Guest Post: 2019 Oscars may be more remembered for the crises than the ceremony

Julie Lobalzo Wright, University of Warwick

Comedian Kevin Hart lasted just three days as the host of the 2019 Academy Awards. Almost immediately after his name was announced on December 4, a backlash began on social media about homophobic jokes Hart had made on Twitter between 2009 and 2011. After refusing to apologise, even when the Academy demanded it, Hart stepped down as host on December 7, leaving the ceremony without a host.

The last time that happened was in 1989, an occasion the Academy would prefer to forget as, instead of a host, producer Allan Carr had arranged a bizarre revue involving Snow White and Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary. Disney sued for breach of copyright.

This year’s ceremony is shaping up to be just as controversial. Ratings for the awards show have been declining for some years, perhaps because people have grown tired of the overt political messaging. (It’s interesting to note here that there’s also a strong correlation between the box office performance of the film that wins multiple Oscars and the ratings for the awards show. So, in 1998, when Titanic won 11 Oscars and took US$2.1 billion worldwide, more than 57m people watched the show. Last year, when The Shape of Water won best picture – having earned less than US$200m at the box office – less than half that number of people tuned in: 26.5m.)

With the thought of boosting ratings this year, in August the Academy proposed the introduction of a new category: best popular film. This was widely thought to be a Really Bad Idea.

People involved in fims such as Black Panther, which took more than $US1 billion within 26 days of release, asked whether the film’s global popularity meant it would be pigeonholed as “popular” rather than “excellent”. “What,” asked the New York Times,, “if it received a nomination for the populist Oscar but not for best overall picture? Would that mean Black Panther and films like it were second-class citizens?” The idea was swiftly shelved.

At least it will be diverse

In the end, when the nominations were announced in February, box office behemoths, such as Black Panther (the first best picture award for a superhero movie), were nominated alongside critical successes, such as The Favourite and Roma.

Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody (which has also done very brisk box office at US$850m and counting) is also nominated for best picture, despite mixed critical reviews – the film has the lowest average scores of any of the best picture nominees on Rotten Tomatoes. The Guardian reviewer, Steve Rose took particular exception to the film’s handling of Freddie Mercury’s private life, casting “Mercury’s wilderness years as a symptom of his gayness”. And, shortly after the Queen biopic won best picture at the Golden Globes, The Atlantic published a long list of allegations of sexual misconduct against director Bryan Singer, who had been fired by 20th Century Fox in December 2017, with three weeks of filming left – reportedly over differences with the cast and crew. His name was removed from nominations at the Baftas. Singer has denied the allegations, telling the BBC that the story “rehashes claims from bogus lawsuits filed by a disreputable cast of individuals willing to lie for money or attention”.

One accusation this year’s Oscars is hoping to avoid is the unwelcome tag of #oscarssowhite, which has dogged the awards in recent years, exposing the lack of diversity in Hollywood cinema and in the voting branch of the Academy. Nominations for Black Panther and Blackkklansman, in addition to the Mexican film Roma and the queer female ensemble film The Favourite, should ensure the ceremony has at least the impression of diversity it has so craved previously.

Bad timing

But, ever conscious of ratings, the show’s planners set about designing a shorter ceremony, hoping to encourage viewers who have previously been put off by a running time of three and a half hours (four hours and 23 minutes in 2002). But when it was announced that only two of the five songs nominated in the best original song category would be performed, there was a widespread backlash – and musicians reportedly showed solidarity: either all the songs would be performed, or none. Once again the Academy relented.

It was also announced that four awards would be given out during the ad breaks – cinematography, film editing, live action short, and makeup and hairstyling. None of these categories, it was quickly noticed, involved nominees representing films made by Disney (the parent company of ABC, the network broadcasting the ceremony). And surely cinematography and editing are two of the most fundamental crafts to the art of cinema. Movie makers certainly thought so.

After protests from, notably, the American Society of Cinematographers as well as a host of big names such as Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, within the week the Academy announced that all 24 awards would be presented live on TV.

What else could go wrong? It is possible the awards will still feature spontaneous moments, surprise wins, and sensational stars to supplant the months of negative publicity leading up to the event. Only two years ago when an otherwise fairly unremarkable evening became one of the most talked-about Oscars in years when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty read out the wrong name for best picture. This year it’s going to take something pretty sensational or outrageous on the night to save the Oscars from being remembered as a fiasco from planning to broadcast.

Julie Lobalzo Wright, Teaching Fellow in Film Studies, University of Warwick

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Oscars 2019: Roma, Yalitza Aparicio and the fascinating history of non-professional actors

Catherine O'Rawe, University of Bristol

The surprise nomination of non-professional indigenous woman Yalitza Aparicio for this year’s best actress Oscar for her role as a domestic servant in Alfonso Cuarón’s critically acclaimed Roma has been greeted as a “fairytale”.

