We Can Survive on Clouds of Sugar, My Bald Darling

So you went ahead and did it, Academy. You gave the Oscar to The Artist just to spite me. I know you did. It certainly didn't win on its own merits.

I can't say I hated the whole broadcast. Billy Crystal was funny at times, though mainly I guess I'd say he didn't have any particular flavour, which is what I think Oscar producers wanted. There was a Cirque du Soleil performance that fell spectacularly flat--the two stoned faced, flying Cary Grants to some icy Danny Elfman music kind of exemplified the disconnect between the shaved cat self-important self-caressing and the actual joy of movies the evening's theme was ostensibly intended to be. Maybe a close second in that department was a montage of famous movie lines with oh-so-precious soundtrack added, giving an embarrassingly weepy ecstatic undertone to Dustin Hoffman yelling, "I'm walkin' here!" Oh! Dustin Hoffman is walking here! This precious movie moment ought to be encased in a diamond swan, dipped in chocolate and placed in our bathtubs for us to cuddle while we're naked and clean!

Yeah, so the Academy Awards are actually really creepy. It's like having lunch with someone you normally get along with, whose personality you instinctively respond to, and discovering that while you've been talking he's been masturbating under the table.

And may I just point out again that the movie that won for best picture rather undeservedly used music from a great movie that wasn't even nominated for an Oscar when it came out. The Oscars aren't about celebrating movies, they're about the idea of celebrating movies, and so you can't celebrate good filmmaking until you're twice removed from the source. It's like how everyone pretends Angelina Jolie looks good while I couldn't stop thinking of a draugr from Skyrim;



That block of writing tattoo on her arm only emphasises the impression of someone who's been living in a concentration camp. She had great hair and a great dress, but it was like seeing Gollum in drag. Though I think Gollum had a little more meat on his bones.

Speaking of Skyrim, I hadn't realised two Skyrim voice actors, Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer, were both nominated for best supporting actor. Christopher Plummer certainly deserved the win, though I'd have said he deserved it for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which wasn't nominated the year it came out. When Plummer gave his acceptance speech, it demonstrated again how an older actor almost inevitably does better onstage unprepared than the younger generations. He made a joke about how he had been working on his acceptance speech since he was born eighty two years ago that wasn't particularly funny but it worked because he delivered it well. Every single young actor flubbed at least once on stage last night, but Plummer was at ease and intelligible.

But Hollywood honours its own, sooner or later, and will be very proud of itself for doing it, unless you're Sean Young trying to get into a party.