Copious Notes

Sean Penn backstage after winning the Oscar for best actor for his performance in Milk. Copyrighted AP Photo by Matt Sayles.

As Oscars surprises go, Sean Penn besting Mickey Rourke in the best actor race was not Juliet Binoche jumping ahead of Lauren Bacall in 1996 or Shakespeare in Love stunning Saving Private Ryan in 1998.

Mickey Rourke on the red carpet. Copyrighted AP Photo by Amy Sancetta.

But the conventional wisdom was that Penn, nominated for Milk, was a fairly recent winner (2004 for Mystic River), and Mickey was the hot new comeback tale with The Wrestler. Rourke had already won a number of pre-Oscar acting prizes, including the Golden Globe. So, a lot of observers, including me, installed Mick as the favorite to win for a moving, harrowing  performance that included being stapled by a real-life wrestler called the Necro Butcher.

But when the envelope was opened, Penn’s name was called, and he stepped to the stage to thank, “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” Some saw it as reflexive. On Morning Joe, conservative commentator Joe Scarborough called awarding Penn for playing the trailblazing gay rights activist Harvey Milk, “Pavlovian,” saying he predicted it the moment he saw Penn was playing Milk. That’s a vast oversimplification, invoking a Pavlovian reflex by many conservatives to paint Hollywood as obsessed with boosting liberal politics.

Penn’s victory could have been predicted for a variety of reasons, and was by some media outlets including Enterainment Weekly, which I expect will probably offer up a report on how Penn won. In its annual article where it has some voters anonymously reveal their picks, two-out-of-three commentators chose Penn, and in reporting from a variety of sources, you could sense an undercurrent of support for the film and the performance. Late in the weekend, I was wondering if Louisville’s Gus Van Sant, who directed Milk, would have been a better upset pick for director than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s David Fincher, who I incorrectly guessed.

But it turned out it was Penn with the Milk upset, and really it could have been predicted by ruling in one piece of conventional wisdom and ruling out another. It would have been good to remember that actors who play real people tend to do well at the Oscars. With Penn’s win, four out of the last five best actor winners have played historical figures. And the idea he’d won too recently was overplayed. Kevin Spacey won best supporting actor for The Usual Suspects in 1995 and best actor for American Beauty in 1999. Jodie Foster’s best actress honors were 1988 for The Accused and 1991 for Silence of the Lambs, Meryl Streep’s Oscars came in in 1979 and 1982, and, of course, there were Tom Hanks’ back-to-back best actor nods in 1993 and ‘94. Clearly, Oscar does not have a problem awarding two trophies to actors who turn in strong performances in close succession.

And yes, some of the strong feeling for Milk is fueled by past and present social issues that both Penn and Dustin Lance Black, who won best original screenplay for Milk, addressed those from the stage, last night. But Penn did not win for a reflexive left-wing bias and he didn’t steal an honor from Rourke. He earned the prize for being one of the best actors of our day, and the victory was more predictable than we might have thought.

Best actress winner Kate Winslet, second from left, is congratulated by some of her predecessors in the honor, including Sophia Loren (left), Nicole Kidman (top right), Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry (right), and Marion Cotillard (foreground). AP Photo | Mark J. Terrill.

They told us they got it.

Nothing speaks louder in television than ratings, and after years of putting on the longest, most bloated awards show out of the majors, dismal ratings (by Oscars standards) in 2008 told the Academy Awards producers they needed to shake things up. They could no longer say it was the Oscars, and people would watch no matter what they did, which is the spirit of actual quotes I’ve seen from Academy directors in the past.

So, we were told this would be a radically different, surprising Academy Awards ceremony.

It did have its moments.

Probably the best were the acting award presentations, featuring five former winners congratulating this year’s nominees. It gave every nominee something to walk away with.

Michael Shannon walks the red carpet with his girlfriend, Kate Arrington. AP Photo/Amy Sancetta.

