Another mediocre night with Oscar

Here are some things I'd hoped never to see:

-- A Birdman parody in which Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris appeared on stage in his tighty/whiteys.

-- An Oscar show in which Boyhood won only one award, Patricia Arquette 's statue for best supporting actress.

-- A purported celebration of movies in which the high points belonged to three singers: Lady Gaga, John Legend and Common. Lady Gaga nailed a medley of songs in a tribute to The Sound of Music, and Legend and Common brought the audience to its feet with Glory, the song from Selma that went on to win an Oscar.

With their win, Legend and Common found a platform to give one of the night's best acceptance speeches, even managing to mention the appalling rate at which young black men are being incarcerated.

So what kind of night was it?

You don't need me to tell you that it seemed endless, that an affable Neil Patrick Harris got off to a great start with a rousing musical number and then sank under the weight of a ton of lamely written material.

I'm not an ardent Birdman supporter, so Oscar's finale didn't buoy my spirits, either.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won best director. Birdman won best original screenplay, and, of course, took home best-picture honors.

I felt sad for Boyhood and Richard Linklater, an indie-oriented director who may not get another shot at an Oscar. I'd have felt better if the Academy had split its votes, giving Birdman best picture and Linklater, best director.

Despite complaints about this year's lack of women and people of color, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does seem to be changing.

Time was movies such as The Theory of Everything (British and a bit middlebrow) and Selma (socially powerful) would have been frontrunners for best-picture honors. Neither was.

And Oscar seems as removed from popular tastes as ever. Julianne Moore's victory as best actress was well-deserved, but I wonder how many people saw Still Alice, a heartbreaking movie about a brilliant college professor forced to deal with early onset Alzheimer's.

Was I upset that Eddie Redmayne, who played physicist Steven Hawking in The Theory of Everything, beat Michael Keaton (Birdman) in the best-actor category? Not really.

I've always liked Keaton, but thought Redmayne had the more difficult role. Despite Hawking's debilitating ALS, Redmayne never failed to show us the man's brilliance, arrogance and wit.

What else but random thoughts are possible during a telecast that tended to stagger under the weight of its own mediocrity?

-- Notable acceptance speeches came from Graham Moore (who won the best-adapted-screenplay Oscar for The Imitation Game) and from Patricia Arquette, who used the stage as a platform to call for wage equality for women.

Moore, who mentioned that he attempted suicide at age 16, encouraged those young people who feel different or alienated to hang in. Their day, he said, will come.

-- I was happy for Alexandre Desplat, who won best original score for The Grand Budapest Hotel, his first Oscar win after eight nominations. Desplat is a great composer of movie music.

-- I wondered if Clint Eastwood applauded when Laura Poitras won the best documentary Oscar for Citizen Four, her movie about Edward Snowden.

-- I was surprised that Whiplash won the Oscar for best editing, but upon reflection remembered that the movie's editor, Tom Cross, made a story about a jazz-obsessed drummer (Miles Teller) feel like an action movie.
Cross did a fine job, but Boyhood, which was shot over 12 years, must have been the more difficult movie to edit.

-- The In Memoriam section put a lump in my throat.

-- It struck me that the best visual effects category consisted of movies that a majority of viewers might actually have seen: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Interstellar won.

-- Wouldn't the telecast have been better if Harry Belafonte, Maureen O'Hara, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and animator Hayao Miyazaki had been honored at the big show rather than at a separate Governor's Awards program.

I'd rather have seen them than the chaotic Everything is Awesome production number. The tune -- from The Lego Movie -- was nominated for best song.

-- And who thought it was a good idea that director Pawel Pawilkowski, whose Ida won best foreign-language film, had to compete with the band to finish his acceptance speech?

-- The set? It was arcade gaudy. Maybe that's why Harris occasionally wandered into the audience, a move that mostly fell flat. So did a running gag about Harris's Oscar predictions, which supposedly were being kept under lock and key.

Still, maybe some good came out of the evening. Best supporting actor winner J.K. Simmons (of Whiplash) told people to call their parents.

With Simmons on the case, who needs Jewish mothers?

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead. Put Oscar behind you, and call home.

For a complete list of Oscar winners, click here.

It's almost over -- Oscar season, that is

Birdman and Boyhood in tight race for best picture.