Aparicio was training to be a teacher when she reluctantly went to an audition where Cuarón was immediately struck by her. Her presence and her similarity to his own childhood maid – on whom the film is based – secured her the role.

Propelled into the spotlight by her role, she has become the first indigenous woman to grace the cover of Mexican Vogue. She also endeared herself to her growing social media following by uploading to Twitter a video of her sobbing reaction to news of her nomination.

If Aparicio wins, she will be the first indigenous Latina Oscar winner and will join the small number of non-professional actors to win an Oscar in recent times. This number includes Anna Paquin for her role in The Piano (1993) and Haing S Ngor, a former doctor from Cambodia, who won the 1985 best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Roland Joffe’s The Killing Fields, in which his own traumatic experiences informed his outstanding performance as a local journalist.

In the same year as acclaimed indie hits such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, in which Brady Jandreau played a version of himself as an injured rodeo rider, and Crystal Moselle’s Skate Kitchen, featured an all-girl skate collective from New York, it seems that authenticity in casting and performance is all the rage.

But Aparicio also stands out as being typical of the non-professional’s experience throughout cinema history. Her “journey” from naïve provincial girl to the red carpet hits many familiar notes. Interviews emphasise how little she understood of cinema, and how she had never heard of Cuarón and feared the job offer might be a trafficking scam.

Authenticity

Aparicio’s unpolished and untrained authenticity is sharply juxtaposed with the glamorous world in which she now finds herself. Part of the non-professional’s effect is to throw into relief the extraordinariness of stars, as well as their proficiency, understood as a product of years of training and dedication to their craft. Aparicio’s novelty, spontaneity, and natural appearance are all singled out as antithetical to the professionalism of her co-star, experienced stage actress Marina De Tavira, who has also been nominated for an Oscar.

Her story mirrors the “discovery” of Barkhad Abdi, the untrained Somali-American who played a memorable co-lead to Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips. It also recalls the children recruited by Danny Boyle from the Mumbai slums for global hit Slumdog Millionaire.

In the latter case, ethical concerns around the effects of sudden fame on vulnerable children were recognised by Boyle. He set up a trust fund for them, though this didn’t prevent allegations that the father of one of the girls tried to sell her to capitalise on her fame.

Power imbalance

The non-professional child actor came to prominence in post-WWII Italian neorealism, which specialised in taking performers from the streets. Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-winning 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves was particularly celebrated for its non-actors, chosen for their faces and bodies rather than any acting talent.

Lamberto Maggiorani, who played the tragic father, lost his factory job after the film and struggled to find work as an actor; he repeatedly begged De Sica to help him out. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Enzo Staiola made several further films and retired at the age of 15. However, accounts of his treatment on set , which included De Sica publicly humiliating him to make him cry, match other testimonies of neorealist directors extracting performances from non-professionals by insulting and even beating them.

This power differential, always implicit in the actor-director relationship, is obviously exacerbated when the actor is inexperienced and has no manager to guide them through the film industry. While Aparicio and Cuarón’s on-set relationship seems to have been affectionate, one anecdote about the film’s shooting is somewhat disturbing. In a central, traumatic scene for her character Cleo, Cuarón admitted that he deliberately withheld from Aparicio what would happen. Her anguished reaction is genuine – and presumably she could not be trusted to generate that response otherwise.

Aparicio has declared that she would like to continue to act, though she admits that Roma may be a one-off. French film critic André Bazin wrote of neorealist actors that the non-professional can be used only once because their effect can never be replicated. But non-professionals have gone on to career success – Paquin, obviously, as well as Sasha Lane, discovered by Andrea Arnold for her film American Honey, is continuing to work. So is Abdi, though in low-profile parts. Others, like the kids of Slumdog Millionaire, have returned to their old lives.

In all the press talk and interviews with Cuarón and Aparicio, one thing is never mentioned: pay. While one presumes that she received a fair salary for the part, non-professionals generally come cheap because it’s often assumed that part of the reward is the experience itself, the fairytale story. But when the magic finishes and the closing credits roll, they all too often find themselves alone.

Catherine O'Rawe, Professor of Italian Film and Culture, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From the Archives: Moving Picture Institute announces first annual Liberty in Film Awards

Moving Picture Institute announces first annual Liberty in Film Awards
February 19, 2013 4:06 PM MST

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on February 19, Adam Guillette of the Moving Picture Institute announced the winners of the first annual Liberty in Film Awards, timed to coincide with the awarding of the Oscars in Hollywood on February 24.

Among the winners he listed:

• Best explanation of what makes charity possible: The Dark Knight Rises. When Bruce Wayne asks Alfred why the Wayne Family Foundation is no longer contributing to the boys’ home, Alfred explains that contributions are made possible by the profits of their company. ”No profits, no charity.”
• Best adaptation of an impossible-to-adapt book: Atlas Shrugged: Part II. The rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor, Atlas Shrugged: Part II does an incredible job of showing both the terrible destruction of big government and the incredible power of the individual.
• Fan Favorite: The Hunger Games. MPI supporters demanded an award for this dystopian tale of an evil centralized government that forces its teenaged citizens to kill each other for sport.

