Oscars 2010: Can't anybody here make a good TV show?

If you follow me on Twitter, you know most of my thoughts on last night's Academy Awards telecast. For those who don't (or for those who want to relive the same complaints 12 hours later), a review of the Oscar show coming up just as soon as I hijack my fellow winner's speech...

There are certain stumbling blocks an Oscar-cast simply can't eliminate. First, there are so many awards shows leading up to this one that there's virtually no suspense; Best Picture was the only category most viewers care about where there was any question going into the show what would win, and Best Adapted Screenplay was the only thing close to a major category where the winner was a surprise. (Everyone assumed that award would be the consolation prize for one-time front-runner "Up in the Air.") Second, there are too many awards - or, specifically, too many awards either devoted to either to movies the bulk of the audience hasn't seen (notably the three short-film categories) or to disciplines the bulk of the audience doesn't understand and/or care about (the sound awards, to name two). So the show is destined to either run long (though last night's show still wasn't in the ballpark of the 2002 show for length), feel very rushed at the end (when we get to the categories people actually tuned in for), or both.

Given those inevitable drawbacks, you basically have to grade every Oscar-cast on a curve. But even allowing for the things the producers can't do much to change(*), the 2010 show wasn't very good.

(*) And I thought the little clip reel of previous short-film winners who went on to successful feature-film careers did as good a job as possible of explaining to viewers they those categories exist and are still part of the main show and not the technical ceremony (aka the Nerd Oscars) that someone like Elizabeth Banks or Jessica Biel hosts the week before each year.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin weren't terrible hosts, but nor were they particularly memorable. These are two of the funniest men on the planet, but they seemed uncomfortable swapping generic one-liners in the opening monologue, then vanished for long stretches of the show.

Oscar co-producer Adam Shankman's love of musical numbers, meanwhile, seemed to belong in an Oscar telecast of a different era. I liked the idea behind the opening musical number with Neil Patrick Harris and a bunch of showgirls (and/or "So You Think You Can Dance" alums dressed as showgirls) but can't remember the lyrics or melody to any of it the next morning. And the decision to showcase the five nominated scores with interpretive dance numbers was indulgent, incredibly long (especially since the producers had already axed the Best Original Song performances for eating up too much time), silly if you knew anything about the nominated films, and the sort of nonsense I thought the Oscars had left behind when Debbie Allen was banished from the show in the '90s. If you want to play extended parts of the nominated scores, great, but there's a much easier, more germane visual you can use to accompany them: clips of the films.

Still, no matter how tentative the hosts were, how odd some of the production choices were (a random montage of horror movies that seemed unclear on what the definition of a horror movie is, and in some of its choices of Oscar-winning films that were released after "The Exorcist," disagreed with the introductory remarks by Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart), or how long the show ran, everything might have been okay with an even vaguely competent director.

Instead, we got Hamish Hamilton making the wrong choice at virtually every turn.

He gave us long shots when we needed something more intimate (for instance, when all the John Hughes movie alums first came on stage at the end of the Hughes tribute), random and confused edits, terrible choices on who to cut to in the audience (anytime "Precious" won, we of course had to see every notable African-American person in attendance, and after spending half the show cutting randomly to a surly George Clooney, nobody could bother when Sandra Bullock told a joke at his expense in her acceptance speech), etc., etc. After everyone screamed bloody murder about the framing of last year's In Memoriam segment, which focused more on Queen Latifah than the images of the movie people who died, what excuse was there to make the exact same mistake for the first few entries in this year's montage? (Unless you were squinting, you may not have even realized Patrick Swayze led things off.) And after giving us shot after shot after shot of former spouses/collaborators Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron every time one of "The Hurt Locker" or "Avatar" won, how in the world did Hamilton fail to show us their interaction when Bigelow beat Cameron for Best Director?

(Just remember all the bumbling on display when members of the television Academy, living up to their usual inferiority complex towards the movies, give Hamilton an Emmy next fall.)

