Double Oscar Winner Not Exactly A Fan

THE INDEPENDENT: Forgotten golden girl of the Oscars
In the 1930s Luise Rainer won Best Actress Oscars in successive years. Gerard Gilbert meets a movie legend
Friday, 20 February 2009

One former Academy Award winner who won't be watching the Oscars this Sunday – and not just because she is almost deaf and no longer bothers with television – is the 99-year-old actress Luise Rainer. "All that ballyhoo... all these long speeches, thanking the grandparents and the great-grandparents... No, I find it very boring", she says in her German-accented English. You can only feel thankful that Rainer was spared Kate Winslet's simpering breakdown at the Golden Globes last month.

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Oscar Night: The Departed Leaves The Podium With Gold

NY TIMES: ‘The Departed’ Wins Best Picture, Scorsese Best Director
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and SHARON WAXMAN
Published: February 26, 2007

HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 25 —Twenty-six years and seven snubs after his first Oscar nomination, for “Raging Bull,” Martin Scorsese finally felt the warm embrace of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Sunday as he was named best director and his murderous mob thriller “The Departed” was named the best picture of 2006.

“Could you double-check the envelope?” Mr. Scorsese quipped after silencing a raucous standing ovation of whistling, whooping academy members.

“I’m so moved,” he said, accepting the directing prize. “So many people over the years have been wishing this for me. Strangers — I go into doctors’ offices, elevators, I go for an X-ray — they say, ‘You should win one.’ ”

Forest Whitaker won best actor for his performance as the cunning, seductive and savage Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.”

“Receiving this honor tells me that it’s possible,” Mr. Whitaker said. “It is possible, for a kid from East Texas, raised in South Central L.A., and Carson, who believes in dreams, who believes them in his heart, to touch them and have them happen.”

Helen Mirren took best actress for her performance as a traditional monarch in a modern world in “The Queen.”

“For 50 years or more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle,” Ms. Mirren said. “I salute her courage and her consistency, and I thank her, for if it wasn’t for her, I most certainly would not be here.”

Graham King, the only of three credited producers permitted to accept the best-picture award for “The Departed,” said, “To be standing here where Martin Scorsese won his Oscar is such a joy.” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Guillermo Del Toro’s magical-realist fantasy set in 1944 Fascist Spain, received Oscars for cinematography, art direction and makeup at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, but fell short of its ultimate prize, best foreign-language film, which went to “The Lives of Others,” from Germany.

Jennifer Hudson, the “American Idol” reject-turned-star of “Dreamgirls,” was named best supporting actress, giving two of the four acting awards to African-Americans. And Alan Arkin, the cranky, heroin-snorting grandfather in the bittersweet family comedy “Little Miss Sunshine,” won best supporting actor.

“Little Miss Sunshine” also won for its original screenplay by Michael Arndt, a former assistant to Matthew Broderick who had to wait seven years for his script to be produced. “When I was a kid my family drove 500 miles in a van with a broken clutch,” he said, explaining the source of his inspiration. “It ended up being one of the funnest things we did together.”

On a night in which several top awards came as no surprise, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary featuring Al Gore on global warming, won best documentary feature.

“I made this movie for my children,” said the director, Davis Guggenheim, his arm on Mr. Gore’s shoulder. “We were moved to act by this man.”

Mr. Gore took his moment in the worldwide spotlight to underline the film’s message. “My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis,” he said, adding that the “will to act” was a renewable resource. “Let’s renew it,” he said.

That film also won best original song, for “I Need to Wake Up,” by Melissa Etheridge, upsetting “Dreamgirls,” which had three songs in contention. Holding her Oscar aloft backstage, Ms. Etheridge quipped that it would be “the only naked man who will ever be in my bedroom.”

In a twist, “The Lives of Others,” which examined the Orwellian police state that was East Germany, won in something of an upset. The German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, thanked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California “for teaching me that the words ‘I can’t’ should be stricken from my vocabulary.”

The awards for Mr. Del Toro’s movie came on a night in which his and two other films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors. One of them, “Babel,” won for its original score by Gustavo Santaolalla, who also won last year for “Brokeback Mountain.”

“Happy Feet” was named the year’s best animated feature.