Among the “negative” awards on the list:

• Best performance as a publicist for Arab Oil: Matt Damon in Promised Land. Damon’s anti-fracking film was funded by the government of Abu Dhabi.
• Best propaganda piece for toddlers: The Lorax. The writers of this film turned Dr. Suess’ story about conservation into blatant anti-capitalist propaganda aimed at children.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner after his presentation, Guillette explained that the mission of the Moving Picture Institute is “to promote freedom through film.”

The organization does that, he said, “by supporting films and filmmakers that can make a significant impact, either change laws or change the culture to promote freedom-oriented ideas.”

'Different approach'
The Moving Picture Institute's “strategy is an entirely different approach than An American Carol,” for instance, a Kelsey Grammer-Jon Voight vehicle from 2008 that tried to portray conservative values through a lighthearted comedy/satire.

“What we do” instead, he explained, is to “support rising filmmakers rather than [make] the massive gamble of an expensive film.”

The institute supports young directors and screenwriters by helping them “make short films to pitch their talent to the major studios in Hollywood, which helps get them development deals and representation” to make more movies commercially.

“At the same time,” Guillette continued, “their films made for these purposes end up going viral on line or end up in classrooms being viewed by hundreds of thousands of students.”

Incentives
Whether the Liberty in Film Awards have an impact on thinking in Hollywood relies on old-fashioned incentives, he said.

“Like anything else,” Guillette explained, “you've got to reward good behavior and point out bad behavior. This is an excellent opportunity to point out some of the bad behavior in Hollywood but reward those doing an excellent job promoting freedom.”

To learn about the films produced by or supported by the Moving Picture Institute, Guillette pointed to the organization's web site.

“The easiest way is to go to movingpictureinstitute.org. We have all of our films listed and you can instantly click through to NetFlix, Amazon, or anywhere that film is available. It compiles all of them at one place.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 19, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Robin Williams remembered by 'Dead Poets Society' producer, screenwriter

According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, actor-comedian Robin Williams' suicide last summer prompted the largest number of Google searches during 2014. It was also one of the top-ten topics on Facebook.*

The tragic and untimely passing of Robin Williams in August made for the most Googled term of the year. The actor’s name ranked No. 1 on Google’s most searched list of 2014. Last week, Facebook released data around the most-talked about topics on the social-networking platform, and Williams ranked No. 4. Needless to say, this moment was one of the biggest of the year.

This year also marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Dead Poets Society, the 1989 film that brought Robin Williams his second Oscar nomination for best actor in a leading role. (He later won an Academy Award for best supporting actor for 1997's Good Will Hunting.)  Dead Poets Society also earned Williams a Golden Globe nomination for acting.

To commemorate the movie's quarter-century and to pay tribute to Williams, the Virginia Film Festival screened the film and brought its screenwriter, Tom Schulman, and one of its producers, Paul Junger Witt, to Charlottesville to participate in a conversation about the making of Dead Poets Society. The discussion was moderated by film and stage director Mitch Levine, president of the Film Festival Group.

In addition to Dead Poets Society, for which he received an Academy Award, Tom Schulman's screenplays include Honey I Shrunk the Kids (with Rick Moranis, 1989), Medicine Man (with Sean Connery, 1992), and Welcome to Mooseport (with Ray Romano and Gene Hackman, 2004). His producing credits include Indecent Proposal (with Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, 1993) and Me, Myself, and Irene (with Jim Carrey, 2000), and he directed 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (with Joe Pesci, 1997).

Paul Junger Witt has produced more than 60 movies and TV shows, ranging from 1960s TV series like Occasional Wife, The Second Hundred Years, and Here Come the Brides to The Partridge Family and Soap in the 1970s (a decade in which he also produced the award-winning TV movie, Brian's Song with James Caan and Billy Dee Williams) to Benson, The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and Blossom in the 1980s.

Levine, Schulman, and Witt discussed Dead Poets Society and related topics on Sunday, November 9, the closing night of the 2014 Virginia Film Festival at the Culbreth Theater on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

Paul Junger Witt at the Virginia Film Festival

Asked by Levine whether Robin Williams was the first choice to play John Keating, the unconventional English teacher at a boys' boarding school in 1959 New England, both Schulman and Witt nodded their affirmation.

Director Peter Weir, Witt said, “got a performance from Robin that we hadn't seen before.” For the younger cast members (including Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles, and Ethan Hawke), “most of whom were green, were inexperienced, Robin actually became that figure [of an inspiring teacher] because he was so generous and so patient with the kids and kept them so loose and kept them laughing and inspired. They adored him, much the same way, as characters, they adored their teacher.”

