David Sedaris at the Oscars, being very David Sedaris with his famous* tiny notebook and his modest interest in celebrity.

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* Famous to anyone who's read the published diaries of David Sedaris. He has a method to his writing, and it begins with carrying a little notebook everywhere and writing down observations to be expanded upon, the next day, as a diary entry.

"Your need for approval is like a sickness."

A gem of meaning at 3:14 in this video of the opening of the Oscars show last night.

Not having seen the movies, I experienced this noisy cluttered barrage of vignettes as ugly chaos. It reminded me — with jarring pokes and jabs — why I don't want to see new movies anymore. Why was Conan in overdone makeup that made him look like a very ugly woman? Why did animated Conan develop stars in his eyes for 3 adolescent girls? Why were children screaming and chasing him? He stops for a moment to speak Norwegian and examine whether his need for approval is like a sickness and then the children screaming chase him out of the psychoanalytic dark Norwegian room. It's back to the noisy cluttered barrage that is Hollywood as Conan runs into the theater. I don't know what movie those children were supposed to represent, so I was just thinking generically of Hollywood's exploitation of children. How did the children become the monsters? Or were they running from monsters and Conan running with them, not away from them? At least tell a clear story. But no, I think this years stories were about chaos and raw fear and uncomprehended monsters. 

Are you watching the Oscars?

I'm not. I really couldn't care less. I haven't gone out to see a movie once this past year, and I don't think I've watched a single new movie on TV, even though we pay for multiple streaming services. What's the Best Picture nominee with Leonardo DiCaprio — something like "One Battle After Another" — that been on Netflix — or is it HBO — for months, and I've never even clicked the button to start it?

I did watch Ben Shapiro run through all the Best Picture nominees, and he didn't like any of them and made me feel that I'd like them even less than he did:

I watched a movie from 1928 the other day — "The Circus." And I've been watching the 2006 movie "Marie Antoinette":

The Oscar nominations are out.

Here.

I don't think I've ever been less interested in the nominations. I haven't seen or been interested in seeing any of these movies. 

"Flow" is the only movie up for an Oscar that I've seen.

I've blogged about it twice — here and here. 

I didn't watch the Oscars, but somebody who did and knew I only cared about "Flow" gave me this minimalistic update:

Here's a Hollywood Reporter report about what I see was an upset: "Independent Movie ’Flow’ Wins Best Animated Feature in Upset/‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘The Wild Robot’ from powerhouses Disney and DreamWorks were also nominated in the category." 

"I also, again, just want to recognize and honor the sex worker community."

"I will continue to support and be an ally. All of the incredible people, the women that I’ve had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this incredible — of this entire incredible experience."

Said Mikey Madison, quoted in "Mikey Madison wins best lead actress for 'Anora'" (NYT).

Madison also underscored the influence that sex workers had on her performance. To study her character, she read memoirs by sex workers, underlining sections of Andrea Werhun’s “Modern Whore.”... She also... took pole-dancing lessons. The role involved significant nudity and a number of intimate scenes, which Madison said was never daunting to her: “I was always comfortable, and I also think because Ani was too,” she told The Times.

I haven't used my tag "the [blank] community" in a long time, but here we have "the sex worker community." 

Mikey Madison becomes the 10th woman to win an Oscar for playing a prostitute — 12th if you count Donna Reed in "From Here to Eternity" and Jo Van Fleet in "East of Eden." And Madison is the first to win an Oscar for playing a prostitute since the #MeToo movement shook Hollywood to its nonexistent core.

Hollywood gets a wokeness wake-up call.

They gave 13 Oscar nominations to what, I've heard, is a terrible movie, and the over-honoring seems to have to do with the transgender theme and the transgender star.

But now "'Emilia Pérez' Star Karla Sofía Gascón Under Fire Over Tweets About Muslims, George Floyd, Oscars Diversity" (Variety).

A tweet from Nov. 22, 2020: "I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic."

And from Sept. 2, 2020: "Islam is marvelous, without any machismo. Women are respected, and when they are so respected they are left with a little squared hole on their faces for their eyes to be visible and their mouths, but only if she behaves. Although they dress this way for their own enjoyment. How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY."

Jacques Audiard, Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, Coralie Fargeat, and James Mangold.

I'm reading the list of movie directors nominated for an Academy Award — the nominations were announced a few minutes ago — and I don't recognize any of the names.

I even care about one of the movies — the one about Bob Dylan — though I haven't gone out to see it, not yet at least. But I have to recognize that I don't care about present-day movie directors. They're not these giants of the culture like they were in past decades, not to me anyway. I cared when David Lynch died, and I never even particularly liked his movies. But he was an important cultural figure, and I felt interested and reverent about that. Maybe it's me, and I'm getting not just old but very old. 

