Ben Hur Kicks Kung Fu
Mar 27 '01 (Updated Mar 29 '01)
The Bottom Line It's redundant to recommend something that is obligatory.
The annual presentation of the Academy Awards is a national holiday every bit as sacrosanct and hyped as Christmas. We love to hate it, hate to love it, and most of us--although there are sure to be plenty of Oscar Grinches out there--wouldn't think of missing it.
Oscar night, with all its satallite specials, is a splendid rite of obeisance to our gods and goddesses, our very own figurehead royalty made in our image and happily free of any sense of noble obligation. We expect them, like the Olympians, to cavort and play as we schlubs would do, were we not encumbered by mortality and mortgage payments.
It's too easy to disdain the Oscars. They flaunt disdain in our faces, like the leering circus barker who promises a tent full of freaks and monstors for a dime . Of course we loathe this annual display of abject narcissism just as we are titillated by it. Every year we watch for the surprise moments: the costume made of credit cards, the streaker, Billy Crystal in a Hannibal Lector mask, Cher's latest get-up, the welcoming back of ostracized heros, the surrogate acceptance speech of an Indian Princess, the antics of a Cuba Gooding Jr. We watch to see how the generations flow from one to another, how the stars grow younger from year to year and how, like a toy that has been loved too long, they are trotted out for one farewell hug before being spirited away to Good Will.
This year, as happens, it seems, cyclically, the Oscars tried to low-key it. Steve Martin, spare as an abstract minimalist painting, set the tone of the evening by delivering a monologue, bereft of props, old clips, buffo acrobatics. He was snappy, sharp and as elegant as his tux. Cary Grant meets Bob Hope.
The gowns, too, were more restrained. Many of the stars were dressed against type. Juliette Binoche, trying desperately to shed her bland inscrutiblity, was dressed like a vamp flapper (...and those pearls, dahling....) , while the concoction that Sarah Jessica Parker had on would have better suited a bicycle messenger or a scuba diver on hard times. But there were no ostrich boas or headdresses, no, okay, few, plastic surgeries that hadn't quite set yet. Yes, Julia Roberts couldn't walk very well, but at least the problem was not that her legs had been sewn together to accommodate her dress.
Julie Andrews, with her gray--not, note, silver--hair, her black gown so appropriate for someone of her age and matronly--not fat—form, epitomized Oscar 73. Her understated face lift is a testimony to the restrained art of the cosmetic surgeon.
So, it was a fun evening, for all its studied blandness. To its credit, there were no major glitches or speeches that went on as long as the Great Wall. Predictably, Hollywood chose the Hollywood blockbuster of the year to honor. You Can Count on Me won nothing, thus reminding us, in case we were beginning to doubt it, that Hollywood is still in the hands of the philistines. That everyone's favorite star and Hollywood honey, Tom Hanks, went home empty handed this year was a bit of a surprise. That Russell Crowe stopped glowering long enough to give a rather eloquent acceptance speech (never mind the get-up) was also unexpected, and that somehow or other the Academy resisted crowning Goldie Hawn's daughter the Cloned Ditz was astounding. As it turns out though, an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress often proves to be the kiss of death for a movie career, so maybe the Academy was just giving the kid a second chance.
Then there were the standard not-quite-bad-enough-to-be-good production numbers. Why are they still there, you wonder? Because without them, when could we go relieve our beer bloated bladders or make another batch of popcorn? We certainly don't want to walk out on the commercials, do we?
If there was one major disappointment in this year's Oscars it was that no one alluded to the figure who now occupies the White House. Having been reviled by the righteous Republicans for 8 years, how can these "liberal" Hollywood types not speak up about what is happening politically? That Charlton "Shoot-em-up" Heston was treated with anything other than contempt at least suggests that those Hollywood liberals—largely a myth fabricated by the rabid right anyway—have gone into hiding or gagged themselves. We really are returning to the 50s, McCarthy mentality and all. Scary. Really scary.
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Epinions.com ID:
DorieBB
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Location: North Haven, CT
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
politics, movies, garden: my 3 abiding passions
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