The 79th Annual Academy Awards began on an intimate note with white-background one-on-one interview footage of the nominees.Some nominees were funny, some bitter, some bitterly funny. Two-time Oscar bridesmaid Alan Arkin explained, “Losing builds character. Anyone can win one.” Stephen Frears warned that even thinking about the queen of England in a sexual way is akin to treason. Eddie Murphy simply stared down the camera. The footage set the tone for the rest of the evening – funny, personal and, as always, overlong.
Then the show proper began, live from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre. Ellen Degeneres started her hosting duties by saying the gig was a lifelong dream come true, then gently chided several nominees (to eight-time nominee Peter O’Toole: “Third time’s the charm.”) before ending her opening monologue with a response to all the Mel Gibson/Michael Richards controversy. “If there weren’t blacks, Jews and gays,” she said, “there’d be no Oscars.”
“Pan’s Labyrinth” picked up the first award of the night (for Art Direction) and the Mexican fantasy film seemed poised to sweep all its technical categories later in the evening, with wins in both Makeup and Cinematography (beating heavy favorite Emmanuel Lubezki for “Children of Men”). The “Pan’s” juggernaut, however, lost steam with losses in Original Screenplay and Score, and it hit a brick wall in its most important category. “Pan’s” lost Best Foreign Language Film to Germany’s spies-and-lies thriller “The Lives of Others.”
Maggie Gyllenhaal briefly recapped her hosting duties at the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards, which was followed by the first of several odd but neat silhouetted moments featuring a dance troupe morphing into iconic images from last year’s films and poster art. The first was the best, an Oscar statue, but there was the bus from “Little Miss Sunshine,” the pitchfork boot from “The Devil Wears Prada” and the revolver from “The Departed.” By the time Degeneres joined the troupe for “Snakes on a Plane,” the superfluity was becoming overwhelming, though her off-the-cuff remark that the dancers were naked let some of the hot air out of the spectacle.
Will Ferrell and Jack Black mugged through a song about the long, sad history of comedians getting snubbed by the Academy (Jim Carrey must have declined the invitation). It was one of the funnier bits of the night, with Black threatening Leonardo DiCaprio for both being Oscar-nommed and dating supermodels (“I’m gonna elbow you in the larynx!”) and former nominee John C. Reilly joining the fun from the audience to explain that comedians can get noticed only if they start out in dramas.
Acceptance speeches kept namedropping the same people – DiCaprio, O’Toole, Martin Scorsese, “Pan’s” director Guillermo del Toro – but the king of the evening’s shoutouts was former Vice President Al Gore, whose global-warming themed “An Inconvenient Truth” won Best Documentary Feature. Always an openly liberal event, the Oscars treated Gore like something of a conquering hero, though the show did poke wonderful fun at all the hype in an extended bit that ended with Gore being played offstage just as fellow “green” spokesman DiCaprio had finally convinced him to announce a run for the ’08 presidency. Rocker Melissa Etheridge later picked up Best Original Song for “Truth,” thanking her wife in her acceptance speech.
Moppets Abigail Breslin and Jaden Christopher Smith introduced the nominees in the “short” categories (get it?) and the refreshing winners. “West Bank Story,” a “West Side Story” parody moved to Palestine with rival Muslim and Jewish fast food workers, took home Live Action Short, while “The Danish Poet,” a whimsical hand-drawn fable of star-crossed lovers, shocked its Disney and computer-generated competitors with a deserved upset in Animated Short. Animated feature honors went to “Happy Feet,” proving definitively that the Academy cannot resist the power of the penguin.
The clips of the Best Picture nominees were more elegant than usual, mixing footage from the films with articulate behind-the-scenes commentary from people like Scorsese, Helen Mirren and Clint Eastwood. On the opposite end of the spectrum were the ultimately pointless annual montages, save the reel of artists who passed away in the last year (this year’s drew a tear with a final image of Robert Altman). One montage, introduced by “Academy Award-winning screenwriter” Ben Affleck, looked at the writing process. Another, probably the best of the bunch, looked at 50 years of Best Foreign Film winners, an appropriate topic considering the international flavor of this year’s nominees. And the last was a grossly overindulgent, disappointing homage to “American voices” in cinema from, of all people, Michael Mann.
