87th Annual Academy Awards: Some Thoughts

Ever since I was 12, I stayed up late to watch the Oscar telecast.    For a movie lover, this is the Superbowl.      Last night's 87th Oscars ceremony hosted by Neil Patrick Harris was like many of the past telecasts:  Unnecessarily long.    Each year, the identity of the Oscars host is revealed with eager anticipation.     Neil Patrick Harris is a talented actor with prior awards show hosting experience.    However, a host is usually only as good as the material he is provided.    I thought Harris carried himself well, but had to shoulder a load of a ridiculously long, drawn-out telecast.     It is too much for any one person to handle.    Nonetheless, he carried himself with aplomb.

Here are some other thoughts about the 87th Oscars:

*   When I wrote wrap ups for the previous two Oscar telecasts, I was annoyed by the unusual amount of standing ovations.    Last year, the audience awarded 12 standing O's.    About three-fourths of the way during this telecast, I praised the audience for its restraint.    It gave only one standing ovation (to Patricia Arquette for her acceptance speech containing a plea for equal pay for women).    Four musical numbers went by and nary a standing ovation.    I was impressed.    Then the bottom fell out.    John Legend and Common received three standing ovations within 10 minutes.     Standing ovations for speeches reflecting societal woes seemed to be the norm.    This year's audience gave 10 ovations, so there is slight improvement.     I'm not saying that some weren't deserved, but too many standing ovations detracts from the impact.    

*   Lady Gaga impressed with her renditions of songs from The Sound Of Music.   Julie Andrews' immediate appearance afterwards added a nice touch.   

*   I said it before and I'll say it again:   Awards that people just don't care about (which is all but say 10 categories) should take place at an untelevised ceremony like the Governor's Ball or The Scientific & Technical Awards.    Have a presenter explain who won what and the categories will be covered in less than five minutes.     I should cut and paste this paragraph to put in next year's wrap-up.   I'm sure it will apply.

*   Speaking of technical categories, why were the nominees in these categories seated way in the back of the Dolby Theater?   Or in the side balconies?    It took many of the winners entirely too much time just to walk to the stage to accept their awards.    That adds to the running time.    Again, if these categories had their own ceremony, this would not be an issue.

*   Each year there is at least one notable omission from In Memoriam segment.    This year was Joan Rivers, who was seen on the red carpet annually and of course was known to give sometimes skewering fashion critiques.    Was this an oversight or done accidentally on purpose?    Hmmm.

*   Afflictions are king in the acting categories.   Two more awards presented to actors playing people with afflictions.    Eddie Redmayne (The Theory Of Everything) playing Dr. Stephen Hawking and Julianne Moore (Still Alice) as a woman facing Alzheimer's.    A close second is an actor who uglies himself or herself up for a role.  

*  Did Neil Patrick Harris' predictions really need to be read right before the announcement of Best Picture?   The weary audience at home and in the theater were surely ready to leave and could not muster enough energy for one more bit.

*  I understand Sean Penn once acted in a movie directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu (21 Grams) but his joke, "Who gave this guy his green card?" in reference to Inarritu might have a little too inside for us viewers.    Now Penn is under fire for what is perceived as an off-color joke.    Penn needs to stick to his day job.  

*  I enjoyed the opening joke "Best and Whitest" from Harris, plus the byplay between John Travolta and Idina Menzel over Travolta's butchering of her name last year.    Travolta was a good sport, but then again, why shouldn't he be?   He is an annual presenter even though he hasn't made a relevant movie in quite some time.

*  Jennifer Lopez hasn't been relevant in movies in ages.   Why is she an annual presenter?   Maybe because she wears dresses that show off her ample breasts.    In that case, no problem.

*  Wouldn't it behoove Kelly Osbourne of E!'s Fashion Police to look presentable while critiquing other people's dress choices?   A purple mohawk doesn't work at all and neither did the frumpy dress.

*  Finally, I finished 5 for 8 picking the major categories.    I made my predictions shortly after the Golden Globes, which is not always the best Oscar predictor.     Yet, making picks after the SAG Awards, Producer's Guild Awards, and Director's Guild Awards is almost like shooting fish in a barrel.     I thought for sure Boyhood would be a shoo-in after taking into account early critics' awards and the Golden Globes.    It lost a lot of steam since.    My Best Picture and Director picks were wrong.    I also thought Michael Keaton could build off his success at the Globes, but Eddie Redmayne (who also won a Golden Globe) went on a roll winning the SAG Award and BAFTA for Best Actor.   



