I didn't know Hugh Jackman could sing, but he did a great job in the opening number, and as host for the night.
Penelope Cruz got an Oscar - best supporting actress - and gave a good speech.
Tina Fey and Steve Martin were funny.
"Milk" just got an Oscar for best screenplay, and the recipient gave a good speech in support of equal rights for gays.
A long night ahead...
Benjamin Button is doing well so far...
They said the show was going to be really different this year -- and so far, it is. I enjoyed the presentation of best supporting actress, with past winners introducing the nominees. I find it's moving along very smoothly.
I wish the people in attendance would tone down on their outfits a bit. Jessica Biel's outfit was hideous, and thus probably incredibly expensive. This at a time of world financial meltdown. They're showing off their wealth, not a good example to set. 
All the dresses are loaners, Boom Boom. The actresses are basically modelling for designers on Oscar night.
Heath Ledger just won an Oscar posthumously. Wow.
JerryLewis presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. I grew up watching Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in their silly flicks, and then the Jerry Lewis MS Telethon for a few years. I didn't know he was still alive - he looks to be suffering from quite a debilitating disease. He was prresented the award by another nutty professor, Eddie Murphy.
Slumdog Millionaire is also cleaning up tonight.
ETA: they're performing some of the music from this film - incredible stuff.
[url=http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/590951]Slumdog Millionaire's troubling policy implications[/url]
February 21, 2009
by Mitu Sengupta, assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University.
Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most celebrated films in recent times, tells the rags-to-rajah story of a love-struck Indian boy, Jamal, who, with a little help from "destiny," triumphs over his wretched beginnings in Mumbai's squalid slums. Riding a wave of rave reviews, Slumdog is now poised to win Hollywood's highest accolade, the Oscar for Best Picture, [Sunday] night.Nabbing this honour will probably add tens of millions of dollars to Slumdog's box-office takings. It will also further enhance the film's already-robust reputation as an authentic representation of the lives of India's urban poor.
Most of the awards collected by the film have been accepted in the name of "the children," suggesting that its own cast and crew regard (and are promoting) it not as a cinematically spectacular and entertaining work of fiction, which it is, but as a powerful tool of advocacy.
Nothing could be more worrying. [b]Slumdog, despite all the hype to the contrary, delivers a deeply disempowering narrative about the poor, which undermines, if not totally negates, its apparent message of social justice....[/b]
Continued in the next post...
[b]If anything, Boyle's magical tale, with its unconvincing one-dimensional characters and absurd plot devices, greatly understates the depth of suffering among India's poor.[/b] It is near impossible, for example, that Jamal would emerge from his ravaged life with a dewy complexion and an upper-class accent.However, the real problem with Slumdog is not its shallow, impressionistic portrayal of poverty. [b]Its real problem is that it grossly minimizes the capabilities and even the basic humanity of those it claims to speak for.[/b] It is no secret that large chunks of Slumdog are meant to reflect life in Dharavi, the 213-hectare spread of slums at the heart of Mumbai. The film's depiction of the legendary area, which is home to some one million people, is that of a feral wasteland, with little evidence of order, community or compassion.
Other than the children (the "slumdogs"), no one is even remotely well-intentioned. Hustlers, thieves, and petty warlords run amok, and even Jamal's schoolteacher, a thin, bespectacled man who introduces him to The Three Musketeers, is inexplicably callous. This is a place of evil and decay, of a raw, chaotic tribalism.
[b]Yet nothing could be further from the truth.[/b] Dharavi teems with dynamism and creativity, and is a hub of entrepreneurial activity, in industries such as garment manufacturing, embroidery, pottery, and leather, plastics and food processing. It is estimated that the annual turnover from Dharavi's small businesses is between $50 and $100 million (U.S.).
Dharavi's lanes are lined with cellphone retailers and cyber cafés and, according to surveys by Microsoft Research India, the slum's residents exhibit a remarkably high absorption of new technologies.
Governing structures and productive social relations also flourish. The slum's residents have nurtured strong collaborative networks, often across potentially volatile lines of caste and religion. Many cooperative societies work together with grassroots associations to provide residents with essential services such as basic health care, schooling and waste disposal, and to tackle thorny issues such as child abuse and violence against women.
