OSCAR
SYMPOSIUM
with
your host Nathaniel
and six very special guests
February 2008
Introducing Our Seven Participants
And we're off...day one
NATHANIEL: On January 1st at 12:00 AM many people can be found shouting "Happy New Year" out their windows / front doors / cars / drunken stupors etcetera. I'm stubbornly silent. I'm arguing.... "No, no, no. The new year doesn't start until the last Monday in February. You know... the day after the Oscars. duh!" So, that's how my clock works. I know that both of my returning guests Sasha Stone, who rules over Awards Daily, and Nick Davis of Nick's Flick Picks, who lords over classrooms at Northwestern, also find that Oscar season demands their subservience.
But the symposium virgins? Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun fame, Boyd van Hoeij of the essential European Films, Tim Robey from Mainly Movies and the London Telegraph and Dennis Cozzalio who blogs away with cinematic fervor at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. I have no idea if the annual circus surrounding the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is like a mild disturbance to them or if it hits their lives like a full fledged tornado. But let's find out.
This is the moment when you come out of your house and things suddenly go from black and white to color. I guess this makes me Glinda, floating down in a pink narcotized bubble to welcome you. What tune are you singing these days in the merry old land of Oscar? And if you really want to go with the analogy which film has the heart, brains or courage that you're looking for?
NICK: I should be too old and too professionalized to admit this, but I still don't sleep much the night before the Oscar nominations, and I always think there is going to be a blizzard or an alarm-clock malfunction or a Cloverfield situation, and I am somehow going to miss them. Or that Good Morning America is going to cut away to the world's largest eggplant instead of keep with their livecasting commitment. I have displaced all of the Christmas Eve and first-day-of-school butterflies of my youth onto the pre-nomination butterflies of my, you know, still RELATIVE youth. So even though New Year's Day is already my favorite holiday, I actually celebrate it again when the noms come out. You and I obey different calendars, Nathaniel. As though we worship in different religions. Which maybe we do, but I thought the whole point was that we didn't?
Anyway, to get back to Dorothy: it's actually the Academy that I look to, fretfully, for brains,
courage, and heart. (By this time, the films of any given year, most of them wholly unnominatable, have already given enough of those things.) But to see the AMPAS voters nominate a documentary as smart as No End in Sight or a performance as brainy as Tilda's, or show the courage to defy their reputation for unbearable lightness and wail and moan along with No Country and TWBB and Michael Clayton, or the heart to stick with critical, uncommercial faves like Tommy Lee or Viggo or Persepolis, or The Savages.... this is what the yellow brick road that we wander so stupidly is supposed to be about, right?I know there are plenty of meanie flying monkeys and horrible witches and snooze-inducing poppies and nasty old trees to deal with along the way. But I'm starting out positive. Part of the sickness, or an outgrowth of being up all night *in my office* doing much less glamorous, workaday tasks than waiting for the Oscar announcements?
SASHA: Hi there, nice to meet all of you and thanks Nat for inviting me back for a second go-round.
I'm with you, Nick. I have panicked each and every year I've been watching the Oscar race, but specifically two days cause me so much physical stress I am wondering more and more why I torture myself with something so small. Nominations morning is always sheer agony. I wake up every hour on the hour, check the clock, get up way too early, always have an upset stomach from the too-strong coffee and then the moment the names are announced, this time by Kathy Bates of all people ("The rain. It gives me the blues.") I know that nothing from that point on will ever be the same. Oscar day is even worse because you've invested so much already that when the winners are announced you either jump with joy or else collapse under the weight of your own puffed up ego.
Last night, as the Producers Guild winner was announced, I knew that upon going to sleep I would wake up to many angry voices that There Will Be Blood didn't win. If No Country for Old Men was the film that wasn't winning, I'm sure they would all love it more.
As bloggers, does anyone ever think about "what the commenters will think," or tailor your content for your readership? Or do you believe it's your site and you'll cry if you want to? I do agree, though, that this is an especially vibrant year with good movies, scripts and actors - the 4 Months debacle notwithstanding.
TIM: Hey chaps, Thanks for inviting me Nat, and looking forward to shooting the breeze with all of you in the coming days. This is me saying "hi" and "bear with me today" -- I'll be checking in properly soon but I have to go to an ACTUAL FILM AWARDS DINNER in an hour or so and need to go dress. It's hosted by the Evening Standard. Daniel Day-Lewis is probably not coming.
When I'm back I'll share the gossip, I promise. And say some stuff about the Oscars, I double promise...
