Live-blogging is one of the great by-products of the Internet age. Reading live-commentary websites while a cricket or tennis match is on is often more entertaining than watching the match itself (on the TV strategically placed next to the computer; switching between the two screens is terrible for the eyes, but that’s another story). This was the case on Oscar morning too — my favourite bits had nothing to do with the actual ceremony (which was as dreary as every Oscar snoozefest of the past few years has been) and everything to do with the minute-by-minute updates on various blogs.
Especially the comments from kindly, well-meaning but clueless Americans who were feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about their top movie award going to a film about poor people in a third-world country. “Aw, that slumkid from India sure is enthusiastic!” drawled a commenter on Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily (http://tinyurl.com/bqscuh). One wondered which of the film’s child actors he meant, until it transpired a few comments later that he was talking about the biggest kid of them all, the 50-year-old Anil Kapoor, who had been gesticulating wildly through the evening.
Kapoor was the subject of other funny rants too. Marvelling at the speed with which he reaches the stage whenever Slumdog Millionaire wins a big award, New York Entertainment (http://tinyurl.com/brv23z) said, “Somehow, incredibly, like a pompadoured bolt of lightning, he had already made it out of his seat and up the stairs. How did he do it? Did he bodysurf over the first ten rows? Had he been hiding under the podium the entire night?”
Finke herself was snarky about the ceremony, repeatedly calling it “the gayest Oscars ever” and expressing her horror at the prospect of having to watch sights such as Eddie Murphy handing Jerry Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. “Oh no. Fair warning. Go take a bathroom break or get a drink NOW.” She was more gracious about A R Rahman’s acceptance speech, saying it was “a reminder why it’s so important for the Academy Awards to be internationalised”.
But others were pleased by Rahman’s wins for less noble reasons. “Fortunately, a win for ‘Jai Ho’ saves Peter Gabriel from having to make an awkward acceptance speech,” said the FilmCrunch website (http://tinyurl.com/b8tjj6), a reference to Gabriel’s cold war with the Academy after it was announced that the nominated songs wouldn’t be performed in their entirety. No place for friction during this highly sanitised television spectacle.
Of the 65-second musical performances that did take place, Paste Magazine’s live blog (http://tinyurl.com/crfrud) observed that “the numbers are impenetrable, but they underscore how this show is all about Hollywood’s nod to Bollywood”. Meanwhile, as Smile Pinki (remember that one?) won in the “short documentary” category, blogger Ali Arikan (http://tinyurl.com/cvgnse) wrote resignedly, “Start getting ready for tomorrow’s headlines with lots and lots of Indian puns.” He should have seen what the homegrown Indian newspapers looked like on Tuesday.
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The ceremony drew to its tired, inevitable close, but the Guardian blog (http://tinyurl.com/brga3p) kept the flag flying with a series of wry observations. “That was the Penn-ultimate award,” it quipped as Sean Penn walked off after stealing the best actor prize from poor Mickey Rourke. “Just the big one left to go.”And when the big one — Best Picture — was announced and the entire Slumdog Millionaire crew rushed the stage (through the air-vacuum created by Anil Kapoor’s coat-tails), there was a brief shot of a beaming Angelina Jolie in the front row. “Do you think Angelina is maybe thinking of adopting the whole podium?” wondered a commenter on Nikki Finke’s site.