Some other highlights and lowlights from the show:

• I'm happy for Bigelow, who deserved the win for directing one of the most exciting, yet unconventional, action movies in years, but everything about the presentation of her directing award left a bad taste in my mouth. The choice of Barbra Streisand to present (including Babs' opening remarks about how excited she was at the possibility of a woman winning) and then the orchestra's choice of "I Am Woman" to accompany Bigelow's walk off-stage all screamed that the only thing that mattered about Bigelow's achievement was her gender. Yes, it's long-overdue that a woman won (not that Hollywood gives female directors a ton of great opportunities), but it's insulting to Bigelow's immense talent to focus so much on that.

• One improvement over last year's show: the tributes to the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees came from former co-stars, rather than former winners who may or may not have had a connection to one of the nominees, and we got both performance clips and the testimonials, rather than just the speeches. That made things run longer, and some of the testimonials were still awkward (Colin Farrell invoking "SWAT" for Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker reminding people that Sandra Bullock was once in "Hope Floats"), but overall the execution of the idea was much better.

• It was a good night to be affiliated with "Lost." That show's composer Michael Giacchino (whom I profiled a couple of years ago) won the Best Original Score trophy for "Up," Fisher Stevens (who played Minkowski, the radio operator on the freighter in season four) won for producing Best Documentary winner "The Cove," and both of the Best Picture frontrunners featured "Lost" actresses in small roles: Evangeline Lilly in "Hurt Locker" and Michelle Rodriguez in "Avatar."

• Speaking of TV alums at the Oscars, Mo'Nique's win for Best Supporting Actress means that UPN and the WB are, I believe, tied for the number of former stars to win acting Oscars. (Mo'Nique was on UPN's "The Parkers," Jamie Foxx on the WB's "The Jamie Foxx Show.") Unless I'm forgetting someone, who will break the tie? A castmember from "Shasta McNasty" or "7th Heaven"? UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments, Forest Whitaker (who won a few years back for "Last King of Scotland") hosted UPN's "Twilight Zone" remake, so the pressure's on the WB alums now. I say Jessica Biel's due next.

• I'm of the right age for Hughes' movies to matter a lot to me, but I'd understand why viewers outside that demo would wonder why the show spent so much time on this one guy who died and not any of the others. I also hope Matthew Broderick's "Hey, Ferris! This your day off?" impression of the fan encounter he has every day was cathartic for him, and that he can now again embrace his inner Ferris Bueller, given how he's spent so much of his adult career playing pinched, Cameron-esque dweebs.

• Best presenter banter: Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. bickering about writers vs. actors. Worst: Probably Ben Stiller coming out in Na'avi makeup was one of those ideas that was funny as a brief sight gag, then kept going and going and going.

• The producers introduced an off-stage "Thank-You Cam" this year that was allegedly supposed to give the winners an opportunity to do their usual deadly lists while doing something more interesting for the viewers at home. It was, unsurprisingly, completely ignored.

What did everybody else think?

Oscar day open thread

The Academy Awards are tonight, and I know a lot of you will be watching. (Though not, unfortunately, if you live around here and subscribe to Cablevision.)

So feel free to use this post to discuss the films you think will and/or should win in certain categories, and then to discuss the Oscar telecast (including hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin) as it goes along.

The only thing I ask is that we try not to spoil the movies too much while talking about them, okay? Not everybody has seen all the nominees (particularly in a year with 10 Best Picture nods instead of 5), and we can talk about whether, say, "Hurt Locker" or "Inglourious Basterds" deserves a screenplay award without giving away much about pivotal plot points, okay?

Have at it.

Thoughts on the Oscar nominations?

This isn't a movie blog, but I write about film occasionally enough that I was curious for everyone's reaction to the just-announced Oscar nominations. Because there are so many other awards shows now, the nominees in most of the categories weren't a big surprise. But with the expansion of the Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, there were a lot of wild cards. (If I had to guess, I'd say that "The Blind Side," "District 9," "A Serious Man," "Up" and "An Education" benefited most from the expansion.)