In fact, they often compensate for the formal government's woeful inadequacy in meeting the needs of the poor. Although it is true that these severely under-resourced self-help organizations have touched only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, it is important to acknowledge their efforts, along with the simple fact that these communities, despite their grinding poverty, have rich, valuable lives, a resourcefulness that stretches far beyond the haphazard and purely individualistic sort portrayed in the film....
[b]It is ironic that Slumdog, for all its righteousness of tone, shares with many Indian political and social elites a profoundly dehumanizing view of those who live and work within the country's slums. The troubling policy implications of this perspective are unmistakably mirrored by the film.[/b] Since there are no internal resources, and none capable of constructive voice or action, all "solutions" must arrive externally.
After a harrowing life in an anarchic wilderness, salvation finally comes to Jamal, a Christ-like figure, in the form of an imported quiz show on which he succeeds thanks to sheer dumb luck or, rather, "destiny."
Is it also "destiny," then, that the other children depicted in the film must continue to suffer? Or must they, like the stone-faced Jamal, stoically await their own rescue by a foreign hand?
Indeed, while this self-billed "feel good movie of the year" may help us "feel good" that we are among the lucky ones on Earth, it delivers a patronizing and ultimately sham statement on social justice for those who are not.
When did Best "Female Actor" become Best "Actress" again?
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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]
Kate Winslett wins it!
And Sean Penn! (he gave a courageous speech)
Best Film: Slumdog Millionaire (boo, hiss!)
Haven't seen slumdog millionaire. I will have to get out to see it, now.
quite liked the show this year. And LORD, Beyonce can sing. Holy smokes.
I really wanted to see Mickey win for actor : (
I saw the Wrestler today and was knocked over with the movie.
I don't get out to a lot of movies, but I saw The Wrestler and loved it.
Man on Wire won for Best Documentary. It is an amazing film.
Which film won Best Foreign Film?
I am really glad Sean Penn won, although I would have also liked to see Mickey Rourke take it.
Yeah, I would like to have seen Rourke win it, too.
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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]
"All my life I had a choice between hate and love. I chose love, and I'm here," --- best speech so far, short of the amazing Sean Penn's talk on Prop8.
I thought for sure that Waltz With Bashir would have won best foreign film. Instead it went to Departures (which I must now see).
Mickey Rourke's speech kicked ass. He went on to tell the audience and the powers that be to hire Eric Roberts (I lurve Eric Roberts!). No one seems to get Mickey Rourke. He is still devestated after his long time companion Loki, his dog, died.
Rourke once said when asked about Sean Penn (and they are close friends) that Sean was the biggest homophobe around. The media, too stupid to pick up on sarcasm and humour, ate it all up at face value. Stupid commentators. Clearly Sean is no homophobe.
Rourke had a speech? When? I must have missed it.
This was at the Grammy's Boom Boom.
Correction, The Independent Spirit Awards....
My highlights were when Sean Penn called the Academy "Commie, homo-loving sons of guns," and when Slumdog won best picture. I've seen it twice now, and definitely think it's worthy of the acclaim.
I was also hoping for a Mickey Rourke win, but Sean Penn's speech was beautiful.
I also though Hugh Jackman did a great job with the opening number, though I did think the recession angle was a tad tacky.
Mickey Rourke sooo deserved to win. One of the best performances I've seen in some time. And Darren Arenofsky wasn't even nomianted for directing which is a travesty!
Here's Rourke's speech from the Spirit awards. I've been warned not to listen to it at work.
I thought for sure that Waltz With Bashir would have won best foreign film.
Why was that?
I haven't seen it, but after reading this review, I wouldn't want to invest my entertainment money in it:
To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir, to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely begins to describe the violence that this film commits against Palestinians.
There is nothing interesting or new in the depiction of Palestinians -- they have no names, they don't speak, they are anonymous. But they are not simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Their anguish, their questioning, their confusion, their pain -- it is this that is intended to pull us. The rotoscope animation is beautifully done, the facial expressions so engaging, subtle and torn, we find ourselves grimacing and gasping at the trials and tribulations of the young Israeli soldiers and their older agonizing selves.