Just take our Lexington guy, Michael Shannon. We all knew he would not be winning, up against the performance and the emotional backstory of the late Heath Ledger. But he got this heartfelt public tribute from Christopher Walken: “You were right on target. Well done.” Mickey Rourke suffered a mildly surprising defeat, but had Ben Kingsley declare him, “The returning champ.” And each winner walked into the congratulatory embrace of their predecessors. The appreciation of those moments and arrays of best actors and actresses they gave us were really great.

Also great was host Hugh Jackman’s opening number, a recession-era tribute to the best picture nominees. It even included a Dark Knight moment, acknowledging many people felt the Batman movie should have been nominated for best picture and other awards, and the mind-blowing idea of Anne Hathaway playing Richard Nixon.

The producers couched the show in an storyline of talking about how a film is made, starting with screenplay awards and moving into technical honors. Some of the categories were grouped, like all the visual art awards, and that had to help things go faster and brought the show to a close before midnight. But it was a contrived idea that forced the show to awkwardly work in the awards for films that weren’t scripted, live action features and sort of ignored that before all those technical awards, you have to have a director and stars.

The show also tried some things that didn’t work, including a production number — how 1970s! — celebrating the supposed return of the musical, and a film from Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen that was supposed to honor the comedies, but didn’t do much of anything.

This was by no means a bad show. It had some lovely moments, including the beautiful and dignified best supporting actor acceptance speech by Heath Ledger’s family and Queen Latifah’s bittersweet rendition of I’ll Be Seeing You for the film clips of people who passed away last year.

The Academy Awards producers are on the right track trying to refine this thing, and it still is a huge night. But this year’s edition didn’t offer anything to attract people who wouldn’t be tuning in anyway. And in truth, there really is little the producers can do to attract people that aren’t interested in the contenders. It’s not like the Grammy Awards, where you can turn the ceremony into a big concert, and so what if you’re giving all the awards to an album most of America hasn’t heard.

Oscar can’t do that. It needs blockbuster contenders for blockbuster Oscars audiences, and right now, Oscar-worthy and box-office-champ seem to be mutually exclusive terms.

• One thing this year’s Oscars did have over last year’s ratings bomb was a sense of joy. Last year, you could honor the artistry of No Country for Old Men, but it was like cheering on a funeral, the film was so dark and violent, and the Coen brothers seemed to barely register any pleasure in their victory. Slumdog Millionaire, on the other hand, was this uplifting film that brought along an exuberant cast and crew, including a bunch of cute kids.
• Several post-mortems raise the provocative question, should Oscar dump behind-the-scenes and other “minor” categories from the broadcast? I’ve always liked that Oscar gives people like sound designers and short-subject filmmakers a moment in the global spotlight. But can the show ever truly gain momentum unless it relegates some of these honors to pre-gala ceremonies, like other awards shows do?
• Thanks to Hollywood.com for including Copious Notes in its TwitterNation roundup.

• Click the play button to hear our interview with Michael Shannon talking about his career and his Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

• Click here for our story and interview with Shannon about Revolutionary Road and his upcoming projects.

• Check the LexGo version of the story for more photos and Shannon’s filmography.

Michael Shannon’s journey to the Academy Awards started at Tates Creek Junior High School in Lexington.
“I was in eighth grade, and I was not athletic at all,” Shannon says, recalling the years at Tates Creek. “But I wanted some sort of after-school activity.”

Michael Shannon. Copyrighted Associated Press Photo | Matt Sayles.

He tried the speech team.

“They gave me a little monologue to work on,” Shannon, 34, says. “It just captivated me. It wasn’t anything I fantasized about. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an architect. So, it kind of surprised me.”

That surprise has translated into a serious stage and film career that has resulted in Shannon’s Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in Revolutionary Road.

He will learn whether he won Sunday night, when the Academy Awards are handed out in Los Angeles.

Revolutionary Road, about a couple who try to flee 1950s suburbia, is loaded with Oscar-caliber talent, including stars and previous nominees Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. But, on Jan. 22, when the nominations were announced, Shannon’s best supporting actor nod was one of only three for the film, in which he plays a mentally disturbed man who makes powerful observations.