Accepting for best supporting actor, Mr. Arkin said that “Little Miss Sunshine” was about “innocence, growth and connection.” His voice cracking, he praised his fellow actors, saying that acting was a “team sport.” He added, “I can’t work at all unless I feel the spirit of unity around me.”

William Monahan won best adapted screenplay for “The Departed,” his transplantation of the movie “Infernal Affairs” from Hong Kong to South Boston.

An Oscar also went to Thelma Schoonmaker, the longtime editor to Mr. Scorsese. She saluted Mr. Scorsese for being “tumultuous, passionate, funny” as a collaborator. “It’s like being in the best film school in the world,” she said.

“Dreamgirls,” nominated for eight awards, the most of any film, also won for sound mixing. But Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” whose three nominations were caught up in the tempest caused by the director’s drunken, anti-Semitic rant last summer, was shut out.

Ellen DeGeneres made her first appearance as the host of the movie industry’s annual celebration of itself, on a night expected to have its share of pregnant moments. Three filmmaking titans — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola — presentedthe award for best director.

Ms. DeGeneres said it had been a lifelong dream of hers to be host for the Oscars, rather than to win one. “Let that be a lesson to you kids out there: Aim lower,” she said, sounding a theme for the evening’s opening, which was designed to honor the many nominees, 177 in all, rather than focusing on the winners.

Ms. DeGeneres repeatedly ventured into the audience, at one point getting Mr. Spielberg to take a picture of her with Clint Eastwood, “for MySpace.”

And in a choice full of irony for industry insiders, Tom Cruise, who was thrown off the Paramount lot last summer by Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, gave the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Sherry Lansing, the former Paramount chairwoman who retired during a shake-up by Mr. Redstone two years earlier.

Backstage, Ms. Lansing said she had not known that Mr. Cruise was going to give her the award. “I saw him at an Oscar party a few days before, and he was sort of cold to me,” she said. Onstage, she said, he had whispered in her ear: “This is an honor. I really wanted to do this, you know how much I love you.” Ms. Lansing said she believed Mr. Cruise, who had a rough year before taking over management of United Artists, would be back to pick up an Oscar for directing or producing within five years.

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer, received an honorary Oscar from Mr. Eastwood, who starred in the spaghetti westerns for which Mr. Morricone provided the unmistakable music.

The program began with a bouncy montage, directed by Errol Morris, of interview snippets with nominees reciting, among other things, the number of times they had come close to winning an Oscar. “Zilch,” said Peter O’Toole, of the number of times he had won.

Will Ferrell and Jack Black, leading members of Hollywood’s comedy rat pack, did a song-and-dance number bemoaning the paucity of comedic talent among the Oscar nominees. “I guess you don’t like laughter,” Mr. Ferrell sang. “A comedian at the Oscars is the saddest, bitterest, alcoholic clown.”

John C. Reilly, a past Oscar nominee, then stood up in the audience to remind them — in song — that he had been in both “Boogie and Talladega Nights.” All three then crooned that they hoped to go home with Helen Mirren, a best-actress nominee, who is in her 60s.

Breaking with tradition, the show’s producer, Laura Ziskin, best known for the “Spider-Man” franchise, rejiggered the lineup of awards to leave the marquee categories — best actor, actress, director and picture — for the end of the night. The first half of the show was front-loaded with technical and craft categories: art direction, makeup, sound editing and mixing, costume design and visual effects.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” won for visual effects; “Letters From Iwo Jima” took sound editing; “Marie Antoinette” picked up costume design.

The director Ari Sandel won best live-action short film for “West Bank Story,” a spoof on “West Side Story” with feuding Palestinian and Israeli falafel stands. “This is a movie about peace and about hope,” Mr. Sandel said. “To get this award shows that there are so many out there who also support that notion.”

The award for animated short went to “The Danish Poet,” written and directed by Torill Kove.

Mr. Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, a nominee for best actor (“Blood Diamond”), announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits. “This show has officially gone green,” Mr. DiCaprio said.

The Oscars adopted other conservation measures this year, such as using recycled paper for the Oscar ballots. “We have a long way to go, but all of us, in our lives, can do something to make a difference,” Mr. Gore said.