Current wisdom has it that 2015 has given us one of the tightest Oscar races in years. Clear frontrunners have yet to emerge in several important categories, namely best picture, best director and best actor.
That may be true, but I have to confess that even several tightly contested races haven't gotten me psyched for Sunday's Oscars. In truth, the moment I'm most eagerly anticipating is the end of what feels like another interminable awards season.
Having said that, I suppose it's incumbent on me to make a few Oscar predictions, so here goes:

Best Picture
Birdman will win.
The competition has narrowed to a battle between Boyhood and Birdman. It's entirely possible that Boyhood will prove victorious, but Birdman seems to have received a boost of inevitably from victories at the Producers and Directors Guild awards, where it won best picture and best director honors respectively.
Besides, I know moviegoers whose judgment I respect who believe Boyhood doesn't quite live up to its reputation. A little underwhelming, they argue.
I'm going against my gut by picking Birdman, but my gut often finds itself out of alignment with Hollywood thinking.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope Boyhood takes best picture, but I'm prepared for Birdman to fly.
Best possible upset: Selma surprises everyone and wins best picture.

Best director
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
It's not unreasonable to expect a split vote for best picture and best director with Birdman winning best picture and Richard Linklater (Boyhood) winning best director.
A favorable outcome for Linklater might depend on whether the Academy decides that this well-regarded indie director -- who spent 12 years making his movie -- can't go home without some recognition.
But ...
It may be difficult to stop Inarritu since he's already won the Directors Guild award and because his movie bowed much later in the year than Boyhood, which had its premiere more than a year ago last month at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Of course, there's yet another possibility: Inarritu wins best director, but Boyhood snags best-picture honors.

Best Actor
Eddie Redmayne will win for The Theory of Everything.
Lots of folks think Birdman's Michael Keaton will take home Oscar gold for his portrayal of a desperate Hollywood actor trying to make a comeback on Broadway.
Keaton, who hasn't starred in a movie in a while, certainly makes for a better Hollywood story than Redmayne: Veteran actor re-emerges to wow voters or something like that.
But the Screen Actors Guild award went to Redmayne, and actors make up the Academy's biggest voting bloc. Ergo, my pick.
Besides, Redmayne was terrific as physicist Steven Hawking; he deserves credit for keeping Theory of Everything from falling into disease-of-the week sentimentality. He portrayed Hawking's ALS-related disabilities with alarming accuracy, but never lost sight of Hawking's wit, brilliance and humanity.
If there's a dark horse here, it's Bradley Cooper. How could a Cooper victory happen? If Redmayne and Keaton wind up splitting voters, Cooper has a chance.
Besides, even people who don't admire American Sniper concede that Cooper gave one hell of a performance as Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

Best Actress
We're now crossing into safer terrain for predictions.
Julianne Moore wins the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of a college professor battling a rapidly advancing case of Alzheimer's. This is a strong category, but Moore deserves to win -- not only for her performance in Still Alice, but for a career geared toward excellence -- with a few digressions, of course. Let's not talk about her first movie of 2015: The misbegotten Seventh Son.

Best Supporting Actor
The Oscar goes to J.K. Simmons. Why go against the wave of support Simmons already has received with Golden Globe and SAG awards?
If you think Simmons was scary and intimidating as a sadistic music teacher in Whiplash, you've forgotten his portrayal of a white supremacist in 56 episodes of HBO's Oz.

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette will win.
Arquette may not have quite as much support as Simmons, but she'll have enough to win an Oscar for her work as an often-frustrated single mother in Boyhood.

Now for some quicker hits:
Look for The Imitation Game to emerge victorious in the best adapted screenplay category. I'm betting that The Grand Budapest Hotel will win best original screenplay for Wes Anderson , although -- for my money -- the movie is more a brilliant display of visual wit than anything else.
I'm going to skip most of the so-called technical categories, except to note that Birdman will win a cinematography Oscar for Emmanuel Lubezki, who also won in that category last year for his work on Gravity. Talk about being on a roll.
As for documentaries: It doesn't look as if anything can stop Citizen Four from taking home an Oscar, although I can't help but wonder whether Academy voters have at least some mixed feelings about Edward Snowden, the film's subject.
I'm thinking the Polish film Ida will win best foreign-language film, although this category can (and has) produced upsets. If I had a vote, it would have gone to Leviathan.
I'll be watching and Tweeting Sunday evening, contributing to the great snarkfest that now accompanies every awards show.
I believe the annual gathering at which Hollywood celebrates itself is fair game for snark.
Let's face it, the lengthy telecast seldom proves entertaining, and the results don't necessarily reveal anything essential about the cultural moment in which we're living.
We watch because ... well ... because we do.
Let's face it, being movie lovers often necessitates putting ourselves in the position of rejected lovers who refuse to take a hint. No matter how many times the Oscar show bores or disappoints us, we always seem to return for more.

'Birdman' tries to ruffle lots of feathers

A vibrantly presented world, but what's there to care about?.

If you've been following this year's film festival news, you know that director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman -- or more pretentiously Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance -- has taken flight in critical circles.

