Note to Academy - We Get It: You're Not Racist

What does it say that the Oscars ended a little over an hour ago and I'm already over them? And I actually liked a lot of the movies that were nominated this year. A few things we can learn from tonight's ceremony:

In: Anti-Racism, Rap, Reese Witherspoon
Five-Minutes Ago: Anti-Homophobia, Country, Joaquin Phoenix
Out: Everything that didn't win. Sorry, suckas.

As for the two surprises of the evening:

Best Picture: Crash - A Very Important Movie, with a Very Important Message. The Academy loves to promote itself (how many times can they encourage people not to bother with DVD's? Message: TV is too small and pedestrian for the Big Ideas we promote with movies). Awarding either Brokeback Mountain or Crash would assure the Academy that they're socially relevant, but the anti-racism message in Crash is a universal, airtight political message, whereas the anti-homophobia message supposedly promoted by a Brokeback win would be attacked as pushing a trendy liberal "agenda." Crash wins!

Some people might also say that Crash is simply the better film, but I disagree. Brokeback isn't flawless. I, like many, was bored when it started to drag in the middle. But it was also more than just a Very Important Message; it was a love story, and a beautifully told one at that. Meanwhile, Crash was nothing but a two-hour Message. By the end, it was overwrought and manipulative, as if the writer was in love with his clever (i.e. gimmicky) script.


Best Original Song: "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle & Flow - While I was rooting for Dolly Parton's "Travelin' Thru" from Transamerica (how happy did she seem when performing on stage? I would love to get drunk on Mint Juleps with her, she seems like so much fun), I can understand why "Pimp" won. You could cynically argue that it again lets the Academy promote themselves as hip and socially aware (see above; although Eminem's "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile was actually the first rap song to win an Oscar, he didn't perform on the awards show). But while "Travelin' Thru" only plays during the end credits, "Pimp" is instrumental to Hustle's plot. Not only do you see the main character (played by Best Actor nominee Terrence Horward) create and record the song, you see how much it means to him, how his whole self-instigated redemption revolves around the success of this song. I'm not sure Three 6 Mafia's performance on the Academy Awards would convince people this is the best song in a movie this year, but it probably is the song that meant the most to the movie it came from.

Also, Jon Stewart was great. Crisp and succint, he often offered the best one- or two-line reaction and then moved on. He had some good zingers ("For the record: Martin Scorcese, zero Oscars. Three 6 Mafia, one Oscar.") and fresh ideas, especially those ads done in the style of political lobbying ("Kiera Knightley - Acting While Beautiful"). He set the tone for a fun, laid-back ceremony that was echoed by the Animation winners (Wallace & Gromit: The Case of the Were Rabbit) adorning their Oscars with the same huge, floppy striped bow ties they were wearing, the Documentary winners (March of the Penguins) bringing huge fuzzy stuffed penguins on stage with them, and Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell presenting the award for Best Makeup with way too much on themselves.

Even with the endless pointless montages (film noir? Really?), they managed to keep the show under four hours. And although playing music as soon as the winners started their speeches was just plain wrong (the saxaphone during Ang Lee's speech was especially tacky), the Academy didn't embarrass themselves too badly. Oh, wait, I just rememberd the Crash-as-interpretive-dance sequence for its Best Song nominee. Nevermind.

Choices (or, Breakfast on Brokeback Mountain)

I know I had to stop reading all the reviews for Brokeback Mountain because it was just so much praise I didn't want to have high expectations and then be disappointed.

Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed by any means. While not perfect, the movie is basically as good as everyone makes it out to be. It tells the tale of two cowboys, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal), who fall in love but can't admit it to themselves or anyone else (they knew men who were killed because of rumored homosexual tendencies). They go on to marry, have children, and see each other for "fishing trips" once or twice a year.

Over the course of twenty years, you witness two poor, hard-working, virile, lonely guys become desperate, angry, repressed, lonely men who make the only choices their/our culture offers. And you witness how those choices, or lack thereof, slowly rip apart from the inside out these two exemplars of masculinity and everyone around them.

It was strange to watch this after having just seen Breakfast On Pluto, a new film on the other end of the spectrum from Brokeback. Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins, Red Eye) stars as Irish transvestite Patrick/"Kitten" who moves to London to find the mother who abandoned him as a baby. Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With a Vampire), the film is a rollicking, sometimes playful, sometimes disturbing account of one man's gender-bending adventures from wearing dresses as a nine-year-old to joining a punk band to being accused of a terrorist bombing attack to performing at a peep show.

Watching Kitten's travails through 1970's war-stricken Ireland and London - always looking fabulous in colorful thrift store coats and glittering blouses, always so determined to apply a sunny, optimistic attitude to every situation to the point of dillusion - I was struck with how much more successful this tranvesite is at navigating through his threatening world of oppressive Catholicism and homophobic media and militia than the cowboys of Brokeback are at making their way through a world dominated by masculinity and rigid gender rules.

Granted, Kitten falls down a lot (not literally...girl knows how to work the heels) - she gets beaten up and arrested, dumped by her rock star boyfriend, exploited by her magician boyfriend, and almost killed by a client while hustling the streets - but somehow, through it all, she uses her vivid imagination and almost obsessive need for optimism to finally settle down. When asked about her disciplined cheeriness, Kitten admits that if she acknowledged her real feelings she "might cry and never stop." It reminds me of the Doves song, "Catch the Song," in which they sing, "Catch the sun/before it's gone." Even though her world isn't very sunny, Kitten is going to catch as much of it as she can. You can't help but root for her - she's totally determined to be who she is, no matter who doesn't like it.

