How sad is it that THIS particular monologue by Chris Rock sounded edgy? This monologue was to Chris Rock as Jell-o instant vanilla pudding is to crème brulée. How sad is it that there was NO cleavage in sight, not even after Rock's hideous joke about the four biggest Spanish-speaking stars? How sad is it that no one wore anything really, terrifyingly awful? Are they that afraid of Kathy Griffin? And how sad is it that, as Cintra Wilson so aptly puts it in today's Salon:
Now, "Million Dollar Boobies": That was NOT the best movie of the year. That was the Champ, the Jackie Coogan, 1930s, gloves, tears, sweat 'n' snot classic, rewritten for a younger female and older male, who exercise their sexless intimacy through broken noses and mercy-killing. It was a solidly good film, but for me, it was like paying $325 a night to stay in a four-star hotel -- Clint, Morgan and Hilary are pretty much the Gold Standard, and if it you can't pull the wagon with those three majestic Clydesdales of the Thespian Craft, it has no wheels. That film had tasteful wallpaper, thick towels, a rose on the bedspread, and no real funk or character. But you can cry a world of hurt while watching that has nothing to do with the film itself, and I think that's why it won: It was cathartic. We're in a lot of collective pain, we're weary and confused, and Clint hit the right release valve. Big Daddy's going to put you out of your misery now, Tiger. You just rest.
...that Kill a Cripple for Clint swept just about everything, leaving poor, ever-more-diminutive-by-the-day Marty Scorsese, sitting there with that painted-on smile YET AGAIN? OK, last time his lugubrious, ponderous, bloated Gangs of New York was justifiably beaten by Adrien Brody's fascinatingly majestic schnozz. But just because a reasonably attractive girl can do a whiz-bang-up job playing trailer trash but can't do anything else, and just because it's Clint Fucking Eastwood behind it, and just because it involves a bunch of the Required Factors for Victory (see also: Scott Renshaw's interesting scoring system at Cinemarati, and Nathaniel R's spot-on analysis of Why It Pays For Actresses To Ugly Down), doesn't make it Great Cinema.
Of course I'm in the minority on this.
Still...it was a pretty boring evening overall. It's a shame how Hollywood has been beaten into submission by stupid billboards and right-wing shills; so that they seem to actually believe now that they are responsible for the decline of western civiliation. It's amazing to watch all these people that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity love to point fingers at shower accolades on this guy:
In the spring of 2000 Eastwood joined forces with Rep. Mark Foley (R. FL) to support the ADA Notification Act, a bill that would require disabled people to wait yet another 90 days, requiring them to ask a business, nicely, to please make their premises accessible, before suing them under the Americans with Disabilities Act for their lack of access. Since 1992, the federal law has required access. But almost no small businesses have bothered to obey the law.
Yet, according to Eastwood in his media blitz during the spring of 2000, businesses were being picked on by "unscrupulous" lawyers out to make a fast buck.
Eastwood appeared on the talk shows Hardball and Crossfire; he was covered in a Fox News Special. The National Journal quoted him. Columnists covered his comments. Newsweek used the "Mercedes" quote on its "Perspectives" page ("What happens is these lawyers, they come along and they end up driving off in a big Mercedes," Eastwood told reporters, "and the disabled person ends up driving off in a wheelchair."),
THIS is the face of "Hollywood Liberals"? Sure, Rock did that great bit comparing Bush's lack of accountability to someone who works at the Gap and declares war on Banana Republic for selling toxic tank tops that don't even exist. But once you got past that, the "Face of Hollywood Liberalism" was a puffed-up and self-important (and humorless) Sean Penn sniffing indignantly at what he perceived to be a bitchslap at Jude Law in Chris Rock's monologue, which had ME yelling at the TV, "Hey, Penn! Get over yerself already!" I haven't been so annoyed by condescension since someone reminded me that NASA stands for "National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
For me the high point of the evening wasn't even on the Oscar telecast itself, but in, of all places, Barbara Walters' interview with Jamie Foxx. Now I recognize that these people are ACTORS, and you can figure that there's a certain amount of performance in everything they do, but Fox was so articulate about what having African-Americans win these silly things means for the larger community, and so loving in the way he talked about his late kickass grandmother, that it almost made me forget I really wanted Don Cheadle to win.
After the show I went to sleep and dreamt that Clive Owen had won Best Supporting Actor. I woke up and my bed was filled (as it is every morning), with two sprawling cats.
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