Oscars 2006

Capsules of Award Winners and Nominated films

Cinema views By Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

http://www.geocities.com/cinemaviews

Some of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded and some nominated movies of interest are featured in capsule form below. Expanded reviews will follow on noteworthy ones such as "Crash" and "Brokeback Mountain."

You can read the full reviews of some of these films such as Hustle & Flow" on http://blackwebportal.com/wire from the MovieReviews link, or just click my name, "Kevin J. Walker" in the Media Partners section, on the right. (Ignore that old picture and scroll down. I've tried to update it but I can't get into the section).

• "TSOTSI" is a South African movie from a story by playwright Athol Fugard that won for Best Foreign Language film, in Xhosa. That's the Zulu African language with the tongue "clicks" in it. That should be fun to read in subtitles!

• "MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA" is period film by the team that did the musical "Chicago" won for Best Cinematography, Art Direction and of course, Costume Design. They'd better be glad that the hauntingly beautiful "House of Flying Daggers" wasn't eligible this year. The movie is remarkable because it was cast with no American or Europeans, and was refreshing to see another culture, its history and ways. This is what many of us go to the movies for.

• WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT" -- Best Animated Feature Film is a new category they invented because excellent movies like "The Incredibles" and the "Shreks" were being touted as Best Picture entries. This is also one of the best and wry film titles to come along in years!

• "MARCH OF THE PENGUINS" narrated by Morgan Freeman won for Best Documentary. Freeman also narrated Steven Spielberg's "War of The Worlds" which was nominated for one of the technical awards.

• "CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE" won for Best makeup. Disney, whose corporate entity offers Same Sex Partner benefits, and whose theme parks feature "Gay Days," is gambling that they can get in on some of that Christian movie money following the $ucce$$ of films such as Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" and "The Gospel."

We could put Tyler Perry's "Madea" movies in the mix, since for the second year in a row his films have dominated at least the opening weekend. This time his "Family Reunion" is in its second week of domination against multiple new releases.

Like New Orleans resident (or make that former resident) Master P who once profitably sold his music CDs out of the back of his car on the street, Perry had sold millions of DVDs and videotapes long before the corporate White folks even knew who he was, all legit and yet outside of their system.

Don't think for a moment that the studio heads ain't trying to rekonize what's going on when little Urban movies with cheaply paid casts and directors such as "G" are turning over such profits, especially in the home sales aftermarket. They want in, and they want it now!

Still for all the honours, moviegoers avoided the LGBT films like they'd get the Avian Flu combined with SARS, with an AIDS chaser.

The favourite of those who wanted to push Homosexual acceptance on the American public saw their chosen film wrecked by the dark horse, come-from-behind, hit-and-run win for "Crash" for Best Picture:

CRASH

WON:
Best Picture
Best Film Editing
Best Original Screenplay

Last year's nominee Don Cheadle from "Hotel Rwanda" was one of the many top shelf actors in "Crash," which was about two days in the intersecting lives of some Los Angelenos and the conflicting attitudes of race, economics and ethnic issues. The movie featured a Who's Who of present and future Oscar nominees.

Among the cast of "Crash" was the present Best Actor honoree Terrence Howard for "Hustle and Flow" about a Memphis pimp seeking a career change as a rapper was one of the film's co-stars, along with Australian and Sci Fi Sistah Thandie Newton of "The Chronicles of Riddick" as his Buppie wife; Ryan Phillippe of "Way Of The Gun" and "Cruel Intentions," (and Mr. Reese Witherspoon); and the ripped-off for Best Actor Matt Dillon as a racist LAPD cop who nevertheless has a heroic core.

In "Crash" I maintain Dillon was the true hero of the complex film, much like Danny Aeillo as Sal the pizzeria owner of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing," sharing that quality of decent humanity with the late Ossie Davis as Da Mayor of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

Dillon will return to the comedy roles for which he's better known by the public after his spurned suitor in the goofy and profane "There's Something About Mary." In "You, Me and Dupree." Dillon and Kate Hudson are settling in for a comfortable married life when his goofball friend and House Guest from Hell played by Owen Wilson comes to live with the newlyweds and plays havoc with their lives.

The crowd in "Crash" features revelatory roles for the likes of Ludacris, Larenz Tate, Ryan Phillippe, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Don Cheadle, and the thick-a-licious Nona Gaye, who was simultaneously in "xXx II: State of The Union" opposite Ice Cube as one of the rotating agents of Samuel Jackson's covert agency's spymaster. Gaye was also in two "Matrix" movies.

