The Oscars

There's a lot of things to love about the Oscars. The pomp. The pageantry. The fact that they give an Oscar for the best short animated film. The stars showing up in environmentally correct cars that were mostly loaners meaning they don't actually own a Toyota. Mega-wealthy stars getting a gift bag worth thousands of dollars. What's not to love?

Hey, Kirby Puckett died.

I didn't actually watch the Oscars (A Fistful Of Dollars was on another channel). Looking at the ratings, I wasn't the only one. I didn't really have much of an interest in the festivities, but it might be because the only movie with nominations in the major categories that I actually saw was Walk The Line. Looking at the box office numbers, I was the rule not the exception. Granted, the amount of money a movie makes obviously doesn't indicate quality. However, you would think at least one of the Best Picture nominees could have beaten The Dukes of Hazzard, although I think Brokeback Mountain did actually catch the documentary about penguins. While I didn't see any of the Best Picture nominees, I can't believe they were all better than Walk The Line, but unfortunately, the Johnny Cash biopic had two problems. One, it made money. Two, Cash spent the whole movie chasing his soulmate June Carter. It probably would have gotten an Best Picture nomination if he had spent the whole time chasing Waylon Jennings. In the end, it came as a shock to everyone that Crash beat out the gay sheepherder movie for Best Picture. Never thought I would write those words.

The Best Actor and Actress winners were somewhat expected. Reese Witherspoon won for her earnest portayal of June Carter in which she showed a side of June that I didn't know existed. Man, she was a nag. Her only real competition was Felicity Huffman who should have been in a category all her own. She should have been up for the straight-female-used-to-playing-sluts-now-playing-a-man-about-to-get-his-wang-sliced-off Oscar. She would have won that one. The Best Actor went to Philip Seymour Hoffman who surprised everyone (well, all 10 people who watched Capote) with his second (at least) portrayal of a gay man. And in this case, he wasn't creepily lusting after Dirk Diggler's johnson. I was pretty happy that he won over whoever was in Brokeback Mountain. I would hate for the makers of Capote to second guess their lack of a sodomy scene in the movie.

In the supporting category, Rachel Weisz won for the her role in The Constant Gardener which surprised me since I read she got killed at the beginning. Because of that, I will probably never watch the movie. It's got to be all flashbacks. However, it is nice to see a Hollywood movie that would take an anti-corporate viewpoint, because the only wholesome corporations are major movie studios that do all their filming in Romania to avoid union wage scales. According to George Clooney, the Oscar voters are a daring bunch. At least he alluded to that in his acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor. After all, the movie he won for was Syriana which blamed the U.S. in general, and Big Oil, in particular, for al the world's ills. Making a movie that comes across as a liberal soundbite is tremendously courageous in Hollywood. I'm not sure Clooney can get a job parking cars there now. Of course, he could have been talking about the nomination of his movie Good Luck, and Good Night which was another one of those movies that nobody saw, but did raise awareness of that huge social problem - McCarthyism of the 1950s. After all, nothing says courage more than going after a guy who died in 1957 and was discredited in his own lifetime. Maybe his next project will be about a an aide to McCarthy during his Red Scare days who would later authorize wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. Somehow I doubt it since his name was Robert Kennedy. I will say one thing in Clooney's defense. At least he didn't take the opportunity to poke fun at another actor's debilitating illness.