79 years of Oscar, and it’s still a pretty party.
Sure, the Academy Awards have been criticized a lot for being “dry” and “losing its touch,” but I thought tonight’s broadcast was an amusing, albeit dragging, ceremony. Ellen DeGeneres was funny with just the right touch of class.
I was surprised with the Best Original Song category. You would think that 3 out of 5 nominations for Dreamgirls would earn it a statue, but the award went instead to An Inconvient Truth. The song was good, but the Dreamgirls medley performance was incredible. Jennifer Hudson outsang Beyonce by a mile (as she did in the film), but the collective performance was fabulous.
As much as I loved Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, a part of me is disappointed. Eddie Murphy was truly phenomenal in Dreamgirls and I felt he deserved to win. But then again, he is one of those actors (like Johnny Depp) who have been so long criticized by both the Academy and the American media that an award such as the Oscars seems so far out of reach.) I was hoping for a Little Miss Sunshine win though for Best Picture.)
But the whole night wasn’t a let down for me. Many deserving talents won, and none of their speeches ran on too long–thanks to the orchestra pit whose soft piano solo would cue winners to leave the stage. Some speeches were predictable, others were too well-rehearsed, but there were a few that were just right. My top three favorites:
1) Forest Whitaker (Best Actor, The Last King of Scotland) — “And through our combined belief, we can create a new reality.” Yes, he had a written-out speech, but he had a genuine enthusiasm for his win and a genuine humble attitude that radiates off the stage. His moving account of what it means to be an actor was a highlight.
2) Jennifer Hudson (Best Supporting Actress, Dreamgirls) — “Look what God can do.” So it was pretty predictable that she would win (although I was beginning to worry for a second after Eddie Murphy’s loss), but her Cinderella story of stardom makes her victory even more triumphant. She dedicated her award to her inspirational grandmother, which left her–and me in my living room–in tears.
3) Martin Scorsese (Best Director, The Departed) — “So many people have wished this for me…” Okay, I haven’t seen The Departed, but I was rooting for Marty to win. He’s contributed so many masterpieces to Hollywood that it’s about time he got the statue to solidify what everyone knows: He is a master. His speech was funny and moving and made even more amazing by the three directors who presented the Oscar to him (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola).
A good night all around, but watching the Oscars always makes me yearn for a red carpet stroll.
I grew up in a neighborhood of culs-de-sac, and ever since I can remember, there’s a house at the corner of the cul-de-sac across from ours that always had a limo parked out in front of it. A white limo. Not a super big, fancy one; it was a good old-fashioned white limo. The owner, I guessed, was a driver and took his work home with him.
Everytime we left the house, we would pass by it and I would look at it and think about how glamorous it must be to ride in a limousine. I saw on TV all of the movie stars and famous and important people who arrived places in limos and traveled around in luxurious cars. And I always wanted to ride in one. I wanted to be one of those famous and important people that people would look at it and take pictures of, someone that people would notice.
We’ve never been one of those families that go places in fancy cars like that though. For important birthdays or events, my parents never hired a limo driver to take Naomi or me and our friends around like other parents did for the kids I go to school with. I always felt a secret jealousy for that.
But when you think about it–when I think about it–it isn’t about the expensive car, the luxurious limousine, that defines who a person is. You can be an important person and not travel that way. Maybe I’ll never fulfill that secret little dream of being a star, but it’s not as far out of reach as I imagine it is. People like Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson proved that it’s not impossible.
So maybe I’ll be in one of those limos someday, and I’ll get to sit back, close my eyes, and remember that old-fashioned white limo in the driveway “back home.” And I won’t ever forget that.
