Academy Awards

I managed to get through the Academy Awards last night. I saw the beginning, a little of the middle and came back around 10:45 for the end. Overall I enjoyed what I saw. The opening was pretty good starting with the computer generated fly into the theatre passing all the great actors and moments in movie history. Very well done. The skit about their search for a host was pretty good but what happened to Ellen?

For the films - I saw three of them this year. Good Night & Good Luck, Crash & Brokeback Mountain. I thoroughly enjoyed all three. I wasn't able to say beforehand that I strongly preferred one over the other. GN&GL was a steamy look into an era I knew nothing about and found it totally fascinating. Crash was an excellent playoff of emotions and tensions in our racially mixed world... a hard topic to broach and extrememly well done and acted and Brokeback Mountain was a powerhouse of emotional repression and an expression of realities that rarely ever get played out on the big screen. It really was an excellent year in film. Capote & Munich look like they'd easily fall into the same category of quality. So for all the losing nominees I'd surely say it was the best year to not have won one because any other year they would have blown the competition out of the water in terms of quality.

Highlights of what I saw... the opening sequence, John Stewart did a pretty good job of hosting the show and Ben Stiller desperately trying to ring some humor out of a screen screen costume. I can't imagine hosting is an easy task given all the big stars out in the audience and knowing there are over a hundred million people watching you live. Egads... Everyone looked good... there were no really big mistakes... the political side was kept low key for the most part at least from what I saw. George Clooney made some good remarks though..

I'm kinda glad Crash won though. Three cheers for independant films! It was a difficult movie to watch and it sent out a message to everyone about the reasons why we are like all are... everyone is connected and even the little things we say or do has reprecussions we never see. Glad to see it was directed and produced by a Canadian too. I guess it takes an outsider sometimes to see what we don't always see ourselves and in this case perhaps it took a Canuck to help Americans see themselves in a more realistic realistic light. So kudos to him.