Oscar Night Is Sunday… Some Final Thoughts

The 78th Annual Academy Awards, which will be broadcast live this Sunday, March 5, features Comedy Central vet Jon Stewart making his hosting debut. It must vie for viewership in an atmosphere in which most awards telecasts (ie, the Grammys and the Golden Globes) have seen some of their lowest ratings in years.

Plus the Oscars must go to battle with a frontline of films from a year in which box office receipts were at their lowest in nearly a decade.

Without question, however, this year’s selection of films features a number of topics and performances well outside the usual mainstream fare… and that usually leads to a lively broadcast and a few surprises on awards night. In honor of the event, it’s time for my annual Oscar column, but this year instead of canvassing all the major categories and nominations, I’d like to focus first on all the Best Picture nominees, and then throw in my two cents on some of the unfortunate individuals and films who might have been overlooked.

*Best Picture (nominees — Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Munich): Although Crash has gained a hint of momentum as we round into the final stretch before awards night, it’s looking pretty certain that Brokeback Mountain will emerge victorious in this category.

Although there is much to admire in the film (especially the heartfelt performances), I mentioned in a previous column that I just didn’t fall head-over-heels for it as others have. I think USA Today said it best when it asked about the film, “Is it a milestone, or movie of the moment?”

It’s probably a little bit of both, so for my money, the best film of this bunch is Crash.

It’s a fascinating, densely-plotted film of interweaving stories amid the multicultural melting pot (in many ways, boiling pot, is more like it here) of Los Angeles. Written and directed by Paul Haggis (a previous Oscar candidate for his screenplay work on last year’s Million Dollar Baby), this rich, ensemble-led work squarely tackles some searing questions about racism, class conflict, and the unfailingly human tendency to talk over one another rather than hear and communicate with each another.

Though it would appear that this category is essentially a two-horse race, viewers, when making out their Netflix list (or taking a drive to the video store), should not ignore two other selections: Good Night, and Good Luck and Capote.

One is a deceptively simple, yet elegantly shot, drama that re-creates the real-life, ‘50s clash between CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (played with unflinching gravity by nominee David Strathairn) and Sen Joseph McCarthy, yet features plenty of echoes to our current, cultural landscape, while the other is a quiet but engrossing examination featuring a tour-de-force performance by one of our great character actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who gives a rich, balanced performance as eccentric writer Truman Capote.

Lastly, in my opinion, the less said about the last nominee, Munich, the better. I found it to be much akin to Spielberg’s other entry of 2005 (War of the Worlds) as a noisy, chaotic and needlessly violent work. Though there were a few notable elements in the movie (some stylishly suspenseful sequences, fine work by the actors), it shouldn’t be holding a spot in this category that would have been better filled by such deserving films as Walk the Line, Cinderella Man, Pride & Prejudice or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

*Most Overlooked Potential Nominees: Other than the abovementioned four movies, all of which could have easily merited a Best Picture nomination, the Academy bypassed some quality work of note, including: Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man (his surly reputation probably caught up with him because his actual performance in the film was stellar); Naomi Watts in King Kong (she managed to shine even in the midst of an effects-driven movie); Donald Sutherland in Pride & Prejudice (who’d have thought that the man so often associated with heavies could give such a warm and heartfelt performance as a gentle, bemused father?); and Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins), whose steady directorial hand and co-scripting duties brought depth, style and new emotional weight to the near-mythic tale of the Dark Knight of Gotham City.