Oscars.

"Twenty-six years and seven snubs after his first Oscar nomination, for Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese finally felt the warm embrace of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Sunday as he was named best director and his murderous mob thriller The Departed was named the best picture of 2006," write David M Halbfinger and Sharon Waxman in the New York Times. Thelma Schoonmaker, picking up her third Oscar, is quoted regarding their collaboration: "It's like being in the best film school in the world." A slide show.

"The only real cheer of the night from the press came when Martin Scorsese won the best director award," blogs David Carr. "The whole room erupted in a huge roar."

Updated through 2/28.

Ellen DeGeneres brought "a casual Friday mood to Fancy Sunday," writes Alessandra Stanley. Plus, Eric Wilson on what was worn (another slide show).

As for another winner of the evening: "It is worse than painful to reflect on how much better off the United States and the world would be today if the outcome of the 2000 election had been permitted to correspond with the wishes of the electorate," writes New Yorker editor David Remnick. "With his documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, [Al] Gore made the undeniability of the [climate] crisis a matter of consensus; thanks largely to him, an environmental issue will be an electoral issue. His secular evangelism has earned him an honored night at the Academy Awards and - almost as glittering - a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.... If the next few months produce an obvious and relatively intact nominee, fine. Gore can stay active in his new role, and perhaps carry that role further, as a kind of climate czar in a Democratic Administration. But, as someone once said, stuff happens."

"If The Departed outlives Sunday night's other nominees, it won't be because it was necessarily a better movie," writes Patrick Goldstein. "It will survive because genre movies, be they thrillers, westerns or comedies, have a timelessness and a lack of pretense that tend to age better than films about topical subjects or social issues.... 'I'll never forget watching Public Enemy,' Scorsese said backstage, referring to the seminal 1931 gangster film. 'The brutal honesty. The street honesty always stayed with me. That's a mark I always aimed towards. This film had that kind of attitude.'"

Also in the Los Angeles Times: John Horn on how no campaign was the best campaign for The Departed; Kenneth Turan: "It is not the happiest state of affairs that Hollywood, once the storyteller to the world, has to go to another culture to get its best ideas"; and Tina Daunt: "Gore was the man of the moment for much of the evening."

"William Monahan - I remember him. He and I were on the same internet chat board. He's nominated for an Oscar and I'm blogging the Oscars. Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?" murmurs James Wolcott.

"The Academy clearly likes penguins," notes the Guardian's Xan Brooks.

"Alan Arkin wins! Do push-ups! Do push-ups!" Erik Davis at Cinematical.

"Jennifer Hudson is so refreshingly Not of That World," writes Cintra Wilson at Salon. "She's a perfect Rosetta Stone for the big secret of star power - it's not about how small your nose is, but how expansively and gracefully you accept yourself; how much of yourself you can lovingly reveal."

"Somebody explain to me how you can watch Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men and think that Pan's Labyrinth is the better work of cinematography?" Jeffrey Overstreet.

"A 'Best Original Song' Oscar for a documentary?" wonders Matt Dentler out loud. "This is unprecedented, and likely to change the way docs are scored (after acquisition most likely) in the near future. Ladies and gentlemen, you have witnessed the birth of a brand new doc trend..." AJ Schnack adds that Truth is the first doc to win two Oscars, period.

That Little Round-Headed Boy: "Ya know, God bless Al Gore and the campaign against global warming. But if I might interject a bit of politics into the evening, this constant coronation of the man rubs me the wrong way. I voted for him. But if he hadn't run such a boneheaded campaign to begin with, he should have run up an even higher vote count and not left any states too close to call. He should have waltzed in. He could have been watching tonight's show from the White House instead of making jokes about it."

"Overheard at the Oscar Party: Part Nine: 'Gwyneth Paltrow is acting like she understands.' ... Overheard at the Oscar Party: Part Ten: ' They should've used Queen songs in The Queen.' ... Overheard at the Oscar Party: Part Eleven: 'Here comes Beyoncé with a KNIFE!'" Phil Morehart at Facets Features.

"This room isn't giving much love to punk rock pioneers James Taylor and Randy Newman. Well, they kept it short. And here's Melissa Etheridge. And the room is begging James Taylor and Randy Newman to come back." Glenn Kenny.

"I'll say it again," says Dave Micevic, "the Academy spends way too much of its time on the songs... Do directors show up to the Grammy's and intermittently play short films for the audience? If they don't, they should. It would only be fair."

