Oscar Night
I'm going to all kinds of spoil people. If you haven't seen The Departed or watched the Oscars you might not want to read this.
Anyone who knows me knows that I love movies and that I love the Oscars. Watching the Oscars though, kind of melts my brain, you know, in that way that sitting next to a hot guy in class kind of melts your brain, like that. So there's no guarantee that I'll be able to write coherently.
Again, if you know me, or read this blog, you know that I really wanted Leonardo Dicaprio to win an Oscar. For me, acting and writing are what really make films and acting and writing are all about making people feel something. Watching movies or reading stories would be a waste of my time if they didn't make me feel anything. In the movies all sorts of factors combine to make people feel something starting with a good story, but it doesn't matter how great the story is if the actors aren't able to capture the emotion at the heart of the story. Leonardo Dicaprio gets it done every time. Every. Time. I thought he deserved an Oscar the first time I saw him on screen (in This Boys Life), but he wasn't even nominated then and he didn't win tonight.
Forrest Whitaker won the best actor award tonight and as disappointed as it makes me that Leonardo Dicaprio didn't win I appreciated Forrest Whitaker winning primarily because his acceptance speech was beautiful. And speaking of acceptance speeches, the producer of The Departed (and Blood Diamond) acknowledged Leonardo Dicaprio's superior acting skill in his acceptance speech for best picture. It made me happy to hear someone else echo my opinion because so frequently I hear disagreement when I start to argue that Leonardo Dicaprio is one of the best actors working today.
It was also a nice consolation to me that The Departed won so many Oscars since it was my favorite movie last year. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the only movie I saw in the theater last year. Of course I was happy it won best picture, and I was glad to see Martin Scorsese win best director. The one that really made me happy though, was the award for film editing.
Odd, you might think, that I noticed the film's editing, that anyone would notice film editing in any film really (aside from film editors), but especially that I would notice it since I'm a person that gets lost completely in films. Sometimes, if I see a movie many, many times I'll notice all the technical aspects, but I only saw The Departed once and I did really lose myself in the story (the sound bite, by the way, when it won best picture said that Scorsese said it was the first movie he ever directed that had a plot which I'm inclined to agree with).
There was one thing that I noticed though, that was a moment brought together by, (probably) the script, the direction, cinematography, and film editing. Near the beginning, during the police academy montage, one of them, Dicaprio's character I think, is taking notes in a weapons lecture and the lecture is about blow back. The professor talks about the police issued weapon and that blow back happens when someone is shot, at close range, in the head with such a weapon. Now, presumably it's a function of the caliber of bullet (and I think the professor even says so) and certainly plenty of people other than police officers use weapons of the same caliber, however, at the end of the movie, when the elevator opens and Dicaprio's character gets shot in the head, it's the perfect illustration of exactly the concept the guy was talking about in the beginning, blow back, and it seemed to me, like an obvious clue that the shooter was a cop. It's revealed almost immediately that it was a cop so it's not exactly like they're expecting you to take the clue and figure it out yourself, but the bookending of the lecture in the beginning and the shooting at the end was so beautifully just on the line between subtle and obvious and part of what made it so perfect was the way they cut together the shooting scene.
So, as much as the acting and the writing make a movie for me, I thought that the editing and directing Oscars were well deserved by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese for The Departed. It was really a beautifully made film in every way.
And one last thing. Al Gore at the Oscars = priceless. Seriously, there should be a MasterCard commercial about it.
Anyone who knows me knows that I love movies and that I love the Oscars. Watching the Oscars though, kind of melts my brain, you know, in that way that sitting next to a hot guy in class kind of melts your brain, like that. So there's no guarantee that I'll be able to write coherently.
Again, if you know me, or read this blog, you know that I really wanted Leonardo Dicaprio to win an Oscar. For me, acting and writing are what really make films and acting and writing are all about making people feel something. Watching movies or reading stories would be a waste of my time if they didn't make me feel anything. In the movies all sorts of factors combine to make people feel something starting with a good story, but it doesn't matter how great the story is if the actors aren't able to capture the emotion at the heart of the story. Leonardo Dicaprio gets it done every time. Every. Time. I thought he deserved an Oscar the first time I saw him on screen (in This Boys Life), but he wasn't even nominated then and he didn't win tonight.
Forrest Whitaker won the best actor award tonight and as disappointed as it makes me that Leonardo Dicaprio didn't win I appreciated Forrest Whitaker winning primarily because his acceptance speech was beautiful. And speaking of acceptance speeches, the producer of The Departed (and Blood Diamond) acknowledged Leonardo Dicaprio's superior acting skill in his acceptance speech for best picture. It made me happy to hear someone else echo my opinion because so frequently I hear disagreement when I start to argue that Leonardo Dicaprio is one of the best actors working today.
It was also a nice consolation to me that The Departed won so many Oscars since it was my favorite movie last year. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the only movie I saw in the theater last year. Of course I was happy it won best picture, and I was glad to see Martin Scorsese win best director. The one that really made me happy though, was the award for film editing.
Odd, you might think, that I noticed the film's editing, that anyone would notice film editing in any film really (aside from film editors), but especially that I would notice it since I'm a person that gets lost completely in films. Sometimes, if I see a movie many, many times I'll notice all the technical aspects, but I only saw The Departed once and I did really lose myself in the story (the sound bite, by the way, when it won best picture said that Scorsese said it was the first movie he ever directed that had a plot which I'm inclined to agree with).
There was one thing that I noticed though, that was a moment brought together by, (probably) the script, the direction, cinematography, and film editing. Near the beginning, during the police academy montage, one of them, Dicaprio's character I think, is taking notes in a weapons lecture and the lecture is about blow back. The professor talks about the police issued weapon and that blow back happens when someone is shot, at close range, in the head with such a weapon. Now, presumably it's a function of the caliber of bullet (and I think the professor even says so) and certainly plenty of people other than police officers use weapons of the same caliber, however, at the end of the movie, when the elevator opens and Dicaprio's character gets shot in the head, it's the perfect illustration of exactly the concept the guy was talking about in the beginning, blow back, and it seemed to me, like an obvious clue that the shooter was a cop. It's revealed almost immediately that it was a cop so it's not exactly like they're expecting you to take the clue and figure it out yourself, but the bookending of the lecture in the beginning and the shooting at the end was so beautifully just on the line between subtle and obvious and part of what made it so perfect was the way they cut together the shooting scene.
So, as much as the acting and the writing make a movie for me, I thought that the editing and directing Oscars were well deserved by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese for The Departed. It was really a beautifully made film in every way.
And one last thing. Al Gore at the Oscars = priceless. Seriously, there should be a MasterCard commercial about it.
posted by Beth at
10:56 PM
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