The movie’s other two nods are for art direction and costume design.

Shannon slept through the nominations.

He was at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where two of his films were premiering: The Missing Person, in which he plays a noir detective, and The Greatest, in which he plays another brief-but-memorable role as the driver who killed Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon’s son.

Michael Shannon (standing) and Dallas Roberts in Adam Rapp's "Finer Noble Gases," part of the Humana Festival of American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

“I had gone to see a midnight movie the night before … so, unfortunately, I didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m.,” Shannon says.

The nominations were announced at 6:30 a.m. Utah time. That’s when his phone started ringing.
“I was pretty shell-shocked,” he says. “It just kept ringing all day long.

“That’s the special thing about it is realizing how many people are rooting for you.”

Including people back home.

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Sir Paul McCartney performs the Beatles classic "I Saw Her Standing There" with Foo Fighters at the Grammy Awards. AP Photo by Mark J. Terrill.

So, what if they had an awards ceremony and didn’t hand out any awards?

OK, the Grammy Awards didn’t go quite that far. But there were vast expanses of airtime last night in which we did not see any little victrolas handed out. This is not necessarily a complaint.

For years, the Grammy Awards have been known for great performances and interesting pairings of artists. This year, in particular, it seemed like the recording academy decided to throw a concert and, when the show stopped to take a breath, hand out occasional awards.

If only the Oscars were honoring people who specialized in live performances, that might solve some of the Academy Awards’ ratings woes.

Like the Oscars, the Grammys have also been leaning more toward critically as opposed to popularly acclaimed fare to honor. The big winner last night was Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand, big with the adult rock crowd, but not so much with the Top 40 audience. There were live awards given to Coldplay and Lil’ Wayne too, so it’s not like this was a bust for hitmakers.

But regardless of who won, the selling point of the Grammys is the show, and this was a pretty hot one starting with U2 playing Get on Your Boots, the first single from the Irish quartet’s forthcoming album. Then, we got an unexpectedly sweet pairing of Justin Timberlake and Rev. Al Green, doing, among other things, Let’s Stay Together. Other standouts included Sugarland showing the power of one voice and one guitar, Jennifer Hudson triumphant for the second Sunday in a row, Radiohead and the USC Marching Band and Sir Paul McCartney showing the amazing longevity of that little pop song, I Saw Her Standing There.

Yes, there were misses: The set for Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl was as bright as Vegas, but her voice was as flat as the desert. And I am still waiting for Chris Martin to deliver a competent performance of Viva la Vida on TV. And the energy did seem to evaporate from the show in the last hour or so.

But this year’s Grammys emphasized the show in awards show, and that made it a pretty good night of television.

Further reading:

More about Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.

For not even being at the show, Chris Brown created plenty of drama.

My Twitter feed from last night’s show.

Read Walter Tunis’ review of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ July concert at Rupp Arena.

Members of the cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire arrive at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards. From left are, Producer Christian Colson, actor Dev Patel, actor Anil Kapoor, actress Freida Pinto, director Danny Boyle, composer A.R. Rahman and writer Simon Beaufoy. Photo by Matt Sayles | AP.

That clanging you hear from Hollywood could be the bellwether ringing for Slumdog Millionaire.

Things in this year’s awards season were not terribly clear until Sunday night, when Danny Boyle’s story of an unlikely game show winner won four Golden Globes, including best motion picture drama, best director for Boyle and best screenplay for Simon Beaufoy. It seems like everyone who’s seen this movie has tremendous enthusiasm for it, and that is translating to award voters.

It would be an interesting contrast to last year if Slumdog continued its run into the Academy Awards. While the awards, so far, have not seen the return of blockbusters, which we thought we might see, Slumdog is a much more hopeful film than last year’s pitch black winner, No Country for Old Men.

Kate Winslet poses with her two Golden Globe Awards, which she won on Sunday. Photo by Mark J. Terrill | AP.

