How To Improve The Oscars
2/25/2007 11:34:05 AM
This is the time of year when all film buffs, professional and amateur alike, are united in one goal: how to avoid watching the Academy Awards.
The professionals, however, will almost always succumb. And then proceed to stew in front of their plasma widescreen digital home entertainment centers as injustice after injustice, mediocre musical act after mediocre musical act, and lame insider joke after lame insider joke parades before them.
One can't watch the Academy Awards with the same gleeful partisanship and leering scrutiny that one brings to, say, the Golden Globes. That's because the Oscar broadcast is a show divided. On the one hand it wants to be a serious salute to the best work and noblest intentions of the movie industry. On the other, it wants to be entertainment.
Each year, it is deeply embarrassing to the entertainment industry that its annual awards show is not entertaining. And within hours of the last second of the broadcast, pundits hit print and airwaves with advice on how to improve the show. Their advice varies from the conventional (cut the Governor's speech), to the equivalent of ethnic cleansing ("Fire Gil Cates!"), to the surprisingly commonsensical ("more categories"). The Academy itself makes minor adjustments: Nominees are informed by the Academy that they need to be "entertaining" when accepting their awards. And one of this year's innovations is a back stage webcast wherein winners can fully list all the recipients of their heartfelt thanks. All of this is pathetic, and the result of industry schizophrenia.
As a veteran of decades of these things (except for the "lost years" of 1975 to 1985) I propose to offer a few suggestions now, before the show airs. These are little ways to improve the show on the night it occurs and in the weeks and months leading up to the red carpet. Here a just a few concepts to keep in mind as the program unfurls and unravels tonight.
Increase nominees to seven candidates per category. Are there really only five potential bests in any one year in each slot? If there were seven best actor slots this year, then maybe a couple of worthy cast members of The Departed might have made the cut. Maybe a few American actresses might have slid in. Also, the increased number of nominees would make Oscar betting pools more interesting.
Clarify the categories. No one knows the difference between best sound mixing and sound editing. Either drop them or rename them in a manner that makes crystal clear how they function. Not that most voters themselves seem care, since they probably also attribute the virtues of the cinematographer to the editors (as the voters seem to have done this year in).
Show all the short films and the foreign films on the Internet. Let there be free downloads of these movies, so that everyone can better assess just what the Academy members think are so good about them.
Either make the show funny or make it serious, but don't do both. Either turn the whole broadcast over to Lorne Michaels or the producers of The Daily Show, or keep the jokes out all together and have dignified old codgers introduce the nominees. The schizophrenia of having it both ways may reflect the divided nature of show business, but it makes for a terribly uneven experience for "normal" American viewers. And we wind up with that horrendous slo-mo dance interpretation of the flaming car rescue from Crash.
Expand the membership. It's possible that the results of Academy voting would be less skewed if they added 2000 more members. But where? Not from Hollywood. Let them be drawn at random from the masses themselves, via contests that reward winners with full Academy membership, with all the rights that entails. Also, let every working film critic in America have voting rights.
Don't broadcast the show. The Oscars should be like murder trials: cameras inside the premises only inflame the masses. Instead, sketch artists should be installed, with embedded journalists allowed to describe what happened, as at an execution. This way, the mystery and magic of movies are maintained, and shouldn't that be what the evening, finally, should be about?
— D.K. Holm
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Video of the Day 2: Spaghetti Town
2/23/2007 5:30:00 PM
I swear I once had a nightmare just like this. No, it’s not animation – at least technically. And while it’s technically live action, that doesn’t mean that I have any idea how to classify “The Receptionist”’s fun and unsettling short, Spaghetti Town.
(Hat tip: The Daily Reel.)
--Bilge Ebiri
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Five Films That Shaped Black America in the Nineties
2/23/2007 5:00:00 PM
It may be Oscar season, but let's not forget that it is also Black History Month. Dax-Devlon Ross is the author of the ambitious book Beat of a Different Drum, whicht chronicles the real-life struggles of young African Americans trying to find their place in today's society. In this piece, Dax looks back at five films that influenced Black America in the decade past, and why that era of films and filmmakers were so important, if short-lived. Spike Lee continued to make interesting (Inside Man) and important work (When The Levees Broke) this year. There was the entertaining fun of Outkast's musical Idlewild, the scripted music video ATL and the celebratory concert documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party.
But besides the success of Dreamgirls and to a lesser degree The Pursuit of Happyness, what else would we have to consider black cinema this year? Norbit? Little Man? Waist Deep? Not exactly shining examples. In celebrating films from the recent past, this essay brings out some interesting, if troubling points for discussion.
--Bryan Whitefield
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Happy Hour Warning! Why You Shouldn't Drink At An Office Party...
2/23/2007 4:30:00 PM
As a huge fan of the BBC's The Office and a non-participant in NBC's version (I know, I know, "It's good") these are the kind of moments that made it necessary to watch the episodes twice. Once to cringe through and a second time to actually laugh. This is a typical example with the only difference being that it's from neither network but pulled from the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction world of YouTube. Unbelievable.
--Bryan Whitefield
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A Storied Bunch: Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas To Give Scorsese His Oscar. Maybe.
2/23/2007 4:00:00 PM
Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood has an interesting piece up, revealing some of what will be happening, telecast and presenter-wise, at this Sunday’s Oscar ceremony. Perhaps the biggest scoop is that the Best Director statue will be presented by the rather notable triumvirate of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg -- obviously, to create a great photo op when Marty Scorsese wins his inevitable Best Director statue for The Departed.