"This will be easier: Raise you're hand if you were NOT IN Crash" quipped Oscars telecast host Jon Stewart, who helped run a tight ship. The always longish Academy awards this time came in under 3.5 hours, one of the shorter ones in latter years.

Stewart is known for his fake news cable show but does a movie once in a while, such as the darkly comic "Death To Smoochy" about the maneuverings behind a children's TV show; and as the member of the alien infected teaching staff in the most excellent Sci Fi film "Faculty" and one of my favourites. In the movie he dies.

Paul Haggis' ensemble film on racial intolerance tackled a difficult subject, and carried it off in a film that held your attention riveted in place. This isn't a film that sells a lot of popcorn and soda.

I also like that "Crash" doesn't accept the nonsense that "Black people can't be racist," which is pure sugar honeyed ice tea. In fact, its brewed unfiltered, lemon-lime, sugar honey iced tea! And you can quote me

Cheadle's character, who expresses stereotypes about Latinos to his fellow cop Latina girlfriend's face, and talks bad to his crackhead mother has the opportunity to do the right thing, and he punts. If it was a White man, we'd holler like hell at the injustice.

Two budding career criminals in the film are full of self-righteousness and self-pity, excusing their antisocial behaviour because of some historical wrongs, and thinking that they're some sort of modern day Robin Hoods by robbing White or Upper Middle Class people.

"Hey, Osama -- says a clerk in a gun store. "Plan the jihad on your own time." When a small grocery store was trashed by protesters who painted "Arabs Go Home!" on the walls, his confused wife says "Since when are Iranians Arabs?"

Sandra Bullock is known for the fluffier roles she played in "While You Were Sleeping" and two "Miss Congeniality" movies. In "Crash" in keeping with its Good/Bad Jeckyl/Hyde nature of the unknowability of prejudice and what's truly in a person's heart, her pampered suburban valley housewife has words that come out of her mouth that we almost never hear on a mainstream film.

After she and her District Attorney husband are carjacked Bullock goes off on her bleeding heart husband:

"Last night I had a GUN Stuck. In. My. Face!!

"And the thing is, I KNEW it was about to happen!," when she didn't follow her instincts and was more wary when they were approached by two young Black men.

"When a White person reacts this way, then they're to blame," she continues, and then orders all the locks changed again when a young Latino male, an entrepreneur and loving father just trying for his piece of the American Dream, arrives and replaces the house locks because her purse along with her keys and credit cards is taken during the 'jacking.

"Oh, like he's not going to leave here and go sell our keys to his gang-banging friends!"

"Would you PLEASE keep your voice down!" hisses her husband, played by the "Mummy" movies Brendan Fraser, as the young man, his tattoos visible on his neck and arms, and with his jaws clenched pretends not to hear her rant, along with their Latina housemaid.

Like Halle Berry, and Meg Ryan, two other of America's Sweethearts Sandra Bullock can do no wrong, not even when she tries to. But this is her chance to finally break out. After Science Fiction action movies such as "The Net", and her futuristic cop in "Demolition Man" opposite Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes, Bullock has played confused low class trollops, rehabilitating inmate or promiscuous tramps as in "Forces of Nature" with Ben Affleck, "28 Days," or "A Time To Kill."

"Crash" is an uncomfortable film, and that's the point. This is not a cupcake film by any stretch, and don't leave or you will be lost. This isn't "Big mama's House 2."

What you may think you know of the many people you see in "Crash" isn't it. The signature line is spoken by Matt Dillon's wise veteran cop to his rookie partner.

"Listen to me, just listen: you may think you know yourself, but you don't. Give it some time."

Haggis wrote and directed a painful film with punch that delivered what people say they want in their movies, something different, something substantial and relevant for today. The Academy has redeemed itself by its gutsy choice.

The naysayers however once again criticized a movie that wasn't their choice by leveling the same sort of double standard and illogic they directed at Jamie Foxx at "Ray," saying Foxx was "just imitating" his subject (?!?)

Oh, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote" and "Walk The Line's" Joachim Phoenix or Reese Witherspoon weren't? Besides, ¿when a movie is about someone else, just what would you have them do?

They likewise said about "Crash" that it was "unlikely" that these people would all be connected in this sort of way. That's funny, I didn't hear them say that about "Magnolia" which had the same sort of Six Degree structure. But then, they liked that movie. Jerks.