 

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Matthew Vaughn

Starring:  Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Sophie Cookson

I enjoyed Kingsman: The Secret Service until it made a wrong turn into Kick-Ass territory.    The film went from an amusing adventure to an ugly, nasty, overly violent gorefest.    It built up enough goodwill to survive the final 30 minutes, but why did it have to become so needlessly bloody?    Why the sudden shift in tone?     It comes as no shock that Kingsman and Kick-Ass share the same director. 

The actors in Kingsman are clearly having fun with the preposterous material.     The film's tone was light and poked fun at the films it emulates, such as Bond films.    Then, a critical scene involving a church with members that are basically KKK minus the hoods came and my heart sank.    In the scene, Harry Hart (Firth), who recruits the young hero Eggsy (Egerton) into the Kingsman, takes on the entire church in a loooong fight scene in which numerous people are maimed, injured, or killed in the nastiest ways possible.    The scene is played in slow motion and with Freebird on the soundtrack, further exacerbating the violence.    It is true that the church members are people with deplorable views, but this doesn't mitigate the gore.    I realized then that Kingsman became a better version of Kick-Ass, but a version nonetheless.   

Before that, Kingsman was pretty fun.   It didn't cover much new ground, but it was still enjoyable.   Then it flew off the rails.    Without giving away too many plot points, Eggsy finds himself in a showdown with Richard Valentine (Jackson), who is the lisping villain.    Valentine's plot to reduce the surplus population in order to fight global warning is something Ebenezer Scrooge would have liked.    The final twenty minutes or so represents a complete shift in tone.   We see heads exploding, bodies carved up, and blood spewing everywhere.    What segment of the audience is all of this supposed to appeal to?

The film is set up for a sequel.   I sincerely hope the next installment steers the series into a different direction.    One that is less bload-soaked. 

Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) (2014) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan

Just because a movie is "different" doesn't make it wholly successful.    Birdman qualifies as such a movie.   The acting is top-notch, but having such strong performances in this movie is akin to having the best violinists on the Titanic.     Birdman isn't happy being different, it wants to be Different.    If the story were told without flights of fancy, hallucinations, and unexplained plot points, it may have been a treasure.    Instead, what sticks out most in the viewer's memory are scenes like Riggan Thompson (Keaton) flying around Manhattan in a CGI-induced hallucination.     What gets lost is the people, who are at the mercy of director (and co-writer Inarritu's) overly active imagination.    It can't get out of its own way. 

Keaton plays Riggan, who like Keaton himself once played a 90's film superhero.    Riggan played Birdman, a winged superhero, twenty years before but is now days away from his Broadway debut.    The parallels can't be a coincidence.   He writes, produces, directs, and stars in a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel.    Things begin to unravel as one of his co-stars is struck by a spotlight falling from the ceiling.   The replacement is Mike Shriner (Norton), a volatile, sometimes insufferable method actor who has a tanning bed shipped to his dressing room.    During one of the previews, Mike breaks character and complains that there isn't real gin in the glass he's drinking from.    Riggan wants to fire Mike, but is talked out of it by his agent Jake (Galifianakis), whose job is to run interference and talk Riggan off the ledge on more than one occasion.     If there is a guy who needs to be talked off the ledge often, it is Riggan, who is haunted by a taunting voice of an imaginary Birdman that constantly reminds him of the actor he used to be.   

When we first see Riggan, he is in his tighty whities meditating while floating above the floor in his dressing room.    There are instances in which Riggan seems to have supernatural powers, or at least ESP, but this is not explained.    Riggan has staked his personal and professional fortune on the success of the play.    He wants to be Relevant.   His daughter Sam (Stone) works as his personal assistant, but has issues of her own as a recovering drug addict.    She also catches the eye of Mike, causing further tension between Mike and Riggan.    Riggan's ex-wife (Ryan) is on the periphery, lamenting about the direction things have taken between the two.   Riggan is also sleeping with his co-star who may or may not be pregnant.   It is little wonder, I suppose, that he fantasizes about being able to fly above the city. 

There is a lot to juggle for Inarritu and company.   Much of the action takes place within the confines of the cavernous theater, creating a hermetic world in which the walls are closing in and the ceilings are threatening to collapse on top of our characters.    Some of the characters escape to the rooftops just to breathe, if not to consider jumping off.     Birdman is effective conveying this world which threatens to suffocate all within it.  

Birdman flies off the rails, however, when it allows too much weirdness to intervene.    It falls back on too much whimsy and too much supernatural nonsense.    Why does Riggan seem to have supernatural powers?    What is the nature of Leslie's (Watts) relationship with Riggan's girlfriend?    Such loose ends are left without a payoff.    These are some of the frustrating aspects of Birdman.

Yet, when Birdman does work, it works well.    My overall view of the film is of dislike, but not disinterest.    The film is technically sound, but suffers because of the screenplay.   I wish Inarritu had chosen to play the material straight and not right angling in the wacky business it could've done without.