Before Dead Poets Society, he noted, Williams “had done a couple of turns as a serious actor and he had an energy that we believed audiences would find believable in terms of a teacher who is inspiring.”

Schulman added that “we encouraged Robin to bring as much of himself as he could to the part. Dinging the bell and things like that, that's Robin, his comedy.”

Levine suggested that what he finds “remarkable” about Williams' performance as John Keating “is that he doesn't do – forgive me – the 'Robin Williams shtick,' with the performance. It's so subtle and so nuanced that even when he's imitating Marlon Brando, it's with reason and truth and intent and complete believability. For those who, at that moment, only knew him from the funny stuff, it's a remarkable tribute to him as part of this collaboration.”

Schulman agreed: “It seemed to me the essence of his character was to reach these boys and Robin gave of himself in that way. You can feel the connection.”

Witt agreed, as well: “And they adored him. If any of them could have made it this evening, they would have. Most of them are working, which speaks to how well it was cast. They just adored him.”

Recalling Williams' unexpected passing last August, Levine said that “one thing I was particularly struck with when we learned of his death was [the] outpouring of public and private mourning and grief for a man who was a public figure and not part people's lives in an immediate way, for most of us – yet people grieved as if they lost one of their own. I think, for me at any rate, he was so lacking in guile. That's so rare. There wasn't an evil molecule in him and for him to offer a performance like this” in Dead Poets Society, “it's for the ages, and we have it for the ages, which is a fact.”

Witt added that he had worked on a second film with Williams, the Christopher Nolan-directed Insomnia, which also featured Al Pacino.

“It was a tough shoot,” he said. Pacino's acting style “is very different than Robin's but they blended perfectly and Robin kept, as he could, the entire set loose. He even managed to make Al smile a couple of times. He was just an extraordinary talent and a really good guy.”

On the set of Dead Poets Society, Schulman recalled, “As soon as you'd call cut, he would start doing his thing and at a certain point you'd just have to send him away because you couldn't get any work done.”

Witt also remembered how one of the key shots in the film had to be done on the morning of New Year's Day, because the weather conditions were just what were needed.

“We couldn't take a break between Christmas and New Year's,” he said. “We had the school [St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware] and we could use it completely because the students were home” for the holidays.

“There was one shot that Peter had planned but there was never enough snow” to do it, he continued.

On New Year's morning, “after an evening of debauchery, the crew came together with [cinematographer John Seale] and they went out and got this one extraordinary shot and gave it to the director as a gift because it was on their own time, on a holiday, [with] no charges to the production because it would have been triple [time] or whatever.”

That was the shot in the snow when the students have learned about their classmate's suicide.

At Levine's request – because it was a show he grew up with – Witt talked a bit about his experience producing The Partridge Family, the 1970-74 ABC-TV sitcom about a musical family led by mom Shirley Jones and featuring David Cassidy, Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, and Dave Madden.

“I wish I could tell you a happy story,” Witt replied. “It was a kind of a nightmare. The business can, – and especially a series – can be very hard on kids. I did the pilot and the first year and I walked away from a hit because of what I was seeing and could not stop. I was never sorry. I never again did a series that featured kids that young. And we chose the kids, the children we worked with very, very, very carefully in areas beyond their talent. It's tough and that show was painful for me in that respect.”

Screenwriter Tom Schulman

An audience member noted that “Robin Williams humor seems so organic,” almost like rock and roll. “Did he seem to suppress it during filming?”

Schulman said no, he didn't.

“In fact, I remember the first day Robin showed up for a shot. He was going to be there for a day and he was going to go to New York for two weeks to be in a play. And he seemed almost too on-book, so literal in the way he was delivering the lines that it worried me. I wanted more of Robin's humor and Peter [Weir] agreed and said, 'Well, we've got two weeks to think about it.'”

When Williams came back to the set, the director “did an improv with Robin. He said, 'What would you like to teach the class? A little Shakespeare, maybe read to them?'”

Weir told Williams he would shoot the improvs, just to see what happened.

“And Robin came in and did that improv, he did the John Wayne thing, he did a reading from that book, and something connected. Robin realized, 'Even though I'm doing all the talking, it's a dialogue, I'm getting something from these kids.' It changed his performance right away and from that day on, Peter never said another word about Robin's performance. Robin just got it. Peter called him 'Robin Keating' – Robin and the character became the same guy. It felt to me that whatever wacky humor Robin used, say on Mork & Mindy or in his improv, he never used that” during the filming of Dead Poets Society. “It was all blended into the teaching” of the character, John Keating.

The entire conversation among Mitch Levine, Tom Schulman, and Paul Junger Witt can be seen on this YouTube video.

