Oscars

Viewing the ceremony – not comprehensively – after a multi-year hiatus. (Oscar-cast doubles as storm alerter.)

I’m old enough now to be less keen on the living than on the honored dead:
  • Robert Duvall
  • Graham Greene
  • Diane Keaton
  • Val Kilmer
  • Robert Redford
  • Rob Reiner
  • Terence Stamp, etc.
(Some heavy hitters.)

Of the nominated movies, I’ve seen Sinners. Delroy Lindo, who plays a tragicomical virtuouso drunk (Cat Ballou’s Lee Marvin, anyone?), lost his contest to Sean Penn but would have been a worthy laureate. And I’ve seen KPop Demon Hunters (triumphant but unworthy).

Paul Thomas Anderson will win, one year or another (probably this year); and so will Jessie Buckley, who’s too good to be in what gets made nowadays. She’s acted with Olivia Colman, which reaps dividends, Oscar-wise. I’d like to see Jessie win for something schlocky like her earlier efforts in Beast and Men, or for a Richard Linklater adaptation of Mary Midgley’s Beast and Man – not for a prestige picture about one of Shakespeare’s love interests (everybody wins for that).

It’s been a grueling weekend. Daniel puked, I puked, and now Samuel has just puked. Three of us down, two of us to go.