"[W]hat the hell was the shadow puppets?" asks Edward Copeland. "Could they not get Mummenschanz? If they really want to boost ratings, why not have Puppetry of the Penis create images evoking nominated films next year."

Joe Leydon, echoing many sentiments out there: "Sorry, but Michael Mann's montage of clips meant to represent how America is represented in the movies must rank among the most muddle-headed efforts of its kind in Oscar history."

"Of course, the evening's big disappointment was that Martin Scorsese did not join his fellow great directors - Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang - who never won an Oscar in competition," writes Jim Emerson. "nstead, he joins Norman Taurog, John G Avildsen and Sam Mendes as one of the immortals whose name will always, from this moment on, be preceded by the term 'Academy Award-winning' as if it were a prefix. (I kid.)"

"It was a smooth move on the part of the telecast to have Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas present the Best Director category," blogs Bill Gibron at PopMatters. "Though it gave conspiracy theorists fuel to fuss that the Academy Awards voting (and results) are not as secret as one thinks, it was awesome to see Scorsese take the stage to the warm embraces of the men with whom he helped shape the 70s - the last great decade of film."

"Most Embarrassing Moment: When Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg were dubbed the 'original' Three Amigos." Nick Schager.

"I know that a cadre of naysayers will be bitching and moaning about how Infernal Affairs was a better movie and how this is nowhere near Scorsese's best work and shouldn't the real Best Picture, say The Death Of Mr Lazarescu have, in the best of all possible worlds, won the Oscar and blah blah blah," jots Tom Hall. "You can only win the race you're in and tonight, somehow, Martin Scorsese and The Departed beat the odds and were rightly awarded Best Director and Best Picture of The Year."

"He's the reason I got interested in movies," writes the AV Club's Scott Tobias. "Scorsese's coronation was inevitable, but sweet nonetheless. I wish he had 20 minutes just to free associate."

"Diane Keaton comes out with Jack Nicholson to present Best Picture and as much as we'd like to wrap this up quickly, we need to take a sidebar to mention that she looks fantastic." The Fug Girls for New York.

"This year, the Oscars weren't sending a message, political or otherwise," writes Nikki Finke. "They simply went with the best picture, which happened to be a gangster tale this year." Earlier: "I kept hearing all weekend how the show was being cut, cut, cut. Well, congrats, Laura Ziskin: you produced a show that was NO FUN whatsoever."

"I have never been so bored with the Academy Awards in my entire life," groans Anthony Kaufman.

"I thought it was the worst produced Oscar show in memory," agrees David Poland.

"It was the most elegant and somehow gentle Oscarcast I can remember," counters Roger Ebert, watching at home for the first time in 30 years.

"[A]n exemplary telecast," agrees Nick Davis. "Somehow, Oscar almost never takes this obvious lesson, but the Academy Awards show should entertain a wide audience while also serving an ambassadorial, gently informative purpose for all of the arts it recognizes within commercial filmmaking." He argues that Ziskin did just that.

Nathaniel R: "Ellen as Host: Yes please. Let's do it again."

DK Holm offers half a dozen suggestions for improving Oscar Night at ScreenGrab. Similarly, but also not at all, Micah at Reel Distraction on "how the Academy Awards would be handled in a better world."

Online viewing tip #1. Ray Pride points to Errol Morris's short.

Online viewing tip #2. Jason Kottke points ancestors of the iPhone commercial.

From Rebecca Winters Keegan's backstage diary for Time:

6:43: Ooh, snap! The trash-talking sound mixers of Dreamgirls address an apparently hot button issue in the sound community: Apocalypto mixer Kevin O'Connell, the Susan Lucci of the category, who has never won an Oscar despite 19 nominations: "I just wonder what Kevin's trying to do out there by trying to get an award using sympathy," says Oscar winner Michael Minkler. "Kevin's an OK mixer, but enough's enough about Kevin." And you thought actresses were catty.

[...]

7:53 Biggest press room applause so far follows the entry of Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Those German journalists sure are nationalistic! I repress the urge to stand and declare, 'I am a jelly donut.' Someone asks a question comparing Dick Cheney to the KGB. The director wisely points out that said journalist would be killed for asking that question were the comparison really apt.

"'No way,' the Academy proclaimed, as they dug [Peter] O'Toole's grave and danced on it." Mark Bell at Film Threat.

