Is it possible to teach an old statue new tricks?
For 77 years now, Hollywood has generously devoted an entire night to lavishing affection upon itself at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual awards ceremony. Yet after all this time, the categories within which filmmakers are considered for recognition remain, to borrow a phrase from the Clinton campaign, more of the same. Here at SFR, we've decided to break the mold by introducing a slew of new criteria for distributing the not-so-statuesque statuettes.
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Best performance by a pharmaceutically compromised actor
And the winner is: Dustin Hoffman, who completed most of his scenes in
Finding Neverland
while battling the formidable handicap of morphine-induced fuzziness. After Hoffman accidentally sliced off part of a finger just a day into the shoot, a well-meaning sawbones left him so doped up it's a miracle he managed even to mouth his lines intelligibly. As it turns out, any impairment of the little big man's actorly capacities would most likely have gone unnoticed amidst
Neverland
's determinedly fluffed-up, message-oriented take on the circumstances that inspired
Peter Pan
. It's understandable (given the source material) but lamentable that leading man Johnny Depp was asked to turn in such a sober,
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nigh-saccharine performance, after
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
and
Pirates of the Caribbean
demonstrated the heights he can reach by tapping into his
Dionysian side. We're guessing Hoffman was still under the influence when he signed on for
Meet the Fockers
. (JA)
Most educational night at the movies
This award goes to Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman and the rest of
Million Dollar Baby
's cast and crew. Prospective pugilists could learn a lot by taking in Baby en route to the gym-like how important it is to center your weight over your knees, keep moving your feet, and for God's sake, tuck in that chin, lest you make an easy target of it. The film also offers a good demonstration of how to set boundaries with any sleaze-ball relations who might show up wanting a cut of your prize money (you'll probably find this burdensome task a smidge easier if said relations have all the depth and dimensionality of cartoon characters, like those featured here). The silver medal in this category goes to Catalina Sandino Moreno, who gave audiences a crash-course in heroin smuggling with
Maria Full of Grace
. This year's Best Actress slot is crowded with worthy contenders, but if the Academy sticks to its usual pattern, Moreno will be crowned for her superior work in just a few short decades…when she's under consideration for something else. (JA)
Most blatantly overlooked actor (whose character has a few emotional problems)
This one has
Sideways
star Paul Giamatti's name written all over it. The workman-like character actor has already turned in at least one other choice lead performance (
American Splendor
) as well as some eerily compelling work in Todd Solondz's
Storytelling
. The Academy has always loved a drunk (Nicolas Cage in
Leaving Las Vegas
, Ray Milland in
The Long Weekend
, Humphrey Bogart in
The African Queen
…the list scrolls on)-so why not nominate Giamatti, who has people in wineries all over California quoting his character's over-the-top oenophilic pronouncements ("just the faintest soupçon of asparagus, and a flutter of nutty Edam cheese"). Other performances perhaps a trifle too squirm-inducing for them to applaud with heads cocked warmly to one side include Kevin Bacon's barely restrained child molester in
The Woodsman
and Sean Penn's homicidal salesman in
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
. (JL)
Achievement in accents
In 2004 we found Renee Zellweger twisting her Texan tongue around
Bridget Jones
again, and London-born Jude Law pretending to be an American in at least one of the umpteen films he headlined. But the laurels go to Cate Blanchett for her inspired and
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amusing Kate Hepburn routine, which would have made for an excellent
Saturday Night Live
sketch, or a sure-fire tiebreaker in a game of charades. Sadly, however, director Martin Scorsese required Blanchett to maintain her pinched, nasal rendition of New England upper-cruster Hepburn
long past any reasonable point of plausibility, threatening to turn the fearsomely talented actress' scenes in
The Aviator
into a grueling endurance test. Leave it to the Academy to make matters worse by actually nominating Blanchett, drawing even more attention to Scorsese's reluctance to edit. Not that Blanchett's consistently valiant performances don't merit recognition, but this particular nomination smacks of Hollywood's long-established penchant for incestuous back-patting. (JA)
Best foreign-language film we'll never get to see
They say
The Sea Inside
is gut-wrenchingly moving; they say Javier Bardem's acting belies his crinkly age makeup; they say all kinds of things, but really we have no idea. All we know about this movie
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is that its trailer-along with that for this year's other notable Spanish film,
Bad Education
-plays interminably, but the goods have yet to be delivered. Foreign-film nominations always baffle the average viewer, particularly since we never get the chance to see most of them until long after the party's over. The Academy's medieval code for foreign-language submissions (for starters, each country is only allotted one) disqualify films like Bertolucci's
The Dreamers
, made with the participation of more than one country, or
A Very Long Engagement
, which wasn't released early enough to be considered. But it was entirely France's own doing that Jean-Luc Godard's retelling of the
Divine Comedy
,
Notre Musique
, wasn't submitted. Eh bien-if
Les Français
don't win this year they have no one to blame but themselves. (JL)
Best use of top-secret time-travel technology derived from Area 51
How else to explain Mike Leigh's note-for-note recreation of 1950s London (and vintage abortion technique) in
Vera Drake
? Crikey, Mikey, even the dust looks
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authentic! To be fair, Martin Scorsese and Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave us flat-out stunning renditions of 1920s Hollywood and Europe between the wars (in
The Aviator
and
A Very Long Engagement
, respectively), but that's just it. Did bygone eras really
sparkle
like that? Were they ever that meticulously polished? Leigh's London exudes so much mouldering-yet-cozy palpability that Vera engages senses traditionally off-limits for moviegoers-it's an almost olfactory, nearly tactile experience. Then again, it's possible Leigh's task was made easier by the fact that certain boroughs of Olde London have never significantly changed since 1959, necessitating no recreation. Still, we're guessing he had extraterrestrials (or, at the very least, their minions in the US military) on the payroll. (JA)
