Annette and I watched the Oscars last night, and this morning, I had two thoughts about the whole event. I’m sure neither of these thoughts is particularly original, but here they are anyway:
- This year, Annette and I saw only one of the movies nominated for best picture, Sideways. What it boils down to is sitters for Will are getting harder to get and more expensive, plus we’ve both been pretty busy with other things this year.
However, I don’t think we’re the only folks who watched the Oscars this year who felt out of touch with the big nominated films. Chris Rock had a funny bit where he was asking people in the Magic Johnson Theater complex in LA if they had seen any of the nominated movies. None of them had. Then he asked folks to name their favorite movies, and the list included things like Alien vs. Predator and White Chicks.
Now, obviously, this was edited together this way, and it was supposed to be funny: look at all these people who didn’t see one of the movies that “the academy” thought were worthy, and look at the crappy movie these people really went to see. Ha-ha. But the thing is Rock’s bit seemed a little too true to me.
- A closely related second point: the two most controversial and polarizing movies of the year, The Passion and Fahrenheit 911 (guess which one of these movies I actually saw), were no where to be seen. Other than the references Rock made in his opening monologue.
I’m not entirely sure what this all means, other than it seems to me that the Oscar people are walking a pretty thin and specific line in terms of what movies they see as “worthy.” It has to be arty, but not too arty; it has to be Hollywood, but not too Hollywood; ethnicity is nice, but not too ethnic; and for God’s sake, make sure it doesn’t piss anybody off.