*For what it's worth, here's the entire top-ten Google search list for 2014:

1. Robin Williams
2. World Cup
3. Ebola
4. Malaysia Airlines
5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
6. Flappy Bird
7. Conchita Wurst
8. ISIS
9. Frozen
10. Sochi Olympics

I have no idea who or what “Conchita Wurst” is, and I imagine a lot of people asking “What is Flappy Bird?”

2009 Oscar Predictions

As I write this, the 81st Annual Academy Awards are just getting underway. Hugh Jackman has finished the big production number to open the show (joined by Anne Hathaway) and he's playing around with the audience.

I have only a few minutes to make predictions of this year's winners before those predictions are overtaken by events. My reason for delay is that I drove up to Arlington today to see a play, and I have just returned. The play was Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, which is about a man, a tape recorder, and a banana and has a running time of 1 hour and 5 minutes. Sadly, as I said to my seatmate at the end of the play, "There's six hours of my life that I won't get back."

I will predict the winners only in those five categories for which I have seen all the nominated films, beginning with Best Adapted Screenplay. The nominees are:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Except for Doubt, all these films are also nominated in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. I actually think that John Patrick Shanley did a poorer job in adapting his own play, Doubt, than Peter Morgan did with Frost/Nixon. Having seen both plays, I considered them both unfilmable. While Slumdog Millionaire is the favorite going into this category, I think Frost/Nixon will take the prize.

Second, Best Short Film (Animated), for which the nominees are:

La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory - Lovestory
Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up

Eliminate La Maison en Petits Cubes, a depressing film, and the weird (but intermittently entertaining) This Way Up. Presto has a leg up in this category because it was distributed as a curtain raiser with WALL-E, one of the biggest films of the year. Lavatory-Lovestory (from Russia) has a sweet sentimentality to it, but my favorite is Oktapodi. The Oscar, however will go to Presto.

Third, Best Short Film (Live Action), with these nominees:

Auf der Strecke (On the Line)
Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland (Toyland)

Who likes short shorts? I like short shorts. Even in high school, I preferred short stories to novels as did, I think, a number of my classmates. When, as sophomores, we read Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," it was months before the refrain "I would prefer not to" died away. (There's something in that phrase that bespeaks the attitude of 15-year-olds.)

Short films are to feature films what short stories are to novels, and their makers have much the same goals and responsibilities. It's too bad that short films are so seldom seen outside of film festivals and, on occasion, on pay cable networks like HBO, because they deserve wider viewership.

I first saw New Boy as part of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, where it was an audience favorite. I think the Oscar voters will agree and it will win. This Irish film faces strong competition, however, from The Pig, a deliciously politically incorrect Danish movie. I'd be happy if either one took the statuette. (If The Reader does not do well in other categories, perhaps Toyland will win for its Holocaust theme as a consolation prize.)

Best Director and Best Picture nominees are:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

These films are the same ones in each of the two top categories. In both, the contest is between Slumdog Millionaire and Milk. I believe that one will win Best Director and the other will win Best Picture. So, if Gus Van Sant takes the trophy for Milk, look to Slumdog Millionaire to win Best Picture. Conversely, if Danny Boyle wins for Best Director, Milk (a conventional biopic with an unconventional central character, just as Slumdog Millionaire is a conventional boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back movie with an unconventional setting).

(As I finished that paragraph, Dustin Lance Black has won the Oscar for best original screenplay for Milk. That may portend something for the film's prospects tonight.)

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'The Envelope, Please . . .'

For those of you who went to sleep Sunday night -- or was it Monday morning? -- thinking that Martin Scorcese was the big winner for his twisted crime drama, The Departed, think again.

Scorcese -- who accepted his Oscar from three of his nearest peers (Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg) -- has some catching up to do, because the weekend's biggest award winner was Michael Lucas, whose La Dolce Vita took home 14 trophies.

Who is Michael Lucas? What is La Dolce Vita? Fair questions, since I always thought La Dolce Vita was directed by Federico Fellini and released in 1960, not 2006.

According to Edge Boston,

Capping an astonishing night at the Castro Theatre, Michael Lucas’ La Dolce Vita made GAYVN history tonight with wins in 14 categories, including Best Picture, at the annual ceremony.

Though it’s not unusual for individual movies to be rich in nominations, it is extremely rare for a movie to garner double-digit wins. The previous record holder, Buckshot Productions’ BuckleRoos, won 11 awards in 2005.

Michael Lucas’ La Dolce Vita has the further distinction of winning an award in every category in which it was nominated.

That's right: Eclipsing the combined success of The Departed, Pan's Labyrinth, and Little Miss Sunshine, the inconvenient truth is that La Dolce Vita swept this years gay adult video awards.

If the San Francisco Chronicle report is accurate, the GAYVN ceremony was the place to be last Saturday night, with famously B-list comedienne Kathy Griffin hosting and local celebrities dotting the crowd:

The night honored some deserving industry pioneers with lifetime achievement awards, including San Franciscan Peter Berlin. The nominated documentary on his life, however, lost out to "Gay Sex in the 70s."