We don't see Palestinian facial expressions; only a lingering on dead, anonymous faces. So while Palestinians are never fully human, Israelis are, and indeed are humanized through the course of the film.
The last facial expressions you see in the movie are Palestinian when it cuts from rotoscope to real footage. I think that a lot of the criticism is valid though, its a movie about what is happening to the Israeli psyche and its true Palestinians are given very little attention or time. For me, the ending was effective in showing who the real victims are, after two hours of cartoony Israelis talking in monotones about their repressed memories and philosophical feelings about war, the raw footage of the grieving Palestinian women felt very to the point.
Absolutely, melovesproles, in fact, that is the entire point of the movie. The movie engages with memory and how Israel represses not only its crimes, but the realness and humanity of its victims. The absence of Palestinians from the film is consonant with the absence of Palestinans from the mind of the protagonists (and, indeed, the West). And then, in the final scene, when we see live action film for the only time of grieving Palestinians, this absence is made starkly real to us.
I agree with Catchfire. Waltz With Bashir is an incredible film. al-Q, really, you should see it. Yes, it does focus on the Israeli soldier that the film is about, but what it really does is show the inhumanity and brutality that Israeli soldiers are trained to do. And the absence of Palestinian faces and suffering actually makes a point in the film, since it IS supposed to be from the point of view of the Israeli veterans.
The whole point of the film is that the main character has blocked out his experiences from Sabra and Shatila. And so he goes around to his old war veteran buddies and tries to piece together what happened once he starts to have flashbacks that he doesn't understand because of repressed memories.
The people he encounters are very matter-of-fact about their service during that time, which is why it takes him the whole movie to bring back his memories. The reason for this is because those soldiers HAVE dehumanized the Palestinians they killed. But when those memories come, they're horrendous, they're a war crime.
It's a very anti-war movie, and a very pro-Palestinian movie, even if it's told from the point of view of what this massacre has done to Israeli soldiers who participated. Any anti-war movement has to recognize that war doesn't just harm the victims, but also the perpetrators - even if the perpetrators don't realize that their souls are sick from the way they've dehumanized their victims and repressed memories in order to be able to live with themselves.
And as Catchfire says, at the end, the grieving Palestinians makes it clear that this is the result of everything the soldiers were remembering in the film (and not focusing on).
P.S. And the film is based on a true story - the filmmaker is the main character of the movie, and this is based on his experiences of repressing his memory of his military service during Sabra and Shatila.
You make the movie sound worth watching, Michelle. It's going on "the list". 
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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]
Feministing just posted an interesting analysis of Slumdog Millionaire, here: http://www.feministing.com/archives/013870.html
I note that the author refers approvingly to the Sengupta piece I posted above.
I liked Slumdog millionaire, but of the five nominees for best picture, it was perhaps the safest choice for an Oscar. It's your standard issue rags to riches story. It was pretty formulaic. I haven't seen Milk, but I heard it was pretty good. What did everyone else think?
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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york
Saw Milk this week and it was very good. A really powerful story that ought to make people think. I didn't however think that Penn deserved the Oscar. He was very good in that role, but I preferred Pitt in Benjamine Button.
P.S. And the film is based on a true story - the filmmaker is the main character of the movie, and this is based on his experiences of repressing his memory of his military service during Sabra and Shatila.
I'm still not convinced, and I'd rather not pay to support Israeli cinema. (Maybe I'd watch a pirated download, though.) Then there's this:
Gideon Levy / 'Antiwar' film Waltz with Bashir is nothing but charade
Hollywood will be enraptured, Europe will cheer and the Israeli Foreign Ministry will send the movie and its makers around the world to show off the country's good side. But the truth is that it is propaganda. Stylish, sophisticated, gifted and tasteful - but propaganda.
A new ambassador of culture will now join Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, and he too will be considered fabulously enlightened - so different from the bloodthirsty soldiers at the checkpoints, the pilots who bomb residential neighborhoods, the artillerymen who shell women and children, and the combat engineers who rip up streets.
Here, instead, is the opposite picture. Animated, too. Of enlightened, beautiful Israel, anguished and self-righteous, dancing a waltz, with and without Bashir. Why do we need propagandists, officers, commentators and spokespersons who will convey "information"? We have this waltz.