But Mr. Gore did not throw his hat in the ring, as the producers of his film, among others in Hollywood, had hoped he might. Asked if he had a major announcement to make, Mr. Gore said: “With a billion people watching, it’s as good a time as any. So my fellow Americans, I’m going to take this opportunity, here and now, to formally announce” — and the Oscars orchestra, right on cue, drowned him out as if he had droned on a second too long.

The Academy Awards capped a season in which the conventional wisdom has often been wrong, and actual wisdom has been in short supply. The big question before the nominations was how many Oscars “Dreamgirls” might win, and what film could compete with it for best picture. The only question after the nominations was, What happened to “Dreamgirls”?

Many theories were advanced, including misguided marketing and an abundance of hype, but the film’s director, Bill Condon, cut to the chase: “Maybe the Academy saw five films they liked better.” Whatever the reason, the film’s elimination left the race wide open to an array of films that took very different routes to the nomination.

“The Departed” rode a wave of box-office success and a plan to keep Oscar hype on the down-low, partly because many in the industry felt it was time to recognize the director Martin Scorsese’s lifetime of excellence. “Little Miss Sunshine,” a new take on the family road-trip movie, which won four Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, was a film that no one in Hollywood seemed to want to make, but it connected with audiences to the tune of more than $94 million in worldwide box-office receipts. “Babel,” by contrast, left United States audiences cold while doing good business abroad, but connected with critics and was rewarded for a global, ambitious story by winning best dramatic feature at the Golden Globes.

“The Queen,” a small movie that managed to do everything right, managed to ride one of the year’s more remarkable performances — Ms. Mirren as a traditional monarch in a very modern world — to broad critical recognition. And after “Flags of Our Fathers,” another would-be Oscar hopeful, met with indifference, Mr. Eastwood and his studio, Warner Brothers, decided to release the film’s twin, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” before year’s end — and were rewarded with a best-picture nomination.

This appeared to be the most ethnically and linguistically diverse batch of film nominees yet, appropriate enough given that Hollywood’s foreign revenues now eclipse the domestic take by a significant margin. The Oscar slate included several films shot largely in languages other than English, most notably Mr. Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima,” in Japanese, and Mr. Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” in Maya dialects.

“Babel,” from the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, spanned three continents and five languages — Japanese, Berber, Spanish, English and sign — and two of its actresses, Rinko Kikuchi of Japan and Adriana Barraza of Mexico, received nominations. (Three films by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 honors.)

Oscar And The Film Business

LA TIMES: Oscar isn't Hollywood's face
The academy honors the Helen Mirrens, but the industry is really all about the Adam Sandlers.
By Joe Queenan - February 25, 2007

OF ALL THE creatures on the face of the Earth, only humans would dream of nominating Ryan Gosling for a best actor award for his exemplary work in a film almost no one has seen.

Actually, the only humans who would make such an extravagant gesture are that tiny group of mysterious voters who make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Year in, year out, this largely unidentified group of voters — many of them quite advanced in years, some presumably dead — persist in honoring actors, actresses, directors and screenwriters for their superb work in films that are widely ignored and have almost nothing to do with the industry's raison d'etre.

Let's face it. The movie industry is not about "Half Nelson," Rinko Kikuchi, "Pan's Labyrinth," Jackie Earle Haley, "Little Children," Abigail Breslin or Ryan Gosling. The movie industry is about Will Ferrell, "King Kong," Owen Wilson, "Meet the Fockers XV" and, to a greater or lesser extent, all films that either are or resemble "Nacho Libre." Ryan Gosling and Rinko Kikuchi have nothing to do with it.

To bring into focus the extraordinary iconoclasm the academy exhibits each year in its determination to reward films that Americans do not care about, actors we usually ignore and directors we don't even like, one need only consider the very different mentality that prevails at the Grammys.

Two weeks ago, the music industry, as usual, went out of its way to honor insanely famous artists who sell lots of records. The music industry does not dole out its highest honors to gallant but obscure recordings made by gallant but obscure artists; it gives its awards to people such as Madonna. The music industry revels in the fact that it is in the revenue-generating sector; it is in the Justin Timberlake, Ludacris, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera and Red Hot Chili Peppers business. It is in the Mary J. Blige, Gnarls Barkley, John Legend and Dixie Chicks business.