The weekend highlighted San Francisco's position as the capital of the gay porn industry. Elected officials -- including Assemblyman Mark Leno, Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Treasurer Jose Cisneros -- penned official statements honoring Colt Studios, which celebrated its 40th anniversary Friday. City Supervisor Bevan Dufty worked the crowd in the lobby of the theater before the Saturday night ceremony.

If San Francisco is the capital of the gay porn industry, what does that make the San Fernando Valley? Is Congressman Brad Sherman not delivering for his constituents in the Fightin' 27th?

Friday Night at the Movies

Now that the 2007 Academy Award nominations have been announced, many of the critically acclaimed films that were released late last year are now reaching Charlottesville.

This weekend's movie menu is rich and deep. There is Volver, with Penelope Cruz, at Vinegar Hill. The Regal Downtown has five Oscar-nominated films on its six screens: Babel, The Last King of Scotland, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Notes on a Scandal. The Regal Seminole Square features Dreamgirls and The Pursuit of Happyness. And The Queen is at the Carmike.

So what did I choose to spend my $8.75 ticket price on?

I went to see Epic Movie. Or, as Bill the Cat would say, "Thbbbt!"

To tell the truth, with all those heavy dramas in town, I was looking for an easy laugh or two. And that's what I got.

Perhaps I should not be so unkind. Epic Movie has more than a couple of laughs in it. I chuckled several more times than that. Most of the humor is rather subtle, which is odd, because Epic Movie is produced in an ostentatiously over-the-top fashion.

Most of the plot -- such as it is -- hangs on the scaffolding of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are four "orphans" named Peter, Susan, Edward, and Lucy who find the magical land of Gnarnia when trying to hide in a mysterious wardrobe. Mayhem ensues.

Epic Movie, like Scary Movie before it (along with its sequels), is a descendant of Airplane! Sadly, each generation of this genre -- using references and allusions to other movies and pop-culture phenomena -- finds itself lacking more and more of Airplane!'s DNA. Nowadays, Family Guy does it better than any of the movies do.

While our four principals are fighting their way to the Gnarnian throne, we get long sequences based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Caribbean. (Does Johnny Depp get extra residuals for being sent up twice in one parody?) There are references to MTV's Cribs, American Pie, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Kal Penn, who played Kumar, is "Edward" in Epic Movie), even Borat. Snakes on a Plane, Nacho Libre, and the X-Men series also get screen treatment. James Bond and Chewbacca make brief appearances, as does a drunken Mel Gibson.

Most of the people who saw the movie with me are going to go "Wha-?" when they read that last reference. As soon as the credits began, more than 95 percent of the audience left the theatre. (Perhaps they were commenting on the quality of the film, but I don't think so. They were just in a hurry.) Consequently, they missed some of the funniest bits the movie had to offer -- interspersed with the end credits. One of them had a Mel Gibson lookalike in a prison cell with Edward. Another was a complete musical number featuring the Oompa Loompas and Willy Wonka.

To be fair, there are two quite remarkable performances in Epic Movie that deserve noting: Crispin Glover is absolutely creepy as Willy Wonka and Darrell Hammond is absolutely unrecognizable as Captain Jack Swallows. (Johnny Depp must be terrifically inspiring.)

Were I to give the producers the benefit of the doubt, I might suggest that they are serious about their art. This would be demonstrated by some of the more subtle jabs at film conventions in Epic Movie. For instance, there is no attempt to hide the use of stunt doubles (or even dummies) in fight sequences. Displaying the artifice like this is winking at the more alert members of the audience. It is, in itself, an acknowledgement of what the Germans might call "die Hörerschaftkeit," or audience-ness. ("Ha, ha -- we know you're out there! And you paid $8.75 to see this, too!")

Allow me to vent, briefly, about rudeness in the theatre. Would you believe that a woman a few rows behind me actually answered her cell phone about ten minutes before the movie ended!? She carried on a conversation that was audible to the entire theatre. (From what I could gather, she was making plans to meet in the lobby someone who was seeing a movie in a different auditorium.)

So, if you attended the 9:30 p.m. showing of Epic Movie at the Carmike Cinema in Charlottesville on Friday, January 26, and you recognize yourself as the person who talked aloud on her mobile phone -- you deserve to be slapped around and should never show your face in public again. Ever.

Etiquette aside, Epic Movie just does not measure up.

Win Some, Lose Some

I'm glad I didn't make any wagers on the Academy Awards this year. I predicted correctly in only 14 out of 24 categories presented on the live broadcast Sunday night.

I missed three out of the four acting categories and both short-subject (live action and animated) categories, as well as some of the "technical" categories.

