{"id":120,"date":"2001-03-26T11:51:11","date_gmt":"2001-03-26T18:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/?p=118"},"modified":"2001-03-26T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2001-03-26T18:51:11","slug":"the-73rd-annual-academy-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"The 73rd Annual Academy Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 73rd Annual Academy Awards<\/a>
\nFor once, the majority of the Oscar races were not “sure things” – with the exception of Juila Roberts (who was brought to us last night by the letters X and Y), there weren’t really any givens across the major categories. Also, for once, deserving people won (for the most part – more on that in a second.) Here’s my take on what went down last night.<\/p>\n

As for the show itself, I was amazed how quickly it moved along, especially after last year’s yawnfest. (Unless I miss my guess, they actually finished EARLY!) Steve Martin was a perfect choice for host, and did a fantastic job. (“The FBI has just informed me that they have a suspect in the Russell Crowe kidnapping case, and all I have to say is…Tom Hanks, you should be a ashamed of yourself.”) While I generally enjoy the job Billy Crystal does as host, his routines were wearing a bit thin on the nerves last year.<\/p>\n

As I alluded to earlier, NEARLY<\/i> everyone who won was deserving. I say NEARLY<\/i> because Tom Hanks really should have won Best Actor. I won’t deny that I enjoyed Russell Crowe in “Gladiator”, but he had a very strong supporting cast to work with throughout the movie – Tom Hanks, on the other hand, carried an hour and a half of “Cast Away” with only a volleyball to play off of, and did so superbly. The real reason Russell Crowe won last night was that Hollywood didn’t want to give Hanks a 3rd Oscar. (That, and they were trying to repent for overlooking Crowe in “The Insider” last year.)<\/p>\n

There’s the matter of Julia Roberts, but seeing as how her winning was a forgone conclusion since the nominations came out, I’ll just say this – I’ve never cared for her as an actress. Also, with all her money, why hasn’t she gotten those horse teeth fixed?<\/p>\n

I’m gratified that Steven Soderbergh won Best Director for “Traffic” – I was afraid that his vote was going to be split, and Ridley Scott was going to win for “Gladiator”. In my view, substance won out over special effects.<\/p>\n

But on that note, I can live with the fact that “Gladiator” did walk away with Best Picture. It was one of those films you just can’t take your eyes off of for the whole 3 hours. It was damned entertaining. The performances were solid, and it was popular as hell. It was also more accessible to a general audience than it’s closest competition, “Traffic” – which is why it won. And I can live with that.<\/p>\n

One last thing: Hey, Academy – what was with all the freaky close-ups on Bob Dylan? I felt like the nation was giving him a collective throat culture for a few minutes there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 73rd Annual Academy Awards For once, the majority of the Oscar races were not “sure things” – with the exception of Juila Roberts (who was brought to us last night by the letters X and Y), there weren’t really any givens across the major categories. Also, for once, deserving people won (for the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hxip-1W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.m-dnovember.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}