Oscars, my arse

Oscars come but once a year…which is why I will allow myself to discuss it, even although more than a week has passed since the actual event and I still have managed/can’t be arsed to find the full transmission given the results and apparently shite hosting. A lot of people won’t agree with me but, frankly, who cares? Who is reading this blog except some mofo from the FBI?? And that’s only if I’m lucky… Anyway, I digress.

Right, hosting. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did a cracking job at the Golden Globes - great one liners, cameos as fake actors in fake films – magnificent. Stephen Fry at the BAFTAs, trying his best to make Americans feel inferior in their command of the English language –again, thumbs up (sorry, FBI agent who I will thus forth address as Big Dave)

(I'd go and see it...)

But to the beef…one of the very few upsides to my current unemployed state means that I had the time to see nearly all of the big contenders this year (bar ‘Les Miserables’ which I flat out refuse to go and see – a musical without tap dancing and some sort of reference to “dames” is not really a musical in my book). The competition was ridiculous, particularly when one considers the slimmer seasons of some of the past few years. Yet, as was the case last year with McQueen’s ‘Shame’, the various award bodies failed to even nominate one of the best films of the bunch, ‘The Master’. It is bewitching, complex, disturbing and extremely innovative, not to mention that it provided some of the best performances of the year. I was really surprised that even the BAFTAs failed to include it in the shortlist for Best Film and Best Director.

The main category that bothered me, apart from Ang Lee winning for feckin about with a few blue boards and a tiger (ok, I haven’t seen the film), was the Best Actress. Competition was, again, insane but I had decided that Emmanuelle Riva should win. ‘Amour’ was the greatest film in the line-up. I found the deceptively simple style, outstanding performances and subject matter which we can all, in some way, relate to extremely moving. Riva was particularly effective and affecting; her rapport with Trintignant and her performance were extremely natural and, well, quite devastating. I know that most people have dwelt on her performance in 'Hiroshima, mon amour' and so they should. After seeing 'Amour' I revisited 'HMA' and despite having seen it many times before, her performance never fails to totally captivate me, growing in complexity with each viewing. In both films she portrays a poetic notion of fragility and strength, yet, in contrast to her character in 'HMA', one never learns all that much about the background of Anne, her character in 'Amour', a fact that aides in emphasising the still nature of the film as time and therefore death creeps by.  

The other candidate which I would have been thrilled to see win, given not only her performance in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ but also her fantastic body of work leading up to it, is Jessica Chastain. She is a rarity and, to her credit, one finds it difficult to fit her into a category. Although the subject matter of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is not really something that I would usually run to go and see at the cinema, Bigelow and Boal’s collaboration along with the excellent cast really makes it worthwhile. It is an important film which will be looked back on as a benchmark, along with ‘The Hurt Locker’ of the causes and consequences of this “war on terror” which plague our modern existence. The controversy surrounding the film was confusing and, as our Australian cousins would say, "a pain in the proverbials" because instead of promoting intelligent discourse about the film and the horrors inflicted by interrogators, the world seemed to point the finger at Bigelow and Boal, as if they had been encouraging this practice rather than simply recounting the facts. Apologies to Big Dave as this last paragraph went slightly off course. In conclusion, sucks for Riva, really hope that she makes another appearance in the near future and I’m sure that Chastain will continue to surprise us with her unconventional yet brilliant approach. J-Law – “the proof of the pudding will be in the eating”.

As for the rest, I can’t complain although I do wish that at least one of the awards bodies had awarded Sally Fields as she really was spectacular in ‘Lincoln’. Although I have not seen her performance, I can see why “The Haths” won, I mean, she's playing a dodgy French prostitute who loses her teeth and then dies – the Oscars love that kind of gear! (NB, I am aware that Victor Hugo probably did not write that in his notebook as a character sketch prior to writing the actual novel)

The worst part of this whole season being over is that we’re really not going to see that many decent films until around November. There are, thank God, a few exceptions. I still haven’t seen ‘To The Wonder’ (more on that at a later date), ‘Hitchcock’ (could be rubbish – Hopkins with prosthetic nose? Saucy Alma? I hope to be proven wrong…) and, above all, Ken Loach’s ‘Spirit of ‘45’ which I would encourage even Big Dave to see. Soon the season of 3D movies (still don’t get it) and films with J-Lo will be lining the cinemas. I would like to remind Big Dave, if he has any influence in the film world to remind distributors that come June not ALL of us are on our school holidays and would maybe appreciate the odd film which does not feature Bruce Willis. This is, of course, unless Bruce Willis is playing, say, a former cop with mother issues who is trying to sort his life out in a small village in Bavaria…it could work! With that, I must leave you in order to explore this excellent idea and get Harvey Weinstein to give me some money.