Sat through the Oscars last night. Taking it in glances:

• There was a general tone of weariness about the whole affair. After the long, drawn-out , contentious WGA strike, there is probably a need in The Industry for something light, traditional, conciliatory and uncontroversial. I know the feeling: After a protracted squabble or grinding contretemps I wouldn’t want to sit down and watch three hours of churlishness, egomania and excessively strong lighting. I would prefer a pleasant evening watching a well-controlled, predictably glitzy affair.

• Jon Stewart did a fine job, alternating between constrained comedy and plain niceness. He said nice stuff about award winners after the breaks. He may have had a hand in getting Markéta Irglová back up on stage for another shot at her cut-off acceptance speech. He may have been holding his barbs back because, due to the truncated prep time available, he didn’t have a volume of barbed material to fall back on.

• The opening montage was awful, a mash-up of film character clips CG’d into a driving game. Frenetic, pointless and poorly made.

• Humility– Something I merely hoped would begin to return to Hollywood as a result of the strike– seems to be making a serious comeback. Marion Cotillard’s acceptance speech was so heartfelt and touching it almost made me cry. Ethan and Joel Coen kept it very simple (Especially after the clip montage of winning directors showing, among others, James Cameron proclaiming himself “King of the World.” Did that really happen?) Javier Bardem brought his mom. Awww. Even Scott Rudin managed to keep his ego to just a few times larger than average.

Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno, was a genuine surprise– but not just because she won (The screenplay for Juno was pretty good: Excellent thematics, well-crafted narrative structure, but grating dialog. But as the stilted “Buffy” slash “Gilmore-Girls” style dialog is the film’s gimmick as much as it’s teen pregnancy plot). Diablo Cody’s common definition as a “stripper turned blogger turned screenwriter” was getting so annoying I was beginning to lump her in with Sofia Coppola, as just another indie hipster who would probably deliver an incoherent, glib, Juno-like acceptance speech. But no– she held back the tears and operated under the two emotional states most appropriate to the evening’s general tone: gratitude and humility. More power to ya, Ms. Cody. As Tim Goodman from SFGate said of her, “she’s a perfect example that no matter who you are, if you turn on a pitch and get all of it, you can go places.”

• No Country For Old Men, the film I wanted to take best picture, took it. Yay.

• Most people I have talked to about the Oscar telecast thought it was a snoozer. I personally liked it’s stripped-down presentation. If a few more hard decisions were made early on, I’ll bet it could have come in under 2.5 hours.

• I don’t know if this is indicative of the sort of film year it has been or some other factor I can’t even fathom: We threw an Oscar-viewing party this year, but nobody showed up– Every invitee claimed force majeure due to illness. It was just me and my wife, the sole audience for my witty observations. I’m out about $90 in groceries and booze, money I hoped to make back by taking the betting pool. Well, the booze won’t go to waste.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am and is filed under General, Oscars!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.