"So we tasted a robust, well-modulated Arabica blend of 2005-style indie cred and classic Tinseltown glamour, not quite fully middlebrow but not too arty either. Hollywood has become Starbucks. (So has everything else, but that's a more complicated argument.)" Andrew O'Hehir, one of half a dozen commentators in a Salon roundup.

"[T]he show settled into the most blandly self-congratulatory snooze-fest the Academy has staged in years," writes Dave Kehr. "So that's over, and now the industry can get back to making Ghost Rider II."

"[W]hy do journalists say such nasty things about the Oscars, when most people sort of enjoy watching the telecast?" The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle gets asked this all the time. And the answer is "easy. Journalists don't like the show because it runs overtime and screws up our deadlines.... So while you approach the show as a chance to have fun, we approach it with some anxiety. And while you can get up and leave the room during the interpretive dance, we have to stay, just in case it ends early or Jack Nicholson drops dead, or someone's dress falls off."

Chuck Tryon notes that the LAT's Kenneth Turan's remark (see above) "ignores the fact that Hollywood has always turned to other cultures for some of its best stories."

"I have no particular love for The Departed, but I'm not made of stone," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "It would have been too much to see those Groucho Marx eyebrows knitted together in chagrin as Clint strode past them to the podium once more."

Flickhead: "Hey, Forest, you've got the world by the balls. Any chance you can bring your angst down a notch?"

Nick Antosca at Ed Champion's party: "helen mirren helen mirren HELEN MIRREN."

"Hudson duets with Beyonce all-friendly like... and then steals Deena's big number 'Listen,' right out from under Miss Thing. (Is that like, destiny, child?) I was all ready for some hair-pulling and body blows," writes Gabriel Shanks, "or at least someone ripping out some extensions. But then Anika Noni Rose, aka 'The Forgotten Dreamgirl,' comes out in her million dollar Stewart Weitzmans and hits the high note... a piercing, gorgeous siren that seems to say, 'I can beat both you bitches down.' Next to Cate Blanchett throwing Judi Dench into a bookcase in Notes on a Scandal, this was my favorite catfight of the year."

"[W]e profess to be bone tired of celebrating films we did not love," write Marcy Dermansky and Jürgen Fauth. "Here at World/Independent Film, we'd like to use the end of another awards season to give a last shout-out to the forgotten and underrated movies of 2006, among them Down in the Valley, Lemming, Shortbus, Le Petit Lieutenant, Brick, When the Levees Broke, and of course, David Lynch's magnificent Inland Empire."

The Academy is "stuck in a portal mindset, forcing you to go to oscar.com and watch the videos," writes Steve Bryant: "Make the thank you videos embeddable, guys. Lose the pre-roll."

Online viewing tip. "I've never been more moved by an acceptance speech," writes Miljenko at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope, pointing to Ennio Morricone's.

"Morricone lifts his Oscar - others have set it down tonight - and holds it high, looking right at the camera. It's a great moment, wordless. This may be the one lasting image from tonight's broadcast." Christian Hamaker, Crosswalk.com.

"It's not about celebrating trends, it's about placing new cultural products within the historical context of Old Hollywood, thus confirming a given movie's status as capital-A Art." Karina Longworth at the Netscape Blog.

Online viewing tip. Evan Derkacz's got video of Gore having a grand night.

"Is This Funny?" asks Brendon Connelly.

Updates, 2/27: "The Oscars, more perhaps than any other US institution, is a powerhouse of strictly American feelings, and the world as a whole is not always crazy to have that kind of feeling stuffed down its throat," writes Andrew O'Hagan in the Telegraph. "Hollywood is a very small community of wealthy and successful people, devoted to the high-gloss business of congratulating itself. And despite its gestures towards 'respecting' and 'recognizing' foreign excellence, the Academy Awards ceremony only knows how to celebrate foreignness in purely American terms. That's to say - patronizingly."

"Old-line Hollywood studios, confronted over the last few years by indifferent audiences and an insurgent collection of independent film makers, declared dominion over the industry's crowning event," argues David Carr.

Also in the New York Times:

• Sharon Waxman and Eric Wilson on Vanity Fair's after-show party, that is, the after-show party.

• Advertising columnist Stuart Elliott: "Once again, the commercials that appeared during the Academy Awards seemed better than the commercials that appeared during the Super Bowl."

• And television reporter Bill Carter reports that Oscar's ratings were up slightly this year. More from Scott Collins in the Los Angeles Times.

