The Oscars

Evidently a suicidal jury would much rather shoot itself in the nose clutching a gun in one hand while reaching out for golden statuesque manhood with the other to an Antonio Sanchez drum roll and/or speculate about the universe out of a wheelchair rather than go out there to find another planet capable of sustaining human life. That's survival instinct for you within ''the line of sight''! Long years ago the jury was criticized for making the mortal error of looking above its navel to award 'Gandhi'. It took some years to correct that mistake by eventually decorating an anal-ytical vision of Indian slummery. This is surely a matter of some gravity, which for the Oscar jury must be a dead weight around its loins rather than a gigantic heartfelt force of liberating attraction which Hollywood apparently sets out to annually celebrate even though the jury it appoints continues to believe this is merely special effects! Or side effects, if you prefer!''What's love got to do with it'', yeah! And then there is the distinct possibility that seized with Noah- like trepidation of forthcoming floods due to global warming, Mexico may be emerging in jury-dick-tional mind as the preferred haven for the Oscark a la "The Day after Tomorrow". But I wouldn't credit the sag-acious old men & women of this jury such foresight given their penchant for being wiser by hind-ahem-sight preferably in white tights butting into theater space & turning it into a retirement home for suicidal manic-depressive Oscarcastaways, while themselves setting sail in the Oscark with lusty lustrous garmented types, preferably more revealing than space suits & capable of more than one measly kiss per 180 minutes. (What? No bathtub, no naked Archimedes @ Eureka! Now, that's not traditional @ the Oscars). Land ahoy, lower the anchor! {p.s. The alt title of this mail is : ''Is Oscar, if not Hollywood, waging fund war with NASA, if not NORAD?''}

This year I managed to watch the live telecast on the Cable TV channel Dubai One as opposed to intermittently streaming over the 'Net or even simply waiting for the results to show up on IMDb! As a show, it left a lot to be desired – with host Ellen De Generes (returning after her 2007 engagement where Martin Scorsese was also a contender) disappearing for moments on end and only lazily putting in the occasional – and hardly side-splitting – quip (at her best, perhaps, when mentioning Jonah Hill's anatomy as seen in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET). Her antics included taking orders for pizza to be delivered and distributed around among the nominees…which really showed up, and later taking up a collection to pay for it!; she also took a large selfie of herself, Meryl Streep and everyone nearby! Still, her constantly being in the aisle or indeed sitting next to the nominees themselves was an act that quickly grew stale and displayed a lack of ideas more than anything else.

As usual, the list of presenters was a sorry sight: these included a few youthful non-entities (Zac Efron, Channing Tatum), some uneasy-looking stars unwilling to lay down their boots (Harrison Ford, John Travolta) and a couple of old-timers who rather than adding to the lustre made a spectacle of themselves by exposing just how far gone they were to millions of spectators (Kim Novak, Sidney Poitier)! The latter two were especially embarrassing to watch: what was husky-voiced and Botox-riddled Novak doing presenting the Animation categories, and what was the point of having Poitier (who was leaning on Angelina Jolie all the time) present the Best Direction Oscar when it was obviously not going to Steve McQueen (if anything, they should have had them replace Will Smith in the Best Picture category thus allowing Jolie to give the Oscar to partner Brad Pitt)?! Another irritating presence was that of a seemingly tipsy Liza Minnelli, who was there (with two of her siblings) to watch pop-star Pink cover her mum Judy Garland's signature tune "Over The Rainbow" on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the release of THE WIZARD OF OZ – I would think they are the only surviving relatives of actors who were alive in 1939, known as Hollywood's greatest year ever! With respect to the "In Memoriam" section, I was disappointed to see Philip Seymour Hoffman take the spot that ought to have been reserved for Peter O'Toole – and, how come some "inventor" no one has ever heard of rates a mention but not comic Jonathan Winters, master Hungarian film-maker Miklos Jancso, prolific writer/director/actor Bryan Forbes or film noir stalwart Audrey Totter (on the other hand, Harold Ramis got remembered twice, firstly by way of presenter and former colleague Bill Murray)?! Having a theme for the whole show is silly in the first place but to choose "Heroes" and include clips from recent superhero movies (as if we needed to be reminded that they were still being made!) - but none from the earlier SUPERMAN franchise with the late Christopher Reeve?! To add insult to injury, they included clips from classic movies like CASABLANCA (1942), IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), BEN-HUR (1959), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)...seriously?!