Several presenters bombed with bawdy banter (Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear pop to mind) in the tech categories, which went to “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” for Visual Effects, “Letters from Iwo Jima” for Sound Editing and “Dreamgirls” for Sound Mixing (never bet against a musical). But the low point of the evening was “Elements & Motion,” a sound effects choir adding verbal zips and pows to clips from famous films. As one viewer put it at the Oscar party this writer attended, it was like “Rockapella gone horribly wrong.”
James Taylor was a snooze with his Original Song nominee, but Etheridge was more vibrant. And if it hadn’t occurred at the three-hour mark, the well-staged trio of “Dreamgirls” songs, with its epic Beyonc and Jennifer Husdon diva-off, might have been a broadcast highlight.
Degeneres kept things witty when she could, saying absent nominee Dame Judi Dench was having “knee surgery on her face,” pitching a script to Scorsese (a combination of “Goodfellas” and “Big Momma’s House”), vacuuming the carpet dangerously close to Penelope Cruz’s gown and, most memorably, getting Steven Spielberg to snap a MySpace profile photo of Ellen cuddled up to Clint Eastwood.
Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win for “Little Miss Sunshine” was a surprise, but a good one. The long-excellent character actor tersely read through some prepared words before chucking them as emotion overcame him.
To no one’s surprise, Jennifer Hudson took home Supporting Actress honors for “Dreamgirls,” tearfully thanking her grandmother, who “had the passion but never the chance” to make it in show business, and yelling a last-minute thanks to Jennifer Holliday, who originated Hudson’s role in the Broadway production of “Dreamgirls.”
Best Adapted Screenplay went to an admittedly medicated William Monahan for “The Departed,” the first sign of where the evening was ultimately headed. Longtime Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker picked up her third Editing Oscar for “Departed,” leaving the famed director in tears as she thanked him for the opportunity to work with him.
A parade of nominated costumes (it was weird to see three differently dressed Queen Elizabeths standing side-by-side, wasn’t it?) ended in a win for “Marie Antoinette,” and Sherry Lansing picked up an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian efforts. Lansing was the first female president of a major Hollywood studio and oversaw production of award-winners “Kramer Vs. Kramer,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Forrest Gump” and “Titanic.” Ennio Morricone, who has composed iconic scores for over 400 films (including “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”), was also honored, with presenter Clint Eastwood fumbling through teleprompter readings because, as he later admitted, he forgot to wear his glasses.
“The Blood of Yingzhou District” picked up Documentary Short. “Babel” won Score. Academy president Sid Gannis kept his annual comments to under a minute, and Michael Arndt’s Original Screenplay for “Little Miss Sunshine” beat out stone-faced, “important” competitors like “Babel” and “The Queen.”
Next, it was on to the last four categories, with Forrest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) and Helen Mirren (“The Queen”) picking up well-deserved honors in the lead acting categories. Mirren’s speech was something of a disappointment, as she compared the win to a “gold star,” praised Queen Elizabeth for her “courage and consistency” before taking a potshot at her hairstyle and finally held aloft her Oscar shouting “All hail the Queen!” Whitaker’s acceptance was more tender and more subdued, perhaps the best of the evening. At first overwhelmed, he genuinely inspired with the story of his belief in a dream and a speech about creating a new, better reality through art.
Then came the make-or-break moment of the night. Would Scorsese finally win a directing Oscar for “The Departed”? If he hadn’t it would’ve been doubly insulting, considering the award was presented by Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Scorsese’s win was an emotional wallop, met with an instant standing ovation. A little overcome, the notoriously talky director joked, “Can you check the envelope again, please?”
The Best Picture race had seemed a wide open one, with most analysts predicting a win for either “Babel” or “Little Miss Sunshine.” But it was “The Departed,” which Scorsese called “the first movie he has ever done with a plot,” that shot down the competition for the win. The film had won no precursor awards; its win signified recognition of a well-made, popular, non-political mainstream entertainment. Basically, it was just a great “movie.”
Though the ceremony itself was typically messy, the emphasis this year was on races that people actually cared about, with competitors one could become emotionally invested in. The Academy avoided controversy without making safe choices; it was the rare year when sentiment and the quality of the work rewarded collided in a deeply satisfying way. One of the final images of the night will probably prove the most lasting – Scorsese standing still and quiet in the wings, graciously basking in the Best Picture win, his Oscar clutched securely in his hands.