ROY EDROSO

If our editor-in-chief has maintained this link, one may plainly see how wrong I, an alleged "savant," was in handicapping the Oscars this year. Out of 19 categories, I correctly picked winners in four: the unavoidable Shrek for Best Animated Feature, Pearl Harbor for Best Sound Editing, the Nutcake Math Whiz for Best Adapted Screenplay, and--stop the presses--Lord of the Rings for best makeup. My batting average is worse than Rey Ordonez's. Already the snide mail is rolling in. I really should get into fields of prognostication that suffer fools more gladly. Like politics. (This just in! We're going to invade Iraq any decade now!)

The big news was the historic redress of an old, shameful shortcoming on Oscar's part. I speak of course of Randy Newman's Best Song Oscar. Newman has written several great albums, and some fine film scores, but the piece of shit for which he was lauded for (its slightness made self-evident by its wretched performance in the program) shows how far the Academy will go to make restitution for ancient slights.

Oh, did you think I was talking about Denzel and Halle? Well, who knows but that they deserved their Oscars for the work honored; as I previously bragged here, I've seen none of the winning films and performances (preferring to pick winners by reading patterns in my bilious ducts), and it's very possible that Washington's prize performance was on par with his magnificent Malcolm X, and that Berry was much, much better in Monster's Ball than she was in X-Men. (I mean, if you'd told me years ago that Cher was going to turn into a decent actress one day, I would have been skeptical, too.)

In any case, if you're going to have symbols, they should be grand ones, and once we let go and accept that Oscar is about symbols, those Oscars, with honorary awardee Sidney Poitier's, made a wonderful triptych. The centerpiece, of course, was Poitier. His speech made me weep, and I'm an accredited curmudgeon. He's such a fine actor that I could only view it as a performance, and God, what a performance: the old lion, face slightly sunken with age but bearing still regal and authoritative, telling the new breed in a rich, sepulchral voice of the long, often difficult journey that had led to this moment. His words were better-written than most of the movies--particularly his acknowledgement of those who came before him, "on whose shoulders I stood to see where I could go." Isn't the English language beautiful, and isn't it sublime when spoken by a great actor? Poitier's speech reminded me of someone's comment on those of William Pitt the Younger: that he built his arguments on "the firm, architectural pile of his sentences." Poitier's sentences were a ladder to glory.

Washington, bless him, matched Poitier for dignity, and when they shook their Oscars at one another and Washington said there was "nothing I'd rather do" than go on "chasing" Poitier--the acknowledgement of a master by a disciple, playful but humbly serious--the public reservoir of good will this still-young actor has built up with the public must have overflowed. A pity that Berry pulled a Paltrow, blubbering semi-coherently through her speech, but for a moment, when she mentioned Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Diahann Carroll, and her face became briefly calm and luminous, I was even moved by her. (Then she had to thank her lawyers. Ugh.)

While we're on the subject of the Oscarcast, I must say I was impressed with all the little films that punctuated the program (Chuck Workman for Best Director!), and especially by the mercifully light touch the creators applied to the 9/11 button. God bless Woody Allen. (I've already mentioned God more than the Oscar people did, and I appreciated that, too.) Flushing away all the maudlin crap that has accreted to the image of New York in the past six months, Allen gave 'em the real New York--sharp, funny, brilliant, resilient, and Jewish. The NYC film clips he introduced were also a joy--whoever thought Nora Ephron would make something I would enjoy sitting through?

Something Hersholt Humanitarian honoree Arthur Hiller said has also stuck with me: "It's so embarrassing to receive an award for doing what you should be doing." And the crowd applauded this! Love the dress, darling, but what really becomes Hollywood is creative humility.

Back to my fuckups. I erred rather badly on Gosford Park. My heart rose when I saw Altman in the audience. I thought someone had tipped him off that he would win. But they did give fucking Opie the Oscar. Kudos to the cameraman who picked up Altman and David Lynch having a laugh together while Opie was onstage. It reminded me of the time three titans--Billy Wilder, John Huston, and Akira Kurosawa--handed the Best Director Oscar To...Sydney Pollock. (Huston and Kurosawa had also been nominated.) Pollock at least looked embarrassed; Opie was gosh-darned full of himself. At least Julian Fellowes gave Big Bob props as he picked up his screenplay award.

Rings and Moulin Rouge divvied the craft awards in ways I did not anticipate. At least I'm not the only one who was fooled by Jim Broadbent and No Man's Land.

So A Beautiful Mind strides into history, while I slink back into my cave to write savage denunciations of things no one cares about, till next year, when show business fever will again, no doubt, overtake me.