Now, if and when it happens, I will be sniffling along with the rest of the audience, but that said, I hate it when Oscar does this sort of thing. It gives the whole affair an aura of artificiality, even moreso than the one it’s already got.
And also, remember the last time they tried to pull something like this off, trotting out Harrison Ford to give the Best Picture award to Saving Private Ryan, only to have it go to Shakespeare in Love? Can you say, “awkward”?
What I’m trying to say is: I will throw up if I get to see Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu with these three up there.
--Bilge Ebiri
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For Shame, Oscar
2/23/2007 3:30:00 PM
"Ah, the glory years of the Hollywood renaissance! What bounty besmeared our screens in that halcyon season of brave cinematic trailblazers building their cathedrals of son et lumière ... Oh, wait, 1976 was the year Earthquake came out, wasn't it? Ah, but it was also a year with a stunning line-up for the best picture nod. It seemed for once as if geriatric Hollywood (ie, the fools who vote) had recognised the new breed and finally understood. Look at those nominees: Alan J Pakula's one masterpiece, All the President's Men, which changed America's political language forever; Network, which predicted, almost to the letter, the very media-industrial complex now strangling America's national discourse; Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory, a proper leftie movie from a major studio; and Taxi Driver, the most shocking and kinetic movie of the decade, by its greatest new film-maker. And what actually won? Rocky, of course. Colour me punch-drunk and push me down the stairs."
- John Patterson's list of Oscar's 10 Greatest Crimes isn't exactly a fount of original thought. (Yeah, we know, it sucks that Citizen Kane lost. Next!) But it is still a pretty fun read, if only so we can again marvel at the fact that Halle Berry has an Oscar, and that Marisa Tomei's vanquished opposition included Judy Davis, Vanessa Redgrave, and Miranda Richardson.
--Bilge Ebiri
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A Bone To Pick With Roger Ebert
2/23/2007 2:45:00 PM
Anyone who's spent a decent amount of time reading about film online has probably come across the name D.K. Holm, whose cinematic interests are so broad and wide-ranging, and his output so prolific, that one wonders how he could just be one person. Either way, I am very pleased to intro him as yet another one of Screengrab's army of new contributors. - BE
Yesterday's mail brought a copy of Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007. I've become a fan of Ebert's print reviews since they've become more easily available, thanks to the internet, and this edition goes to the top of the bathtub reading stack.
In the past few years, Ebert's introductions have been frank about his health issues, but the new book's foreword is all business: the movie business, that is. It's informative, and interesting as he tracks the three major upheavals in movie history that have changed how movies are distributed and viewed.
But that's where I feel a wee bit of a divergence from one of Ebert's assertions. On page X (that's -10 or .10 to you), in describing the shifts in how people watch movies over the years, writes, "I believe that the best way to see a movie is in a theater with an audience, and that light-through-celluloid is still better than any digital projection system I have seen."
But is this true? Is the big screen still the best way to see a movie? Was it ever? I doubt it.
Now, this rant isn't about audiences. Movie audiences have always been awful, as shown as far back as the 1930s and '40s in the old Robert Benchley and Pete Smith shorts, which occasionally complained comedically about annoying or loud people in theaters. "Audience" is, in fact, just a fancy word for "crowd," and all crowds are nasty, collectively plummeting even the highest IQs in the room. I like theaters, too, but only when they are empty.
No, this is about the sentimentality critics have about the golden age of movie theaters. I've seen thousands of movies in every available theater in my hometown and only rarely had a good experience. Generally, the sound is bad, the prints are scratched, and the auditorium is filthy (and yes, the audiences are awful). The "silver" screen hasn't been "luminous" since the 1920s, because shortly thereafter the physical makeup of film itself advanced and changed, and then movies gradually went to color. There isn't even any celluloid anymore. Cellulose acetate replaced celluloid beginning in the 1930s.
Ebert does go on to write in that same paragraph to acknowledge the "bright side of the digital revolution." But movies are a public art only by happenstance. The first mass viewings of movies were in small machines gazed into by individuals. It was someone's clever idea to reverse the direction of the light so that more people could view one strip of film collectively, to the higher profit of distributors.
Modern movies per se have never looked better, thanks to digital technology. Today's computer screens and high definition television sets are sharper, clearer, erosion free, more easily accessible, and best of all, private. After about 100 years, movies have gone full circle and essentially returned to the nickelodeon, where perhaps they should have stayed all along.
--D.K. Holm
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Quote of the Day: Soderbergh on Clooney
2/23/2007 2:00:00 PM
"We found each other at the right time...We needed each other. We were both looked at as people with potential who hadn't delivered. It was a trick of the mind for George and me to show up on set each day and be creatively free when we both knew what the stakes were. If we didn't pull it off - if he didn't prove he was a movie star, if I didn't make something audiences could enjoy - we were in big trouble."
- Steven Soderbergh, speaking to The Guardian, about his fortuitous relationship with George Clooney.
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The Nerve Movie Awards 2007
2/23/2007 1:30:00 PM
 | | Daniel Craig with his, uh, "trophies." |
So, we figured we'd close out the awards season with a bang -- only we let you choose which bang was the best. Go here to vote in this year's Nerve Movie Awards.
One day, I guarantee you, Eva Green will win an Oscar. Until that time, she may have to settle for this -- which ain't so bad, if you ask me.
--Bilge Ebiri
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Video of the Day 1: Errol Morris Oscar Short
2/23/2007 1:00:00 PM
The great Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) will be doing a four-minute short film for the Oscar broadcast on Sunday. Here's the one he did back in 2002.
Also, go here to read up on Morris's efforts this year.
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