Reaction Shots: For Better and Worse, The Oscars Has Become The VMAs

Plus a review of Coda and a movie you should be watching.

I Am Legendary.

Ross Douthat wrote an otherwise anodyne essay in The New York Times connecting the decline of the Oscars with the death of the movies. The latter half is something that some critics will allow themselves to write if it means that you need a needless discourse for a week or so. The thesis it at least argues is that as the movies being nominated change - that it has become less big and starry, more prone to intellectual property - the Oscars will fall along with it. The movies, according to Douthat, are the key engine to the American celebrity. The idea of paying a ticket, because of the idea that an actor alone could carry and command one giant effort.

King Richard was meant to be a crowning moment for Will Smith. As I’ve mentioned earlier in another post, King Richard fits not just fits Douthat’s criteria of what an Oscar movie should look like. It is the Oscar movie Will Smith needs to show that he can still be a good star, even a great star, whose career is armed with a restrained charisma that allows him to command on the screen. The reason why I mention this is because Smith, the person, is unrecognizable from the movie star status he once held, much of which comes from his overzealous and open marriage with Jada Pinkett Smith was revealed to be more of a facade during a cringeworthy interview between the two on a talk show that she herself sets up. (There’s a possibility that his behaviour is akin to the moment Richard Williams was interrupting his daughter’s TV interview).

This is why, once he won the Best Actor award as King Richard, all of it rung hollow, after taking offence at Chris Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia. Hearing phrases like ‘vessels of love’ and then claim that Richard Williams, the character that he was playing, would defend their family is a half-apology at best. It would seem to have come from a wrestling heel who just broke part of his opponent’s tendon than a movie star. It should have been his moment of pride but has instead made him become an unmasculine, narcissistic punchline.      

One would have to argue that this must have been a massive stunt for the Academy Awards to push, because they have been struggling to get viewers in caring for them, endlessly compromising on many things, whether it’s to sacrifice some of its technical awards or to give a fake award to the most popular movie, as polled by Twitter users. Funnily enough, this is what I wrote prior to last year’s Oscars [on a sidenote, I did wrote that I will never write about them again, but I lied. So my apologies.]:

I don’t know what could revive the Oscars, as the show’s producers and commentators have tried to brainstorm for more than a decade. Movie stars? Dedicate an award to the most popular movie? Nominate the most popular movie? Nominate a musical from 2016? No one pays that much attention to this. The Oscars doesn’t need its VMA moment when Kanye took Taylor Swift’s microphone away or Miley Cyrus twerking on Robin Thicke’s crotch. It already had one with the La La Land fracas in 2017. But back then, it didn’t provide a lift in viewership. 

I then realize that much of it didn’t matter because the most memorable moments of the Oscars do not have anything to do with a carefully curated monologue about one of cinema’s greatest achievement turning half a century old, but the celebrity. This was the case with the VMAs, and even still, it allowed itself to be about music videos, because the sheen of that show was about being crass and provocative, something that was still compatible with the moments I mentioned above. 

After all, one of the most flattering moments in the Oscars’ recent history is Ellen Degeneres taking a selfie with so many celebrities and then posting it on Twitter. People were interested, because everyone knew about Ellen Degeneres and the others in it. And it did improved the ratings. A disruption to the rigid status quo happens to be gawked at: an absence of a host, a frat-boy for a host, the wrong winner is more memorable than watching CODA. But maybe, many of these unforced errors need to be a remedy in order to satisfy everyone and in effect no one. 

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Review: CODA

As the home of nicecore streaming, last night was Apple's greatest day. A corporation with layers of backing capital, its streaming service Apple TV would be something you’ll only sell as part of a bundle. Exclusive rights to shows and movies haven’t been the lightning in the bottle as most people hope for, at least until something like Ted Lasso actually catches their attention. As I previously wrote in the last edition, I haven’t seen CODA… until now. Even as someone who has followed the Oscars and made a big effort to see all the nominees, I have never heard of the film and I was surprised that it has enough legs to get to where it is the Best Picture for this year. But now that I have seen CODA, I am confident in saying that this is the worst winner since Crash.

There has been lots of bad Oscar nominees that riled me up. Some that have undeservedly won Oscars. But if there was any distinction Crash had, along with other bad films, it’s that you at least thought about it for a minute, processing how much ugliness can phonily masquerade as beauty. CODA, which stands for Child Of Deaf Adults, has little to offer and it is remarkable that a movie with no aesthetics crafted and barely any distinguishable narrative beats to bear has made it this far to win Best Picture. Lifetime movies have the distinction to be more challenging than this.

The flaws of the film begin with its focus: a teenager named Ruby Rossi who happens to hear and has to be the emotional breadwinner for her deaf family, all of whom are fishermen struggling to make ends meets with their new co-op. Ruby has dreams of becoming a talented singer and in order to do that, must get a scholarship at a prestigious music school. She never shows a passion for music. Sure, she sings while helping her father and brother with the fishing and has an oddball record collection, but I never buy that this was an ambition that she has long held. 

Selling someone’s imperfections is tricky, even when they are inhibiting a disability. This tactic tries to persuade normal people that they are just as well-functioning, but it can knock them down a notch. Despite featuring deaf actors in the role of deaf people, Sian Heder treats them as outliers, which is a shame because they are interesting on their own (Troy Kotsur, who plays the father, won a Best Supporting Actor award, becoming the first deaf person to do so. I hope in the future he got better roles way better than this). Each of these people is struggling to adapt to normal society and are in need of a person to help them be accepted by others who they can hear, but our attention is instead burdened by a frustrated girl who has little romantic chemistry with a boy (surprise, surprise) who happens to be practising for a spot at a prestigious college. 

CODA is less of a Sundance hit and more like a tasteful riff of a Happy Madison effort, since it has the dad farting, him being incredibly horny with the mom and a teacher trying to interpret sign language pretty badly. But most importantly, it contains the old-fashioned morale of ‘family being important’ as its biggest signifier in order to compensate for its laziness. 

Following the End of Movies essay, Douthat commented that the Oscars giving CODA the big award is a sign that the Academy doesn’t care anymore. And he’s right. If its lack of originality in its screenplay and direction, save for its representation of a disability, is the kind of thing that makes it in your Best Movies of the Year list, I’m not so sure how many movies these Academy Award voters actually watched. Or if, they actually watched anything at all. 

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You Must Watch This: The Piano (1993)

Because of the regularity of this kind of newsletter, I am changing the name of Movie of the Week to You Must Watch This. If you have any other name suggestions, please let me know. 

I recommended it before, and I’ll recommend it again. The Piano, directed by Jane Campion, is a magnificent triumph, containing some of the elements that both The Power of the Dog and CODA lacked. At the time of its release, The Piano broke a lot of records. Holly Hunter and Anna Pacquin, a child star at the time, won Best Actress and Supporting Actress respectively, and Campion scored a Best Original Screenplay for it as well as being the first female filmmaker to win the Palme D’Or. Pacquin plays an important role in interpreting her mother, and it’s not as if Holly Hunter’s Ada McGrath was a crutch to her and herself through her disability. It is a fully realized character, that is driven by a momentous narrative and an equally grand score. 

ICYMI: The Last Video Store in Sydney

I wrote an obituary on Film Club, a lone video store in Sydney that has recently closed its premises. This was originally written in the defunct Rebeller, where I interviewed the departing store owner, and the guys over at Splice Today were nice enough to re-run it as a tribute. When I get the time, I will write the second part about how we talk about physical media.