It's the night before the Oscars. The strike has been settled, so there will be awards. Jon Stewart, whom I enjoyed two years ago, is back as host. So why am I not more excited?
As I've grumbled about before, the excessive amount of guilds and critics circles eliminate almost all suspense when it comes to winners. As I said to my mother this afternoon, "You can take a nap during Best Actor and Supporting Actor." I mean really, is there anything Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem haven't won? They're probably award winners on Pluto - that is, if Pluto didn't suspend its ceremonies when its planetary status was stripped last year. (Bardem is more than deserving in my book; I'm a lot more ambivalent about Day-Lewis and There Will Be Blood, about which I'm STILL not motivated to write a review five weeks after seeing it.)
I think my other problem is that I'm simply not as passionate about the 2007 selections as I was about anything on 2006 10 Best list. A year after that ceremony, I still think about the regal Helen Mirren, "Shipping up to Boston" - OK, maybe because it's on my iPod - Penelope Cruz' warmth in Volver ... and, conversely, how much I hated Babel. (Was it wrong of me to wish Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's whiny children dead?) Almost nothing from 2007 inspires that kind of emotion in me, good or bad. I respect more than love the latest crop of flicks. I want to gush for weeks about something again and nag everyone I know to see a particular movie. I can't remember the last time I did that.
Our Oscar party this year is more muted, too. My father is doing great in his recovery from throat cancer, but I'm not sure raw veggies will go down well. I'm recuperating from my third stomach virus of the winter. My brother moved to New York on Wednesday, and he can't come back to Boston yet. My parents and sister-in-law have seen very little they can discuss.
Hopefully the fashion won't disappoint. I need something to gab about Monday!
P.S. My choices from Jan. 22 and Feb. 16 still hold. In summary: No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers, Mortensen, Christie (I've now seen The Savages, though; Laura Linney was her awesome self), Bardem (I've also seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; I ended up doing my laundry), Swinton, Lars and the Real Girl, abstention from adapted screenplay.
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