The Birdman Triumphs

Between Emma Stone's crotch shot and Sean Penn's green card joke, there was the stuporous event we have come to call the Oscars. Every year, the Academy deems it necessary to bore everyone with a 3+ hour award ceremony, but everyone who is anyone always shows up for the annual fashion show. Neil Patrick Harris did his best to keep the show rolling. He strolled out in his underwear, a la the title character of Birdman, to the amusement of everyone, and made the yearly poke at Oprah.

Lady Gaga paid a tribute to The Sound of Music. Why not Pink Martini, who teamed up with the Von Trapp family, and did a beautiful tribute album in Dream a Little Dream this year? Anyway, I heard she put on a good show.

John Legend and Common joined forces for a rousing rendition of Glory, from Selma. The song won the only Oscar for the movie about Martin Luther King, Jr's key march during the Civil Rights movement. It had to be the high point of this otherwise banal evening.

There were complaints going into the Oscars that none of the actors from Selma were nominated for awards. I thought David Oyelowo gave a wonderful performance. Otherwise, I thought Selma a bit too earnest, presenting a heroic MLK, when Ava DuVernay could have stripped away some of the layers of history and given us a more intimate portrait of the man. I was pleased to see that the film touched my daughter deeply, who couldn't understand how people could do that to each other.

Ten movies were nominated for Best Picture. It came down to four however: American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood and Selma. Each had its vocal supporters. I was quietly rooting for Grand Hotel Budapest but was happy to see Birdman come away with the top prize. It may have been an "actors movie" but was so well done that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu took best director and best original screenplay as well, much to the chagrin of the American Sniper contingent, which made its displeasure known.

I didn't see anything wrong with Sean Penn's green card joke, but in 2005 he got teed off at Chris Rock's jab at Jude Law and felt the need to defend his buddy. I guess he too has to be more careful what he says in public, although Inarritu was not offended, having directed Penn in 21 Grams.

I was glad to see Inarritu take a lighter approach in Birdman. His movies have been so deathly serious that it was great to see his comic side, albeit dark comic side. I thought the acting was superb and was hoping Emma Stone would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but alas she got beat out by Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. She's my least favorite of the Arquette siblings.

Julianne Moore finally got her Oscar. I guess you have to play someone with a disability to have any shot at the award these days. Meryl Streep literally jumped out of her seat when Moore was announced. I did too as Julianne was long, long overdue.

This year's Oscars may not have had the diversity some persons were looking for, but for the most part the best talents won. If Inarritu doesn't have a green card, he should get one now, as I imagine he will be in very hot demand in Hollywood.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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