HUSTLE & FLOW

WON: Best Song "Hard Out Here For A Pimp" by Three-6 Mafia
Nominated: Terrence Howard, Best Actor

"We should just surrender to Al Qaida right now" opined Radio Factor host Bill O'Reilly on his show Monday, who said its winning signaled the unmistakable decline of the onetime guiding light of Western Civilization.

"Hustle and Flow" is placed in Memphis, Tennessee, also home of the movie's writer/director Craig Brewer. Its really about the mid-life crisis of D Jay, a low-level marijuana dealing pimp with business so bad he can't afford to have air conditioning in neither his hooptie car nor his rented home, which he shares with his broken down harem of cheap but earnest 'Hoes who spend a lot of their time back-talking to him, when they're not out making him any money to pay the rent.

His solution is to go back to the music he loved making, and so he embarks on a career as a rapper. Chris Ludacris Bridges costars as Skinny Black, a local boy made good and whom D Jay plans to pimp to get his way into the rap world.

Read the full review on http://Blackwebportal.com/wire division, at MovieReviews.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

WON:
Best Director -- Ang Lee
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Score

NOMINATED: Heath Ledger for Best Actor

"Brokeback Mountain" was being talked about so much its vociferous backers just may have talked it right out of an Academy Award. The blatant pro-Gay activism may have spurred a late in the game backlash by Academy voters against the all but crowned Ang Lee film about two Wyoming cowboys who fall into The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name in a story that spanned decades.

It actually was a good movie as directed by Ang Lee, ("The Hulk", "The Ice Storm", "Sense and Sensibility", "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger") about unrequited love, frustrated goals and dreams that just happened to have two men in love at its center. But its merits as cinema was obscured by all the foofarah surrounding it.

Heath Ledger was nominated for Best Actor, which was a rip because "Jarhead", "Day After Tomorrow", "October Sky" and "Varsity" star Jake Gyllenhaal was better as Jack Twist, and he didn't mumble through his lines like he had a wad of chewin' tobacco in his mouth. Not even when he told his domineering father to "sit your fat ass down before I kick you into next week! He is MY son, and this is MY house, and you are MY guests!"

Gyllenhaal would have been much famouser much earlier as the scheduled replacement for "Spiderman 2" if look-alike Tobey McGuire ("Cider House Rules") hadn't been able to make it back, after his injured back in "Seabiscuit." In another Six Degrees of Oscar connection, "Brokeback" director Ang Lee directed McGuire in "The Ice Storm."

Maybe they gave Ledger some points because the Australian has made so many American movies since "She's All That" and like the "LA Confidential" star, he's practically American now in his film roles. He also had a good brief role in "Monster's Ball" as Billy Bob Thornton's troubled son. (Cinema trivia: Nicole Kidman and Mel Gibson were actually born here in America and raised in Australia).

WALK THE LINE

WON: Reese Witherspoon for Best Actress
[Also Nominated: Joachim Phoenix, for Best Actor]

Lots and lots of good music are in a very entertaining and long treatment of the courtship of Johnny Cash for June Carter, played winningly by Reese Witherspoon, later to become his wife and artistic soulmate, who wrote the song "Ring of Fire" about their tumultuous attraction. The two died IRL within a year of each other after Cash's new album made another generation of fans for his crossover music.

"Walk The Line," which some wag said was like "Ray," but with White people," was pleasantly tinged with his earlier Gospel, Country Western, Rockabilly, and Blues that made Cash's music among the favourites in households from urban African Americans to Latinos to Yuppies. My late father Alfred Walker of Carthage, Arkansas always made us kids be quiet on nights when his "Johnny Cash Show" came on.

Witherspoon, like co-star Joachim Phoenix played their own instruments and sang their own songs to lend a realistic touch to "Walk The Line." She gained critical notice for her turn as the scheming high school senior in "Election." her husband Ryan Phillippe from "Way Of The Gun" was in a critical role in "Crash," so both went home happy on Oscar night.

Joachim Phoenix of Puerto Rico was nominated for Best Actor for his entertaining portrayal of Johnny Cash, but he like Terrence Howard couldn't get past the Phillip Seymour Hoffman juggernaut for "Capote."

And if there's one thing Academy voters love its a biopic, preferably a big period one like "Gangs of New York" or Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility" which employs lots of electricians, seamstresses and carpenters. In effect, they are wisely voting themselves more employment!

CAPOTE

WON: BEST ACTOR -- PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN

With the movies this year so loaded with so many sodomistic characters a few were certain to slip through. "Capote" won Best Actor honours for Philip Seymour Hoffman for his portrayal of the openly Gay Southern boy from Louisiana who went East and became a celebrated novelist after he penned "In Cold Blood," about a time when the killing of an entire family by a couple of drifters still shocked Americans.

