This is going to be a rather long post, but bear with me!
First off, let me clear something up. People (actually friends since I don't have any other followers yet!) have been asking me why I hadn't written anything after the Oscars. Well, I've been horrifyingly busy! Last week my adviser dumped a whole new project on me and after finishing that I had to study for my midterm, and as you know I was also hosting an Oscar party, so I had to take time to prepare for that one too! But believe me I was killing myself to get back to my blog as soon as possible. So here it is:
The shock of the evening was the directing category. After the front runner of many other awards, Affleck, was not included in the Oscar nominees, everybody was rooting for Spielberg, or even O. Russell and Haneke. But no one saw this coming! (Maybe they did but I don't know of).
After they announced Ang Lee's name, it was like I had an epiphany! I said DUH! I should have known! He had directed the "un-directable" movie...a movie that no one thought could be ever made. And of course that is something that should be celebrated. And I congratulate the Academy for doing so. A rightful choice.
By the way, I just read that the visual effects artists of Life of Pi have been criticizing Ang Lee since Sunday night, for not acknowledging their work. I am sure he must have been more than grateful since the movie was nothing without the effects. But just put yourself in his shoes for one second and imagine how it must feel like getting up there. You are excited, overwhelmed, you try to remember everyone while digesting what has just happened (which in this case since it was unpredictable must've been harder to digest!), and it is basically impossible to remember all the names unless you have written them down before hand. So give the guy a little break, will you?!
I've come to learn in life that whatever you do, no matter how much you try to keep everyone pleased, there still will be a fair share of people who you will make upset unintentionally! So, we have your back Ang! I feel for you!
Why is everyone hating Anne Hathaway?
The second shock of the evening was Michelle Obama announcing the best picture of the year. (I am not going in any kind of order here...just jotting down whatever I remember!) I was disappointed when she showed up, since I thought this must mean that they have picked Lincoln! But as one of my friends reminded me, they had done the same thing with president Clinton showing up at the Golden Globes, and still Argo had won!
And what a reflection Iran's "coverage" of Michelle Obama had in the press here! :D
The funny thing is that I had the weirdest dream last night. I saw that I am at the airport with my brother and we are picking up Michelle Obama and Malia at the airport! While her younger daughter is waiting for them to arrive! And it was obvious that it must be a few years back since they were both kids! Then I turned to my brother and said wow, how could he let such a young girl come to the airport without any escort! And he said well they are not famous yet! I said what?! Has he become a senator yet?! (As if we were from the future!) He said I think so...or maybe not yet...it's still '99! (And may I remind you that I didn't know and still don't know when exactly he had become a senator, and I know this doesn't make sense since her second daughter wasn't born yet I guess! But it was a crazy dream as I said!) And then we were on a ship together, where Obama had joined us, and I have no idea where we were off to!
Anyway, enough with the crazy!
Moving on, I've gotta say I really likes Seth MacFarlane as a host. He is one of the funniest men alive in the US (second to Louis CK who I believe is the funniest of all!). Although, I've gotta say, in the last ten-something years that I have watched Oscar every year, no one has been able to match up to the first time Jon Stewart hosted the show (I think it was back in 2006). Even Billy Crystal's (first time in the past 10 years (I think it was 2005), though very funny, was a little behind Stewart's. But still second best in my opinion. But compared to Hugh Jackman,Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg,... Seth MacFarlane did an awesome job.
And I also reaaally liked how they celebrated music in movies.
On another note, how cute was Jennifer Lawrence and her falling down?! She is adorable no matter what she does! She has taken the definition of tomboy to a new level! :D After watching the clip showing her part in the movie, I remembered how great she was in the movie and how much she deserved this award. But at the same time, I had tears in my eyes while watching the clip-role for nominees. What an amazing array of actresses and performances! Wow! Gotta see them all.
I used to like Anne Hathaway A LOT! I found her funny and amiable, based on her roles in the Princess Diaries and the Devil Wears Prada, and her appearance in SNL, and I always thought she was extremely talented. But throughout this award season, my fondness of her gradually faded away! I thought she would be more interesting but as a person didn't seem like she...how should I explain it...she didn't have much to offer! Don't know if she used to be like this but at least has become unappealing, at least to me! And I never have liked people whose behavior is "exaggerated" and she's one of those kinds (like Golshifteh Farahani)! Of course I still respect her as an actor and still think she's talented but...not one of my favorites anymore! And seems like I am not the only one feeling like this:
And as someone says in this link, she is an actor, she is supposed to be dramatic. But I don't think so necessarily. I prefer my actors to be humble, not that she isn't, but be less dramatic!
