#oscarsnosly

Three nights earlier I had been on a podcast saying that the Oscars didn't interest me much anymore because they contained few if any surprises.

So what a surprise the 88th annual Academy Awards ended up having in store for me Monday night (Australia time). A couple, actually.

Unfortunately, they weren't all good.

If you had asked me to pick any one award that I thought was a total lock, I would have told you it was Sylvester Stallone winning best supporting actor for Creed. Yes, perhaps even ahead of Inside Out winning best animated feature and Leonardo DiCaprio winning best actor.

But it did not happen.

Instead the award went to the deserving Mark Rylance, who might have been my second choice, but a distant second to good old Sly.

And yet again one of the acting performances closest to my heart, the one with at least a 50/50 shot at winning, goes against me.

There are likely numerous examples over the years, but the ones that leap immediately to mind are the losses by Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler (both to Sean Penn, actually), and Michael Keaton just last year in Birdman. All three of those men were the leads in my favorite movie of the year. As it happens again with the secondary lead in my second favorite of the year, I guess I have to cover my ass with an ironic #oscarssowhite and #oscarssomale and #oscarssoold to account for my choices for the performances I most wanted to see awarded.

I'm sure in that same time there have been wins that delighted me just as heartily, but it's the tough losses I remember most. I didn't realize how much I wanted Stallone, who is otherwise not a favorite of mine and historically never has been, to win, until he didn't.

But not all the surprises were bad.

Spotlight taking home best picture made for probably my biggest surprise in that category since Crash sucker-punched us all back in 2005 -- a moment I mentioned in that ReelGood podcast as the last time I was really surprised in general by the Oscars. I'd venture I've guessed the best picture winner correctly in every Oscars since then, even at the times I was desperately rooting for a different winner (The Social Network). So it was a nice surprise to see Spotlight beat out presumed favorite The Revenant, which had the in-show momentum of having just picked up best actor and best director, yielding the spotlight (if you will) to a movie that hadn't picked up an award since the evening's very first (best original screenplay).

What wasn't a surprise to anyone who has marveled at what he can do on a stage is how Chris Rock struck the perfect tone for his monologue and ensuing comments about race throughout the evening. He hit hard, but he hit in both directions, which was an incredibly smart and in itself a bit unpredictable way of handling his predicament. He let Will Smith and Jada Pankett have it even harder than those allegedly perpetrating the racism, to the extent that one wonders if those two will ever attend another Oscars. (Pinkett may not have the option, since, as he so bitingly pointed out, she wouldn't have been invited in the first place.)

The most killer segment that had me laughing hardest was when Whoopi Goldberg, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan and Rock himself made their way into parodies of some of the most nominated films, there to exemplify the lengths black actors must go to to get cast in Oscar-worthy films. Morgan brought gales of laughter in drag as The Danish Girl, danish in this case being a reference to the pastry he was cramming in his mouth, but then Rock outdid him as the black astronaut stranded on Mars that two NASA officials (played by Martian cast members Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig) would not pay $2,500 to save. "I can hear you mother[bleepers]!" Rock says as they do the cost-benefit analysis within earshot over a satellite video link. "I don't see a black astronaut stranded in space. Do you?" Wiig says to Daniels through winks.

Other general thoughts:

- The scrolling of the thank yous didn't accomplish anything, as many of them ended up being repeated anyway and they just gave the whole thing a cable news network feel.

- Why were only three of the five songs performed? Were the other two nominees too busy to attend?

- As moved as we were all supposed to be by the Lady Gaga song, her gesticulations, vocal or otherwise, were just so wild that I couldn't help cracking to my wife that she was reminding me of Barbra Streisand.

- I didn't get the sense that the black actors and actresses who presented felt they had done some kind of deal with the devil. It seemed to be more or less just business as usual, and that was good.

- More of the comedic banter worked than usual. I liked Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe going back and forth about the number of Oscars they had between them, and Tina Fey pretending to be drunk was great. Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Ali G) proved just random enough to keep us on edge and never know what they might say next.