It is not in the Kristin Hersh, Richard Thompson or Pierre-LaurentAimard-plays-Anton-Webern-pianotranscriptions business. True, it does give a limited number of awards to artists such as Chick Corea and Doc Watson, whose records do not sell and of whose existence the public is generally unaware. But it does not give major awards to these artists. If there is a music industry equivalent of Abigail Breslin (who played Olive in "Little Miss Sunshine"), then sorry, no Grammy for Parallel Abigail.

The academy has a different approach. The academy does not want to be confused with its craven, vulgar cousins in the music industry. Even though it is well aware that choosing a middling success such as "Crash" as best picture over any number of "Spider-Mans" is the equivalent of Major League Baseball giving the Cy Young Award to a pitcher who went 11-8, or its MVP award to a leftfielder who batted .268 with 13 home runs and 78 RBIs, the academy loves to honor films that make people in the movie business feel better about themselves.

And why not? No one really wants to think that they started out in the "Citizen Kane" line of trade and ended up working for Talladega Nights Inc. No one is really comfortable with the idea that the face of the industry is Adam Sandler and Ashton Kutcher rather than Daniel Day-Lewis and Ralph Fiennes. Nobody wants to go home after a hard day making Brittany Murphy movies when it would be so much more fulfilling to pretend that work was all about Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.

This is what makes Oscar night so special. It's not so much a case of the industry presenting itself the way it would like to be seen; it's the night when the industry gets tanked up and forgets what it does for a living.

Is this a bad thing? I guess not. Hypocrisy and self-delusion are two of America's most revered traditions, without which none of us could function. More to the point, the academy's self-delusion reaps vast benefits for us all.

The current cover of Vanity Fair — the Hollywood issue — is graced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Owen Wilson and Jack Black. Even for a magazine that once put the dopey, synthetic, rich-boy-discovers-poor-black-people Anderson Cooper on its cover, this is a sad moment.

If this motley crew is the best Hollywood can offer, then the age of radiant movie stars is over. For whatever else this quartet of glamour-challenged chaps may be, they are definitely not matinee idols.

Looking on the bright side, if Oscar night were run like the Grammys, or Major League Baseball, or any of the other organizations that love to hand out awards to people who don't really need them, then the movie stars stepping up to receive their fulsome homage tonight would be Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Owen Wilson and Jack Black, with Adam Sandler not far behind. This would be a very bad thing.

Personally, I think that any organization that stubbornly refuses to honor Jack Black, even though he will earn more for his worst movie than Helen Mirren will earn in her entire career, is to be congratulated. And so, my hat is off to the academy. The Nobel Prize in literature never goes to a Stephen King or a Danielle Steel; the Oscar for best actor should never go to a Chris Rock or a Jack Black. Leave them on the cover of Vanity Fair where they belong.

Joe Queenan writes frequently for Barron's, the New York Times Book Review and the Guardian.

Judge The Film Or The Man?

NY TIMES: Praise for Gibson Film, Quandary for Oscar Voters
By SHARON WAXMAN Published: December 5, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4 — With some early reviews lauding the audacity and innovation of Mel Gibson’s bloody Mayan epic, “Apocalypto,” Hollywood’s tight-knit community of Oscar voters may find itself facing a difficult dilemma in the coming weeks: Will they consider the film for an Academy Award?

Since Mr. Gibson’s drunken tirade against Jews last summer, many people in Hollywood swore — both publicly and privately — that they would not work with him again or see his movies.

But that was before the critics began to weigh in on “Apocalypto,” a two-hour tale about a peaceful village of hunter-gatherers who are attacked and enslaved by the bloodthirsty overlords of their Meso-American civilization.

Mr. Gibson wrote, directed, produced and financed the film, much as he did “The Passion of the Christ,” his surprise 2004 blockbuster; the Walt Disney Company is distributing the film.

“Apocalypto,” which will open on 2,500 screens across the country on Friday, is as different from a typical Hollywood film as Mr. Gibson’s last one: it features unrelenting, savage violence, is told in an obscure Mayan language and uses many nonprofessional actors with a primitive look born far from Hollywood.

