Academy overlooks winners
There were only about 10 of us in the audience on Sunday to see Kevin Bacon star in “The Woodsman.” And six of us had gone there together.
Which tells you all you need to know about how the public at large is apt to approach a film about a pedophile, even one played by Mr. “Footloose.”
The subject matter, in fact, may be why we didn’t see it in Spokane or Coeur d’Alene.
No, we squeezed ourselves into a small multiplex set in a strip mall in York, Penn., where my wife’s family lives. We watched it in a movie house that has poor sight lines, a cafeteria-quality sound system and seats that are more appropriate in a bingo parlor than any state-of-the-art movie theater.
Still, as I say, we were able to see it.
And this much I can tell you: “The Woodsman,” which tells the story of a man struggling to resist his natural criminal urges, boasts one of the more intense performances of the year. One that, arguably, should have earned Bacon a spot among the five nominees for Best Actor.
You can say it every year, and 2005 is no different: It’s hard, at times, to understand how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences makes its Oscar- related decisions. As we head into Sunday’s ceremonies, for example, several questions beg to be answered.
What does Hollywood have against Liam Neeson? The Irish actor, a Best Actor nominee in 1994 for “Schindler’s List,” was conspicuously ignored for playing the title character in “Kinsey.” He easily could have filled the space taken up by Johnny Depp, who slept his way to a Best Actor nomination in “Finding Neverland.”
How do you spell Giamatti? As in Paul, the actor whose performance in “Sideways” was nearly as good as the one he pulled off in 2003’s “American Splendor.” That portrayal, too, wasn’t deemed worthy of an Oscar nomination (even if it was good enough to take the Screen Actor’s Guild prize). When it comes to Giamatti, the Academy is clearly illiterate.
Was the “Sunshine” too “Eternal”? Apparently so, because “I (Heart) Huckabees” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” notwithstanding, Michal Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” may have been the most visually and thematically inventive film of 2004. And yet the Academy decided that it was good enough for only two – count ‘em, two – nominations: Kate Winslett for Best Actress and Gondry, Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth for Best Original Screenplay.
Who did Kevin Spacey, Michael Moore and Mel Gibson forget to pay off?
Spacey is the guy who not only wrote and directed but starred in “Beyond the Sea,” his love letter to the late pop crooner Bobby Darin. And he didn’t just star, but he sang and danced so well that even the judges on “American Idol” might have been impressed.
Moore, of course, is the gadfly documentary filmmaker who twice now, in the guise of playing the avenging muckraking angel, has managed to arouse sympathy for icons of the conservative right: Charlton Heston in the Oscar- winning film “Bowling for Columbine” and George W. Bush in the ignored-by-the-Academy “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
And Gibson? Well, he’s the guy who taught us in “The Passion of the Christ” that suffering, not forgiveness, is the true Christian message. What’s interesting about Gibson’s film in terms of the Academy are the arguments being put forth by columnists like Michael Medved that claim “The Passion” received just three Oscar nominations (Best Cinematography, Makeup and Music) because liberal Hollywood doesn’t like, one, films made by maverick filmmakers and, two, films about religion.
As if there has to be a conspiracy surrounding “The Passion” not being nominated for any of the big awards. As if no one could argue that the film is a failure on its merits.
But, hey, we Oscar observers are used to such controversy. Again, it happens every year. To the Academy, you see, one person’s masterpiece is merely another person’s misadventure.
Ask Kevin Bacon.