- I was interested to note a correction of previous awards biases in favor of actresses over actors. Best supporting actor was plunged deep into the program, as many as ten awards after best supporting actress, and best actress came a whole two awards earlier than best actor (broken up by best director). Maybe they thought that in a year they were being criticized anyway, just go for broke and lean male as well as white?

- The only one of Rock's lines of commentary that left me feeling a little funny was the objection to women being asked about more than their dresses, but it did set up his funniest line of the night, which was: "If George Clooney came to the Oscars wearing a lime green tuxedo and a swan coming out of his ass, I guarantee you they'd ask him: George, what are you wearing?"

- Other than DiCaprio, who gave one of the most succinct and poised speeches I've ever seen at the Oscars, the acceptance speeches were pretty dull. And not only because the music started playing most of them to their finish not 15 seconds in.

- That guy who said he may be the first openly gay person to receive an Oscar pretty much has to be incorrect about that. Even keeping in mind the word "openly," I'd say there had to have been at least five others in the last decade alone.

- Dave Grohl's In Memorium performance of "Blackbird" was a highlight.

- Even if their movie didn't win, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Emmanuel Lubezki set astonishing precedents by winning awards both back-to-back and back-to-back-to-back. I'm not looking this up right now, but I'm kind of wondering if anyone has ever won Oscars in three straight ceremonies like Chivo did this year. Probably Edith Head or somebody. I know for certain that only two other directors have ever taken home back-to-back trophies. Good on them.

- With my own predictions, I was on a roll at the start of the night. I got something like the first seven correct before finally failing to pick Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time when I should have. After that my track record returned to being mediocre.

- Our recording ran out in the middle of the producers' acceptance speech for Spotlight. Oh well.

Okay, now I must go to bed as it is 2:21 a.m. here, and what the hell am I still doing awake.

Insanity incarnate, and other Oscar thoughts

I haven't done my usual amount as a lead-up to the Oscars this year on my blog. In fact, I've done almost nothing.

So I thought I'd get in a couple quick thoughts in case you came to The Audient to prime yourself for this year's awards.

First off, the image you see next to you.

This is an event my friend Ross from my Flickchart discussion group on Facebook is attending. It's at the AMC 14 Georgetown in the D.C. area. (He's currently about to start The Revenant as I type this, but I'm posting it much later than I'm typing it, so you can't read this and still go try and catch the 5:10 a.m. showing of The Martian. Sorry.) That's right, all eight best picture nominees during a 24-hour period, with only short breaks in between. They charge $65 per ticket.

While on the one hand I think he's totally crazy -- especially since he's already seen all the movies, some of them more than once -- on the other it's something I totally would love to do some year. I'm curious how seeing all the nominees in such close proximity would change my thoughts on their respective merits.

I'd also love to be the one programming it. Specifically, the one deciding which films belong in which time slots, and whether that would reveal your own personal biases. Whoever did it this year has done a pretty good job. Brooklyn (the only one I have yet to see) seems like a nice soft introduction to the experience, a film that is totally suitable for a morning time slot. This could also reveal the biases of the programmer, as the first one is obviously the one everyone will be freshest for. The Big Short seems to make a pretty logical follow-up, keeping things at least comedic if not light throughout, then Room hits you with a bunch of depressing shit mid-afternoon. The Revenant keeps you down at that level to such an extent that Spotlight, even though it's about child molestation by Catholic priests, seems like a comparative ray of light. Spotlight is also in what's considered the most traditional time slot for a centerpiece, though as the fifth film it's debatable whether that really matters at that point. Mad Max of course makes a terrific midnight movie (it's essentially the most critically acclaimed midnight movie of all time). Bridge of Spies gets kind of the short shrift I suppose, but one hopes that residual energy from Mad Max would give it something of a boost. Then The Martian, well, this is when you really sleep I guess, if you weren't already doing so during Spies. But being the last movie also gives it something of a position of program prominence. You'll feel like Matt Damon just trying to survive at that point.

I don't ever expect to live in the D.C. area, but maybe one of the theaters will do this in a city where I do live someday.