Also in the LAT:

• Richard Rushfield wanders the halls of the Kodak Theatre: "I am distressed, downright heartbroken, to hear in 20 minutes these respected thespians say not one thing remotely interesting. They discuss how to use their BlackBerrys, jet lag, pictures of kids. Celebrities, apparently, really are just like us."

• Rachel Abramowitz at the post-Oscar Governors Ball.

• Mary McNamara on the care and maintenance of an Oscar.

David Poland lists "Ten Ways The Oscar Show Came Up Short." And more at Movie City News from Gary Dretzka.

"The overriding impression left by the evening at the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard is of a group of people far removed from the realities of American or global life." And so on. From David Walsh at the WSWS.

At ScreenGrab, Alexis Tirado gets a few words with Alan Arkin and Paul Clark compares this year's winning genre flick with 1971's, The French Connection.

"No offense to Ms Hudson, who is a terrific singer even if she's not yet a terrific actress, but I wonder about a world where she has an Oscar and Peter O'Toole doesn't." Craig Phillips.

"How many great films does a guy have to make to win a goddamn Oscar?" A Scorsese special at the First Post via Metaphilm.

The German papers are no longer unanimously approving of The Lives of Others; signandsight translates diverging takes.

More and bulkier translated quotage from Michael Scott Moore for Spiegel Online: "Is Oscar success for The Lives of Others good or bad for German cinema? Has the world finally stopped expecting Nazis to appear in prize-winning German films? Is the movie even a true portrait of the East German secret police? German papers discuss."

Paul Matwychuk:

I love the way Martin Scorsese looks these days. He's barely recognizable as the same intense, Mephistophelean guy in those photos taken on the set of Taxi Driver or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore or The Last Waltz, with that black, incongruously aristocratic beard and those hard, dark little eyes—there's a cruel, brooding expression on his face, as if someone already told him he'd have to wait 30 years before he would finally win an Oscar.

Nowadays, he's likable ol' Marty: everyone's favourite movie-crazy Italian uncle, with the Swifty Lazar eyeglasses, the Groucho Marx eyebrows, the Giorgio Armani suits and the world-beating grin.

"I'm sure Scorsese doesn't mind being referred to as a master of the crime movie; I also doubt that he would want that carved on his tombstone, either," adds Glenn Kenny. "By my count, out of the twenty fictional feature films he's made, only three of them can be described as out-and-out gangster movies."

"Gore - the son of a senator himself - was raised for the presidency. But for the moment at least, he is showing all the irritating signs of a man at peace with himself," writes Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. "With an Oscar in his fist and triumph on his face, Al Gore is a man you can tell your kid about. That, maybe, is even better than being president."

Updates, 2/28: Conservatives and libertarians are lambasting Gore for the amount of energy his household uses. Ed Pilkington has a longish report; also in the Guardian, Jeremy Kay on The Departed's successful marketing campaign and Kira Cochrane: "Mirren is great in many ways but the more she goes on and on about her deep love for our monarch, the more admiration turns to queasiness."

Geoffrey Macnab takes a good long look at Scorsese's career in the Independent.

At ScreenGrab, Leonard Pierce samples a bit of right-wing live-blogging at Libertas.

Spender Morgan gets folks talking about the "luncheons, pre-parties, after-parties and after-after-parties" for the New York Observer. More from Simon Doonan: "On the evening of Feb 25, the dykes invaded Hollywood.... These gals were hosting, vamping, performing songs, being nominated for awards - and winning! - and they were positively chewing up that red carpet with their non-stop glamour." And Andrew Sarris: "For my money, [Ellen DeGeneres] was the most effective Oscar MC ever - better even than Bob Hope or Billy Crystal."

Robert Abele shares his notes in the LA Weekly.

"Why wasn't a single reference to George W. Bush made by anyone - including Ellen DeGeneres in her gently laid-back stand-up routines?" asks Jonathan Rosenbaum. He's not taking this issue lightly, either.

"Dubbed the most international Oscars in years, Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony shall be remembered, at least by this writer, as one of the most culturally ignorant on record," writes Tim Wong in the Lumière Reader.

"See, this wouldn't be a big deal if people like Tom Shales weren't actually influential." Ryan Wu talks back to the Washington Post TV critic.

Alternet's Joshua Holland passes along Andy Borowitz's "Onion-esque report": "Supreme Court Gives Gore's Oscar to Bush."

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2007 12:51 AM