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| | Honoring cinema's political year
Sunday, Feb 27, 2005 By John Brummett My credentials to handicap tonight's Oscars? Well, I've seen all five nominated films. There's an independent movie house in Little Rock that names a popcorn and drink special after me. Beyond that, movies have been uncommonly political this year, to the extent that I cited one about immigration in a debate with state Sen. Jim Holt and wrote a few days after that about the right wing's outrage over Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby." Evangelical Christians - now there's a political group - remain bent out of shape that Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" didn't get nominated except for ... makeup, I think it was. Michael Moore's campaign commercial against George Bush got shut out, which has been something of an issue. What will make tonight's annual orgy of celebrity gluttony mildly more interesting than most - to me, at least - is that there likely will be dissipation of strength. This may be that rare year that declines to defer to the grandiosity of self-styled epics. These awards are not likely to be overwhelmed by some larger-than-life film that I care nothing about - "Braveheart" or "Lord of the Rings," for example. That's unless "The Aviator" sweeps. It's one of those vast, overdone, self-indulgent things - made more to dazzle and stand for its Oscar than to tell a well-acted story. It's about something hardly anyone can really care about: the obsessions of Howard Hughes, a nutty guy of inherited wealth. It shows a plane crash in slow motion, stressing the incineration and the slicing of the tops off houses. Maybe a plane crash looks like that; maybe not. Most who could tell you are dead. I'm figuring "The Aviator" will take several early technical awards, then lose momentum at the end except for the director's Oscar. I suspect that will go to Martin Scorcese, the director of the film. It's high time he got one, and sentimentality usually counts for an award or two. If by some comical miscalculation Leonardo DiCaprio should win for best actor for his portrayal of Hughes, I will leave the watch party and walk home. Never for a single second could I believe him as Howard Hughes. Conversely, I never thought Jamie Foxx wasn't Ray Charles. Foxx should and will win for best actor. My personal favorite of the nominated movies is "Sideways," which won't get anything except best adapted screenplay and maybe a supporting actress award for Virginia Madsen. It's a little independent movie about a nerdy guy who gets nervous around women, is a failed writer and obsesses on wine, specifically pinot noir. It's about me, actually. It seems to me that the period between the announcement of nominations and the presentation of awards often becomes a fluid time, nuanced with shifts of momentum, much like an election. One movie will start out hot, like "The Aviator," but seem somehow to fade as the date draws near. Another, "Sideways" this year, will do well in the pre-Oscar awards, then find itself preemptively relegated to also-ran status by emerging Oscar consensus. And some movie will get hot. That movie this year is Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby." It was initially reviewed as a sound little story of which Eastwood should be proud because of the bravery of the subject matter and his ever-improving acting and directing skills. Since then it has seemed to gain respect with each passing day, and it has not been hurt at all, but helped, by the right wing's attack on its neutral presentation of an emotional and polarizing issue. The movie's Hillary Swank will win best actress and Morgan Freeman probably will win best supporting actor. And all of a sudden it appears "Million Dollar Baby" may get the big award. That would suit me, since I can't have "Sideways" and don't want "The Aviator." ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
