Step right up, everybody: it’s Oscar time once again. Early this morning, probably far too early for an actor or actress with late-night tendencies, the Academy’s stuffed shirts (and Selma Hayek) made their announcements to a quivering world. I’m sure that Baghdad is quiet now, if only to reflect on Dreamgirls getting the shaft. I haven’t seen Dreamgirls, but know this: the Academy doesn’t typically bestow Best Picture status on just anything, especially well-made musicals (or conventional films, for that matter) about African-Americans. Especially when they can give the nod to a white family on a road trip, the brilliantly marketed Little Miss Sunshine.
Surely the blogs and airwaves and television entertainment shows are all agog with the news: no Dreamgirls Best Picture, certainly this will be Scorsese’s year, who’s going to win it all, will Eddie Murphy win an Oscar, and so on. Will the Academy give Borat Best Original Screenplay (intriguing, as it was mostly improvised) just to see what that saucy Brit would say?
Do not ever forget that the Oscars are marketing. They are the Super Bowl advertisements, Valentines and Sweetest Day, only with arrogant celebrities.
Which leads one to wonder what all the fuss is about: the greatest movies never get nominated (this year, see Children of Men), the best performances ignored. Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren are incredible actors. But their performances were hardly even their best–and they were mimicry (Whitaker’s was a bit better). Clive Owen, Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth), Ray Winstone (The Proposition), Charlotte Gainsbourgh (The Science of Sleep), and Toby Jones incredible performance in Infamous… all ignored in favor of Will Smith and Meryl Streep.
And this question: Martin Scorsese, having seen his great pictures snubbed so that awards could go to John G. Avildsen (for Rocky, when he made Taxi Driver), Robert Redford (for Ordinary People, in the year of Raging Bull), and Kevin Costner (for Dances With Wolves when GoodFellas was begging for the nod), is likely going to steal his statuette from Paul Greengrass for the superior United 93. And I wonder if it bothers his cinematic soul to see politics reward him and take the prize from a young, edgier artist… just as it happened to Scorsese years ago?
This list of great actors and actresses and directors denied their Oscar glory only gets longer, while the mediocre fill the Academy’s coffers, as usual. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who really believes that Babel and Little Miss Sunshine are better pictures than Children of Men or Borat or even Talladega Nights. But they’re better marketed. And that’s all that counts.
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