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..News
..Nominations
..Oscar Race Charts

..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

..Scoreboard
..Charts

March 24, 2003
1:55 a.m.

Oscar Night
by David Poland

I'd like to thank The Academy…

Chicago won Best Picture. And Catherine Zeta-Jones won the one award that Chicago really deserved.

But in the Great Eight, that was it. There were four other wins, many of which made no sense at all.

But in spite of the Best Picture win for Chicago, the real winner for the night was The Pianist, which grabbed three of the Great Eight. The Pianist won 75% of its categories in the Great Eight. Chicago won in only 25% of its categories in that same group.

Okay, so maybe you'll disagree. But that's how I choose to look at it.

On top of that, I am happy with all four acting winners. Perhaps some other winners would have been okay with me in some categories. But none of the acting winners were anything less than deserving.

Chris Cooper did almost no campaigning, busy on Seabiscuit much of the time. He won. Ronald Harwood did almost no campaigning. He won. Roman Polanski obviously did no campaigning… he has refused to discuss the work and he has certainly been smeared. He won. Almodovar… Conrad Hall… Eminem… almost no campaigning… all winners.

Gangs of New York was shut out. The abandoned Frida won two Oscars. Reports were that Jack Nicholson was supporting Adrien Brody ahead of himself, so maybe Jack won in a Rosie Perez kind of way. We do know that Daniel Day Lewis lost out, as did Scorsese. The relentless blitz that was going to get gold for Rob Marshall, Renee Zellweger, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly and Bill Condon didn't play out that way. Dion Beebe lost, as was inevitable, to a dead guy.

The primary residue of al this? Scorsese has been disgraced for no good reason. Please, for the love of a great director, release the real Scorsese cut of Gangs of New York and allow some percentage of those bashing this movie to embrace the quirky, deeper-breathing, voice-over-lite vision of a master. Renee Zellweger has to get past her failure to perform on stage and in getting votes. And Chicago will forever have an asterisk next to it in our mental record books, as everyone desperately tries to figure out what any Oscar voter who voted for Chicago for art direction ahead of Gangs or Rings was thinking. Sound? Yeah, playback is a bitch! Maybe they wanted to give Chicago an award for its excellent and ineligible score.

Other random thoughts that will be less random after I've had some sleep:

*Best Moment Of The Night: Adrien Brody gave us one of the great acceptances ever. And also reminded us of what was on CNN during the entire show.

*Second Best Moment Of The Night: Michael Moore getting booed. Being political is one thing. But when will the left, of which I consider myself a member, stop invoking the election results as though they were still relevant? That's what got him booed. Worse, it was old material. The guy won a WGA Award for Original screenwriting. Couldn't he come up with a second dumb slogan when his use of "fictional" didn't exactly raise the roof/tent at the Independent Spirit Awards?

*Segment That Should Have Been Scrapped: Jennifer Garner and Mickey Mouse. For one thing, an ABC/Disney character giving out an award that three Disney films were up for was kind of troubling. But more pointedly, this was the one really sore piece of production on a show that was one of the best ever.

*Cruelest Choice Of Presenting Slot: For Jack Valenti to give an award for a short is just too on the nose to even be funny.

*Most Clever Placement Of Presenters: Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman were both pretty much kept from political ad-libs by being attached to the presentation of, respectively, The Dead of 2002 and a Best Picture candidate. There was just no room to fudge.

*The Most Suspicious Presenters: Catherine Zeta Jones got her Oscar from former co-star Sean Connery and Roman Polanski's Oscar was presented by Harrison Ford, star of Polanski's Frantic. Neither presented had any connection to any of the other nominees in either category.

*Oddest Title Coincidence: The Two Towers and The Twin Towers won three Oscars between them.

Steve Martin was perfection. He pushed the envelope at times (the line least comprehended on the evening was that Mickey Mouse was the biggest black star of all time) and yet, never felt like he was trying to hard. I felt that his willingness to make fun of the events of the night ("All of tonight's proceeds will go to… really big corporations!") was his way of showing respect to the odd situation of moving forward with awards. Excellent.

In fact, it was probably the best Oscar telecast in memory. It had the big, showy surprises (Brody). It had good musical numbers, even if it couldn't resist a look back at the best/worst of the past musical numbers. With the exception of the crew for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it didn't have many really uncomfortable "playing them off" moments. And everything moved apace.

More later… sleep tight… and thank the Academy. Just when you think they have lost perspective, they surprise you. Congratulations to all the winners, including the voters.

Email David Poland