The 87th Academy Awards

The Oscars, saluting the best and the whitest, as host Neil Patrick Harris said at the beginning of the show, wasn't supposed to be this unpredictable. J.K. Simmons would be expected to follow Javier Bardem, Heath Ledger and Christoph Waltz in their villainous footsteps by easily winning Best Supporting Actor. Patricia Arquette, for her astonishing performance in "Boyhood," would follow with an easy win, as she has been a lock all awards season. Julianne Moore, long overdue for a win, would win without any serious competition for "Still Alice." That would leave three races -- Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor -- to be the difficult ones to guess. Not so this year, for it was a year of surprises. The big winner was "Birdman," but I'm not entirely sure what the deal with this film is. All I know for certain is this: it's the most overrated Best Picture winner since "Driving Miss Daisy" from 1989, and it only won because "Boyhood," its main competitor, was released in the summer. That's it.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that it's not as if I was madly in love with "Boyhood." But the nominees for Best Picture this year were mediocre ("Selma," "Whiplash," "The Theory of Everything," "The Imitation Game") and the others, like the most culturally significant ("American Sniper") or the winner ("Birdman"), were terribly overrated, and so "Boyhood" was simply the best. I really don't see "Boyhood" going down in the records as the one that lost the battle but won the war in the hearts and minds of moviegoers; that is, it's not the next "Star Wars," "Raging Bull" or "Pulp Fiction," all of them Best Picture losers. But in terms of actual merit, it truly sounds impossible to argue that it deserved to lose to "Birdman." Beyond that, perhaps the biggest shocker of the night was Wes Anderson not being one of the many winners of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" when he lost to the writing team for "Birdman." Adding to my frustration is that the one Oscar "Birdman" actually deserved -- Michael Keaton for Best Actor -- it lost, and with all due respect to the terrific performance by Eddie Redmayne, his win over Keaton proved that if you really want to win an Oscar, your chances are significantly improved if you're a white guy playing a protagonist with a disability.

But I should at least be happy that I got to watch the awards. You see, in my present country, the awards had been broadcast for at least two years on Fox Movies, making it for easy viewing. (They even offered a re-airing later in the day.) The following year, it was available for viewing on channel Dubai One, making it a bit difficult to find at first, but I was successful nonetheless. This year, however, the Oscars aired on OSN, a private channel requiring its own super, special cable box. ABC, which has aired the Academy Awards in the U.S. since the 1970s, allowed for live streaming of the show on its website, but only for those who already had a cable subscription (which would sort of negate the need for viewing it online), and only for those who had a subscription and reside in one of the eight markets that have ABC-owned-and-operated stations. Those living in Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle and other major American cities would be out of luck. (One could, however, watch the red carpet interviews and backstage clips for free online; oh, joy.)

Why all the hassle? As Will Oremus at Slate points out, money. "If this sounds like cruel and arbitrary from the cord-cutter's perspective," he writes, "it is. But ABC has business reasons for limiting its live stream in this way. In short, networks don't make as much money from the ads sold of their telecasts. And, in general, media companies have little interest in catering to cord-cutters, whom they view as undermining a bulwark of their business models. Yes, ABC networks are free to watch over the air, but ABC is owned by Disney, and the company also owns a slew of cable channels." Because of this, I went to bed late Sunday night (my time) prepared to wake in a few hours on my birthday and not be able to view the Oscars. However, at the very last minute, I found the good folks at ustream, where there was a channel with a live stream (illegally) available. That being said, for the last four awards, the Big Rat found us and shut the channel down, leaving two drunk ladies watching the Oscars as the only available channel that was at least somewhat relevant to the Oscars (really) but would be the fastest way of learning who the winners were. These ladies appeared to be engaging in some kind of bizarre drinking act where every time the camera showed Benedict Cumberbatch they took a sip of wine, I think. (The camera focused on them and their drinking, not the screen.) Their howling in approval left me confused for several minutes as to who the actual winner was; how was I to know that they were such huge Eddie Redmayne fans?

Neil Patrick Harris turned out to be a surprisingly awkward (and boring) host, especially considering how much experience he has hosting the Tony and Emmy awards. Despite a fairly entertaining opening number about the magic of movies (or something) with Anna Kendrick and Jack Black, the remainder of his time, save for a fairly clever (and brave) spoof of Michael Keaton's underwear scene in "Birdman," was devoted to lame and certainly uncomfortable jokes. He should have anticipated what kind of a reaction he would get regarding his running gag involving Octavia Spencer guarding his ballot, which at best was this year's "who wants pizza?" and at worst was a message to Oscar-viewers everywhere that if you win an Oscar for playing a black maid in the 1960s, you will one day return to serving white folks at the Oscars.

It's moments like these -- the inability to open up the show for all viewers, its predominantly white male membership shutting out Ava DuVernay for a deserving nomination, the insult of refusing to let the winners actually talk, and the painful yawns throughout -- that make me wonder why I bother watching. But whereas the show was its usual bore, at least the speeches were awesome. Here's a few of them:

Arquette (Best Supporting Actress, "Boyhood"): "To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this country we have fought for everyone else's rights. It's time to have our wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America." Two women, in particular, really enjoyed her speech. (It's a bit depressing, though, that she had to say that in 2015, not 1980, the year "Nine to Five" was released.)

Simmons (Best Supporting Actor, "Whiplash"): "Call your mom, call your dad. If you're lucky to have a parent alive on this planet, call them. Don't text, don't email; call them on the phone and talk to them and listen to them as long as they want to talk to you."

