Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

On Saturday, The Gryphon and I attended another Otakon meeting in Baltimore. My dog, Una, spent the day at the pet sitter's. After the meeting, we went with a couple friends to a nearby Italian restaurant, which was really good. I even managed to find something that didn't have a cream sauce but lots of veggies and garlic instead.

The next day, after I finished a couple assignments, we ate at a local sushi bar. It was really good: lots of tasty things to try. Even though the price tag was such that we wouldn't want to do this every weekend, we enjoyed ourselves.

Afterwards, we drove to the movie theater to see Million Dollar Baby. I'd been hearing people hint about the fact that there was sort of a twist ending, and I wanted to see it before it was entirely revealed to me. The ending, I'd say, wasn't so much a twist ending as a non-Hollywood ending. The writing, directing and acting were all great, so I wasn't terribly surprised when later that night it won for Best Picture and Clint Eastwood got Best Director.

I'd been hoping against hope that this would be Martin Scorsese's year, but The Aviator just wasn't the movie to do it for him. If nothing else, at some point they'll give him a lifetime achievement award.

My guesses on who would win awards didn't turn out so well: I got less than 50 percent right. I was right, though, about the big acting awards: Hilary Swank for Best Actress and Jamie Foxx for Best Actor. Both clearly deserved it, although there were others in both categories who would have also deserved it. Much as I would have liked Johnny Depp to win an Oscar, I think Finding Neverland was too quiet of a movie. I'm sure he'll have other chances, though.

Hilary Swank wore a really strange dress. I think she was going for classy, but it looked like it was on backwards. It had an open back, but the front went all the way up to her neck and looked a bit dowdy. At least in her acceptance speech, she remembered to thank her husband.

Jamie Foxx gave a moving acceptance speech, where he talked about his grandmother and how she had inspired him to make something of himself. She's passed on, so now he only talks to her in his dreams. He said he couldn't wait to go to sleep tonight because he had a lot to tell her. The speech alone was Oscar winning.

Like Tom Hanks and Robin Williams before him, he's proven that comic actors can have range.

One nominee I'd liked to have seen win was animator Bill Plympton , whom I interviewed for Wild Violet last year. He was up for Best Animated Short for "Guard Dog." Even though he didn't win, it was good to see him nominated.

We were happy to see Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor win Best Adapted Screenplay for Sideways and to see Charlie Kaufman, Michael Gondry and Pierre Bismuth win Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The Gryphon and I were disappointed that House of Flying Daggers wasn't nominated for more awards. They were up for a two, including cinematography, and didn't get it. Maybe that movie hadn't been seen as much.

The Oscars telecast moved more quickly, because they did some more streamlined award presentation for awards like Best Sound Editing. They had all the nominees on stage for the announcement so that when they won they only had to walk a couple feet to get to the microphone, rather than across an entire auditorium. In other cases, they presented awards next to the section where the nominees sat and had a microphone set up nearby for the acceptance speeches.

They also eliminated all the pointless montages which serve no purpose. This time there was only an opening montage looking back at 77 years of movies, and then of course, the memorial segment, accompanied by Yo Yo Ma, which gave it an air of class.

Chris Rock was uneven as the MC. He didn't do terrible, but he didn't do much, period. At the opening of the show, he did a monologue where he ripped on the movies and the movie going experience. He was funny, but I thought he might not have gauged his audience correctly. For example, he was saying that if directors can't get a star they should wait. He used as an example, "If you want Tom Cruise and all you can get is Jude Law, wait."

He probably failed to realize how many people in the movie theater thought that Jude Law was a good actor. This was born out later in the show when presenter Sean Penn pointed out that Jude Law is a fine actor.

The problem was that Chris Rock almost did a Don Rickles or Joan Rivers monologue without going all the way. If you're going to be an insult comic, you have to make it more outrageous so that it's clearly a joke. It also helps to pick targets who will be in the audience, so that the banter becomes a way of teasing them. Sort of like a roast.

The only time the monologue really worked was when he talked about race issues in Hollywood and when he did some self-deprecating humor. "If you want Denzel Washington and all you can get is me, then wait."

The rest of the show, aside from occasional jokes while introducing the presenters, he didn't do much. He did have one very funny Vox Pops segment, where he went to an African-American theater in L.A. and asked the people about their favorite movies of the year.

But overall, he did OK. He didn't embarrass himself, and his opening monologue was funny but could have been refined. He might not be asked back, but he has nothing to be ashamed of. But he probably ought to stay away from Sean Penn for awhile.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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