Word: brokeback
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...most of the night, Oscar went with the favorites. George Clooney (Syriana) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) won in the supporting actor categories; Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) took Best Actor and Actress; Brokeback Mountain was cited for adapted screenplay, Crash for original screenplay; and Brokeback?s Ang Lee for Best Director. The smart money even had the right over-under number on how many Jewish references host Jon Stewart would make in the award show?s first 30 minutes...
...Then, 3 hours 21 minutes into the telethon, Jack Nicholson announced the winner for Best Picture-which had at first been thought to be a lock, then a tight squeeze, for Brokeback. ?And the Oscar goes to... Crash.? Those famous eyebrows editorialized surprise, and Nicholson mouthed a ?Whoa.? Paul Haggis, the film?s writer-producer-director, geysered from his seat in joyous shock, and revelry exploded among what seemed like half of the 5,000 audience members at the Kodak Theater. One of the revelers did such ecstatic contortions, she nearly fell out of her gown. The rest hugged...
...know much about the craft of editing-the extent to which the cuts in a film are determined by the script-so they vote for the movie with the most stuff going on. Crash was certainly the busiest film nominated. And the noisiest. Whereas the other four nominees (Brokeback, Capote, Munich and Good Night, and Good Luck.) kept seeking reconciliation within their social and political conflicts, Crash let its arguments bubble over, like an overheated car radiator, into angry confrontations. The movie shouted, and the Academy heard it, over the urgent whispers of the other films...
...Home Team corollary: actors comprise the largest Academy contingent. A long-standing grievance of the Screen Actors Guild is "runaway productions": movies shot abroad, especially in Canada, that ship jobs out of the U.S. Thus there may be some protectionist resentment against Brokeback, which is set in Wyoming and Texas but was shot mostly in Alberta. This would tilt the Best Picture vote to Crash, a low-budget, L.A.-made movie that?s so teeming with speaking parts it seems to have employed half the SAG members in Southern California...
...That?s what Oscar is looking for: not acting but Acting! The Master Thespian strutting his bombastic stuff. By this standard, Heath Ledger, whose boldly subtle turn in Brokeback is so internalized you might need a surgeon to find it, is a less likely winner than Philip Seymour Hoffman, who?s much showier (and pretty swell too) as Truman Capote. Similarly, Reese Witherspoon, the world?s darling, may be seen as simply radiating star quality in her turn as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line. (We love her, but, honestly, the movie is Joaquin Phoenix?s show...