There isn't much left for me to say about the Oscar nominations after Hank Stuever and Dan Zak's Jan. 23 article in the Washington Post. The headline pretty much says it all: "Benjamin's Golden Age: 13 Noms? Film Turns Oscar's Head, Leaves Us Scratching Ours." Of course this isn't the first time the Academy has thrown laurels at a fairly inconsequential film (for more of my thoughts on "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," see the next issue of Scene4). But this year, like Stuever and Zak, I really feel the inequity, particularly since fellow nominees "Milk," "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Frost/Nixon" (I haven't seen "The Reader" yet) are all vastly, astonishingly better movies than "Benjamin Button." Yet the fix appears to be in, and I think the source of the Academy's affection is not David Fincher's film itself, but its star, Brad Pitt. The Academy really, REALLY wants to give Brad the Oscar this year, just as a couple of years ago it really, REALLY wanted to give an Oscar to Brad's buddy George Clooney. The reason is obvious: Brad Pitt is currently Hollywood's reigning superstar, perhaps the last real, traditional box-office draw left in the mainstream film industry, still boyishly handsome in his mid-forties, known more for feeding starving African children than jumping off sofas on "Oprah," and with legitimate claims to being a serious actor. His performance as Benjamin Button, which requires him to age backward from his eighties to his late teens, is a genuinely impressive feat, never mind that Sean Penn in "Milk," Frank Langella in "Frost/Nixon" and Richard Jenkins in "The Visitor" (I haven't yet seen Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler") are more impressive still, and considerably more moving. Hollywood loves to reward its own, and no one in the history of Hollywood, with the possible exception of Clark Gable, has ever been more "its own" than Brad Pitt.
Just as Hollywood loves to reward its own, it doesn't like to reward people who are not its own, by which I mean people not its own in ways it can't co-opt. Rock stars--the one group of people, except perhaps for soccer stars, who have a larger worldwide base of power than Hollywood movie stars--top this list. The Academy made the mistake several years ago of giving Oscars first to Eminem, then to Bob Dylan. Apparently it has decided never to make that mistake again. Last year it shut out Eddie Vedder (never mind that the Best Song winners last year, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, were if anything more deserving than Vedder), and this year it shut out The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, whose song "The Wrestler" by common consensus ranks at or near his best work. Last year the Academy dodged Vedder by loading the nominations with three songs from the Disney flick "Enchanted;" faced with numerous protests, it decided this year to limit Best Song nominations to three, instead of the usual five. One song, of course, is from the requisite Disney movie--this time, "WALL-E." The other two are from "Slumdog Millionaire," written by A.R. Rahman, one of India's musical legends. My guess is that Rahman will take home a statuette this coming Feb. 22. Thus the Academy can kill three birds with one stone: it can give a little bow of approval to Bollywood from Hollywood; it can snub one of the greatest figures in the history of rock for not being Hollywood; and it can give "Slumdog Millionaire" one more consolation prize for losing the Best Picture award that will go to "Benjamin Button."
Comments (2)
So right, my friend. I would just like to say the Wrestler blows all these films out of the water by simply telling a two camera story with absolutely no special effects whatsoever. Much like the Visitor. My two favorite films of the last few years. Fancy editing and historical hype don't work for me. Give me solid, human writing and sublime acting and you've got me every time. Brad Pitt, while a decent actor, is nowhere in the same league as his fellow nominees. He was very good in Snatch and Legends of the Fall, and is shockingly good looking, but most of his films are made for mainstream viewers. My only hope is that the Academy gets at least part of the choice right (something they've pretty much failed at for the last seventy or so years) and gives Rourke his due. Tomei is also awesome. There are few women my age who would take off their clothes for this part. She and Rourke are absolutely convincing from first frame to last. And as for best songs, the Academy doesn't like folks who didn't go to music school. Real grit entertainers who learned guitars, drums, and saxophone (or all the modern instruments of musical expression) on their own in dusty, broken down apartment buildings don't represent the upper classes very well. The fix, however, on this side of the continent seems to be in for Penn. As he's a local boy and Milk is a Bay Area story, he's gotten the nod from the North (where the power and money flow from in California). So the local reviews of the Wrestler were abysmal. The film was also held in limited release (just one theater in the entire Bay Area for an entire month) while Pitt and Penn were given massive press and accolades. Slumdog was given the thumbs up by the local alternative press, who had it right with the far superior Trainspotting and who haven't been able to look beyond Boyle since. Pitt was rewarded by the press for working in a budget art film. Yeah $150,000,000 is a real small budget. How'd they every manage to pay the actors? Did Pitt work for scale? Rourke, on the other hand, was condemned for his drug use and his wild days and pretty much vilified by everyone. And this all means if the Academy gets it wrong, well, haven't they always? Will they every get it right? No, not ever, not in a million years. They are the the purveyors of bad taste and glitch. Box office reigns supreme. Hype is considered true. There's a lot of talk about gowns. The truth, well, the truth is the bitter taste in the loser's mouth who thought vainly he just might win this time. When the odd appropriate winner comes along we get our hopes up that the Academy has finally gotten it this time. It is a fleeting feeling. The next year's films come along and we get exposed once again to the sickly hype. Can we say Titanic? King of the world?
E
Posted by Edward Willy | January 24, 2009 1:32 PM
Posted on January 24, 2009 13:32
Another obvious omission: The Simpsons Movie for best animated feature. Again, for many of the reasons Miles states in this post: Ultimately, Matt Groening and Co. are not "of Hollywood" and therefore deserve not even the chance of an award.
Wall-E might have been a wonderful film, but I refused to see it because its premise was that it was a film about a robot, which I found unbelievable.
Posted by smitty werbenmanjensen | January 26, 2009 4:42 AM
Posted on January 26, 2009 04:42