Oscar scorecard

2005 was, as I've said a number of times, not a great year for me personally as far as movies go. I saw just one film that was of A+ caliber for me, and it wasn't even made in this country (Kontroll). To put that into perspective, the last time I only gave one A+ grade or less was 2000, another bad year for me and one in which I saw just 29 films (and most of those were viewed in later years on DVD). This year I am creeping up on 30 - I'm at 25 now but have three on DVD at the moment and a good deal more waiting in my Netflix queue - and just one A+. That's not good.

What's really not good, though, is when I diverge so wildly with the Academy. I haven't disliked a Best Picture winner this much since the Titanic fiasco of March 23, 1998. The funny thing is that I called every single other major award. Last year I thought that the Academy would want to split Picture and Director between Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator and I ended up being wrong; this year I thought Brokeback Mountain would sweep and I was wrong again! It's not that I think Brokeback was the year's best film, but it was many times more deserving than Crash, a manipulative, meaningless mediocrity. The bad year in film helped Crash immensely; for those who somehow found it good, it stood out even more because it came out in the first half of the year, in which there was nothing of comparable quality. Similarly, because the end of the year produced so few standout films, Crash was allowed to hang around the Oscar discussion, and once it got its foot in the door, nobody was able to see past the notionally important subject matter. (The fact that Haggis had nothing concrete to say on the subject didn't seem to matter.) I don't recall linking to the review in the blog, so you can read the full thing here if you want.

It wasn't a great year for Best Picture nominees. But it was still, in my book, the worst possible choice, by a mile.

Other thoughts:

* Jon Stewart wasn't bad, but he was hardly a revelation. I'm a fan of his delivery, though, so that made even the middling jokes a little better than they would have been coming out of the mouth of, say, Whoopi Goldberg.

* Lauren Bacall's appearance was depressing, wasn't it? As Drew said, "I was worried someone else was going to have to run out there and finish it for her."

* You know, Gil Cates, maybe the Oscars would speed up even more if you dropped all the montages. Seriously, what was the point of those things? I bet they only show them so presenters have time to scurry around backstage without missing too much.

* Is it me, or is having a Best Original Song category practically like having a Best Black and White Cinematography category at this point? I mean, seriously - three nominees? That was all they could dredge up?

* George Clooney is awesome. Good speech. If they were selling "Hang out with George Clooney" on eBay, wouldn't you bid as high as you could stand for it?

* Am I the only one to whom it seemed like Jack Nicholson totally made up Crash's win? Did it say "We couldn't decide, wing it" inside the envelope? Or did Nicholson ad-lib and the producers were just like, "It'd be too embarrassing to correct him, no one will know..." (Obviously this is a silly conspiracy theory, but Jack's behavior seemed odd. I kept waiting for Haggis to look down and go, "Why does this Oscar say 'James Schamus, Brokeback Mountain' on it?" Although I'm pretty sure they don't chisel them ahead of time, unless PriceWaterhouseCoopers has a chiseling wing.)

* All told, okay show, and it ran just 3.5 hours! Still, I'm disappointed with the result. At least I get to drown my sorrows in sports now - with Selection Sunday a week away, it'll probably be April before I watch another movie.