Where There's Hope, There's Oscar
By DAVID CARR
The New York Times
February 20, 2009
THERE you are, minding your own business, going through the mail and
its daily bounty of bad tidings. Let's see, your 401(k) is in the
tank, that valiant effort to refinance the house is going nowhere,
and oh yeah, your credit-card company just capped your card limit and
is looking for most of the balance.
And then, magically, an invitation emerges from the pile. You've been
invited to the 81st Annual Academy Awards. Actually, it's a scribbled
note your movie fanatic neighbor dropped in your mailbox. ("Why waste
money on a stamp?" you can hear her saying.) Turns out she's having
some people over for the broadcast (Sunday at 8 p.m. on ABC). Sure,
it's BYOB, but she's making her special nachos, her wide-screen
hasn't been repossessed, and there will be an Oscar pool, with a
hokey improvised trophy for the winner. Wow, life doesn't get any
better than that these days.
It could be argued, and already has, that a spectacle as frothy as
the Oscars has little salience at a time when people are losing
homes, jobs and, in some cases, hope. But then again movie attendance
is up this year so far, and there's nothing quite like gathering
around something warm and sparkly when the darkness seems to be
intruding at every turn.
Right now I'm in Los Angeles, attending warm-up events and putting
some final finesse on my picks, but with the California legislature
in marathon sessions to close a huge budget gap, grim realities are
casting a bit of a pall here in Oscarland. But the show always goes
on, and at some point a lot of us will give ourselves permission to
brush away the clouds and stare at the sparkle, the drama and the
nonsense that make the Oscars a maypole of American culture.
There is, after all, something oddly reassuring in the folkways of
the Oscars. Who's to say there's anything wrong with poking fun at
someone's dress or speech instead of spending yet another night
casting a gimlet eye on household expenditures? And if you play your
cards right in an Oscar pool with gullible or inattentive
competitors, there might be some loot in it for you. Or at least a
cheesy trophy.
It's an odd year for those filling out their Oscar slates, not
because so much is up for grabs but because so much is writ. "Slumdog
Millionaire" is the prohibitive favorite for best picture and a few
other big categories. The studio-conceived "Curious Case of Benjamin
Button" had a near-record 13 nominations, but "Slumdog," an
independent film partially in Hindi, seems to have gone out front to
stay.
Still, there are elements of suspense. Stung by steadily declining
ratings (although the show remains a huge draw for the network), the
producers of the Oscars have vowed to mix it up this year, so you can
tune in expecting innovation and, yes, the occasional train wreck. In
the actor races, there are some nail-biters: Mickey or Sean? Meryl or
Kate? If you have a pulse, you probably have a rooting interest.
And the movies themselves? There is not a blockbuster in the bunch.
But then this year's Super Bowl included two teams without a huge
national following and blossomed into a classic with wonderful
ratings and stories to occupy the water cooler.
You may not have seen all the movies this year, but as the
Carpetbagger, a daily blogger for The New York Times Oscar Web site,
I have spent much of this increasingly long award season staring into
precursor awards and pundit prognostications and am here to help you
separate the contenders from the pretenders. Oscar intelligence, if
there is such a thing, might help you come up with that surprise pick
in the supporting actress category to make the Monday afterward seem
a bit brighter. There's nothing like having a little skin in the game
to make your night at the Oscars a diverting one.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/movies/awardsseason/20osca.html
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