While last night’s honors seemed to put Slumdog into a solid frontrunner position, they also raised some interesting possibilities for the Academy Awards, which announces its nominations Jan. 22. Like, is Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the winner for best motion picture comedy or musical, now a best picture contender? What about Kate Winslet? Does her dual win, as best actress in a drama for Revolutionary Road and supporting actress for The Reader, indicate this is the year the five-time Oscar nominee might win one of the guys? And will she have to contend with Sally Hawkins, who beat out award perennials Meryl, Emma and Frances for best actress in a comedy or musical for her performance in the little seen Happy-Go-Lucky?

Will everything be a huge disappointment if we don’t get to hear Mickey Rourke give another acceptance speech? After he won for The Wrestler, the star, who looked like he thought he was at the Grammys, gave an oddly-touching and  funny address in which he thanked his dogs and had to have had somebody’s nervous finger ready to hit the censor button.

It was actually a night to push FCC boundaries and reminded us why this cocktail party is so much better than having Billy Bush read the winners’ names, which is what happened last year, due to the writers strike. Winning best actress in a TV show musical or comedy, Tina Fey invited her Internet tormentors to do something I don’t think I’m allowed to say on a newspaper-affiliated blog. At the end of the night, Slumdog producer Christian Colson said a word I know I’m not allowed to repeat here after being told to wrap up his best drama acceptance speech.

That’s OK. He’ll probably have more chances to get it right.

Check out my Twitter for my random thoughts while watching last night.

The late Heath Ledger could be up for a posthumous Oscar in February for his performance in "The Dark Knight." Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

After this year’s Academy Awards, the question was whether the Oscars were still relevant, or if they were going the way of art galleries and modern dance, perceived as too elite and avant garde to appeal to the masses.

Of last year’s best picture nominees, none of them had cracked the Top 10 or $100 million mark at the box office.

Numerous reasons were cited, including studios obsessed with movies calculated to open big, art be damned, and the presence of boutique subsidiaries such as Paramount Vantage and Warner Independent Pictures to release “specialty” and “prestige” fare.

Well, the buzz is Oscar night 2009 may look quite different.

Not that we will suddenly see Harold and Kumar contending for best picture or anything like that.

But you could have Batman.

The late Heath Ledger, a 2006 best actor nominee for his performance in Brokeback Mountain, is seriously being talked about as a best actor possibility for his consumed-by-evil turn as The Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight.

Think that’s funny?

Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, left) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr., right) are shooting an epic war movie and wind up in a real battle in “Tropic Thunder.” Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace | DreamWorks.

A lot of people think that Robert Downey Jr. was brilliantly funny as a method actor who darkened his skin to play a black soldier in Ben Stiller’s Hollywood-bashing Tropic Thunder. Now, he’s a serious contender for a best supporting actor nomination for the box office hit that has made more than $110 million.

Dark Knight, also considered a best picture and director contender, as well as a shoe-in for numerous technical award nominations, now sits atop this year’s box office chart, and it’s likely to stay there. Why? For a while, during the summer, Dark Knight was threatening to overtake Titanic for the all-time box office record of $600 million, though with a home video release of the Batman movie set for Dec. 9, it appears that won’t happen.

Speaking of Titanic, the 1998 Oscar winner for best picture marked the last time the Oscars generated true mass hysteria, and its leading man and woman are back together this year. A Paramount Vantage offering with the downbeat plot of a crumbling 1950s marriage, Revolutionary Road isn’t likely to be all the rage with teenage girls like Titanic was. But it does have an intriguing A-list cast with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Other A-listers on short lists for Oscar contention include Brad Pitt, Clint Eastwood, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie and, seriously, Beyonce Knowles for her role in Cadillac Records. We should also mention that Lexington native Michael Shannon is getting buzz for Revolutionary Road.

This isn’t any concerted effort to help Oscar avoid going the way of the Tony Awards in terms of its national spotlight. But there are a few trends that may be boosting the awards’ star power and box office relevance this year and in years to come:

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