Practicalmadness

I have reclaimed my title; I am sorry to announce that there was no prize winner in this year's Oscars Game. There were several strong contenders, but no one who could beat my score of 82 points (out of a possible 150, not including Super-Bonuses).

The margin could have been even closer had this not been one of the strangest Oscar nights in a long while. Academy voters shocked the world by giving three surprise awards to The Pianist, including Best Actor (Adrien Brody), Best Director (Roman Polanski) and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Coming into tonight, it was believed that Polanski was too controversial a choice (after the whole rape of a minor thing that prevents him from ever entering the United States again; presenter Harrison Ford accepted the Oscar on his behalf), that Brody was too obscure and that the script would be pummeled by either The Hours or Adaptation.

In each category my own guess would be that this is a classic case of two major contenders cancelling each other out, leaving an unexpected (but in this case, incredibly deserving) winner by default. The only downside is that five minutes I spent thinking that maybe they would shock and awe everybody by giving the Best Picture trophy to Pianist, or practically any movie besides "Chicago".

And speaking of shock and awe, Pedro Almodovar -- the Spanish Woody Allen -- won the Best Original Screenplay award for Talk to Her, a total surprise that's only slightly less strange than the Writers Guild giving their similar award to a documentary. In short, Hollywood clearly wants Todd Haynes to crawl into his corner of Julianne Moore's basement and die.

Speaking of that music video writ large, it did indeed win Best Picture, as well as five other awards. Now let us never speak of this again.

Another surprise was the win by musician Marshall Mathers (better known to you as Eminem), whose 'fuck the Oscars' attitude didn't keep the Academy from giving the Best Original Song trophy to "Lose Yourself". True to his word, Eminem didn't bother to show up, sending co-composer Luis Resto to serve up forty-five seconds of spirited Eminem apologia, as well as show off his decidedly unglamorous duds.

In a delightful turn of events, Spirited Away -- the wonderful, often surreal masterpiece by Japanimation maestro Miyazaki -- beat out the more widely seen Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age to win Best Animated Feature.

One development that was not at all unexpected was the awarding of the Best Documentary Feature statuette to uberlefty Michael Moore's antigun documentary Bowling for Columbine, which led to something else also not at all surprising: Moore's forty-five second diatribe against President Bush (also the War, but mostly Bush, who he called a "fictional president"), which prompted boos (and some cheering) from the audience and a remark shortly thereafter by host Steve Martin that Teamsters were "currently helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."

On the whole the presenters and winners stuck to Oscars producer Gil Cates's rules for the evening: acceptance speeches limited to 45 seconds and five thank-yous per person, with limited (if any) commentary about the Current Unpleasantness.

The notable exception was Best Actor winner Adrien Brody, who began by embracing presenter Halle Berry in a manner excusable only because he was in shock, followed by a vaguely coherent, whopping 2-3 minute (!) speech where he thanked at least fifteen people and called for a peaceful resolution to the aforementioned Unpleasantness, which prompted a standing ovation from the same crowd that booed Michael Moore offstage.