Oscars end awards
season on high note

Accepting an award for someone else at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards, Jim Sheridan declared that “after all these awards ceremonies, I don’t know who I am.”

Indeed, never have so many nationally televised movie-awards shows been crammed into so short a period. Thanks to the Academy Awards, which moved from late March/early April to the last day in February, everything has accelerated.

By the time the Oscars were presented last night, effectively ending the movie awards season, each show had established its own points of distinction. While nothing grabs worldwide attention like the Oscars, the other shows are beginning to develop followings precisely because of their differences.

At the Golden Globes, which were as loose as ever, Meryl Streep got in a snarky slap at President Bush’s fixation on steroids in the State of the Union speech. At the somewhat stiffer Screen Actors’ Guild awards, Tim Robbins and Sean Astin promoted union solidarity, while an “In Memoriam” segment saluted not only Katharine Hepburn and Gregory Peck but a host of recently deceased actors whose faces were more familiar than their names.

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Last night’s Oscar ceremonies also saluted Hepburn and Peck as well as Bob Hope, though the more obscure faces from the SAG show were left out. Blake Edwards, the one living person who was given an Oscar tribute this year, was poorly served by a tacky collage of film clips that did little to illuminate his career.

Fortunately, he saved the day by making a slapstick entrance/exit worthy of one of his Pink Pather comedies. He dashed across the stage in a wheelchair that seemed to have spun out of control, grabbing the Oscar from presenter Jim Carrey.

The show needed more loopy moments like that. There were few surprises, thanks to the clean sweep made by “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,” which won all the Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including best picture, screenplay adaptation and director (Peter Jackson). This ties the New Zealand epic with “Titanic” and “Ben-Hur,” which also won 11 statues apiece (and also ran for more than three hours apiece), though it makes for a tedious awards show when a movie takes another statue every time its title is announced.

One of the producers of Canada’s “The Barbarian Invasions,” which won best foreign-language film, said she was grateful that “Lord of the Rings” hadn’t been nominated in her category. After the movie picked up a batch of technical awards, Billy Crystal, the emcee, joked that “it’s now official: there is no one left in New Zealand to thank.”

Crystal-clear performance
Crystal was sharp as ever, slipping in cracks about the gaps in President Bush’s National Guard record and the language spoken in Mel Gibson’s new Biblical epic, while joking about the dangers of being too frank about contemporary politics. When Errol Morris, winner of the documentary prize for “The Fog of War,” compared Vietnam to Iraq, which he called another “rabbit hole,” Crystal was there to quip, “I can’t wait for his tax audit.”

All of this was lost on Sean Penn, who won the Oscar for best actor for “Mystic River” and proceeded to mention his own warnings about Iraq: “If there’s one thing that actors know, other than that there weren’t any WMDs, um, it’s that there is no such thing as best acting.” He then proceeded to praise his fellow nominees as well as several actors who weren’t nominated, including Paul Giamatti (“American Splendor”), Robert Downey Jr. (“The Singing Detective”) and Jack Nicholson (“Something’s Gotta Give”).

Gary Hershorn / REUTERS Sean Penn was one of the few actors to make a political statement in his acceptance speech.

It was the kind of speech that stirred memories of the feisty, unpredictable 2003 Oscars, especially Michael Moore’s anti-war rant (briefly included in Crystal’s opening montage) and the behavior of last year’s winner for best actor, Adrien Brody, who had been so ecstatic that he power-kissed Halle Berry, the award presenter. This time he announced that he was working under a restraining order, before he announced that Charlize Theron had won best actress for “Monster.” But he still prepared for another kiss by spraying his mouth.

Theron nearly lost it when she got around to thanking her mother, then pulled back and announced “I’m not gonna cry.” Tim Robbins (best supporting actor for “Mystic River”) called attention to the abused nature of the character he played and encouraged people in similar situations to seek help.

Sofia Coppola, who won for best original screenplay for “Lost in Translation,” thanked the filmmakers who had influenced her, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Bob Fosse and Jean-Luc Godard. Renee Zellweger, the supporting-actress winner for “Cold Mountain,” read off a long list of people to thank, as did most of the winners.

'No need to thank your parakeet'
Jack Black and Will Ferrell, accompanied by the pushy music that means acceptance speeches have gone into overtime, wickedly sang the never-before-heard lyrics to the tune: “This is it, your time is through, you’re boring . . . no need to thank your parakeet.”

John Waters hosted the more entertaining, less repetitious Independent Spirit Awards, which were held the day before the Oscars in a Santa Monica tent. Every bit as mischievous as Crystal, Waters announced his intolerance for moviegoers who avoid subtitles (“These people deserve to die”) and for theaters that show things other than movies (“The next time you pay to see a movie and they show a commercial, boo!”). Waters also wrestled with Jack Valenti, who hand-cuffed him and pulled him off the stage for losing a screener cassette (Valenti tried to ban the use of screener videos last year).

Gary Hershorn / Reuters Actors Jack Black, left, and Will Ferrell sing an ode to boring acceptance speeches before presenting the award for Best Original Song.

The Indy awards have no illusions about their influence, even though it does appear to be growing. Maggie Gyllenhaal, announcing the year’s best independent picture, pointed out that the movie would likely be catapulted “from total obscurity to relative obscurity.” Still, when the envelope was opened, the big winner turned out to be “Lost in Translation,” which has already risen quite a bit from relative obscurity.

The lasting value of movie awards is, of course, pretty suspect. International polls of film critics almost always single out three movies from the 1950s as among Hollywood’s greatest: “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Searchers” and “Vertigo.” None of them won an Oscar; none was even in the running for best picture, director or script. All were swamped by movies whose reputations have faded.

And it’s not entirely Oscar’s fault. All three of these classics were passed over by the Golden Globes, the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review. And only a few film critics understood their value at the time.

Which overlooked films from 2003 will look unexpectedly brilliant in 50 years? “American Splendor,” “Spider,” “Swimming Pool,” “Shattered Glass,” “Elephant,” “A Mighty Wind” and “The Station Agent” all seem like reasonable candidates at the moment. Still, in spite of the fact that 2003 was a very good year, none of them yet looks like another “Singin’ in the Rain.”

John Hartl is a Seattle-based writer and MSNBC.com's film critic.

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