I suppose in 25 years this guy will have forgotten what he says here:
Slumdog Millionaire child stars given free homes
Forget the Oscars, the biggest Indian winners of the Slumdog Millionaire fairytale are two of the film's child actors plucked from the shanty towns of Mumbai, after it emerged they are to be given "free homes" by the state government.Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, and Rubina Ali Qureshi, nine, who play the lead characters in their younger years, currently live in shacks in the Garib Nagar slum in Bandra East, Mumbai. But Amarjit Singh Manhas, the chairman of a Mumbia housing association, told the Times of India: "We felt that since the children have made the nation proud, they must be given free houses."
There had been anger after pictures emerged of the child stars living in squalor despite the £10m movie earning about £69m since its north American release in November. Set in Mumbai, which is part of Maharashtra state, Slumdog Millionaire won eight awards at the Oscars on Monday, including best picture.
Danny Boyle, who won best director for the movie and cast the Hindi-speaking children from Mumbai's slums in the two lead roles, has repeatedly denied accusations he had exploited the children and not paid them enough. Film-makers pointed out that trust funds had been set up for the children and they had been sent to school.
The Mumbai board's decision has delighted the children's families, according to the Times of India. Azharrudin's father, Mohammed Ismail, told the newspaper: "We have barely got any money from the film-makers. In fact, whatever came, has already been spent. We do not even have a pucca wall in this shanty and our future is equally uncertain. In fact, this decision is definitely a piece of good news for us."
I suppose in 25 years this guy will have forgotten what he says here
You want him to be an asshole?
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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york
Waltz does not question the reasons for the Lebanon war, or even Israel's role beyond its "indirect responsibility," as an Israeli inquiry put it, for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila at the end of the war. But some 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed during the 3-month war for which Israel was directly responsible.
The Lebanon war was illegal, just like the war on Gaza. It was also unnecessary because enemies that shoot at each other can reach peace agreements; friends don't need to. Sadly, Folman's film contributes to the widely-held (and widely wrong) view that Israel is a moral country on which war is imposed.
Huh. That's interesting. I really did NOT come out of there with that impression. Neither did the friend I went to the film with (someone involved in Palestinian activism for a couple of decades), nor another friend who was one of the 8 women who occupied the Israeli consulate recently.
I'll have to pass along these critiques to them! Thanks for posting.
Also, M. Spector, thanks for linking to Mitu's article - it was really interesting. We work in the same faculty and it'll be fun to let her know that it showed up here on babble! :)
P.S. I would welcome any recanting or change of heart by any racist, whether 10 minutes afterwards or 25 years afterwards. Not allowing people to change their minds or rehabilitate after 25 years will change nothing in this world.
"Bashir" leaves you with the impression that Israeli soldiers are nice kids, scared shitless - contrary to the brutality evinced on television news footage. If the facts of the human condition that the film depicts do evoke pity and fear from the audience, it's not because your estimation of these boys has diminished. In Folman's narrative, occupation does not make good people do bad things; rather it makes good people watch bad people (aka "the Lebanese") do bad things.
There is something laughably predictable in the orientalism embedded in Cnaan's analysis of the Phalange: "There was something erotic about the Phalangists' relationship with Bashir," he observes sagely. "Avenging his death was, for them, like taking revenge for the killing of a wife."
Worse, "Waltz with Bashir" asks the audience to feel as much sympathy for those that made the Sabra-Shatila massacre possible as you do for the victims themselves. There is something perverse in this.
Also, M. Spector, thanks for linking to Mitu's article - it was really interesting. We work in the same faculty and it'll be fun to let her know that it showed up here on babble! :)
It's been widely reprinted on the web. Too bad Rabble didn't pick it up.
Dance of Death: 'Waltz with Bashir' and Sympathy for the Killer
And unfortunately, there are those who want to convince us that the enemy is merciful and benevolent, and the demand for a return to truce agreement is a (il)logical concession, that Israel is but a gentle lamb in our land. And there is the rushing to judgement about the film and hastening to the opinion that director Folman is a "resistance fighter" who condemns Israel's wars. He did no such thing—on the contrary, he depicted Israeli officers interfering to stop the massacres, as though the invasion of Lebanon that year included but one massacre.Bashir Habib writes in a Hariri publication that the film is a "bold and courageous act". Satia Nur ad-Din was among the few Arab authors who expressed skepticism of the film's propaganda about itself and about the alleged courage of the director.