Michael Keaton, who hasn't occupied center stage in a movie for a while, has received raves for portraying a washed-up movie star trying to make a comeback on Broadway.

And even those who've objected to Inarritu's cacophonous, multi-story approach in 21 Grams and Babel seem to regard Birdman as a striking improvement.

I begin this way because Birdman arrives with a cache that proclaims the film a brilliant riff on celebrity, movies, stardom and heaven knows what else.

Obviously, I wouldn't have mentioned any of this unless I intended to take a different -- and less effusive -- tack.

Creative, willing to plunge into fantasy without apology or explanation and sharply acted, Birdman resembles, as someone has pointed out, a high-wire act -- except (and here's the rub) the wire might be located no more than two feet off the ground.

Put another way, Birdman has its virtues, but revovles around a less-than-riveting question: Can a movie star we don't particuarly like and with whom we may not identify earn a reputation as a credible actor?

Keaton portrays Riggan Thomas an actor who made his mark playing a superhero called Birdman. Thomas ditched the franchise, but eventually fell into hard times. Now, his money and self-respect are running out.

To redeem his reputation, Riggan has written a play, an adpation of a Raymond Carver story called What We Talk About When We Talk abokut Love. What rides on the play's success? For Riggan: Everything. For us? Much less.

Keaton does a fine job playing a man who's plummeting even as he's trying to take flight. Riggan is tormented by the blatant commericalism of his past success; his box-office triumphs drag on him like an anchor.

But even in a comedy this caustic, it would be nice to give a damn about whether Riggan saved himself or not. I can't say that I did.

Riggan fights an internal battle, even as he faces various obstacles that threaten his play. He often hears the voice of his Birdman character, either berating him for his failures or reminding him that he could (and should) reclaim his place as a bona fide movie star who doesn't need the pipsqueak acclaim of the New York theater crowd.

Working with the gifted cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity and The Tree of Life), Inarritu employs a ferociously mobile camera as he attempts to make it seem as if the entire story is unfolding in a single take, an approach that's augmented by Antonio Sanchez's solo drum score. It's a feat of sorts, but put to what end?

OK, so Keaton played Batman, and stopped playing Batman. For some, this shard of show-business reality adds resonance to Inarritu's movie, but I can't imagine anyone confusing Keaton with the character he's playing.

Most of the story takes place in the tumultuous days before the play's opening: Among Riggan's problems: A cast member has been struck on the head by a stage light that detached from its moorings.

Riggan, who's both starring in and directing the play, hires a replacement, an apparently well-regarded theatrical actor (Edward Norton), a performer whose attempts to find realism in everything he plays reaches ludicrous levels.

Norton finds comedy in the self-inflation of a talented actor who believes that he's fighting a lonely battle to save the culture.

Also along for what's mostly a backstage ride is Riggan's daughter (Emma Stone). She's fresh from rehab and almost always in couldn't-care-less mode.

Stone has a power moment when her character tells her father that nothing about him matters, and he'd best get used to it. Stone then shows us -- as anger drains from her face -- that she realizes she may have gone too far.

We also meet an actress who's finally realizing her dream of appearing on Broadway (Naomi Watts).Zach Galifianakis plays Riggan's attorney and principal advisor, a mostly exasperated fellow who's constantly trying to save Riggan from himself.

Low-grade contempt runs through the entire movie -- for Hollywood and its blockbuster lust, for actors who either are portrayed as deeply insecure or phenomenal twits and for the audience, which is left to ponder the meaning of realistically presented images in which Riggan moves objects with his mind. Power fantasies from a man who seems to control nothing?

The screenplay tosses in some additional characters, notably Thomas' former wife (Amy Ryan) and his actress girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough). Early on, she tells Riggan that she's pregnant, the last bit of news someone in his precarious position needs to hear.

Much of the movie is marked by scorn, but Inarritu really forces his point when we meet the drama critic for The New York Times (Lindsay Duncan). She insists that she's going to destroy the play, even though she hasn't seen it.

Why? Because she detests everything that Riggan stands for; i.e., Hollywood commercialism. Even in a movie with satirical aspirations, it's just another cheap shot.

Look, Inarritu's clearly trying to push his movie out of the usual big-screen comfort zones. But I found Birdman to be marching to a drumbeat of self-absorption, and for all of its agitated craft, it's not without dull spots.

Birdman is about the ways in which artists risk everything and bystanders (and critics) risk nothing. With all humility, I'd say that real risk takers don't feel the need to point out that they're laying everything on the line. They just do it.

You can spend a lot of time deconstructing Birdman, but you may find that once you've done with the exercise, you haven't arrived anywhere that deeply matters.