I did, however, go against conventional wisdom in predicting Crash would win as Best Picture. I have to confess I have not seen Crash -- it played in theatres so long ago, and did not last there for very long -- but I had heard good things about it as early as October 2004, when Richard Herskowitz praised it at a Virginia Film Festival news conference featuring Sandra Bullock, one of the film's ensemble stars.

As I predicted, Memoirs of a Geisha got the visual design awards (except for Narnia's make-up statuette -- which I also predicted), while King Kong got the sound and visual effects awards. I was surprised by Geisha's win for cinematography. (I loved the black-and-white sculpturing of Good Night, and Good Luck, but thought Brokeback Mountain's lush Rocky vistas would win the day.)

My reasoning in predicting Crash, rather than the buzzworthy Brokeback Mountain, boiled down to a simple fact: Crash is about Los Angeles, and most Academy voters live in Los Angeles. Crash is about the voters' lives, and the lives of their neighbors. Brokeback is about an exotic location, Wyoming, that is too far removed from the the lives of Academy voters to render it relevant to them.

It is, of course, unusual for the directing award to go to a picture other than the one that wins Best Picture, but I also correctly predicted that Ang Lee would win for Brokeback Mountain. Call me psychic.

Now I just have to hope that winning three Academy Awards is enough to push Crash back into the theatres. As more than one speaker during the ceremony reminded us, movies are meant to be seen in a darkened room, with a big screen and a crowd of strangers. As AMPAS President Sid Ganis put it, no actor ever finished filming a scene by saying, "That's going to look great on the DVD."

My Oscar Picks for 2006

I'm off to the Virginia Electoral Board Association (VEBA) annual meeting this weekend, and I may not have an opportunity to blog while I'm there. So I want to make sure I post my Academy Award picks before the ceremony on Sunday.

In the interest of saving time and bandwidth, I'll forego explaining my choices. (I'll admit, in some cases, I am being gratuitously provocative and mischievous -- I won't say in which cases.) I don't win anything if I'm correct; this is just for fun; no wagering, please.

One point about the Academy Awards that a lot of commentators seem to miss: You'll see a lot of criticism that Hollywood is out of touch with America, since the top nominated films haven't earned a lot of money, which translates into a lot of people filling the seats to watch them. (GayPatriot, for instance, as paraphrased by James Taranto on "Best of the Web," notes that Brokeback Mountain "had grossed a mere $67.8 million domestically, less than a quarter of the $285.3 million for The Chronicles of Narnia.”)

Isn't this beside the point? The Oscars are supposed to reward artistic merit and technical achievement in film. They are not a popularity contest. For a popularity contest, we have the People's Choice Awards. The People's Choice Awards are to the Oscars what the homecoming queen is to the valedictorian.

Kathy Bates, tonight's guest on"The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson" agrees: "The Academy Awards are about quality in the art of filmmaking," she says, not about the blockbusters that make the most money. (Craig Ferguson, by the way, is the smartest and wittiest of the late-night chat show hosts. He deserves a far wider audience, if only for his well-crafted, practically cerebral opening monologues.)

So, having got that off my chest, here are my Oscar picks for 2006. Comments, criticisms, and catcalls are all welcome.

Actor in a Leading Role
Will win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Should win: David Straitharn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Actor in a Supporting Role
Will win: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Should win: Matt Dillon, Crash

Actress in a Leading Role
Will win: Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Should win: Felicity Huffman, Transamerica

Actress in a Supporting Role
Will win: Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
Should win: Amy Adams, Junebug

Animated Feature
Will win: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Should win: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Art Direction
Will win: Memoirs of a Geisha
Should win: Good Night, and Good Luck

Cinematography
Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: Good Night, and Good Luck

Costume Design
Will win: Memoirs of a Geisha
Should win: Mrs. Henderson Presents

Directing
Will win: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Should win: George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck

Documentary Feature
Will win: March of the Penguins
Should win: Murderball

Documentary Short Subject
Will win: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Should win: The Mushroom Club

Film Editing
Will win: Cinderella Man
Should win: Cinderella Man

Foreign Language Film
Will win: Tsotsi (South Africa)
Should win: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Germany)

Makeup
Will win: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Should win: Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Music (Score)
Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: The Constant Gardener

Music (Song)
Will win: "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle and Flow
Should win: "Travelin' Thru," from Transamerica

Best Picture
Will win: Crash
Should win: Good Night, and Good Luck

Short Film (Animated)
Will win: Badgered
Should win: 9

Short Film (Live Action)
Will win: Our Time Is Up
Should win: Six Shooter

Sound Editing
Will win: King Kong
Should win: War of the Worlds

Sound Mixing
Will win: Walk the Line
Should win: Walk the Line

Visual Effects
Will win: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Should win: King Kong

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: Capote

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Will win: Crash
Should win: The Squid and the Whale

We'll see how accurate these predictions turn out to be next Sunday night. Jon Stewart, it's your cue!