What do you think? Have we lost something? Is there any way back? Or should we not even want to go back — back to that era of giants. I know Francis Ford Coppola had a movie this year. He's one of the giants, one of the names that used to come up time and again in the nomination lists. But he's not there this year, nor was he expected. Nobody liked his magnum opus. Hollywood is not growing giants anymore, and it has no use for magna opera.

"Some film people, including a few studio executives who have lost everything, have been pushing for a quick return to business as usual..."

"... including resuming red carpet premieres and campaigns for the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday extended the nominee voting period until the end of this week; the ceremony will take place on March 2 as planned. But others questioned a 'show must go on' approach. 'We have to ask ourselves: How do we as a business respond to real catastrophe?' [Terry Press, a veteran movie marketer and a past president of CBS Films]. 'Thoughts and prayers and, by the way, my gown is by Gucci?... The decision to be made is whether we protect the image or whether we set an example that mirrors the best storytelling by demonstrating empathy, leadership, compassion and heroism.'"

From "Hollywood’s Filmmaking Continues Despite L.A. Wildfires/Because of costs, few movies are shot locally, leaving the industry in a surreal spot: reeling from personal loss with much of the business untouched" (NYT).

The best satire of the Oscars that I've seen.

Below the line, because it's TikTok...

"The male body is not a joke" — that was the joke, last night at the Oscars.

I understand the humor — I remember the streaking incident from 50 years ago — and I think John Cena played his part well, but I find the body very weird, so weird that I googled whether he was wearing some sort of nakedness body suit. Is that the male ideal these days? Swollen and devoid of hair? And he couldn't have side-stepped out barefoot? He needed Birkenstocks? 

Note: He was wearing panties.

"[Ryan] Gosling created a breakout role that engaged audiences and served as a refreshing reset button when the film became oversaturated with milquetoast feminism."

"Whether [Greta] Gerwig intended it or not, Gosling’s performance as Ken proved more memorable and entertaining than anything [Margot] Robbie could’ve produced with the material she had to work with. Compared to Barbie’s pretty standard character arc, Ken’s story made audiences ponder the complexities of the male experience in a world that penalizes their inherent maleness.... Compared to nominees Emma Stone, who portrayed Bella Baxter in 'Poor Things'... or Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart in 'Killers of a Flower Moon'... Robbie’s heartfelt performance as Barbie proved not 'Kenough' for the Academy...."

Writes Elise McCue in "Don’t Blame The Patriarchy For Ryan Gosling’s ‘Barbie’ Oscar Nomination" (The Federalist)(Gosling got nominated, and the female director and lead actress did not).

I saw "Barbie" and blogged about it (here): "Last night, we actually watched 'Barbie,' which just started streaming on Max. 'Barbie' is one of those movies where I had one favorite line (and one favorite character)...." The line is in this Ken highlights reel:

"To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn't about horses, I lost interest anyway."

The Oscar nominations are in.

 Here's the full list (at Hollywood Reporter).

Notable: "Robbie Robertson Earns Posthumous Oscar Nomination for ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Score."

"The man who wrote 'Glengarry Glen Ross' knows a thing or two about salesmanship. But what he’s selling comes delivered in rhetoric so broad-brush..."

"... it’s hard to determine the line between truth-telling and hot air. Hollywood is 'flogging nonsense,' populated by 'criminal dolts' in a 'lickspittle racket' policed by 'Diversity Capos' Sometimes the complaint is delivered in the form of tortured metaphors... Sometimes it arrives in the twitterpated grievance patter of the anti-PC crowd: 'We knew [a movie villain] of old by his Black Mustache, or his Black Hat; and today by his white skin.' Often it is laced with very Mamet-ian profanity. Sometimes, alas, it comes in cartoon form.... A depiction of Disney’s 'early attempts at animation' shows a hand lowering a mouse into a film projector. One drawing likens an Oscar statuette to a vibrator. The less said about the ones featuring Cookie Monster, 'Shoah' and Harvey Weinstein, the better...."

Writes Mark Athitakis, in "David Mamet is mad at Hollywood. His new book yells why. In an essay collection, ‘Everywhere an Oink Oink,’ the writer and director spews insults at Tinsel Town, especially at the filmmakers who rejected him" (WaPo).

And here's the book — "Everywhere an Oink Oink/An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood" (commission earned).

I bought it.

"The whole night, down to Rihanna’s eloquent performance of 'Lift Me Up' from 'Wakanda Forever,' felt well oiled but entirely preprogrammed because, of course, it was."

 What?! Everyone seemed drunk? I might have watched if I'd known that.

Hey, WaPo, "well oiled" means drunk. If you don't mean literally that oil, the lubricant, was used, you have to get "machine" in there — something like The show worked like a well-oiled machine — if you want to say it functioned effectively. 

I'm reading "It was a lovely, back-to-basics Oscar night. Sorry about that. At Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards, a focus on the winners, not the drama" (WaPo).

