Word: crash
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...savviest predictor for Best Picture. The theory is that people, even Academy members, don?t 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...
...everyone was crazy about the Crash win. During the acceptance speech, musical director Bill Conti seemed to be indicating the vexation of a minority in the room when he brought up the orchestra volume before Haggis could say his piece. (This year, the orchestra played softly through each of the spoken thank-you speeches, making the winners? comments sound like song cues in an old musical.) But Haggis had been on stage earlier, as a Screenplay winner. Besides, his victory was unique, at least to lovers of Oscar trivia. He became the first person to have written two consecutive Best...
...critics, and earned no major Academy nominations. Yet in the absence of old-style epic films among the top contenders, Geisha and Kong aced the technical categories. Each finished the night with three Oscars-not the biggies their makers had once hoped for, but as many as Crash, and one more than Brokeback...
...peddler. Old-timers may look at the Best Song category and see a dreadful devolution over the decades, from the Gershwin and Kern winners of the 1930s to ?It?s Hard Out Here for a Pimp? this year. But, hell, the competition comprised of a woozy liturgical ballad from Crash and an uptempo number from the bottom of the Dolly Parton song trunk. And the winners, three exponents of Memphis hiphop, expressed more astonished delight than anyone except the Crash crowd. One of them even thanked the Oscar show?s executive producer, Gil Cates. That guy?ll be invited back...
...Witherspoon, channeling Sally Field in her acceptance speech, was an anomaly. Otherwise, voters went for meaningfully angry over emotionally adorable-not just with Crash and supporting actress Weisz (as the martyred activist in The Constant Gardener) but in two of the short-film categories. The prize for Live Action Short went to the contentious Six Shooter, written by English playwright Martin McDonagh-a three-time Best Play nominee on Broadway who probably couldn?t have imagined he?d win an Oscar before he got a Tony. And in the Animated Short category, the award went not to the Pixar cartoon...