My Academy Award® Predictions

No explanations here -- just my predictions of who will win, not necessarily whom I prefer to win.

Best Picture
THE AVIATOR

Actor in a Leading Role
Clint Eastwood in MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Actor in a Supporting Role
Alan Alda in THE AVIATOR

Actress in a Leading Role
Imelda Staunton in VERA DRAKE

Actress in a Supporting Role
Cate Blanchett in THE AVIATOR

Animated Feature Film
THE INCREDIBLES

Art Direction
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Cinematography
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS

Costume Design
RAY

Directing
THE AVIATOR

Documentary Feature
SUPER SIZE ME

Documentary Short Subject
SISTER ROSE’S PASSION

Film Editing
THE AVIATOR

Foreign Language Film
THE SEA INSIDE

Makeup
LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

Music (Score)
FINDING NEVERLAND

Music (Song)
"Believe" from THE POLAR EXPRESS

Short Film - Animated
BIRTHDAY BOY

Short Film - Live Action
LITTLE TERRORIST

Sound Mixing
THE INCREDIBLES

Sound Editing
SPIDER-MAN 2

Visual Effects
SPIDER-MAN 2

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
SIDEWAYS

Writing (Original Screenplay)
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

Check my prognostication against the actual list of winners after the awards ceremony tomorrow.

Parsing the Oscar® Nominations

The 77th annual Academy Award® nominations were announced this morning. While some may gaze into their crystal balls to predict who the eventual winners might be, others try to discern cultural significance from the choices of the Academy. In this, they are akin to kremlinologists assigning great political import to the position of Politburo members in the reviewing-stand photos of May Day parades.

I’m generally not inclined to do that, but what the hell. Let’s give it a try.

To the surprise of many who thought it would be entirely ignored, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ earned three nominations, while its rival in the red-state/blue-state culture wars, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, was shut out completely.

Gibson’s film was nominated for best cinematography (a more important category than people give it credit for, since without cinematography there would be no cinema), make-up, and musical score.

The Passion was as overrated as it was overwrought. I saw it on Ash Wednesday, the day it opened, with a large crowd of faithful. My immediate reaction was that it was "an Opus Dei wet dream." Andrew Sullivan is not alone among Catholic commentators who thought Gibson's Passion was pornography -- pornographic violence, to be exact.

Moreover, in a surprise move, Clint Eastwood was nominated for playing a man who has a longtime habit of going to daily Mass in Million Dollar Baby, for which he also received a nomination for best direction. (Eastwood’s acting nod fills the slot most expected would go to Liam Neeson for the title role in Kinsey.)

Just what can the conservative religious critics of Hollywood say about the film community’s values now?

I was disappointed that in the documentary feature category, neither of the two best documentaries I saw this year – Tarnation or Paper Clips – was nominated. Tarnation may be just a bit too avant garde stylistically for the Academy, though its subject matter – a mentally ill woman’s relationship with her troubled son – is not beyond them. Paper Clips, on the other hand, had all the elements that usually add up to a best documentary nomination: the Holocaust, cute schoolkids, and lessons in tolerance.

The odds-on favorite to win best documentary is Morgan Spurlock’s anti-corporation, anti-personal-responsibility Super Size Me, which uses many of the techniques mastered by Michael Moore. But don’t be surprised if the Oscar® goes to Twist of Faith, the story of the victim of a Catholic priest/pedophile. The voters might go with that latter film just to give the religious right an anti-religious film to whine about.

Other disappointments for me include the actors’ division passing over Kevin Bacon for his tortured, subtle, understated performance in The Woodsman, and the absence of any nominations for David Gordon Green’s Southern Gothic road movie, Undertow.

Conservative critics should also be pleased that family-friendly fare like The Incredibles received multiple nominations. Besides being nominated for best animated feature, The Incredibles also was nominated for sound editing, sound mixing, and -- most importantly -- original screenplay. And why not, given dialogue like this?

Helen Parr: Everybody is special, Dash.
Dashiell 'Dash' Parr: That's just another way of saying nobody is.

Not quite as subversive as South Park, but still a subtle blow to the politically correct pushers of "self-esteem" as a substitute for self-respect.

I won’t make any predictions about winners since, in most cases, I have not seen the performances or productions that have been nominated. In fact, the only Best Picture nominee I have seen so far is Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator – a fine movie and one with a clear anti-government message. (Aside from the OCD, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes could be a hero in an Ayn Rand novel. And Alan Alda’s nominated performance as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster rivals Ellsworth Toohey as a statist villain.)

Perhaps later, after I have had an opportunity to see more of the nominees (and it will be near-impossible to see any of the nominated short subjects or documentaries), I will play the prognostication game.

In the meantime, I’ll just be waiting for Oscar® Sunday, February 27, when the awards are presented on ABC-TV and hosted by Chris Rock (whose own brand of humor, by the way, is subversively conservative even while it is vulgar).