Meat Parade
As George C. Scott said when he was nominated for his role in Patton: “The Oscars is a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons."
He was right of course, but Maya is from Los Angeles, and the ceremony is considered sacred among her people. We belong to a little movie club that ran through all of the John Wick movies last year, and Sunday night was a good excuse for a cinematic potluck with the Wick Crew.
Maya made a fondue with an Anatomy of a Fall theme: we played that infectious steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. about eleven times in a row as we ate it. (Did you see that movie? It’s so weird the way the French do law!)
It was a pretty good year for the show itself, and justice was largely carried out at the ceremony, in as much as it ever is, and in as far as it matters.
Greta Gerwig was robbed, but she’s in good company. Killers of the Flower Moon didn’t win anything, although snubs are just part of the Scorsese mystique at this point. He and De Nero don’t need any awards to further demonstrate the incorrectness of Tarantino’s ten-films-and-out theory. I would have liked to see Lily Gladstone win, though.
Priscilla was my favorite of the dozens of Austin Butler performances I saw last year, and it was ignored, as were so many great genre pictures which for whatever reason don’t get to come to the show: Saltburn, Eileen, Talk to Me, The Killer, Wick 4, Theater Camp.
Did you realize that before last night Wes Anderson had zero academy awards, and also that Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain failed to receive a single nomination??
There was no villain to hiss about this year, which was problematic from a dramatic perspective. Couldn’t someone have made a sequel to Green Book or The Blind Side? Where was this year’s Forrest Gump, or Crash?
It was a bumper crop year, and almost all of the nominated films were excellent. The trailer for The Holdovers seemed maudlin, so we skipped it until it was streaming, which was a mistake. I loved that movie, to the point where afterward I re-watched Sideways, which I am pleased to report holds up well.
The kid in The Holdovers should get a Rookie of the Year Oscar, although first-time director Celine Song could make a strong case too. Past Lives contains scenes in which a Skype call is rendered cinematically watchable, which is a real achievement.
The Zone of Interest, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Poor Things were all worthy of Best Picture. I didn’t see Maestro and stand by that decision, and while I didn’t care for American Fiction, I recognize that just about everyone disagrees with me. I admired Cord Jefferson’s acceptance speech and I’m glad that he’s going to get to make more movies.
I also didn’t personally love Oppenheimer, but that’s not fair, because Oppenheimer is about physics, and I cannot understand physics at all. I’ve sat across a table from smart, patient people who have tried to explain quantum mechanics, relativity, or string theory to me, and may as well have been explaining a doorknob to my dog. Oppenheimer, frankly, is none of my business.
This year could have used another fun fistfight, and I was annoyed that I had to field an admiring text from my mother concerning John Cena’s nude body, but I have no further notes.