Of course, the run-up of other awards shows also means there won't be a ton of suspense about who wins, other than perhaps "Avatar" vs. "Hurt Locker" for Best Picture and director, but while we have a few weeks to kill before the big event, what did you think of the nominations? Anyone you hoped/expected to be nominated who wasn't? (For me, it was "500 Days of Summer" for original screenplay.) Any pleasant surprises? (For me, it'd be "In the Loop" for adapted screenplay.) Any nominee you're pulling for, even if they're not the obvious favorite? (I loved Clooney in "Up in the Air," and I'm sure Jeff Bridges is brilliant in "Crazy Heart" and is long overdue, but it'd also be cool to see Jeremy Renner win.)

Have at it.

At the movies: My 20 favorite films of the '00s

Having run through my favorite TV shows of the decade and the year, and then having invited comments yesterday on your favorite films of '09, I guess the only thing that's left is a movies of the decade list, which follows after the jump...

First, a few caveats. In this decade, I had a kid, started a blog to go with my column-writing, and saw The Star-Ledger's TV department shrink from three people to just me, and those three things drastically cut down on my ability to either go to the movies or watch them on DVD. So there are many movies big and small that I just never got to. Because of that, and because my tastes are idiosyncratic, I want to be clear that I'm not saying these were the 20 best movies of the decade, just my favorite 20 of the films I saw.

Here's how I would sum up "best" vs. "favorite": my favorite movie of all time is "Midnight Run," but I doubt it would crack a list of the 100 "best" movies I've ever seen, if you catch my meaning. The 20 films below (and the handful of runners-up) are a mix of films I think are genuinely great ("Children of Men"), ones that I've watched a million times ("Wonder Boys," which, to be fair, came out in the decade's second month, and so had a head start on the other entries), ones that happen to strongly check a particular box for me ("Miracle"), and some combination of all three ("The Incredibles").

So in alphabetical order, here's the list:

"Almost Famous" - Deeply auto-biographical films can feel self-indulgent (see a later Cameron Crowe film from the decade, "Elizabethtown"), with lots of scenes, characters and storylines thrown in simply with the defense of "this is what happened to me, man!" With "Almost Famous," Crowe told his own story, but it was a great story, and one that turned out to be universal to anyone who's ever been passionate about music, or writing, or, really, passionate about anything.

"American Splendor" - I'm a comic book fan, but I'd never read Harvey Pekar's work until I saw Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini's film, which deftly, hilariously and at times movingly mixed the real Pekar with a bunch of fictional stand-ins, some live-action (most obviously Paul Giamatti, in a performance I liked even better than his work in "Sideways"), some animated. Great work as well from Hope Davis as Harvey's wife, and if the movie had contained nothing but the "Revenge of the Nerds" scene, it might still be on this list.

"Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" - The funniest, silliest, most spectacularly quotable movie of Will Ferrell's career. It makes me laugh every damn time, and I like it so much that I've even watched "Wake Up, Ron Burgundy," the straight-to-video "sequel" that's essentially a collection of (understandably) deleted scenes and subplots. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

"Before Sunset" - Like many Gen X'ers, this movie caught me right in the sweet spot, as I'm around the same age as Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's characters, just like I was for "Before Sunrise." Richard Linklater made what seemed like one of the most unnecessary sequels of all time feel essential and powerful, and now, like many of my bretheren, I hope like hell the trio keep revisiting the characters every 10 or 15 years, "7 Up"-style.

"Children of Men" - Just balls-out filmmaking by Alfonso Cuaron and company - not just the famous tracking shots (like the ambush scene), but the creation of a believable, terrifying dystopian world, the performances by Clive Owen and Michael Caine, the music and the rest.

"City of God" - Foreign language films probably suffered the most in my movie downsizing this decade. The Brazilian "City of God" is one of the few I saw, and I was damn glad. Like "Children of Men," it's a marriage of incredible filmmaking technique (by director Fernando Meirelles and company) with a nightmarish world - only this one is the very real slums of Rio, as seen over several years. Loved the TV spin-off "City of Men" (which Sundance Channel aired a few years back), too.

