Saturday, February 28, 2004

My Fearless Oscar Predictions

This year, instead of pretending I have a clue about Best Editing or Sound, I'm limiting my forecasting to 19 races. Here is not who I want to see win but who I believe will win...

• Best Picture: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Best Director: Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Best Actor: Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
• Best Actress: Charlize Theron, Monster
• Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins, Mystic River
• Best Supporting Actress: Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog
• Original Screenplay: Lost in Translation
• Adapted Screenplay: Mystic River
• Animated Feature: Finding Nemo
• Animated Short: Destino
• Foreign Feature: The Barbarian Invasions
• Documentary Feature: The Fog of War
• Art Direction: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Score: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Original Song: "Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," A Mighty Wind
• Costume Design: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Documentary Short: The Chernobyl Heart
• Live-Action Short: Two Soldiers

To be honest, it's a coin flip between Bill Murray and Sean Penn for Best Actor and a wild guess for Best Song. Five or six of the above are projections that all the seers of filmland say are a lock...and I'll predict that at least one of those "can't go any other way" predictions will be wrong. One always is. I'll also predict...

• A joke about gay marriage within the first five minutes.
• Billy Crystal either having a breast exposed a la Janet Jackson or doing it to someone else.
• A joke about Michael Moore being bound and gagged backstage by Teamsters.
• One reference by someone along the lines of, "I hated what Michael Moore said last year. Imagine thinking our president would lie to us about something as important as a war."
• One acceptance speech in which the winner will say, "This is not the place for a political speech" and then make a political speech.
• One really freaky, revealing outfit on a presenter or winner which will have everyone outraged the next day.
• And enough stuff about the recent deceased to make you think you're at a funeral. Or reading this website.

Other than that, I'll meet you back here at half-past Joan Rivers for Live Oscar Blogging! And remember: Formal attire only.

• Posted at 11:26 PM · LINK

Crystal Set

If you think you might not get enough Billy Crystal on the Oscars, you might want to set your TiVo or VCR tonight. NBC is scheduled to air the March 17, 1984 episode of Saturday Night Live in its overnight programming block, starting around 3:00 AM in most time zones. Crystal hosts and dominates the broadcast which includes musical guest Al Jarreau. As I recall, late in the show, Billy does a little monologue explaining why he didn't appear, as planned, on the first-ever episode of SNL.

Mr. Crystal is also developing a one-man show that will eventually play Broadway. It's trying out in La Jolla at the end of April and I may try to get down there to see it.

• Posted at 2:10 PM · LINK

Your Potrzebie is Showing, Charlie Brown!

Over the years, Mad Magazine did so many parodies of Peanuts that Charles Schulz once wrote in to suggest that he could retire and let them take over his strip. Many of those parodies will soon be part of an exhibit at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. On March 20, the exhibit will kick off with an appearance and speech by Sergio Aragonés, who has been drawing for Mad since John Quincy Adams was president. Or maybe it just feels that way.

• Posted at 12:10 PM · LINK

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

I don't know how many cable systems receive the Boomerang Network but it's happily available via satellite. Once or twice a day, I switch over to at random and usually catch a cartoon from the early years of Hanna-Barbera. I don't think it's just nostalgia for my youth that makes me enjoy those shows. They were cleverly written and the animation was often quite ingenious. I was also a devout student of Warner Brothers cartoons at age eight but I don't think I really noticed that the H-B cartoons contained a minute fraction of the drawings seen in a good Looney Tunes. It's amazing, watching an old Huckleberry Hound today, to see how much of the action takes place off-screen or is otherwise upcut. If Huck falls down, you never see him get up. That would have required actual animation. So they cut around that movement, implying it or having him "zip" to a standing position. As I watch a Quick Draw McGraw I remember from 1962, I am amazed at how much wasn't really there and was filled-in by my young imagination.

It's an amazing bit of sleight o' hand but Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had a powerful secret weapon that enabled them to pull it off: Superior voice work, most of it done by the great Daws Butler and a solid supporting cast. Daws was so expressive, so able to wring humor out of any words, that he supplied all the personality and style that was absent from the drawing. It's really a joy just to listen to him and to hear his frequent co-star, Don Messick, playing off him.

The schedules over on Boomerang are a little frenetic. I have rarely been able to track what comes on when, and even when you think you know, announced start times are highly approximate. There are very few commercials so what was once a 30-minute show no longer fills out a half-hour. As a result, they insert oddments and stray cartoons almost randomly between the announced programming. These sometimes cause the next scheduled show to start a little late. Lately in those "bonus" slots, I've caught a few nuggets from the 1967-68 Filmation series of Superman, Aquaman and other DC Comic characters. Again, I am now amazed at how cheap the animation appears but the scripts aren't as strong, the direction isn't as facile with its misdirection, and the voicework doesn't compensate for any of those shortcomings. On one level, it's fun to see them again but on another, it's disillusioning. I didn't recall those cartoons as being wonderful but I also didn't recall them being quite that chintzy.

• Posted at 10:22 AM · LINK