PSH has toiled in the small indie film wilderness for years. You saw him in little films such as "The Big Lebowski;" as a Canadian bank robber, or rather embezzler; in "Boogie Nights"; "Magnolia;" and in "Happiness," which was about a child molester and the type of film mainstream audiences avoided.

Hoffman however will lose much of his appeal to the critics and elitist fans when he attains success, (called by them "Selling Out") because they prefer their film heroes poor and largely unseen and unaccepted by the masses, whom they disdain. They can never be satisfied. Remember when they once praised Sylvester Stallone?

Now that he's able to afford the good life Hoffman can buy a big house for his devoted mom. He thanked her in his acceptance speech for raising four bad-ass kids by herself as a single mother, and who deserved her own award. Go, Phil!! Strong men are almost always Mama's Boys! But I digress.

Hoffman will be seen in this Spring's "Mission Impossible III," as the evil nemesis of Tom Cruise's IM superagent Ethan Hunt, and the same acting skills that won him the statuette will be in full effect as he taunts:

"Do you have a wife, or a girlfriend? Do you? Because wherever she is I'll find her. And I'm going to HURT her. And then I'm going to kill YOU in front of her..."

Oh, Hell To Tha No, its on now!! Ving Rhames returns as the updated Barney McGyver techno geek and the only other one of the crew to be in all three "M:I" movies.

MUNICH

NOMINATED: BEST PICTURE

"Munich," Spielberg's film with "The Hulk's" Eric Bana about the Israeli intelligence agency's retribution against the killers of the 1972 Olympics athletes was in the Best Picture category.

It was criticized by those who felt Spielberg went too lightly on Middle Eastern terrorists because of the questioning of its tit-for-tat violence, and Bana's character's stressing on his mission to hunt down the planners of the Munich massacre. Like George Clooney "Syriana's" Barnes starts questioning his superiors' wisdom and hidden agenda.

Zionists immediately jumped all over Spielberg for daring to question the rightness of their cause, which is reflected today by the Israeli governments announced targeted killing of even the newly elected Palestinian leadership if they don't agree with their policies. By the way, ¿isn't that what Terrorists do when they don't like something? I'm just asking!

"Munich" is a globe trotter from Israel, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and New York as Avner No Last Name and his team of covert operatives hunts down and eliminates with Extreme Prejudice of all those responsible -- maybe -- for the slaying of Team Israel in the 1972 Munich Olympics, which many of us watched unfold live on TV.

The movie is tense, with well paced and well placed touches of ordinariness and humanity and a good Cloak And Dagger film with lots of action scenes that unfold with military precision. Mostly.

KING KONG

Best Visual Effects
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing

King Kong won on a Technicality - that is, awards for

visual effects which is where the big splashy special effects and Science Fiction or Horror films are usually relegated. This is like a "Star Wars 6: Revenge of the Sith"-type of consolation prize. ¿But what about Kong enactor Andy Serkis? ¿Can you say "Ripoff?"

It is a continuing crime that Andy Serkis, the go-to guy for blue screen acting wasn't nominated for Best Actor, and the campaign to get his name on the nominations for his work as Smeagle/Golum of "Lord of The Rings" a few years ago fell short. You can see him for real as the transformed girl's boss in "Thirteen Going On Thirty."

Read the full reviews of both of these films on http://blackwebportal.com/wire in the MovieReviews link, or just click my picture, or my name, Kevin J. Walker in the Media Partners section.

TRANSAMERICA

NOMINATED: FELICITY HUFFMAN FOR BEST ACTRESS

"TransAmerica" featured the already mannish-looking Felicity Huffman from ABC TV's dark comedy sitcom "Desperate Housewives" as a male to female transsexual about to take the final step when it finds out it has a son. Its a Road Trip film, too, and was part of the ongoing Homosexual and Transgendered campaign for acceptance.

"TransAmerica's" star gave way to Reese Witherspoon for Best Actress for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in the most excellent "Walk The Line," a biopic of Johnny Cash.

It was premiered at the Milwaukee International Film festival this Autumn, along with international films from Brazil, Senegal in Africa; and more multiplex fare such as "The Matador"; "Mrs. Henderson Presents" and "Nine Lives."