"The Dark Knight" - The first of several comic book movies on the list, and also the first of three Christopher Nolan movies. In addition to giving us the justly-celebrated performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, "Dark Knight" also did as good a job as I've seen of a live-action movie showing what it would be like to live in a comic book world, to live in terror of people like the Joker and even Batman himself.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - Kate Winslet's best performance in a very good decade for her, a Charlie Kaufman script that managed to marry his usual inventiveness with a real depth of feeling often lacking in his other scripts, and beautiful direction from Michel Gondry. What's not to like? (Other than the fact that Clementine and Joel are probably toxic for each other, that is.)

"The 40-Year-Old Virgin" - Still the best of the Apatow brand of films (both those directed by him and those made by his pals and/or former "Freaks and Geeks" stars). It has a lead performance by Steve Carell so good that it more or less helped save "The Office" (Greg Daniels credits this movie with helping him figure out how to write Michael Scott) and one explosively funny joke or set piece after another. Often imitated, (still) never quite duplicated.

"High Fidelity" - It leaves out a couple of key moments from the Nick Hornby book - Rob refusing to buy the records from the woman with the cheating husband (which is on the DVD as a deleted scene), and Rob and Laura arguing about the mix tapes he always made her - but otherwise Stephen Frears, John Cusack and his screenwriting buddies expertly translate Hornby from England to Chicago. A great (and, whenever Dick or Barry are on-screen, hilarious) meditation on love, be it of music or a woman.

"The Hurt Locker" - I had 19 films set on this list and couldn't pick a 20th. Then I did the post yesterday about the year's best movies, and I just couldn't get "Hurt Locker" out of my head. Among the many things that are cool about it - Jeremy Renner's performance (I can't believe ABC had this guy under contract for a show and let him go), the various action set pieces expertly set up by director Kathryn Bigelow, all the effective cameos - I may be most impressed with how Bigelow and writer Mark Boal managed to make a 100% non-political Iraq War movie. "The Hurt Locker" never asks why we're there; it just accepts that we are, and then goes to show you what that experience is like (terrifying, but also thrilling, mostly) for one specific unit that's there.

"The Incredibles" - I could probably put a half dozen Pixar movies on this list and not blink, but for diversity's sake, I'm going to let my favorite one stand in for all of them. A tremendous superhero movie (and at times spy movie), a great family story, a fantastic commentary on the "Everybody gets a trophy!" mentality our society falls prey to (case in point: my endless Best of the '00s in TV lists), impeccable voice casting and the follow-up I was hoping for from Brad Bird after the wonderful "Iron Giant."

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" - A tale of two comebacks. Shane Black had more or less dropped out of the movie business after "The Long Kiss Goodnight," and Robert Downey Jr. was in the midst of another of his troubled, underemployed periods, when the two teamed up for this self-aware modern noir played half-straight, half for laughs, and all of it fun. Val Kilmer hadn't been this good in a long time, and no one has ever used Michelle Monaghan this well before or since. A high rewatchability level, as well.

"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy - Ask me to pick one of the three, and I'll probably go with "Return of the King" (even with the endless epilogues), but everyone seems fine treating them as one single work, so I will, too. I remember going to a critics' preview of "Fellowship" with Matt Zoller Seitz, and when the Balrog came out to battle the fellowship, Matt turned to me with an 8-year-old's smile on his face and whispered, "I'm so happy right now." "Me too," I said back, and I'm sure I was wearing a matching goofy grin. A tremendous technical achievement, but unlike "Avatar" (which I admittedly enjoyed), one that also seemed invested in the more traditional aspects of storytelling like plot and characterization.