Just to clarify, I don't hate her! I just used to like her more, that's all! And I love her haircut! If I didn't have curly hair, I would've totally gone for it!
Now the fun begins! The biggest name of the night: Argo!
I have been hearing a lot about this, especially among Iranians, about whether or not it deserved to be the best picture of the year. So I am going to share a couple of links on the way and give some explanations of my own along with them.
First of all, one of my friends shared this link after the show which talks about how much of Argo had actually happened:
But I say whatever! It was a good movie and it had served its purpose well, which was to show how Hollywood can play greater than life role in real life, and show Canada and US's relations on solving each others' problems and lean on each other in hard times (as Affleck had explained in Toronto film festival when they had first debuted the film). And might I remind you again that this was NOT a documentary.
Another thing that I saw in the media was Ali Moallem's article on his Facebook page. He is the editor-in-chief and the owner of my favorite Iranian movie magazine, Donya-ye Tassvir (as I had mentioned before in my previous posts), but unlike his magazine, I have never liked him and his articles! First of all he has an evil look on his face, the same as Pope Benedict's! :D
But joking aside he has some weird, harsh, Islamist kind, opinions about cinema which I detest! Of course, as I have said so many times before, you should be in that person's situation to know what their line of thought is coming from. You might not know this but this magazine has been shut down a few times over the past few years by the Ahmadinejad government, so this might be his way of appealing to the government so that they let him keep on publishing. This is just a theory but I never want to accuse anyone for what they say or do.
As for Argo, he has written after the Oscar night that politics helped Argo win whereas Life of Pi should have won! And he has tried to justify this by counting the number of Awards each movie won that night which is a weird, unprofessional thing to do! But I agree with one part of his article. He said that Argo is not a classic movie and probably will be forgotten in a year or two, which I agree. But this doesn't mean that all the movies that have won before were classics and at the same time it doesn't mean that it wasn't the best movie of the year.
If you know Farsi, here's the link:
But as Nikahang Kowsar (the Iranian cartoonist) mentioned in his status on Facebook, why didn't anyone say anything about politics when A Separation won an Oscar for Iran last year?! Now that Hollywood has shown Iran in a new light, which was a fair one in my opinion, now you say it's all politics?! No, no. That couldn't be it.
I also like how Ben Affleck had done his research about Iran and how he tried to show Iranians in a good way and make them better known to world in all his interviews and acceptance speeches. I appreciate what he's been trying to do, which so many people have left unnoticed.
But the best opinion of all (closest to mine! :D) was Tahmineh Milani's (a well-known Iranian filmmaker). On her Facebook page, which turned out to be a very controversial comment she's made since many Iranians are angry with Argo for some reason, she says Argo is a good movie but not outstanding, and since there weren't any "outstanding" movies this year, Argo with the plot it had, had a better chance of winning. She says unlike many people, she doesn't believe that this movie had antagonist approach towards Iran and Iranian politicians, and if there was any approach, it was to serve as an ameliorater (I just made up a word!) between the two countries (Iran and the US). And she says that if Hollywood wanted to make a movie against Iran, it could have done so easily with the power it has. And Argo, except for a few scenes, has shown a rather "mild" view of the way Iran was back then. She also says to choose the best picture of the year, one should see them all (which she claims to have done so) and says maybe Django was better if we look at directing (which Tarantino failed to get a nomination as had Affleck!), but definitely none of the other nominees had anything better to offer than Argo did (in her comments she mentions that she hasn't seen Life of Pi yet, so I don't know if she'll change her mind after that, but by far, this was, in my opinion, the best of all among the ones I have seen from people involved in cinema).
I hope you've survived this looong loooong post! :D
I wanted to break this post down to two, making one about the Oscars in general and the other one about Argo, but since I wanted to post them both at the same time and I knew that the viewing of them wouldn't have been fair to either one (as many might have skipped one!), I kept it as a whole.
Stay tuned for another post coming soon! (hopefully!)
