On the Oscars

I was tired and didn't even see it all last night, but I have the following observations to make:

* Jon Stewart: not too bad as a host. Vast improvement on Chris Rock, whose failure was even worse than David Letterman's ill fated outing. (And I generally like Letterman, although his recent defence of Cindy Sheehan makes you wonder about how sensible he really is.)

* Ben Stiller is always prepared to look stupid, and of what I saw he had the funniest scripted bit last night. (Particularly funny was the line "this is blowing Spielberg's mind", with a cutaway shot of Spielberg in the audience mouthing "no it's not".)

* So Brokeback Mountain lost best picture. Seems fair enough; while not seeing it, I strongly suspect there was a "bandwagon" effect going on in the body of reviews. (When the praise is too universal and too similar in its terms, one often suspects the critics are not bringing an independent mind to their work.) But I like this line:

Larry McMurtry, 69, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, said afterwards: "“Perhaps the truth really is Americans don'’t want cowboys to be gay."”

Did something give him the impression that there was a significant body of Americans just hanging out for cowboy sexual revisionism?

* The current crop of Hollywood stars are generally a pretty uncharismatic lot. It is not that they are bad actors; it's just that there are so few that are personally appealing enough that it makes you want to see their next project. Contrast this with, say, even the 1980's. (As I age, I am increasingly nostalgic for that period.) You had the likes of Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Meg Ryan, (for some) Julia Roberts (I am afraid that all I can notice when she is on screen is her enormous mouth,) Tom Hanks, John Hughes films with their generally appealing young casts, etc. I never took to Meryl Streep, but I can see she how she had star appeal to some.

Now, many of these actors are still working, but it seems that their most appealing and successful work is well behind them. The current crop of 20's to 30-ish stars just don't seem to have the same pulling power.

And their personal lives seem screwed up in ways that detract from their screen appeal. Although Hollywood has always been full of divorce and remarriage, the weird or scandalous behaviour or comments of some stars now - think Angelina Jolie, Anne Heche or Robert Downey Jr - would have been kept from the public in past years.) Now we know too much about the star's private lives, and it does affect the way you feel about the roles they are playing on screen.

The psychology of watching gay playing straight and straight playing gay is particularly interesting. I don't know that it is just prejudice that makes it easier for audiences to accept straight playing gay rather than vice versa; I think it is something deeper. But in any event, everyone was better off when the sexual preferences of the stars was not so openly discussed, and their drug habits kept quiet too.

Enough of that for now.

Update: I have corrected some mistakes from my first rushed version.