I love the Academy Awards like other people love the Super Bowl. Every year there are people I cheer for, people I boo at and proverbial power plays that I get so upset over, they keep me up at night.
This year was no different.
Thanks to Chris Rock, this year’s Oscar show was apparently the highest-rated since 2000. Unfortunately, Rock was almost as unfunny as Billy Crystal. But you can’t really blame him. The dude wants to get asked back, he even said so at the end of the show. And I guarantee that he got at least seven hours of lecture on FCC regulations, swearing and offending the audience at hand. That being said, he still sucked.
And Scorsese was robbed. Again. Obviously the Aviator wasn’t his best work, but it was damn pretty and well-acted and well-written and well-shot. And since I’ve been personally offended that Ms. Cate Blanchett was passed over in 1999 for her amazing role in Elizabeth, I’m glad she at least got recognized for her role as Kate Hepburn. But at the same time, I’m still angry Paltrow has a golden statue for showing her tits.
And speaking of no-talent anorexics, how and why is Hillary Skank winning anything – especially over Annette Bening? I was irate in 2000 when Skank won for a really great script that she had nothing to do with. Oh wait, she cut off her hair and lived as a boy for a week. Big. Fucking. Deal. And at the time people had the audacity to compare this “role research” to Robert De Niro’s weight gain for Raging Bull. No way. Hair grows back, De Niro’s whole body changed. So she took and threw some punches; that also is not a reason to hand Skank an award. And if it is, she should have been recognized for 1996′s Lifetime movie Terror in the House, when she played an abusive, insane teenager. Actually, her best work has been in crappy made-for-TV movies. Am I the only one who remembers her gut-wrenching performance in Dying to Belong? Or maybe as Steve Sander’s single mother girlfriend in the 1997-1998 season of “90210″? Meanwhile, Bening breathes life into and fleshes out roles that would otherwise be two-dimensional. But does she get noticed?
Apparently not.
(Of course, Catalina Sandino Moreno really should have won for her portrayal of a Columbian drug mule for Maria Full of Grace, but I guess that’s why the Independent Spirit Awards exist.)
Morgan Freeman finally won, which is fantastic. Jamie Foxx was good too, but it’s funny (in that not ha ha way) that Foxx got Best Actor after only one or two serious roles and Freeman had to wait a lifetime to get Best Supporting Actor. But maybe the Academy is taking into account Foxx’s role in Booty Call, one of the most underrated movies of all time. (Because you know Halle Berry never would have won if it wasn’t for B.A.P.S. I have to give that girl credit, though, for actually showing up at the Razzies the night before the Oscars and accepting her Worst Actress award for Catwoman.)
Of course, my highlight of the evening was seeing Charlie Kaufman actually win Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. And he was just as cute and nebbish in accepting his accolade as I expected.
And now for the fun part …
Best dressed: Charlize Theron.
Worst dressed: Skank.
Worst teeth: Johnny Depp. I don’t know if those were fake or uncapped or he just ate a chocolate bar, but anyone who saw him talking up close noticed they were brown and creepy. Almost Michael Stipe bad.
(From April 6, 2005)