Most critics (including this newspaper’s) have yet to weigh in on “Apocalypto,” but the excitement of those who have — like that among journalists who lingered to debate the film after a screening ended in Los Angeles last week — has been palpable.

“ ‘Apocalypto’ is a remarkable film,” Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety. “The picture provides a trip to a place one’s never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.”

“Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty,” Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone. “Say what you will about Gibson, he’s a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings.”

Other reviewers allowed themselves to psychoanalyze Mr. Gibson even as they praised the film. In a mixed review in The Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt observed that Mr. Gibson “knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.”

The rising tide of generally positive, if qualified, reviews poses a problem for Hollywood insiders, many of whom would prefer to ignore Mr. Gibson entirely, despite his formal apology and a trip to rehab.

Powerful players like Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Ari Emanuel, of the Endeavor talent agency have publicly disavowed Mr. Gibson, with Mr. Emanuel writing online last summer that “people in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him.”

Other studio chiefs have said they would not work with Mr. Gibson in the future but would not say so for attribution because they didn’t want to endanger their future business dealings. At least one influential publicist has declined to work on an “Apocalypto” Oscar campaign because of objections to Mr. Gibson’s views, but would not say so publicly for similar reasons.

And yet, can the 5,830 voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — an organization that like broader Hollywood, includes many people who are Jewish — ignore a film that may well be considered by critics to be among the best of the year?

Murray Weissman, who has worked on Oscar campaigns for many years and is working for the Weinstein Company on its hopefuls this year, said some voters would not see the film on principle.

“There is still a lot of resentment out there among the Academy members, certainly the Jewish group of them, over the incident,” he said. “There are a lot of people who are very unforgiving. I have run into some who say they will not see any more Mel Gibson movies.”

Yet, Mr. Weissman added, those who saw the movie and believed it deserving would vote for it. “The movie academy is of full of professionals; they will respect a good movie,” he said. “If the guy made a classic film and it’s absolutely brilliant — hey, I’m Jewish — I’d probably embrace it. But going in, I’m shocked and dismayed at his behavior.”

The problem posed by Mr. Gibson touches on an age-old question of whether an artist’s personal behavior ought to be a factor in judging his or her work.

The question is not a new one even in the brief history of cinema, which includes people like D. W. Griffith, the visionary feature director whose work fed racist stereotypes; Leni Riefenstahl, whose ground-breaking talent served Nazi Germany; or Roman Polanski, who in 1977 pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor and then fled the country, which did not prevent him from winning the Oscar for best director in 2003 for “The Pianist.”

As Richard Schickel writes in the Dec. 11 issue of Time magazine, “Gibson is a primitive all right, but so were Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith, and somehow we survived their idiocies.” Disney has taken a low-key approach to the Oscars, awaiting a general sense from critics and influential voices in Hollywood. The film was not on a list of screenings for Oscar consideration sent to Academy members, and no screenings are scheduled with question-and-answer sessions featuring Mr. Gibson, as has become the custom for movies vying for Oscar consideration.

But as the film has been gathering critical support, executives at the studio have begun to refer to “Apocalypto” as their “Million Dollar Baby,” the small movie directed by Clint Eastwood that came from behind two years ago to win best picture at the Oscars. And the studio is planning to send out “screeners,” DVDs sent to Academy members.

“From Day 1 we’d hoped that people would judge the movie on its artistic merits and judge Mel as a director,” said Dennis Rice, a Disney studio spokesman. “We believe they’ll separate their feelings of Mel the man from Mel the artist.”

But in addition to the other issues, the film’s sheer violence — which includes decapitation and hearts ripped from the chests of human sacrifice victims — could turn off some voters, whatever their feelings toward the director.

“Once the reviews come out and it’s perceived to be a foreign language film with that kind of violence, you will have trouble getting people to actually go see it,” said one seasoned Oscar campaigner, who declined to speak for attribution because of business ties to Disney.

“There will be a degree of resistance, And Mel would be the first one to say, ‘I anticipate a degree of ambivalence,’ he knows that,” said Peter Bart, the editor of Variety . “The violence is an issue. But that’s the way he is. That’s the way he sees the world.”