Graham Moore (Best Adapted Screenplay, "The Imitation Game"): "Here's the thing: Alan Turing never got to stand on a stage like this and at look out at all these disconcertingly attractive faces. I do, and that's the most unfair thing I've ever heard. When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and different and I felt like I did not belong. And now, I'm standing here. And so, I would like this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she's weird or she's different and she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you: you do. Stay weird and stay different."

John Legend (Best Original Song, "Selma," shared with Common): "We wrote this song for a film that was based on events that were fifty years ago, but we say that "Selma" is now, because the struggle for justice is right now. We know that the Voting Rights Act that they fought for fifty years ago is being compromised today." He also said that we live in the most incarcerated country in the world, and that there are more black men under correctional control today than there were in slavery in 1850, a claim that was validated by the fact-checking site Politifact.

And aside from the speeches, there was Lady Gaga's wonderful tribute to "The Sound of Music," as well as the Lonely Island teaming up with Tegan and Sara for "Everything Is Awesome," two of the few moments of life for the show. So in sum: memorable speeches, great singing, disappointing-as-usual host, unjustified (for the most part) winners. 364 more days till the next one.

Read More →

Selma

"Our feet are tired, but are souls are rested."
-Martin Luther King

In the opening scene of "Selma," directed by Ava DuVernay, Martin Luther King stares into a mirror and mentions a "disdain for hopelessness." He's simultaneously putting on his tie. It is 1965. It's an incredible way to open the movie, with a haunting score by Jason Moran (in his debut). But then we immediately go from Oslo, Norway to Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls are descending stairs in what appears to be a church, and it doesn't require a PhD in History to at least suspect what is coming. The church explodes, killing the four girls inside.

King, played exceptionally by David Oyelowo, is not going to tire from his success in helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and becoming a Nobel laureate -- he's instead going to Washington, D.C. to try and stress to President Lyndon Johnson that more urgent work is desperately needed, and they need LBJ's help. Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, blacks are still being systematically persecuted, and this is made possible by segregationist white governors, police chiefs, juries, etc. If a perpetrator actually sees his day in court (a rarity), then the white jury always finds the white criminal not guilty. Why? Because, MLK tells LBJ, to serve on a jury, a person needs to be registered to vote. And while, technically, blacks did have the right to vote in 1965, as the next scene demonstrates, this was often not actually the case. In the scene, Annie Lee Cooper (played by Oprah Winfrey, a producer of the film), attempts to register (again) to vote. She is rudely asked to recite the preamble to the Constitution. Upon beginning, she is then rudely demanded to identify how many county judges there are in Alabama. She answers correctly. "Name them," is the next order. Her request is denied.

The film accurately portrays Cooper's bravery and her punching a police officer, and Winfrey has stated that she wished to portray the character because of her courage. The depiction of President Johnson, however, has become a bit more controversial. A group of historians and Johnson advisers have pushed back against the notion that King and Johnson had a tense relationship, or that they disagreed about the procedure for solving the problems. Johnson historian Julian E. Zelizer recently wrote at Vox that Johnson and the civil rights leaders were partners, not adversaries. And as Bill Moyers, himself a former Johnson adviser, has pointed out, it was not Johnson who was behind the wiretapping of King's phones. The culprit? Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, two years earlier. And it should not be doubted that the FBI was ruthless toward King. In addition to the wiretapping, an FBI agent, using terms like "filthy" and "abnormal," sent King a letter suggesting the civil rights leader kill himself.

While the scenes with Johnson might be seen as dumbing-down the history of everything, I don't think they hurt the film too much. While it's truly bizarre that Oyelowo didn't receive a Best Act nomination, his fellow Brits give disappointing performances. Tom Wilkinson isn't particularly good as LBJ, and neither is Tim Roth, whose accent sounds more like an exaggerated version of Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards" than it does than the venomous governor of Alabama, George Wallace (whose daughter, incidentally, claimed Wallace saw the errors of his ways and regretted his years of proclaiming that in Alabama there would be "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"). The rest of the cast, however, is sufficient and plentiful: Common, Wendell Pierce, Lorraine Toussaint, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. all appear as civil rights activists, as does Martin Sheen as a judge hearing the case of the legality of the banning of marching in Selma, and Carmen Ejogo (another Brit) is excellent as Coretta Scott King. In her scenes, Ejogo (who also played the character in "Boycott" from 2001 and who had met her) portrays Coretta not only as a concerned wife but one understandingly angry about her husband's infidelity in scenes demonstrating that DuVernay and her team aren't afraid of de-mythologizing MLK a bit.

"Selma it is." King and his advisers agree to go to Selma to march to Montgomery in a demonstration to demand their right to vote. They concentrate on a "defined battleground," and predictably are met with violence; it's "open season," as Johnson warns. One young man is shot and killed in front of his family. In scenes that provoke demonstrators to ask how it can be that troops were being sent to Vietnam but not Selma, skulls are cracked and scores of people chased. These are not, in any stretch of the imagination, easy moments to watch. As the judge Sheen plays notes, "the wrongs are enormous." So it was then, and so it is, frankly, now.

Is "Selma" a great film? No, and at times it doesn't aspire to be more than a mediocre movie about history, much like "The Imitation Game" before it. I hope that this continues the success of Oyelowo, who also appeared in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Lee Daniels' The Butler," and I hope that the Academy (which is 93 percent white and 76 percent male, and has been stung by a Twitter campaign called #OscarsSoWhite with tweets like "they didn't see 'Selma' but their housekeeper said it was really good") continues to not only diversify but also has enough sense to nominate DuVarney when she earns it. That being said, "Selma" is a movie you should see, but that does not make it one of the year's best.

Read More →