There were no huge surprises from the 80th Annual Academy Awards, although I did not expect Tilda Swinton to win the Oscar for best supporting actress. Well deserved acting Oscars went to Javier Bardem, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Marion Cotillard.
The Oscar for best original screenplay went to Diablo Cody, who the New York Post described as “a sharp-tongued, tattooed, former stripper who glorified a sassy, pregnant teen and her geeky boyfriend.” Personally, I am tired of all the hype for Cody’s Juno and am glad that it did not win the Oscar for best picture, which went to No Country for Old Men.
And no, Michael Moore’s Sicko did not win an Oscar for best documentary. Why? It was not liberal enough. Winner Taxi to the Dark Side was an “examination of the abuses committed during the detainment and interrogation of political prisoners.” The following is part of Alex Gibney’s acceptance speech:
…I think my dear wife Anne was kind of hoping I’d make a romantic comedy, but honestly, after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition that simply wasn’t possible. This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light. Thank you very much.
Host John Stewart was serviceable, but the show itself, particularly the order of the awards, was awful. Moreover, a few of the presenters, e.g., The Rock and Jennifer Hudson, sounded like they just learned how to read. Anyway, why was The Rock a presenter at all?
For me, the big disappointment of the night was that one of the worst movies ever made, Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, did not win the Oscar for best makeup. That honor went to La Vie en Rose, a movie (unlike Norbit) that I will probably never see.