Yes, the Oscars took place last night. The thing that we'd be hearing criticism of if it didn't happen happened, so there's no way to know what motivated the Academy, and I just don't care anymore.

I don't know if Rihanna somehow injected "eloquence" into "Lift Me Up," but I read the lyrics, and they're the opposite of eloquent:

Burning in a hopeless dream

Hold me when you go to sleep
Keep me in the warmth of your love
When you depart, keep me safe
Safe and sound

But that nonsense did not win. This won: 

Translated lyrics here. Like the shrill voice of a bird that can ring your ears... Like singing a song that can make your fingers snap to the beat....

"At its worst her Leslie is a one-note cliché and a clunky Frankenstein’s monster of Jane Fonda in The Morning After, Faye Dunaway in Barfly, and Tilda Swinton in Julia, with just a dash of Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas."

"Only in a Hollywood community of short attention spans and even shorter memories could anyone look at that performance and not find it awkwardly derivative. It doesn’t help that the film that’s been built around Riseborough is sentimental and phoney when it should be gritty and unapologetic. It’s... a dopey soft-soaped world where Leslie’s alcoholism is a helpful tool for personal growth and provides her with life lessons, a new job and a tearjerking chance to reconcile with her son. Her alcoholism appears so unlikely, in fact, that it seems to exist only to provide Riseborough with a chance, scene after scene, to 'do acting'..."

 
From "Andrea Riseborough doesn’t deserve Oscar nod — Danielle Deadwyler was robbed/The British actress’s performance in To Leslie is a one-note cliché, says the Times film critic Kevin Maher" (London Times).

Riseborough, a white actress, was touted by white actresses, and got a surprise nomination, and Deadwyler, a black actress, was, surprisingly, not nominated. Even though Oscar nominations are campaigned for, this particular campaign is deemed suspect because it worked so well and because it happened to undercut Hollywood's efforts to seem racially inclusive. 

The Oscar nominees were just announced.

 Here's everything (all at once).

"Has anyone ever won an Oscar for showing so little expression?"

"[Nurse Ratched as played by Louise Fletcher ] was not — as Nurse Ratched was in the book — an embodiment of matriarchy and women's repression of men. She was horrible, cold, and controlling, but she also had some humanity. She was in a predicament trying to deal professionally with some very trying individuals. She made all the wrong decisions, but she was recognizably human. The actors who played those patients did a fine job portraying seriously ill men and making them dramatically effective and immensely entertaining. We felt free to laugh at them a lot without getting the nagging guilty feeling that we weren't showing enough respect for the mentally ill. There's bonus entertainment in the fact that two of them are actors we came to love in bigger roles: Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd. 'If they made this movie today, they'd ruin it with music,' I said halfway through. There was scene after scene with no music, other than the occasional record that a character in the movie played.... There was never any of that sort of movie music that instructs us on how to think and feels our emotions before we get a chance to feel them for ourselves. When Nurse Ratched puts a syrupy, soporific version of 'Charmaine' on the record player for the ritual of dispensing the psychotropic drugs, what we feel is in counterpoint to the music...."

I wrote that on Christmas Day in 2006, the morning after the last time I watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." 

I'm reading that old post this morning because I see the news that Louise Fletcher has died. She was 88.

Here's the scene where Nurse Ratched keeps the men from watching the World Series game (and McMurphy is an election denier):

"Littlefeather’s 60-second plea for justice resulted in immediate and enduring personal backlash. She says that in the wings, John Wayne had to be restrained..."

"... from storming the stage to physically attack her, while in the aftermath, her identity and integrity were impugned (the rumors were so abiding that in 2012, Dennis Miller mocked Elizabeth Warren by calling her 'as much Indian as that stripper chick Brando sent to pick up his Oscar'). Littlefeather, who had acted in a few films before her infamous moment, says that the federal government threatened to shut down any talk shows or productions that put her on the air."

 From "Academy Apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for Her Mistreatment at the 1973 Oscars/Nearly 50 years after suffering harassment and discrimination for protesting Native American mistreatment, the activist will be the guest of honor at an evening of healing and Indigenous celebration hosted by the Academy Museum on Sept. 17" (Hollywood Reporter).

From the Academy's apology letter: “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”

"Will Smith was never asked to leave the Oscars following Sunday's slap, a new report claims, as Academy Governor Whoopi Goldberg says bosses were too scared..."

"... to physically remove the star over fears he was 'manic' and would cause an on-camera scene.... But according to TMZ, Oscars producer [Will] Packer told Smith he could remain at around 8pm, about 35 minutes after the slap and just five minutes before the actor won his first Academy Award for his role in King Richard....  Goldberg was not present at the Oscars and stressed that she was not speaking on behalf of the Academy's board of directors. 'I can't imagine what was going on back there, but I do know that the only person anybody should be focusing on is Will Smith,' she said."

The Daily Mail reports.