KIM: Interesting you brought up Dorothy, Nathaniel. I woke up this morning to vigorous, house-spinning, flying monkey, granny bicycle riding winds in the desert and exclaimed “Where the hell is Toto”? Actually, I’m just worried about the cats that have been sleeping in my room every night. Nevertheless, given the conditions, I can’t leave the Joshua Tree, which is fine with me. This wind is pretty damn exciting -- and cinematic. I feel like the family hiding out in their cabin in The Searchers, minus the Native Indian threat, and that wonderfully bizarre John Wayne ambling around. Where’s Lee Van Cleef when you need him (I always need him)? Or The Hurricane's Dorothy Lamour, John Hall and Raymond Massey? Or hell, even Daniel Plainview. He could at least slap the power into shape.
Anyway, my connection is a bit unstable, but The Inn is attempting to fix the power outages (It’s cold! We need heat!) so every time I get a signal, I will quickly respond. And for as long as I can -- so forgive me for jumping right into, as Liz says in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, "the meat of things." And thanks Nathaniel and hello to all.
But enough of my “wayward wind, the restless wind…that yearns to wander,” let’s get to the Oscars, a ceremony that, for better and for worse, I’ve been watching every since I was a little kid, rooting for actors like the glorious Jessica Lange.
After so many years of simply throwing up my hands in exasperation: Crash? Chicago? And a Chicago that so very little resembles one of of my heroes, Bob Fosse? Forest Gump? Dances with Wolves? And had I been old enough to remember, Around the World in Eighty Days? (Hey, I feel for the late Mike Todd but it doesn't change things) -- I've become cynical about the whole affair. But I do love the spectacle.
But again, I’m a cynic, though a hopeful one. I remain a nonstop viewer (I cover the telecast every year for MSN Movies) and always anticipate at least three of my favorites will nab that golden boy. I’m also waiting, just waiting (perhaps in vain) for Cher and Dolly to show up, giving all those perfectly coiffed starlets a run for their money….nothing like a Bob Mackie Headdress to get the party started.
And this year is better than usual (at least it’s not as abysmal as 1999, when, aside from The Insider, two of the best pictures of the year, some of the decade: Fight Club and Magnolia weren't even nominated for best picture). But back to this year. Two of my favorite pictures, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were nominated. Daniel Day Lewis, our greatest living actor deserves to win for his inspired, old school writ large yet method performance. Julie Christie, whom I worship–was stellar and Javier Bardem avoided all the clichés of the typical movie killer. But there are some glaring, shameful omissions. No Zodiac for best picture, best director, best supporting actor (for Robert Downey Jr.). No Ashley Judd for Bug? Judd’s was the most moving, brave and superbly raw performances of the year. No Nicole Kidman for Margot at the Wedding? No Samuel Jackson for Black Snake Moan? And goddamit! No Josh Brolin? If I think further…there’s many more.
And then there’s....Juno -- a movie that’s gone into hype overload of hysterical proportions. And I don’t mean hysterical, “ha ha,” I mean hysterical, “twee, twee.” OK, I’m feeling cynical again. And I think my cabin is spinning.
DENNIS : Hi, all! First of all, thanks to Nathaniel for inviting me to this event! With the exception of he and Kim, this will be the first time I will have corresponded with any of you, and I can't think of a better topic to while away a few days on with new friends than the Oscars and the silliness (and actual good things this year) therein. A couple of caveats to start: I am only sitting up about 50% straight thanks to our old friend, the Common Cold, which had the good grace to at least wait to attack until my homework was finished for the weekend (I'm studying to become a schoolteacher-- all the better to be able to suggest to those pliable little minds which movies they should be seeing!) Second, my comfortable old laptop died on me last night, the victim of some heinous virus (calling the Geek Squad!), so I'm typing this first post on my wife's tiny little Dell, which has keys far too small for the giant sausages that pass for my fingers. I hope to get to a computer with a normal-sized keyboard soon, so forgive me for any typos that make me look even less literate than I am! And third, my house has been invaded by Super Bowl watchers, so I may be less responsive during the first half of today than I'd like. But no worries-- I'll get into the swing of things!
Nick, Sasha: I used to sweat the nominations-- get up at 5:00 a.m., endure the idiocy of breathless local reporters, the whole nine yards, just to get the first skinny on the major awards... This was back in the 80s and early 90s, when that was the only source of information and one would have to wait till mid-morning or late afternoon, or sometimes even the next day, until someone pubished a complete list...
NEXT PAGE
In which everyone argues about whether or not Daniel Day-Lewis is hammy in There Will Be Blood and whether or not his milkshake bring us all the boys to the yawd.