"Memento" - The one that put Nolan on the map to make the other two of his films on this list (with a minor bump along the way in the solid-but-nothing-more "Insomnia"). You know a gimmick movie works if it stands up to multiple viewings, and this one does, thanks not only to the clever device that Nolan and his brother used to tell Leonard's story ("I have this condition..."), but the performances by Guy Pearce, Carrie-Ann Moss and Joey Pants. If anything, multiple viewing prove rewarding, as the story only becomes creepier and more tragic once you get out of Leonard's mindset and can remember all the pieces at once.

"Miracle" - The list's token Underdog Sports Movie, it's one I think is really underrated because it was one of a wave of Disney assembly-line sports flicks of the decade. What elevates "Miracle" above the likes of "Remember the Titans" or "The Express" are two things: Kurt Russell giving one of the best, most committed performances of his career as Herb Brooks (jump to the 1:50 mark of this clip and watch how Russell plays Brooks' uncertain reaction to the victory he devoted his whole life, and arguably too much of it, to achieving) and director Gavin O'Connor's long recreation of the Miracle on Ice game, a rare sports movie game sequence that feels almost as thrilling as the real thing.

"The Prestige" - Our third and final Nolan movie, it's a bit of a puzzle box like "Memento," but on a grander scale, as we watch a pair of magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, both at the top of their games) try to outdo each other with ultimately deadly consequences. The Nikola Tesla stuff alone is wonderful, but this is another one of those "watch til the end every single time you see it on cable" movies for me.

"Spider-Man 2" - The overcrowded nature of the third film, and the greatness of "Dark Knight," have made it easy to forget how many people were happy to crown this one as The Greatest Superhero Movie Ever when it came out in 2004. With the origin story out of the way (and it still amazes me that everyone feels the need to do origin movies for these franchises, when the second film is usually much better), Sam Raimi got to tell a classic Spider-Man story on screen, with one great action sequence after another (Spidey vs. Doc Ock on the skyscraper is my favorite), a good command of the idea of Peter Parker as the guy with the world's worst and best luck at the same time, and a very strong supporting performance from Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius.

"Wonder Boys" - Based on a book by one of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon (and far more adaptable than "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which spent the decade in development hell, and which is probably better off unmade), "Wonder Boys" is a funny, shaggy, exceedingly likable story of one memorable weekend in the life of a one-hit wonder author (Michael Douglas), and the various eccentrics (including Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes and Downey Jr.) trying to help or hinder his return to usefulness. I'm a writer, so the subject may speak to me more than most, but it's my go-to DVD whenever I need to put a movie on while getting something else done.

"You Can Count on Me" - The smallest movie on this list, it's the simple story of an estranged sister and brother briefly coming back together before the usual forces send them apart again. It's carried by great performances by Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and by playwright-turned-filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan's attention to the small details that define a sibling relationship.

Others considered: "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Sideways," "Lost in Translation," "Serenity" (just for the TV fanboy in me), "Casino Royale" and many other Pixar films (notably "Wall-E" and "Up").

What was your favorite movie of 2009?

Since this has apparently turned into a movie blog for the last week of '09 (what with the absence of most original TV this week), I may as well ask a question that's come up a bit in the "Up in the Air" discussion below: what was your favorite film of the year?

Now, I don't get to a lot of movies anymore, and I doubt I'll have seen more than 3 or 4 of the 10 Best Picture nominees this year. But with that caveat in mind, my favorite of 2009 would be either (depending on my mood) "Up" or "The Hurt Locker" (today is a cold and windy day, so I'm feeling "Hurt Locker"). "Up" was yet another Pixar masterpiece (particularly the opening montage about Carl's marriage), while "Hurt Locker" was both a kick-ass action thriller and the most engrossing war movie I've seen since "Three Kings."

So, what was your favorite from this year, and why?

At the movies: Up in the Air

The Christmas-to-New-Year's period is my one big movie-going stretch of the year these days, so two days after hitting the local multiplex for "Avatar," I was back to see George Clooney in "Up in the Air,", which I thoroughly enjoyed even as I had to keep reminding myself that the movie wasn't called "The Air Up There." A spoiler-laced review (designed, like my TV reviews, to be read after you've watched the thing) coming up just as soon as I throw out a pillow...

