Academy Awards Wrapup 2005

So I didn’t do to well on my Oscar picks this year. The strange thing is, I’m very happy about it. Instead of second guessing itself and the motives behind each pick, or at least most of them, this year the Academy voters picked the best nominee in most categories.

Million Dollar Baby was nominated for six Academy Awards and won in four categories, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor. The fact that Clint did not win in what is his best performance to date is unfortunate, but no one was going to derail the Jamie Foxx juggernaut. This film was by far the best of the year and it is nice to see that the voters went for this smaller character driven film not only for its acting performances but for picture and director as well. This makes Eastwood truly a legend as a director considering that last year his film Mystic River picked up two of the acting awards, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Plus don’t forget the slew of awards for Unforgiven. Clint has to be number one on most actors’ wish lists this year.

Of course Million Dollar baby left The Aviator and Scorsese out in the cold, again, but it did clean up on the technical awards. The Aviator won for cinematography, film editing, and art direction as well as the consolation acting prize for Best Supporting Actress. I’m surprised that they didn’t win for sound mixing, especially since aside from musical EQ there wasn’t much sound mixing in Ray. Maybe at 74 the academy figured the clock is ticking on Eastwood but Scorsese is bound to come up with something else Oscar worthy sometime in the future. Or maybe, like me, they just liked Million Dollar Baby better.

Jamie Foxx won best actor for his performance in Ray which surprised nobody. Though in his speech he did mention that his daughter had given him some words of encouragement for if he didn’t win I think she may have been the only person in the audience who wasn’t sure.

I was surprised by the number of random people in the audience who didn’t really seem to have a reason to be there. Perhaps when Chris Rock agreed to host the show he required a quota of black people in the theater. That is the only reason I can think of that Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, and Samuel L Jackson were there (though Jackson was a presenter). To make up for the disparity the camera made sure to show them all the time. While I agree that there should be more parity in Hollywood I don’t think a token invitation to the awards show counts in that direction. Plus why do they always invite Mickey Rooney, the guy is scary. Plus, I missed Mel Gibson who may have turned down the Academy when his film was only nominated for two minor awards, but I thought Mel should have shown up to support his film. BTW- The Passion of the Christ didn’t win either of those awards. At least Chris Rock mentioned both Passion and Fahrenheit 911 in part of his monologue.

I did pick the right winners for the adapted and original screenplays and I think that both are deserving films, and deserving films that didn’t win anything else that they were nominated for. I was really surprised though that Charlie Kauffman spoke so poorly. I guess on thinks that a screen writer would have crafted something for themselves to say but I guess not. That is probably why he writes the stuff and don’t act.

Some of the other technical awards were right on the money as well. I was surprised and dismayed to see the way that some of these awards were presented in the aisles with the nominees all seated together, though I guess it was far better than the awards where they had all of the nominees standing on stage looking like a police lineup. Those people aren’t necessarily used to the attention and what’s worse is that they had to stand there in front of everyone knowing they had lost. No one was ungracious but still it is weird. Almost like a beauty pageant where all of those girls have to stand there while one gets picked and they have to hug her and stuff. Ewww. It is not that it is a bad idea, after all, this was one of the shortest Oscar ceremonies in recent history in large part because they didn’t let the pacing lag with all of these people marching up to the stage, it is just that they made second class citizens out of these people. They should have put some of the acting awards into the format to make it more even. Instead they relegated the technical awards, at least those that even make it to the main telecast, second class citizens.

But anyway, the visual effects winner Spider-Man 2 was no big surprise. Achievement in Makeup for Lemony Snicket wasn’t much of a stretch either though I didn’t pick it. There just weren’t any standouts in the category like last year’s Lord of the Rings. The lack of a big mega winner is probably why no one watched the Oscars this year. The big budget blockbuster gets the attention and no amount of Beyonce is going to change that. But I’ll get to that in a minute. I’ll just quickly mention that The Incredibles won for sound editing which is nice.

The Incredibles won for best animated feature to no surprise. I think it unfortunate that since there is now a category for animated feature films they won’t ever get nominated as best picture though I thought that The Incredibles was by far a better and more creative film than Ray. At least deserving animated films now get some sort of award. I’m sure Walt is proud.

As I mentioned in my column running up to the Oscar broadcast the music categories threw me because the Golden Globe winners, and thus the obvious choices, were not even nominated. So I didn’t even come close to picking the winners. Best Original Song was an interesting category because of the issues surrounding the awards ceremony. Though they had the chance to get Mick Jagger, his song didn’t get nominated so it was really a non-issue. In order to draw a larger audience the Academy decided to get Beyonce to sing a majority of the songs. Now Beyonce has a nice voice and may appeal to a different demographic than the normal show audience but that is no reason to shun the original artists. Where would we have been last year if they had decided that Annie Lennox was too scary to perform Into the West? We would have missed a singing Gollum. Thus Beyonce performed Look to Your Path, a French song from a movie I have never heard of, which was fine. She also performed an unnecessary duet with Josh Groban who would have been fine without her. The problem was that she supplanted Minnie Driver singing Learn to Be Lonely from The Phantom of the Opera. Now I am sure that if Ms Driver could perform the song for the film that she was more than capable of singing it to a live audience, Ashley Simpson moments notwithstanding. It was a serious slight to the actress to take this performance away from her.

The other problem with the songs was that whoever was doing the equalization in the theater should be shot. Counting Crows sounded small and tinny though their performance was good. And what was the point of having Andrew Lloyd Webber playing piano accompaniment on stage to Learn to Be Lonely if you couldn’t even hear him? Aside from the vocals the only thing you could hear in the theater was Bill Conte’s pit band. Speaking of the pit band, maybe they were paying tribute to composers we lost this year but the music selections were less than inspired. Was I the only one terribly confused when Morgan Freeman finished his speech and the orchestra went into the Star Trek theme? Or later when the theme to Bonanza played for no obvious reason? Playing such noticeable themes detracted from the rhythm of the evening. At least Conte refrained from playing his own contribution to historic cinematic music, the Rocky theme.

Of course they made a very big deal of the fact that Al Otro Lado Del Rio from the Motorcycle Diaries was the first Spanish language song ever nominated. I didn’t realize this fact but I found it very surprising considering the wealth of Spanish language cinematic fare available. Of course I knew that it would probably be the politically correct thing to give them the award after that and it did happen. But allowing Antonio Banderas to sing the song when the composer and performer of the song Jorge Drexler stood by was unacceptable. Drexler must have agreed as he sang part of the song for his acceptance and didn’t say anything else.

Last but not least, unless you are talking about studios and money and acceptance and respect and all of the other things that movies and awards shows are all about. The poor nominees, and winners of Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short, Best Animated Short, and Best Live Action Short. These folks were either herded onto stage to stare out at the audience nervously or they were left in a group in their seats. Either way these guys didn’t make out. The either didn’t get within twenty feet of the stage or else they got to stand vacantly on the stage while someone else won. In both respect they got less respect than anyone receiving a

Related posts:

1. 2007 Academy Award picks
2. Academy Award Rehash 2007
3. 2004 Oscar Wrapup
4. Oscars 2005 part 1
5. Oscars 2005 Part 2