Michael Keaton vs. his former director

If conventional wisdom holds and this is a best picture race that boils down to The Revenant vs. Spotlight -- though I'm told not to count out The Big Short -- then one of two creative people will be a repeat winner from last year.

Actually, there are probably any number of creative people Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu used on both Birdman and The Revenant, most prominently cinematographer (and likely three-time winner) Emmanuel Lubezki. But for the purposes of simplicity, let's boil this down to Michael Keaton vs. Inarritu.

Keaton was of course the star and one-time frontrunner for best actor in Birdman, and when he lost to Eddie Redmayne, I at least hoped that appearing in the best picture winner would serve as a nice consolation prize. Now he's up for just the latter prize this year with Spotlight.

Inarritu, on the other hand, won best director for Birdman. If The Revenant wins best picture, it will be the first time in history that the same person has directed consecutive best picture winners. Another best director win would just be icing on the cake, and both of these things might happen, even though The Revenant has earned its share of backlash.

I guess I'm rooting for Keaton to come out on top in this battle.

Although I didn't see Spotlight in time to rank it with my 2015 rankings, it would have been a contender for my top ten for sure. What's more evident as time goes by is that I would not rank The Revenant in my top ten if compiling my rankings today, even as amazing as the movie looks. It got my #9 spot, already falling from the #4 spot where I had initially inserted it after seeing it. Given another week it might have been down around #15 or even #20. I still think it's a very good film, but I also think that at its core, it's pretty empty. As is, though, it's my highest ranked best picture nominee, so I can't say I'd be entirely disappointed if it won.

How we almost didn't see the Oscars

The Oscars will of course play live while we are at work on Monday, so we'll need to stop checking the internet as soon as Sunday at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST rolls around. (Which will be right when my lunch starts, so at least I'll get in some morning internetting).

It airs on Australian TV both live, and delayed to start at some weird time at night, like 9:45. We obviously want to record the live one so we can start watching it with our dinner, though even then my wife might not make it through the whole thing. (She didn't last year.)

But any and all plans came within about 24 hours of being scuttled.

Until around Sunday morning at 9:30, we didn't have any idea why we weren't getting any TV channels on our TV.

Since neither we nor our kids tend to watch much on live TV these days, we hadn't troubleshot it very aggressively. But as the Oscars snuck up on us this year, we realized only recently that we needed to get it sorted out prior to Monday, or else it wouldn't be possible to either record the show or watch its delayed broadcast.

We'd tried restarting our Fetch box, our intermediary device that offers us on-demand and queues of free programming, mostly television shows. The on-demand was working fine, but not the TV channels. I'd also felt to the back of the TV to see if the antenna was plugged in, and it surely was.

By Sunday morning I was really worrying. It was too late to get a vendor involved or to try to replace a malfunctioning Fetch box. I started wondering if the Oscars were the kind of thing you could catch on YouTube, or even buy somewhere on the internet.

Fortunately, my wife -- the real brains of our operation -- had the good sense to check the other side of the antenna, the wall side. It was here that it was unplugged, likely by one of our kids.

Now we have the Oscars set to record and can be fairly certain that they actually will do so.

Whew.

Enjoy the ceremony, and check this space for my obligatory post-Oscars recap. Even though I was slack on pre-Oscars posts, I do (sort of) commit to providing you one of these.

The type of reporter I could never be

There's a moment in Spotlight, which I saw last night, when Rachel McAdams' Sacha Pfeiffer knocks on the door of a retired Boston priest, and seems a bit surprised to see the man himself actually answer the door.

When she confirms his identity, for a second a look flashes across her faces that seems to say, "Okay, this is happening" before she launches into her question:

"We have information that you molested kids while serving as a priest. Did you molest kids?"

That's not an exact quote -- unlike a good reporter, I don't take notes when I watch movies -- but it's along those lines, and it's that direct.

In fact, this moment illustrates perfectly why I could never fully give myself over to journalism as a career.

