Oscars all hype, no delivery on ‘scaled down’ show

By Tim Kearns

Daily Staff Writer

The Academy Awards took place Sunday night, and, as viewers saw, the hype on the red carpet was drastically unchanged. The awards themselves were different because they occasionally got things right.

The Oscars taking the time to congratulate themselves on their musical numbers was shameless and shouldn’t have taken place in this “solemn” Oscar presentation, not to mention altogether too much Liza Minelli.

We saw that again with montages of famous Oscar performances or famous Oscar winners, while totally de-emphasizing people’s performances this year, and it just didn’t work as well. Over and over again, we saw all the wonderful things that the Oscars had brought into our lives, but we didn’t see this “scaled down” Oscar show that was supposed to be taking place. Once again: all hype, no delivery.

The Best Sound award going to “Chicago” was ridiculous, considering that it was up against a pure effects film like “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” or massive crowd film “Gangs of New York.”

The acting awards were solid in the supporting categories, but made bizarre mistakes in Best Actor and Actress. Adrien Brody winning for Best Actor was an insult to the other talents nominated for the award. His performance in “The Pianist” was far too superficial, conveying nothing about his character beyond the fact that he plays a piano. His speech was a class act, though, a high point of humor and tact in the show.

Nicole Kidman winning for a performance in “The Hours” is another misstep like Denzel Washington getting nominated for Best Actor while his film’s star, Ethan Hawke, was a “supporting actor.” Julianne Moore, Renee Zellweger and Salma Hayek were all more deserving, and Kidman should have been awarded her Oscar retroactively for “Moulin Rouge.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones is certainly a deserving winner for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, although it wasn’t until the third time I’d seen “Chicago” that I thought she contributed anything major to the film.

An absent Roman Polanski was practically handed the Best Director award by Harvey Weinstein, who was trying to win it for Martin Scorsese’s middling direction for “Gangs of New York” even at the expense of another Miramax director Rob Marshall. By doing so, Weinstein managed to alienate both Marshall and Scorsese and hand it over to Polanski for his overly acclaimed “The Pianist.”

The worst lowlight of the show was its nearly endless parade of flash-in-the-pan presenters, from Jennifer “I’ve made movies?” Garner to Nia “I’ve made one big movie and I’ve already whored myself to CBS” Vardalos. Another lowlight came with Michael Moore’s acceptance speech, not for saying what he did, but for trying to say too much in his appearance and losing his sense of humor, since that’s what makes his political commentary so lethal.

The night had its big winner, “The Pianist,” for snagging three awards that no one could have suspected, and “Chicago” for escaping with the one that counts at the box office, and its decidedly huge loser “Gangs of New York,” which received 10 nominations, and at the end of the night got to take home one statue — Harvey Weinstein.

Oscars ceremony better than some films nominated for awards

By Ryan Curell

Daily Staff Writer

I don’t think there are words that can express the shock I felt while watching the 75th Academy Awards Sunday evening. This was a freak occurrence — the ceremony itself was better than some of the films nominated. The ceremony had moments of hilarity, controversy, excitement — but also plenty of predictability and outrageousness.

The ceremony itself was a surreal experience. There were surprise wins, including Best Actor Adrien Brody and Best Director Roman Polanski, and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah performing “I Move On,” the Original Song nominee from Best Picture “Chicago.”

There were plenty of great acceptance speeches, such as those that spoke of eloquence (Brody), graciousness (Honorary Award winner Peter O’Toole), joy (Zeta-Jones) and arrogance (Michael Moore).

Speaking of glittering pomposity, the night’s best moment was when “Bowling for Columbine” director Moore rallied with the other documentary feature nominees and came out, quite harshly, against the armed conflict in Iraq.

This moment sparked a few wickedly funny moments: the following two presenters (Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti and Julia Roberts) both blankly and confusingly presented their respective awards.

This was followed with host Steve Martin delivering the best comic line of the night: “Right now, the Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.” Kathy Bates then introduced a montage of Academy Award winners who evaluated their acceptance speeches, causing a still-stunned audience to laugh coyly.

“The Pianist” was the undisputed surprise winner of three Academy Awards. Polanski has deserved this award in the past (“Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown”), about a decade before Martin Scorsese made films called “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas” or this year’s nominee, “Gangs of New York.”

Nicole Kidman’s win for best actress in “The Hours” was a crushing disappointment. I recently watched “The Hours” for a second time and felt knocked around by its pretension. Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore were both more enigmatic and radiant in their roles.

Best Actress should have been awarded to Julianne Moore in “Far From Heaven,” far and away the best performance of the year in 2002’s best film.

I think the shot of a completely uninvolved Cam-eron Diaz, playing with her hair and chewing her gum open-mouthed, best describes my feelings about Eminem’s win for Best Song, “Lose Yourself,” from the atrocious “8 Mile.”

Credit the Academy Awards to give this man another reason to think he’s the greatest in the world — Eminem makes Muhammad Ali look about as humble as a cat that’s just regurgitated a fur ball.

Zeta-Jones was the best part of “Chicago.” She did deserve the award, though her performance is nowhere near the charm, complexity or vast superiority to that of Streep in “Adaptation.”

Streep, as writer Susan Orlean, creates a convincing character that is nothing short of brilliance. This was her best work since her comic performance in “Postcards from the Edge.”