Conversely, watching the slower, quieter, heartbreaking Brokeback Mountain, I didn't think of any pop song metaphors. I didn't chuckle to myself at the thought of some light-hearted moment. I didn't walk away with a sense that the protagonists were going to succeed despite their obstacles. I could barely speak, because what I walked away with was anger.

It made me angry to watch these two otherwise decent men screw up their lives and the lives of the women who loved them.

It made me angry that they were barely even making these choices but doing what they were basically forced to do to survive in an unforgiving environment.

It made me angry that they weren't given the ability to know what they were feeling, and even angier to know that deep down inside they knew exactly what they were feeling but couldn't put it into words because that meant abandonment, shame and even death.

It made me angry that we watched this movie over Christmas break in a theater filled with loud cell phones and giggling teenagers who laughed at all the wrong places and swooned over Jake Gyllenhaal as if the movie were a two-hour Tiger Beat ad.

And it made me angry to know that despite all the PR claiming this movie will "change minds" that, despite how great the movie really is, if you made a bunch of extremely conservative, homophobic assholes watch it, the final scene would fade to black and they would say out loud, "Well, they got what they deserve," because even though we'd like to think that we're so different than the narrow-minded mentality of the conservative, rural 1960's, most of this country isn't so different at all, even as we near 2006.

Stick To Acting, Your New Baby, and Your Dawson's Creek Alumni Wife, Please

In last week's Entertainment Weekly, they featured an interview with Heath Ledger regarding his new film, Brokeback Mountain. As anyone who's not living in a cave knows, the film is about two cowboys who fall in love.

They talk about how difficult the love scene was between his co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, and him. After director Ang Lee made them repeat it thirteen times, Heath states, "Neither of us wanted to do it again any time soon." You're straight. Got it, Heath.

Then he pulls this bon-mot out of his newly sore ass: "But in the end, it was just like kissing a person."

Um...ya think? Are you sure there, Heath? Are you sure it wasn't more like kissing a dog? Or Cousin It? Or a duck-billed platypus?

Maybe the reason it felt just like kissing a person was because you were kissing a person. What a douche-baggy thing to say.

Sigh.

Despite all this, however, I am still very excited to see this movie, which comes out tomorrow. And Mr. Ledger is supposed to be excellent in it, so hopefully his stupid remarks won't taint the experience too much.

Who Wants to See That?

If you haven't seen Capote, you're missing out on a good movie and a great performance by Phillip Seymor Hoffman as the eccentric writer researching what will become his famous best-seller, In Cold Blood.

But, when I saw the movie this past weekend, it was proceeded by a preview for Brokeback Mountain, the new Ang Lee film based on Annie Proulx's short story about two cowboys who fall in love. As the preview segues from a story about two young cowboys trying to find jobs to their new, secretive relationship, a man sitting behind me openly mocked the plot. "Who wants to see that?" was said loud enough for everyone around him to hear. Even more ridiculous was when the preview ended and the theater was in total darkness, he proclaims, "Well, that won't last a week."

Who is this moron? First of all, the movie is based on Proulx's story that helped The New Yorker win the National Magazine Award for Fiction. Proulx has also won a Pulizter Prize, so the source material is obviously pretty strong. Second, the film has already been sweeping through the film festivals with massive praise. The hype on this film hasn't quite reached the mainstream yet, so maybe he's not aware of the good will supporting the movie. But he did know, based on the preview, that the movie was directed by Ang Lee, who has given us such diverse quality films as Sense & Sensibility, The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While he did slip with the big-screen version of The Incredible Hulk, he's still worthy of our trust to pick quality projects.

Even more importantly, my companion, Eric, pointed out that this guy is making these homophobic remarks at a screening of Capote, a movie about a well-known homosexual. He's so gay he makes Liberace look like Colin Farrell.

Not that being gay is the focus whatsoever of the movie; it's just portrayed as yet another layer to a fascinating, complicated man. But this moron in the theater was surrounded by many gay couples, and you'd think if sexual preference didn't deter him from seeing a film based on Truman Capote, he wouldn't be so upset by Brokeback Mountain, either.

I understand that Chicago is a midwestern city and therefore maybe not quite as progressive as, say, Manhattan (and there are some bigoted jerks in Manhattan, too), but I guess I assumed that most people living in a large urban area are more tolerant and accepting of other people's differences. I know Chicago is very segregated considering how diverse its population is, and I am aware of the occassional asshole who shows his bigotry in public (usually a twenty-something male insecure in his masculinity or middle-aged/older male who's still holding on to outdated generational values).

Still, I couldn't help but be riled by this guy's comments. I could've turned around to say something, but how do you respond to "Well, that won't last a week"? There was only a few seconds before the next preview started, so I couldn't exactly twist around and spew out, "Actually, sir, the movie is getting rave reviews by just about every critic who's seen it, many of whom predict it will win the Best Picture Oscar. And with its pedigreed cast and crew, it will likely appeal beyond a gay audience to anyone who seeks out quality cinema. Instead of merely lasting a week, it will probably be around for months, if not years. So get used to it."

This post is much longer than I expected it to be, and there's still more I could say, but I think the event speaks for itself. Luckily, a few minutes after this genius expressed his ill-informed opinion, the film I paid good money to see began, and for the next two hours I was lost in a story about a writer, who just happens to be gay, who contributed a body of work that has lasted much longer than a week.