"Up in the Air" works on a lot of levels at once. You can simply enjoy it as George Clooney's most unapologetically dashing, romantic leading man performance since "Ocean's Eleven," or maybe even "Out of Sight." He's been great in other movies, but often in roles that feel designed for him to run away from his own innate charms. (He did, after all, win his Oscar for "Syriana," a movie where he packed on weight, grew a beard, and got tortured.) Clooney has become a great actor - and the scene on the airport shuttle where he takes the call from Vera Farmiga may be the best-acted of his career - yet there's something tremendously appealing about just seeing Clooney be Clooney... at least until those later scenes in which Clooney sees the folly of this.

Farmiga and Anna Kendrick are also terrific, and the sequence where the older duo console a heartbroken Kendrick and then invite her to crash the party (complete with a cameo by a not-so-Young MC) was as purely fun a 15 minutes as I've had at the movies in a long time.

But "Up in the Air" isn't just the story of a dashing road warrior. It's a blunt and poignant look at getting downsized in the worst job market in decades. Jason Reitman's idea to cast real people who had been recently fired to talk about their experience was a nice touch. Even better were Clooney and Kendrick's scripted interactions with J.K. Simmons and Jeff Eastin (as the devastated guy in Detroit), the former illustrating Clooney's belief that his job can be about more than just letting people down easy, the latter illustrating just how brutal this profession really is, particularly at a time like this when jobs are scarce.

And, of course, the second half of the movie also beautifully shows how Clooney's personal philosophy is just as much a delusion as his professional one. His life is fun, but empty, and the 1-2-3 punch of spending time on the road with Kendrick (who's far more human and empathetic than her tele-firing plan would suggest), falling for Farmiga and going to his sister's wedding (where Danny McBride showed how easily he can dial his usual schtick into more realistic, dramatic levels) forces him to realize that he does, in fact, need other people in his backpack.

And what makes the movie feel particularly resonant, I think, is that Clooney figuring this out doesn't solve anything for him, any more than his platitudes really help most of the people he fires move on in the job market. Had the movie followed a more predictable arc - had the "When Harry Met Sally" moment where Clooney goes running to tell Farmiga that he loves her worked out(*) - it would have made everything that came before feel phony. Instead, Clooney ends the movie in the exact same physical space as he began it, even as his emotional life has been ripped apart.

(*) Fienberg (who didn't love the movie in general) complained that he figured out that Farmiga's character had a family early on, and therefore grew impatient waiting for Clooney to find out. I have to admit that I didn't catch on until right when he showed up at her doorstep - again, I feared that Reitman was going the cliched rom-cm route when Clooney bailed on his big motivational speech - and was floored when I realized what was up. But I can see how spotting the twist early (like the people who somehow figured out Donnie Wahlberg killed Bruce Willis) could make some sections of the movie drag.

I don't get to the movies a lot anymore, and I haven't seen a lot of the movies that are considered serious Oscar contenders. But of the films I got to in 2009, "Up in the Air" is easily in the top 3 with "Up" and "The Hurt Locker."

What did everybody else think?

At the Movies: Avatar

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it! Last night, I undertook half of the traditional Jewish Christmas (the other half involves Chinese food) by going to the movies to see "Avatar," which I loved. Everything I'd heard about the story and characterizations were true, in that it's recycling a few dozen stories of allegedly cultured men discovering the nobility of the local savages (it's a little bit "Dances with Wolves," a little bit "Pocahontas," etc., etc.). Fortunately, everything I'd heard about the visuals (which I saw in 3D) was also true. The movie was just a treat for the senses for almost three hours, and the performances (particularly by Stephen Lang, who seems to be making a comeback after being off the radar for a long time, as the ruthless lead soldier) were good enough to compensate for most of the cliches.

We complain all the time about how the whole mainstream movie industry is designed to appeal to 14-year-old boys. For once, here was a movie that made me feel exactly like a 14-year-old boy, and I didn't mind a bit.

If you've seen it, what did you think?