THE CONSTANT GARDNER

WON: Rachel Wiesz for Best Supporting Actress

Rachel Wiesz co-star with "Crash" co-star Brendan Fraser of the most excellent "Mummy" films won for Best Supporting Actress for "The Constant Gardner," about her normally placid diplomat husband's investigation into her mysterious killing in Kenya at the hands of a multinational drug company using the Africans as guinea pigs for drugs that wouldn't be legal stateside.

Her husband is Ralph Fiennes, the efficient Nazi in Spielberg's "Schindler's List," and himself a past winner for "The English Patient." He becomes a gun toting man of action as he tries to piece together the politics and personalities that led to his wife's death.

She is a constant presence, seen in flashbacks as something triggers a memory of her, much like the construction of "Four Brothers" about their murdered foster mother.

SYRIANA

WON: GEORGE CLOONEY FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

"Okay, so I'm not winning Best Director" George Clooney quipped.

Clooney instead won Best Supporting Actor for "Syriana," his starring role that was placed in the Best Supporting category as they often are, sometimes its for political and strategic reasons, if they think the Best Acting categories may shut them out. He was also up for Best Director for his period political film "Good Night, and Good Luck," with its star David Straithairn up for Best Actor

"Syriana" is about the machinations of the CIA and the entanglement of oil and politics in the Mideast. Clooney plays Barnes, a dependable but burnt-out and just barely tolerated CIA contract agent who comes to question his country's involvement and its ethics.

Oil is at the center of the plot, and the efforts to control through proxy the precious black gold that just happens to be under the sands of other sovereign nations. Cooperative would-be foreign leaders are shown to be bought off, while stubborn ones who refuse to sell out their people's future are simply assassinated and taken out of our misery.

It co-stars Clooney's "Oceans 11" and "Oceans Twelve" pal Matt Damon, who with Boston childhood pal Ben Affleck already have Oscar statuettes on their shelves for co-writing "Good Will Hunting," about a Boston math prodigy, a janitor found pushing a broom at a local college.

Damon in "Syriana" plays an equally idealistic economist who is the advisor to the Prince who would be King and transform his desert country for the 21st century.

This is a movie that features lots of Man Stuff, and there aren't any women in central roles. No need. Besides they have plenty of their own "Chick Flick" movies. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

NOMINATIONS: BEST PICTURE, BEST ACTOR, BEST DIRECTOR

George Clooney, the director of "Good Night, and Good Luck" and who won best Supporting Actor for "Syriana" saw his biopic film about CBS TV anchorman Edward R. Murrow also up for awards for best actor for his star, for Clooney as director, Best Actor for David Straihairn ("River Wild", "Limbo") and for Best Picture about the crusading journalist's battle against Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Red-baiting politician who played himself in grainy black and white TV monitors.

In fact, the entire film is in glorious artistic (and inexpensive) black and white, just like all the TVs once were. Ironically, it was Murrow who coined the phrase "Vast Wasteland" about what the promise of TV had become. Its a smart film for smart people, with dialog and references to match. This isn't one that the devotees of films like "Big Mama's House 2" or "Aquamarine" will find high on their "Must See" list.

"Good Night, and Good Luck" has a pleasant Jazz vocal soundtrack by songstress Dianne Reeves, easily interwoven because of their shared offices in the same building, and sets the mood with a sort of commentary.

After coming out against the feared Senator, Reeves is working in the studio on the song "I've Got My Eye On You."

"I've got my spies on you...

I know of all you do..."

Its overlay artistically shows the pressure Morrow and Clooney's producer Ed Friendly are feeling from the Senator, the Military Industrial Complex, and the All Seeing Eye of CEO Paley's CBS Network, with a ripped from the headlines of today with relevancy of Warrantless Wiretapping in the fight against terror.

I asked my favourite theatre's people at the Milwaukee Marcus Theatres South Shore Cinemas if they were going to rebook some of these Oscar-winning films for return engagements, the ones that aren't already out on DVD that is. They've done that before they said, but they have to see what comes down from the ones from On High.

The makers of the films know they can squeeze about 15 percent more profit from reissuing the films; that's why there are so many Special Editions and Directors Cuts and Anniversary releases of films these days. That's just smart business, and is the gift that keeps on giving as well as a way to recoup their money. Actors and staffers are all for it because they find that they get some cash in their pockets as well, so Its All Good. --kjw

walkernet@gmail.com
http://cinemaviews.tripod.com
http://www.geocities.com/cinemaviews

Read the full reviews of these films on http://blackwebportal.com/wire in the MovieReviews link, or just click my picture, or name, Kevin J. Walker in the Media Partners section, on the right. Ignore that old picture and scroll down.

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