Thanks for these links, al-Qa'bong, and I admit the film is problematic since it was produced within an Israeli political and social context--I'm not sure if this critique levied against the film is entirely accurate, although it could certainly prosecute the Israeli war machine a bit more. However, I think the film is not really dealing with whether the war is good or whether the war is bad, but looking at why this question never really comes up in Israel. Or, more than that, why there seems to be a black hole--in memory, in social mores, whatever--where this question should be. I agree that this problem, this nonplus, confers little comfort to Palestinans, but it is a way that Israelis are dealing with a seemingly intractable conflict.
Anyway, Folman has produced another short youtube clip of the Gaza conflict which I think plays out this issue: it attempts to show some perspective to an Israeli audience without being entirely honest to the historical context--in fact, the short is decontextualized so as to promote empathy with Gaza without assignment of guilt to Israel. But does it work?
Thanks for these links, al-Qa'bong, and I admit the film is problematic since it was produced within an Israeli political and social context...
Das Boot and Stalingrad were produced within a German context, yet they're historically accurate.
...the short is decontextualized so as to promote empathy with Gaza without assignment of guilt to Israel.
This is the major criticism raised against Bashir in those articles I posted; that one is made to feel sympathy for the players, yet the reasons why these players are in their situation are either ignored or lied about.
From everything I've read, this seems to be a typically Israeli reaction to being Israeli - that someone else is always to blame for what they do.
I agree with you about that, al-Q, but my impression when I saw the movie is that this is the exact dynamic they tried to illustrate - the lack of questioning, the lack of feelings of responsibility or regret.
I should watch it again after reading these articles and see whether I come away with the same impression as the first time.
I'm not sure Das Boot is a very good comparison, Al'Q--first of all, it was made 36 years after the end of World War II, and after British-German hostilities had ceased (unless you count the World and European Cup). So it is produced in a culture very much ina different mode of self-examination: one of internationally established guilt and national healing. Secondly, I fail to see how the film addresses the German soldiers' blame for the war, and the fascism they were fighting to uphold. I'm not saying the film should do this, but it appears to me that you are arguing Folman's film should do as much. Das Boot communicates general disapproval with the war and with Hitler, but there are no specifics: some crude caricatures of Hitler, a few frustrations at how the war is being run, etc. And it can hardly be said that the U-Boat's crew is representative of every German vessel's.
This isn't to say that your criticism isn't entirely valid, and I don't think that Folman's film is a classic by any means, but he at least is aware of his blind spots and trying to work through them accordingly.
Is there a scene in Bashir that is comparable to the U-boat commander's decision to let the British sailors die after torpedoing their ship, or the punishment squad's participation in the shooting of a child in Stalingrad?
Bashir was made 20 years after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Das Boot was made 36 years after World War Two. In another 16 years will the Israeli political and cultural context have changed enough for them to make films that admit any war guilt?
Er, yes. That's what Bashir is about. Are you telling me that the viewer doesn't feel sympathy for the 'difficult' decision Werner has to make?
Anyway, 16 years is a long time--almost as much time as has passed already. But the key of course, is how I pointed out that hostilities between Germany and English have ceased, and indeed, the Nazi regime defeated, dismantled and tried beforean International court. Until these things happen to Israel, how can an Israeli make a holistic piece of art? There is certainly an admission of guilt in Bashir, even if it isn't as complete and full as history requires.
A. R. Rahman’s two-fisted Oscar haul a couple of weeks ago was richly deserved. Without his soundtrack, [i]Slumdog Millionaire[/i] would have been largely unwatchable. [b]It was the palliative of Rahman’s score that allowed the movie’s grim images of poverty and violence to be served up as entertainment.[/b] Even more skillful and necessary was the way his music energized the film’s central conceit—Redemption by Game Show—with a kind of urgency and excitement that the narrative nonsense itself could hardly sustain.
