This Thursday morning the Academy Awards parties out west are finally starting to wind down. Taking a cue from the French Quarter after Mardi Gras, sanitation crews pressure-wash the rancid party residue off the streets of Los Angeles, sending all the valium and vomit of the Oscars aftermath down the gutters to the metropolitan water purification plant where the night’s effluvia is purified and polished and pumped to the taps on the city’s east side. It’s a recycling of which Hollywood-especially environmentalist Oscar winner Al Gore-would certainly be proud. To say the least, there were some surprises on Oscar night- even suspicious surprises, as if Al Pacino introduced his little friend to the accountants from Price-Waterhouse and doused the winners’ announcements with their blood. For instance, despite what all the polls and critics predicted, Eddie Murphy did not win Best Supporting Actor. Perhaps Oscar voters felt his portrayal of a shoe-shuffling black soulster in the film “Dream Girls” was not too much of a challenge for Eddie, who had portrayed a shoe-shuffling black soulster as part of his routines for the last 20 years. Instead, the Oscar went to Alan Arkin who, after playing a foul-mouthed, bad-example grandfather for the last 20 years, played the foul-mouthed, bad-example grandfather in the independent film, “Little Miss Sunshine.”
Will Farrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly even joined together in a song routine to bemoan the fact that comedians never win Oscars. Was it to prove themselves wrong with Eddie’s potential win or was it to pacify Eddie with a disappointment they all share? Perhaps voters made a last-minute change when they were forced to juxtapose in their minds the serious, Oscar-contender Eddie Murphy of “Dream Girls” with the producer-director-actor Eddie Murphy of his new movie, “Norbit,” which, not-too-ironically, began advertising right around Oscar time. After all, Oscar voters have never forgiven Halle Berry for making “Catwoman” right after winning the Best Actress Oscar for “Monster’s Ball.”
Some other really interesting or notable events at the ceremony:
Jennifer Hudson forgot to thank Simon Cowell for the opportunity to win her Oscar.
Ten-year-old Abigail Breslin, Best Supporting Actress nominee for her role as Olive in “Little Miss Sunshine” was the only of her fellow category nominees to smile when she didn’t win.
Jack Nicholson sported the latest Britney Spears hairdo. Philip Seymour Hoffman sported the old Jack Nicholson hairdo.
With his seventh Best Actor nomination, Sir Peter O’Toole again did not win an Oscar. I guess voters are reasoning that if he didn’t win for “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962 then he shouldn’t win for anything else.
Speaking in his native tongue, Italian composer Ennio Morricone (of spaghetti western “wah-WAH-wah” fame) was more coherent accepting his Oscar than Clint Eastwood, who introduced him in what I suspect was English.
A visibly plump Al Gore, whose Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” warns individuals of the world to reduce their carbon profiles, showed by example how to store excess carbon on your body rather than burning it into greenhouse gases.
Randy Newman wrote and was nominated for another inappropriately depressing theme song to a Disney animated movie. Maybe they should get Eddie Murphy to write songs; he’s already under contact to the studio for Shrek III.
Finally, Helen Mirren keeps her clothes on for a role and wins an Oscar.
Leonardo DiCaprio called Martin Scorsese- who won his first Oscar for direction of “The Departed”- his favorite director. Stephen Spielberg delivers a little disbelieving laugh for the cameras while his neurons scratch DiCaprio off the cast list for the upcoming films Indiana Jones IV and V.
“Little Miss Sunshine” wins Best Original Screenplay, another example of how to make lots of money in Hollywood writing about your dysfunctional family.
Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)- the most falsely advertised movie of all time- wins three Oscars. Even the title translation is a misrepresentation: “Pan” is Greek; “faun” is Roman. Advertised as the next great fantasy epic, the three lush scenes advertised in the trailer are the only three fantasy scenes in the whole movie. If that weren’t enough to ruin that afternoon out with your young nephew or niece, then perhaps portrayals of the brutal stabbings and shootings by the Spanish Civil War fascists will. You Greek boys out there will laugh at your talent of smashing beer cans on your forehead: The lead actor in Pan’s Labyrinth likes to do the same with glass bottles.
Finally, to the most international Oscar audience ever, Academy celebrated Hollywood’s portrayal of American history with a two-minute film montage, the first minute and 15 seconds of which were clips of films portraying wars and ethnic strife. Rather than criticizing the government that defends the freedom to produce and distribute whatever they feel like, perhaps the Academy was reminding the world that historically all nations have suffered wars and ethnic strife. Oh, that’s right: the Third Reich was a peaceful transition from Hindenburg’s Republic. Shame on us for forgetting that.
