The big discussions this year.
It’s Oscar weekend again, but as ever the major talking points for this year’s awards were lined up weeks in advance. Will Meryl Streep, the most nominated performer in Oscar history, add to her relatively meagre tally of two statuettes? Will James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, formerly married to each other and now joined at the hip by their best director nominations (for very different types of films), stick out their tongues at each other for the cameras? Will the magnificent Up become the first animated feature to win best picture? Will the Slumdog Millionaire kids get to present this year? Will the questions ever stop?
One of the biggest discussions has been around the decision to expand the number of best picture nominees to 10 films this year. On the face of it, this seems like a cry for greater inclusivity, but personally I think it’ll only end up reminding us of how random and whimsical any competitive award show really is: what’s the sense in taking movies as disparate as The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, District 9 and Avatar, shoving them into a one-size-fits-all category, and then audaciously choosing a single winner from amongst them? Besides, I doubt that the extra best picture nominees will do anything to right one of Oscar’s most notorious historical oversights: its unwillingness to recognise the worth of superbly made comedies, instead plumping time and again for pedestrian “message” movies.
“Logically speaking, if the nominees in any category should be expanded to 10 or even 20, it should be supporting actor/actress,” says a perspicuous commenter on the Oscars.com messageboard (http://tinyurl.com/ yjuadpj), “because a single film could have as many as three or four juicy supporting roles. But then, logic is at a premium in these things.”
But while nominees have been expanded, the time given to winners to make their speeches has been reduced to 45 seconds. I particularly enjoyed the Academy’s diktat that people refrain from shedding tears at the podium (presumably because this might short-circuit the microphone) — it amounts to a tacit admission that all those weepy speeches of the past weren’t spontaneous. Even the normally diplomatic Vidya Balan was moved to protest this stifling of creative emotions (“Even if I don’t feel like crying, I would still do so if I was asked not to,” she said in a recent online interview), so little wonder that Internet-forum types are letting it all hang out. “Well, that’s the fun ruined,” says a poster on the Daily and Sunday Express Online (http://tinyurl.com/ydmdz5d), “I watch the Oscars only for the tears and the rambling tributes to ‘my parents and my cat Snookums and the folio man and the key grip — can I have my keys back?’”
Naturally, the results of other pre-Oscar award shows have stirred the pot. “Frankly, if Avatar wins anything other than the technical awards, I’ll beat myself to death with my own arm,” says a commenter on the On the Box blog (http://tinyurl.com/yzyot93) discussing this year’s BAFTA results. “Don’t worry, the inglorious bastards is winning,” proclaims a Tarantino enthusiast on Awards Daily (http://tinyurl.com/yjo9vfz), an ungrammatical-sounding sentence that reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s tongue-in-cheek promo for his film The Birds in 1963 (“The Birds is coming!”).
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"Staggering to think that a movie like Basterds could win any prize at all," someone says in response. "The only thing going for it - within the USA, that is - is the eternal American wet-dream fantasy of being competent, effective warriors." This is the cue for a war of words to begin: soon the forum begins to resemble Rediff.com on a good day, and there are no calls for a 45-second time-out.
[Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi based freelance writer]
