Felix at the Oscars

I called 'em. Unlike certain Belgians who never really outgrew their D&D phase, I knew that even the Academy at its worst wouldn't give the Best Picture award to a piece of dreck like Lord of the Rings. I got all four of the big awards, and five of the top six: I missed only Jim Broadbent for Iris, reckoning that Ian McKellen would win that one. So LOTR did even worse than I thought it would!

What I didn't expect was the angry reaction to the African-American sweep among certain of my fellow Oscar-watchers. The debate was so heated that it wasn't entirely clear what position people were taking, but there did seem to be a feeling that the Sidney/Halle/Denzel gongs smelled of political correctness if not tokenism.

Not true. The Academy was, of course, painfully aware of the dearth of black actors with leading-role statuettes, but it's been painfully aware of that for a long time. When Denzel was nominated for Malcom X in 1993, it had already been 29 years since Sidney Poitier's award for Lilies of the Field. This year, he was the beneficiary of the same forces that saw him lose out to an execrable performance by Al Pacino back then: the Acadmey's desire to reward one of its favourite actors, almost regardless of the nominated performance.

The difference this year is that Washington actually did just as well in Training Day as any of the other nominees did in their films. (Pacino beat out superior performances not only from Washington, but also from Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Robert Downey Jr in Chaplin.) In truth, Washington was unbeatable this year: the Academy loves to award the actors it loves, and it had a great performance to hang its award on. Russell Crowe lost for the flip reason: the Academy will never give an actor the top award two years in a row unless he's loved as much as Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks.

As for Halle Berry, she and Lions Gate worked the Oscar campaign masterfully, and her competition was two Grand Old Dames who already have Oscars, and two performances in what the Golden Globes calls a "comedy or musical". Given the choice between that and a serious, meaty, dramatic role, the Academy will always choose the drama.

Berry was by no means the highlight of the show, though: that was undoubtedly Woody Allen, appearing at his first awards ever (he didn't even show up the year he won for Annie Hall), and showing the likes of Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg how a comic monologue is really done. Woody, you done all us New Yorkers proud.

Posted by Felix at 0:17 EST