With respect to how the awards went, I was obviously let down since my top three films of the year – in order of merit, American HUSTLE, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET and NEBRASKA – all went home empty-handed! Conversely, 12 YEARS A SLAVE and GRAVITY were the most awarded (3 and 7 Oscars respectively) but my least favourites! GRAVITY's technical categories sweep killed the suspense, naturally, but there were a few surprising upsets regardless: I cannot fathom why the Best Supporting Actress Oscar went to Lupita Nyong'o, who had only one good scene in the entire film; the Best Adapted Screenplay also went to 12 YEARS A SLAVE over the no-less-reprehensible but far more inventive THE WOLF OF WALL STREET; ditto for the Original Screenplay category – the loss of American HUSTLE (which can only be explained by the plot's derivative nature) proved Spike Jonze's gain with the futuristic and bittersweet HER; another unexpected win was FROZEN's for Best Song over U2's "Ordinary Love" for that Mandela movie (I am sure Bono was itching to deliver a heartfelt speech about the recently-deceased South African leader!); as I said, Alfonso Cuaron was so sure of his eventual directorial win that, when he was named earlier for Best Editing, he did not even deliver a speech (I was actually praying he would subsequently lose and see him left with egg on his face for failing to put in his two words when he had the chance)! As ever, a number of speeches were well-prepared and hit the audience in the right spots – notably all the acting categories and Matthew McConaughey's in particular…but Steve McQueen (what gall to keep such a name, I must say!)'s tongue-tied roll-call of gratitude (sounding like Leonardo Di Caprio's drug-fuelled phone conversation from THE WOLF OF WALL STREET!) was not a high spot, yet the heavy-set guy made up for it by leaping with joy at the conclusion of his triumph for co-producing the year's Best Picture!

Nothing at all to complain here. Every nomination was deserved, if only more than one nominee could win in the same category because every Best Picture nominee (maybe with the exception of Gravity) should of won that award. Really glad Her won best original screenplay. Ellen also makes one of the most famous selfies of all time.

First, out of all the nominated movies in all categories, I've only seen "Nebraska", "The Wolf of Wall Street", "The Missing Picture", "Dirty Wars" and "20 Feet from Stardom". All really good. Nonetheless, I'd say that "12 Years a Slave" probably dealt with the most important topic, and I like that Steve McQueen noted that there are currently almost 21 million enslaved people worldwide. One might say that by awarding a movie that looks at the sheer brutality of slavery, the Academy is atoning for awarding the pro-Confederate "Gone with the Wind".

I'm not particularly a fan of Ellen DeGeneres, but that whole thing with the pizza was a neat surprise. I know that everyone likes to treat Bob Hope as the standard, but in this day and age is it really possible to see him as anything except the gross old man who took Playboy bunnies to Vietnam? Watch the Oscar-winning documentary "Hearts and Minds" and see if you can view him positively. As for Best Documentary Feature, I would've gone with Jeremy Scahill's "Dirty Wars". I noticed that Alain Resnais didn't appear in the In Memoriam montage. He died the day before the Oscars, so they probably didn't have time to include him.

It's hard to deny that the ceremony's highlight was Lupita Nyong'o's impassioned acceptance speech. It turns out that Nyong'o is the niece of the brother-in-law of one of my undergrad professors.

All in all, I enjoyed the telecast. I hope that a major result of this is that we all start taking a serious look at the genocidal inhumanity that was the plantation system.

For a change, the show last night used the minimum amount of get-off-the-stage music, allowing most of the winners to make decent acceptance speeches. I've been writing for years about this issue, how the play-music-over-the-winners'-speeches ruins the proceedings for me because the whole purpose of award shows is to honor the winners, let them bask in their moment of glory, and apparently others have been vocal about this issue as well. There were still constraints, off-screen cues of how much time was left, and most everyone heeded them so the music wasn't necessary in most cases. Thumbs up.

The show itself was very good. Ellen DeGeneres was a fine host, funny without being mean-spirited or corny, just sharp enough in her comments throughout. Loved the pizza thing, that really humanized the affair in a clever way. This was a classy show for the most part, and I didn't nod off once. Kudos across the board - for a change.