Reactions to the 2009 Oscars - Page 2

The Best Actress in a Leading Role went unsurprisingly to Kate Winslet for The Reader. Now she was passed over many times with her past nominations and arguably should have really won for her first nominated role in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility but I do not believe that her performance in The Reader is the one she ought to be remembered for (and I actually feel pretty confident in saying that it will not be). I also know that as consistently great an actress as she has been, we have not seen the best from her just yet. Personally, equal to wanting to see Rourke up on the Oscar stage perhaps giving a blunt, most politically incorrect speech, I would rather have loved to see Melissa Leo humbly rewarded for her fearless, entrenched performance in Frozen River. If there is an optimistic way to look at this, however, it is that since the Oscar burden is past her at a relatively young age, Winslet will have freer rein to aspire to greater and higher artistic goals. Also, that moment when she asked her father to whistle so she could wave to her parents was kind of cute.

Penelope Cruz took the Best Supporting Actress prize for Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, although I hoped that the Academy would show a little more imagination and depth to appreciate work like Marisa Tomei’s in The Wrestler or Viola Davis's in Doubt. I, for one, felt, however, that Cruz did not even give the best performance in the movie itself; the lesser known British actress, Rebecca Hall did in a much less flashy and more understated way and should have received a nomination instead. But Cruz’s performance was compared in some circles to that which might have been given by a younger Sophia Loren and thus was probably deemed friendlier to win. She also had the benefit of a rather recent nomination in a more memorable performance in Pedro Almodovar’s Volver from 2006 and, much like Winslet’s award, this might have been another sort of makeup Oscar for a role that might not be completely deserving (right, Martin Scorsese?).

All the acting categories were presented in the new format of bringing five past winners within the given category and having each of them make a personal speech to one nominee. This may have sounded good on paper but without showing the actual movie clips and with the unevenness of the quality of the speeches (and also some of the performances), some ended up coming across as sappy while others sounded like weak praise. Anthony Hopkins’ compliments on Brad Pitt’s work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were particularly faint with the only good thing he could say about the performance being that he aged backwards (also because it is true). As a result, along with the other categories' presentations showing a prolonged generalized montage of achievements and then announcing the actual nominees, the whole affair ended up feeling a little more self-congratulatory and ended up dragging the ceremony out way too long. Perhaps if they are going to try this again next time, they should also simultaneously play the clips so that they serve as a brief description of what makes the performances deserve their merit.

Article Author: moviejohn

Joo-Wang John Lee is a computer programmer at Binghamton University by day and a movie critic by hobby. Upon insistent suggestion from people around him, he finally decided to start critiquing movies in writing instead of just verbal form among his friends. …

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