Oh I was on that path. I worked as the reporter and interim editor of a newspaper in Rhode Island from 1996 to 1998, and in 1999 I attended Columbia Journalism School, where the brightest journalism prospects in the country -- dare I say, even the world -- go to take the next steps in their careers. (As well as the ones who can fool them into thinking we fit that description, like me.)

But even before starting at Columbia, I think I knew I didn't have that killer instinct, that courage, that unwavering belief in what is right that distinguishes the kind of journalists we see in Spotlight.

It's not so much that I feared the moment of awkwardness that results from asking an interview subject the question that cuts to the core of their own innocence or guilt. It's rather that I feared the moment of rage at the gall I was displaying at even asking. How dare you ask a question like that? How dare you intrude on the inner sanctum of my own protective shell as a human being who wants to be treated with decency?

Of course, I never dealt with anyone as guilty and as downright despicable as the Catholic priests of the Boston archdiocese, who turned out to be just the first publicly reported among hundreds and thousands of priests the world over who displayed those tendencies. The biggest fish I had to fry were local politicians dancing around some of their own double speak. When I had a story about a police chief who had an unregistered car on his property, it nearly gave me fits.

So just imagine the courage necessary to take on the Catholic church, an institution that counts half of your readership as loyal followers, and accuse it of hiding evidence that priests sexually molested young boys.

I appreciate that kind of courage even more because of my past as a reporter, and it makes seeing a movie like Spotlight all the more rewarding for me. What Spotlight doesn't do is make me wistful for a career path I could have had if I'd made a couple decisions differently. I never had what it takes to stick a microphone in someone's face, either literally or metaphorically, and it was useful to realize that before I threw myself into an arena where I was destined to fail. I suppose it's better to succeed at what I do now, to the extent that I do succeed at it, than to have failed as a reporter.

But that doesn't change one bit my conviction that someone needs to stick those microphones in those faces, and movies that celebrate these proud professionals make me proud to watch them.

That time I put my family ahead of Spotlight

Spotlight is the likely best picture winner this year. At least, I thought that for certain until The Revenant won top honors at the Golden Globes, which sometimes means nothing. The Globes really love Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, as evidenced by the fact that they awarded him a best drama globe for Babel, then the only Oscar it won was for its score. The point is, Spotlight is a major awards contender, and I'm not going to get to rank it this year because its release date is January 28th.

But I could have. I sure could have.

I was invited to a critics screening of Spotlight yesterday, Wednesday the 13th in Australia. The only problem is, it was a morning screening, and I had both of my kids home with me. Their daycare doesn't reopen after a brief summer break until today. (My older son will be there for two weeks more before he starts proper school.)

In the past, I might have moved heaven and earth to make this happen anyway. I'd get to that screening come hell or high water. Whatever other cliched expression you want to stick in here.

I'd have asked my father-in-law to watch them (even though he's only ever watched one of them at a time). I'd have figured out if there were a commercial day care center near the screening, one that you can use on an informal, one-off basis (even though that would be very expensive). I'd have seen if someone could come to our house to babysit them (even though that would also be very expensive). I'd even have momentarily toyed with the idea of the five-year-old babysitting the two-year-old. He's demonstrated the maturity for that responsibility, right?

In the end, I didn't. In the end, none of this scrambling left the confines of my mind, where it really only scrambled around for two minutes here and there in the first days after I'd learned about the screening.

As Dominic Toretto would say, "Family comes first."

So am I growing up? Growing into the responsible parent we knew I had the ability to be, one who has his priorities straight? Or am I just getting worse at thinking up outside-the-box solutions?

It's got to be the former. Because in the end I said to myself, "Yes, having an accurate year-end movie rankings is very important to you. Far more important than it has any right to be. But it's just a movie. You can see it two weeks later, and even though it won't be part of your rankings, it'll become part of the larger cinematic tapestry that is anyone's ongoing relationship with the movies. It will, or it could, join other cherished favorites that were not seen during their release years, but still went on to become cherished favorites all the same."

If maturity means accepting inevitable defeat with equanimity, then I'd say I've gotten there.

If priorities means putting my family first, then Dominic Toretto would be proud of me.