Not so Very Grim at All

THE Oscars are a smugly cynical and vacuous exercise in industry promotion that reduces what should be an artistic endeavour into a contest of mawkish rhetoric but avaricious intent that is decided by vainglorious old industry hacks making value judgments comparing everything to how it was in their day — a perspective that with each passing year has less and less of a connection with tastes of most moviegoers.

Except, of course, when Peter Jackson, Anna Paquin or the Weta boys win, in which case it’s due recognition of magnificent achievement and, indirectly, a credit to us all as the society that nurtured them.

This year the academy has, in the view of most commentators, made the right pick by honouring No Country for Old Men as the year’s most outstanding film. No argument here, for the very good reason that we are in no position to hold an informed opinion. As so often happens, many of the leading films have not yet made their way down to our cinemas.

Well, there’s something to look forward to now. For instance, we are assured that only if you see the snarling oilfield movie There Will Be Blood can you understand the significance of what may be the year’s big movie quote: “I drink your milkshake” .

Onlookers might marvel at how this could be considered in any way potent enough to become the standout quote from the standout climax of a standout movie; yet this is the assurance.

It was called a grim year for movies. Actually it wasn’t. It’s just that Oscar has a startling capacity to disregard comedies. Mercifully, one did puncture the academy’s membrane of seriousness; the teen pregnancy comedy Juno which, though it was hardly preachy, was neither maudlin nor a trivialisation of its subject.

That “grim” tone among the favoured few films would have been lighter still were it not for another failing — this one less an eccentricity than a cinematic prejudice.

The Pixar animated comedy Ratatouille was another in a series of enormously popular works from a studio that continues to combine socko box-office results with almost thunderous critical acclaim. There is a sense, however, that until the mavens of the academy accept that animated films need not be ghettoised into an inescapable niche category, it doesn’t matter much how good the Pixar movies are, they won’t get a look in for the best movie Oscar.

The only animated film to get a nomination was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast back in 1991. Does anyone truly believe that nothing else in the Disney canon before that, or from Pixar since, deserved to stand alongside the very best? Clearly one of the year’s least bleak films is a charmer that has been quietly playing in centres such as Arrowtown and Gore, though not Invercargill. The busker romance Once, which took the best song Oscar, was, according to its star Glen Hansard, shot on two Handicams over three weeks, and made for “a hundred grand” — which is less than the catering budget for some films.

Hansard and his co-star (if “star” is an appropriate description for a lead in so modest an operation), not only performed the winning song, but fell in love during the filming and, as ceremony host Jon Stewart would have us know, they made their Oscars kiss backstage.

So tell us again what a grim year it was?

(c) 2008 Southland Times, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.