Razz Like the Wind

A significant wind storm (you never want to hear that adjective in any weather forecast) is predicted for my area tomorrow, and so the forty-ninth power outage (no, blackout) in a decade that I've been dreading all month long due to the dicey weather this February might actually happen this time.  Outage or no outage, though, I have a full week ahead of me, including a dental appointment, and so I might have to wait until next weekend to offer my takes of all of the big news expected from Washington and Hanoi this coming week.  For now, though, I'd like to take a brief look at the one thing that's more painful than a dental appointment - the subject of bad movies.  Specifically, the 2019 Golden Raspberry Award Foundation, or "Razzie," Awards.  

A leading contender for the top 2019 Razzie prizes was Gotti, starring John Travolta as the famous mobster.  A movie that looked good on paper, it flopped with both the critics and with audiences.  I suppose I should have have included Travolta on my "losers of the year" list this past December, given Gotti's bad press and bad box office, but I'm glad I didn't, for two reasons.  One, Travolta is a nice guy.  Second, Gotti didn't win a single Razzie, despite having gotten nominations in most of the available categories; many of the awards went to another film that was so bad, moviegoers didn't even know of - or maybe heard of and then forgot that it existed.

I'm talking about Holmes & Watson, an unnecessary comedy version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in the respective title roles.  It won for worst picture, worst supporting actor (Reilly), worst director (Etan Cohen), and worst remake, ripoff or sequel.  Ferrell got beaten out for worst actor, though, by Donald J. Trump for his "performances" in the anti-Trump left-wing Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 and the pro-Trump right-wing documentary Death of a Nation. (Both movies earned Trump and his pettiness the Worst Screen Combo award as well.) Melissa McCarthy won worst actress for two forgotten movies, The Happytime Murders and Life of the Party, but she still won a Razzie Redeemer Award - given to Razzie winners who follow up horrible performances with good ones - for her portrayal of a forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?  The irredeemable Kellyanne Conway, Trump's White House Counsel, won for Worst Supporting Actress for her appearance in Fahrenheit 11/9.   

But you don't care about all that, because you're more interested in the Oscars tonight, or at least you're interested in the red-carpet show beforehand, where you can see Roshumba Williams turn on the sex appeal in one of those hot dresses of hers.  Well, that's certainly more enjoyable than watching Will Ferrell play Sherlock Holmes.  (No kidding, Kojak!)   

Anyway, for those who do care about the Razzies, the full list of nominees and winners is here.  I hope to be back in a few days, if not sooner.  Wish me luck with the wind. :-O 

Oscar Observations

Chris Matthews joked this past Friday that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was going to cause Republicans to go ballistic by giving Oscars to a French movie and a movie about black people. Well, as it turned out, the latter film - The Help - got only one major award, a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Octavia Spencer. Otherwise, The Help (about black domestic workers in the 1960s South) was ignored by academy members who obviously confused it with an old Beatles movie and wondered why the heck they were voting on it.  :-D  But The Artist - a silent black-and-white movie from France about a Hollywood matinee idol of the 1920s done in by the advent of talking pictures - cleaned up by winning five Oscars: Best Score, Best Costume Design, Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), and the big one, Best Picture.

My mother wondered how a non-American film could even be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar when there's a separate category for foreign movies. It's because The Artist got a relatively wide release, and also, the foreign film category is for the best foreign language film. The Artist, as a silent film, had no language. Besides, British movies (as you might have guessed) are treated by the Academy as if they were domestic films, so why not give the same deference to a French movie with no language barrier to worry about? The Academy's award in the foreign language movie category, while generally ignored by the American right, still gave them something to fume over; the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar went to A Separation, an Iranian film. And Woody Allen's script for his own Midnight In Paris won the Best Screenplay award - another insult to the sensitivities of conservatives. Because what annoys the right more than honoring a New York Jewish intellectual Francophile who married his ex-girlfriend's adopted Asian daughter? How about Christopher Plummer winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing a gay man who comes out of the closet late in life in Beginners?

Oh well, Meryl Streep got the Best Actress Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, so conservatives could take heart in the fact that she won for playing their favorite world figure who isn't Pope John Paul II.

