For those who watched the 79th annual Academy Awards ceremony last Monday, the moment everyone will remember for the rest of their lives is the greatest living American filmmaker Martin Scorsese s long overdue win for the best director award.
Scorsese s triumph was not only the most memorable event of the night, but perhaps the sole highlight of the painfully long show that clocked over three and a half hours.
With falling ratings and tough competition from a dozen awards shows before it, the Academy Awards tried, as it did in the past two years, to reinvent the oldest entertainment show in history but ended up recycling the same rituals with more grace this time.
The obligatory introducing parody montage of the nominated films was axed for a clip of the artists talking in front of a stark white screen about, well, nothing much. The clip aspired to appear sophisticated but ended up being another forgettable montage along with a dozen others that crammed the night.
The montage that prominently stood out was that of the past foreign language film winners. Footage of classics such as Fanny & Alexander, Rashomon and La Strada reminded us not only of how the Academy mostly got it right in this specific category, and of why we love movies.
The 12-member modern-dance troupe Pilobolus presented some of the 2006 s hit films by forming silhouettes of, say the van in Little Miss Sunshine, The Devil Wear s Prada s demonic high-heels, and The Departed s gun and the Oscar statue.
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres, the host of the show, brought a sense of informality, coziness, breeziness and surprising elegance to the show but lacked edginess on par with last year s brilliant host Jon Stewart.
But DeGeneres projected sense of comfort that filled Los Angeles’ Kodak theater didn t save the show from the boredom and dreariness that struck everyone who watched the the show from beginning to end. DeGeneres was good, but not impressive.
She managed to score some big laughs though. Her best lines came early on when she commented on the nomination process.
There s no rhyme or reason to who s gonna win, she observed Jennifer Hudson, people didn t vote for her in American idol but now she s here with an Oscar nomination! Al Gore is here, America did vote for him… then she stopped for the applauding crowd that included the former vice president himself.
The once America s-next-president provided another big laugh after his co-presenter Leonardo Dicaprio asked him whether there s a major announcement he would like to make, referring to a rumor claiming that Gore, whose An Inconvenient Truth won best documentary feature, might seize the opportunity to announce that he’ll be running for the 2008 presidential elections.
Gore, as a response, took out a sheet of paper and said My fellow Americans before he was cut short by the music signaling the end of his speech.
Apart from DeGeneres’ ordering Steven Spielberg to take a picture of her and Clint Eastwood for the community website My Space, the best laughs of the night were delivered from the mouths of established comedians.
Will Farrell, sporting a curly wig, was joined with Jack Black and John C. Reilly for a musical number entitled A comedian at the Oscars is the saddest, bitterest alcoholic clown.
Jerry Sielfeld s presentation of the documentary features was a knockout too, describing the nominees as incredibly depressing.
Unlike past years, the Oscars producers decided to announce the best supporting actors and actresses later on in the show and for about 45 minutes, before Alan Arkin s unexpected win for best supporting actor in Little Miss Sunshine, the only remotely major award unveiled was that for art direction.
The speeches of both the unfamiliar winners for the technical awards and most of the major stars didn t inspire much excitement either as they were essentially repeating the speeches they used for the other awards ceremonies.
Helen Mirren, a very safe bet for best actress, thanked Queen Elizabeth; Jennifer Hudson, another shoe-in for best supporting actress, expressed her disbelief and thanked her director and God; and the shaking Alan Arkin thanked his cast members.
Forest Whitaker s speech, on the other hand, was moving, eloquent and easily ranks as the best speech of the night. The 46-year-old actor described how watching movies at a drive-in from the backseat of a car in Texas made him realize that a kid like him, with enough determination, can fulfill his dream and inspire others. He finished off by thanking his family and ancestors in heaven.
The Oscar producers apparently decided to save the best for last and Marty s win was the moment his huge number of devoted fans, myself included, were anticipating for years.
Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the three godfathers of popular American cinema, handed the award to the baffled Scorsese, who asked them to recheck the winner s envelope, amid a thunderous wave of applause and the sole standing ovation of the night.
The joy over seeing him receive his belated recognition can t overshadow the fact The Departed doesn t rank high in his legendary body of work. And mob-drama, as great as it is, is not the best picture of the year as the Academy hailed it to be.
The word deserve though is rarely synonymous with Oscar winners and the fact of the matter is the majority of cinema s greatest performers and makers, just like Scorsese, received entertainment s highest honor for the wrong films (Al Pacino s Scent of a Woman, Elizabeth Taylor for “Butterfield 8, Carol Reed s Oliver .etc.)
In fact, the list of multiple Oscar losers is much more prestigious than those who actually won. Scorsese is joining a club of past winners that features John G. Avildson (“Rocky ) Norman Taurog (“Skippy ) and Robert Zemeckis ( Forrest Gump ).
In comparison, the list of big Oscar losers boasts names like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Richard Burton and Peter O Toole who, after being snubbed for the eighth time by the academy, tops the list.
The academy s decision to give the cold-shoulder to O Toole s victorious, heartbreaking, impressive performance as an older dying actor who falls for a teenage girl in Venus was probably the only true sour moment of the show.
Forest Whitaker s portrayal of Idi Amin is astonishing and deserving; but O Toole gave the better performance that the academy failed to acknowledge.
There are little qualms over the rest of the awards and even The Departed s win of best picture was not met with hostility from the fans of the other contenders.
Clint Eastwood s Letters from Iwo Jimma was the best nominated film. Nevertheless, the competition this year was the strongest in years and up until minutes before the Oscars kicked off, the best-picture race was still wide open.
The academy s spread of its wealth over a large array of films ( The Departed with four Oscars, Pan s Labyrinth with three, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth and Dreamgirls with two) can only be interpreted as a testament to the outstanding quality of the films released in the past 12 months.
Overall, the 79th academy awards ceremony was overlong, predictable and boring in most parts despite the enhanced production and the tiny original numbers. This was Scorsese’s night though and for that reason alone, this year s Oscars was definitely worth watching.
