Pity poor Oscar - it's hard for him to look relevant or exciting when the newly crowned star of the world made glorious acceptance speeches on Tuesday to his millions of screaming fans in Washington, not to mention his adoring millions more around the globe. The Barack Obama story had a real Hollywood ending, plus it was a ratings grabber. Maybe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should remould the Oscar statuette so its ears stick out slightly.
It doesn't help the academy that its nominations this year are a real mash-up, with only two shoo-ins on the entire list: Wall·E for best animated picture and the late Heath Ledger for best supporting actor for The Dark Knight (announced, in a bitter irony, on the first anniversary of his death by accidental overdose). It's as if the movie world is taking its cues from politics, the brave, new, in-flux world in which American presidents can be half-white, half-black, raised-in-a-split-family, Ivy-educated, faithfully married lust objects.
Look at the most-lauded films. Leading the pack with 13 nominations is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which Brad Pitt plays a man who ages backward. Up for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, two acting and eight technical nods, it's a most curious combo of old-fashioned, tear-jerker love story and cutting-edge CGI extravaganza, from a director, David Fincher, who normally makes thrillers, including Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. The second most-lauded film, with 10 nods, is Slumdog Millionaire, up for best picture, adapted screenplay, director, five technical and two song awards. It's an old-fashioned, tear-jerker love story and an unflinching look at poverty, set in Mumbai but directed by a Brit, Danny Boyle ( Trainspotting). Look ma, it's old-south/new-tech versus emerging-world/low-tech! Crazy!
Tied for third with eight nods each were Milk and The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight, with Ledger's nomination plus seven technical ones, was nevertheless shut out of the top categories of best picture, director and screenplay. This omission represents the continuing yo-yo that is Hollywood: prestige pictures that don't make money versus special-effects-laden comic-book movies that make truckloads. And though Milk is up for best picture, director, screenplay, best actor for Sean Penn, best supporting actor for Josh Brolin, and two tech noms, it could easily win none. No wonder the hottest TV shows and screenplays are now about multiple-personality disorder.
Confusing matters further, opinion on the top contenders is sharply divided, not only between the critics and the public, but also within the academy itself. The best-picture category is all over the map, with two political films ( Frost/Nixon and Milk), an abject-poverty love story ( Slumdog Millionaire), an Auschwitz-guard love story ( The Reader) and a paean to mortality ( Benjamin Button).
For every person who loves Frost/Nixon's sports-film-like structure (will the underdogs win the big game?), there are equal numbers of detractors who call its history bogus, and indifferents who meet it with a shrug. It's the same for the rest of the best-picture nominees, too - Milk is resoundingly inspiring, Milk is a routine biopic; Benjamin Button is moving and is a snore; The Reader is important and is ridiculous, Slumdog is sweetly fresh and is grossly sentimental.
(For the record, I didn't like Benjamin Button the first time I saw it, when it was called Forrest Gump, and I still don't like it now. I think Slumdog will win, but kind of by default.) Pictures that nobody anywhere seemed to like also managed to earn Oscar nominations. Australia got one for costume design. The Duchess got two, for art direction and costume design. Changeling got three, for lead actress Angelina Jolie, art direction and cinematography. Hellboy II: The Golden Army scored one, for makeup. And Wanted, which everybody liked but nobody wanted to admit to liking, got two, for sound editing and sound mixing. If only Jolie were nominated for Wanted, in which she was fabulous, instead of Changeling, in which she was eh - now that would be cool.
Actors make up the biggest branch of the academy, so their votes usually dominate the Oscars, but it's a wonky year for them, too: Slumdog Millionaire is chockablock with supporting-actor possibilities, but not a single actor was nominated. It's hard not to see imbedded racism there - "Oh, we just love your adorable little feel-good movie, but don't expect us to learn any of your funny names!" (For the record, the star is named Dev Patel.) All four actors from Doubt were nominated (Amy Adams and Viola Davis for supporting actress, Philip Seymour Hoffman for supporting actor and Meryl Streep for best actress), as was its adapted screenplay, but it was shut out of best picture and director, and got no technical nods. Revolutionary Road was hailed as the long-awaited reunion of Titanic lovebirds Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio (would that it earned Titanic's dough, or garnered its Oscar show ratings). But they were overlooked, while Michael Shannon, who played their troubled neighbour, sneaked off with a nom.
Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway received a well-deserved nomination for her career-changing performance in Rachel Getting Married, but apparently she made that film all alone: Brilliant supporting actresses Rosemarie DeWitt and Debra Winger, director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet were all shut out (Lumet's omission is especially insane). As well, a performance everyone agreed was charming, Sally Hawkins's in Happy-Go-Lucky, was ignored, as was a performance that everyone agreed was stunning, haunting, a lifetime achievement - Kristin Scott Thomas's in I've Loved You So Long. Shame on the academy for that.
In an unusual display of consistency, all five best-picture nominees were also nominated for their directors and screenplays. That rarely happens. But oddly, there were two orphan original screenplays, nominated for nothing else: Happy-Go-Lucky, which, as mentioned, should have scored one for Hawkins (and for supporting actor Eddie Marsan, who played her driving instructor); and In Bruges, an eccentric little hit-man comedy, surely the darkest horse of all this year's nominees.
This anything-goes spirit could have made for a nail-biting Oscar night, except for one thing: The audience doesn't care. The only blockbuster on the best-picture list is Benjamin Button, with a gross of $104-million (U.S.). The other four nominees' grosses don't even add up to that: Slumdog, $44-million; Milk, $21-million; Frost/Nixon, $9-million; The Reader, $8-million. Partly that's because audiences haven't had a chance to see them - most are on slow, platform-release schedules to capitalize on any Oscar heat - but mainly it's because each requires a commitment that a lot of viewers don't want to make. Two-and-a-half hours to see Button? And the others are about poverty, gay rights, a 30-year-old TV interview, and the Holocaust? Let's go rent Iron Man!
Speaking of Iron Man, I would have been wildly happy to see Robert Downey Jr. get a best-actor nomination for that - he brought something unexpected and authentic to the trite comic-book world. I'll have to be satisfied by his nod for Tropic Thunder, for divinely playing an egomaniacal Aussie actor starring in an out-of-control war film as a madcap black soldier. Downey Jr., who cleaned up his act and knocked two big films out of the park, is the comeback story of the year - followed closely by Mickey Rourke, nominated for best actor for The Wrestler. Hollywood does love a comeback. But it loves to seem open to indie movies, too, which accounts for Melissa Leo's best-actress nomination for Frozen River and Richard Jenkins's best-actor nod for The Visitor. Loved you both, but don't bother to write a speech.
In my Hollywood ending, Oscar night would unfold as follows: In the supporting categories, Ledger would win for The Dark Knight, Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Winning the leads would be Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and Sean Penn for Milk. Milk would win best adapted screenplay, best director and best picture. Wall·E would win best animated feature, Waltz with Bashir best foreign film and either Trouble the Water or Man on Wire best documentary feature. All these things are possible. But I voted for Obama, so if there's only one miracle win this year, I'm glad it was that one.
Johanna Schneller