Overall, the Oscars mostly honored movies that were not among the biggest box office successes of 2011 - the top grossing movies of the past year were, as they have usually been for the past thirty years, artistically lightweight blockbusters. Some people have wondered if the Oscars are relevant anymore, confusing relevance with credibility. The Academy Awards are not supposed to honor commercial success; they're supposed to honor artistic achievement. (Not that they always do.)  But the decline in box office business in a trade dominated by adolescent fare - commercially speaking, 2011 was the worst year for movies since 1995 - suggests that more serious movies may soon be, well, taken more seriously by studios and that the blockbuster era George Lucas always gets unfairly blamed for initiating (blaming him for the Transformers movies is like blaming the Beatles for Herman's Hermits) may be coming to a close.

Then again, maybe fewer people are going to the movies because of bedbugs in the theaters. I'll explain later.

All About Oscar

I didn't watch the Oscar ceremony last night, largely because Oscar ceremonies are boring and interminable, but I read who won what after the fact. I was surprised to find that The Hurt Locker won for both Best Picture and Best Director (way to go, Kathryn Bigelow!). But then, maybe I shouldn't be. Avatar had a sociopolitically liberal message, the kind that Hollywood loves in its movies (at least after the era of the old studio bosses ended), and it looked to be a winner on that basis alone. With its 3-D and computer special effects, though, the Academy likely balked at giving such a picture legitimacy, if only because of the feared aesthetic fallout on movies that Avatar is likely going to inspire whether it won any awards or not. (It won a few minor ones.)

After all, Star Wars, despite its intelligent story telling and multidimensional characters, is still being blamed for ushering in an era of special-effects movies at the expense of . . . intelligent story telling and multidimensional characters. George Lucas probably gets less respect than even Steven Spielberg as a result.

Sandra Bullock has her Oscar for The Blind Side . . . and her Razzie for All About Steve. She won both awards, and she personally accepted both awards. All About Steve, like John Lennon's remark about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ, probably would have slipped by unnoticed and been forgotten if someone hadn't made a big deal out of it, and now the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation had to go and make it a permanent scar on Bullock's career by "honoring" her role in it. And to think this makes her an Oscar winner and a Razzie winner in the same year. Talk about a silver lining with a cloud on it. That she actually accepted the Razzie "award" in person shows that she's far less mean-spirited than the Razzie folks. (Or I. I still won't let Peter Frampton live down the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie.)

Jeff Bridges did indeed get the Best Actor Oscar for Crazy Heart, and my mother couldn't be more pleased. She's been a Jeff Bridges fan for years. It was a not-so-great night for Up In the Air, which lost out on every award it was nominated for.

Vera Farmiga has a way to go before becoming a star of Meryl Streep's magnitude.

For a full list of Oscar winners, click here. And for a complete list of Razzie winners - which I know you care more about - click here.

Right, now I have to go and actually see one of these movies!

"If this picture wins any more awards, the Academy's going to have to see it." - Albert Brooks, 1988, on Bernarado Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Picture

Five Will Get You Ten

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently decided to expand the number of Best Picture Oscar nominees from five to ten for the next awards ceremony. This was the original standard back in the thirties and forties.

There's only one thing wrong with the Academy's decision: There aren't enough good pictures to qualify for so many nominations these days. For every Meryl Streep picture or every independent production that debuted at Sundance or Cannes, there are a slew of big action movies, live-action cartoons, or films based on sixties sitcoms. (Coming soon: Gilligan's Island: The Movie!)

This, of course, will enable twice as many movie to be advertised for their Best Picture Oscar Nomination, whether they're worthy of the honor or not. If you can't have quality (and Hollywood has been lacking there since at least the Carter administration), get quantity.

On the other hand, this may be the only way a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston can get taken seriously.

I expect the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation to double its Worst Picture nominations any day now.

Oscars and Razzies

The Oscars were last night, and Slumdog Millionaire won all but two of the awards it was up for including Best Picture. Now that it's won so many awards, the Academy members - to cop a phrase from Albert Brooks - are going to have to see it. :-D

Two very exotic European actresses won the best lead and supporting actress awards - Britain's Kate Winslet for The Reader, which I haven't seen, and Spain's Penelope Cruz for Vicki Cristina Barcelona, which I have. I think Cruz deserved her Oscar. :-)

I looked at the Razzies ,and I was disappointed. Sure, Mike Myers probably deserved to be dishonored for The Love Guru, and Paris Hilton was undoubtedly a shoo-in, but these were false, easy targets; no one expects much from Mike Myers when he's not playing Wayne Campbell or Austin Powers, and Paris Hilton isn't a real actress like Razzie laureate Halle Berry. Much more interesting was M. Night Shyamalan's "win" for his horror movie The Happening, because he's a hotshot hot-ticket director who's taken seriously.

They named Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as worst sequel. Hey, I liked that movie! :-O