In the wake of The Oscars, a great deal of small-minded vitriol was cast yesterday in places like here and here, and in the broadcast media, about Halle Berry's speech specifically, and the real significance of the event for black actors generally. Judging by the review of some of the papers on BBC Breakfast this morning, upon due reflection a more positive stance is being adopted, and today's Guardian offers a sensible overview that takes in Berry's own uncertainty about whether the industry will change, and the victory of Murder On A Sunday Morning in the Best Documentary category, which takes on issues of racism in the wider, realer world.
If ITV Digital goes under, I'll be in serious trouble: 24 aside, all the TV that I regularly watch is on either Sky One or E4. And now that I'm out of the habit of waiting until these things come to terrestrial, I'm not sure I want to get back into it. My building's management doesn't allow Sky dishes to be installed on the block, so that's not an option. Things are looking grim for our hero....
PS - Mike's last comment (below) brings the grand total of comments added to my postings since the commenting system was instigated exactly 300. Just thought I'd mention.
Now I thought that my last posting was a little unfocused and rambling (though note that it was written between 1 and 6 in the morning....), but dear old Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News takes 'rambling and unfocused' and runs with it.
I don't feel anything like as bad now.....
Oscar Blog 2002
0100 - 0130 - Dear Lord but the red carpet thing is vacuous. Most of the glamorous celebs can't string three sensible words together.
0130 - Jonathan Ross and Alan Cummings have just muttered their last pre-show banalities - a joke about Ian McKellern having a beard! (Guffaw!!!!) So now we're over to the lovely new Kodak Theatre. God Ron Howard looks old, and seems unable to clap like a regular person, and....Tom Cruise has borrowed Don Johnson's designer stubble from Miami Vice circa season one. And 90 seconds in - he's made the first but inconceivably the last reference of the evening to the 11th September.
0134 - Oh dear, someone's just said "I'd rather see a mediocre movie than a good play."
0138 - Thank God, Whoopi Goldberg just descended from the rafters.
0150 - Oh dear, Jennifer Connolly gets the award-receiving off to a dreadful start with the most dull and hackneyed acceptance speech I can remember in a long time.
0152 - And tellingly, the first ad break comes after only one award has been presented.
I'm going to stop doing the timings now - do you really need it? Occasional time-checks only from here on in.
Black Hawk Down gets Editing - seemingly to a great deal of surprise.
The Fellowship Of The Ring gets what will surely not be its first gong of the evening, for Cinematography.
Moulin Rouge! gets the nod for Costume, which is deserved, I think.
Woody Allen has just (very humorously) introduced a filmed insert overview of the history of film making in New York, which makes me all the more determined to get back there sometime soon.
Both the Documentary winners (Feature and Short) noted their thanks to cable network HBO, who seem to have taken on a similar role in the US as FilmFour in the UK, to what is clearly their great credit.
The technical awards continue - Moulin Rouge! picks up another, Art Direction, and huge credit is again given to Baz Luhrmann, I suspect because everyone wants to make up to him for not having been nominated for Directing.
0254 - And so, to the shock of no one very much, Shrek picks up the first ever Best Animated Feature Oscar - in a sense, it's a pity that after all this time without recognition of the form, there wasn't even a Disney film nominated - I rather doubt that without the Disney legacy, there even would be this award.
Black Hawk Down has now picked up two Oscars, which must be giving Ridley Scott the same kind of vicarious pleasure as Baz Luhrmann is getting, as he can't seriously think he's going to be in with a chance for Best Director.
0209 - Cleverly, the producers managed to find the only 25 continuous seconds of Sexy Beast in which Ben Kingsley didn't use That Word in the nominees clips for Supporting Actor. Jim Broadbent just won this one, and I'm really impressed - though I'd have been more impressed if he'd been nominated for Moulin Rouge!
A nice touch - Cirque Du Soleil have just performed an impressive routine in front of a montage of special effects from films from Metropolis onwards, which segues nicely into the Visual Effects award going to The Fellowship.
So - Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neil are out front doing the presentation for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award - She's looking relatively good - he looks like the poster child for gone-to-seed.
Sidney Poitier's speech accepting his Lifetime award is so amazingly dignified it's hard to describe. The pre-presentation insert of younger African-American actors noting the debt they owe to him is possibly the most sincere thing I can remember seeing in an Oscar show.
0405 - The birds are singing outside.....
0430 - Akiva Goldman wins Best Adapted Screenplay in the face of very stiff competition for A Beautiful Mind. Horribly fulsome speech about Ron Howard being the soul of the film.
0437 - And the award I most unequivocally agree with goes to.....Julian Fellowes, Best Original Screenplay for Gosford Park. Who at 0438 ruined it by doing a God Bless America end to his speech.
Stunningly, neither Amelie nor Lagaan won Best Foreign Language - that went to No Man's Land from Bosnia-Hertzogovina. Nice understated speech.
The annual review of The Departed was preceded by 'a moment of silence for all the American heroes....' I suppose it's their ceremony - I won't begrudge them it.
As Whoopi just noted - For those keeping score at home, it's Schizophrenic Mathematicians 2, Hobbits 4.
Whoopi, introducing the excerpt from Moulin Rouge! as its preview for Best Picture just made a wonderful dig at the stupidity of the Oscar system - she described the spectacle, the energy, the visual power of the film and noted that all of this was "apparently achieved without a Director", before pointing out Baz Luhrmann with the words "You kick some butt honey."
0500 - The BBC's transmission has just switched to BBC ONE, and the whole thing was suppsed to be finished, according to the schedule, at 0445, and we're just at the Robert Redford Lifetime Achievement award - both Best Acting awards, Directing and Best Picture still to come.
And The Award for Most Genuine Shock upon hearing they've won goes to..... Halle Berry, for Monster's Ball - who is crying and saying "Oh my God" and "I'm sorry." as I type. And is now making a beautiful speech that's that rarest of Oscar events, raw and honest and actually powerful. And all the tears make her look better, unlike poor old Gwynneth the other year. *And* they gave her the time to say everything she wanted to, which showed rare sensitivity on someone's part. When it finally gets round to opening in the UK I definitely want to see the film.
0528 - Denzel beats Russell Crowe to Best Actor, for which we must surely all be grateful. Pity about Tom Wilkinson, but I can live with Denzel if Russell didn't get it. Lovely joke he's just cracked - "All these years I've been following Sidney, and when I finally get this thing they give him one too."
0538 - Best Directing, always a potential win for A Beautiful Mind's Ron Howard, didn't disappoint, except in the sense that Ron Howard won it instead of either Peter Jackson, or especially Robert Altman.
0542 - and so to the big one - will it be A Beautiful Mind, or The Fellowship, or Moulin Rouge!, or In The Bedroom, or (I've decided I hope) Gosford Park. I don't much mind any that isn't A Beautiful Mind getting it.
0543 - Oh well, so much for the Best Picture going to the best picture. Sentiment wins again....
Not a bad year in most respects, and an important one in several, and Whoopi Goldberg is *so* much better a presenter than Billy Crystal. See you all again next year?
I've had a couple of messages from people noting that they would have expected me to pass comment on the stories about Thatcher (as I and an entire generation will forever know her) being told, essentially, to shut the fuck up. A few of my thoughts on her are in this little essay.
While I'll readily acknowledge that it's a fitting end to the career of one whose casual utterences regularly used to reveal the depth of her callous inhumanity and overweening arrogance, I'd also credit her with having a very sharp mind, and it's rarely a cause for celebration that such a mind is struck low.
Once the old witch dies, of course, I'll be at the front of the celebration parade waving a flag.... 
There's a very funny Victoria Coren column in today's Observer (not online that I can find) about the Oscars - edited highlights, reproduced entirely without permission, include:
"...[for] the single, childless, divorced, gay, or any combination of the four - there is a different set of festivals [from the Christmas, Easter, etc of family life]. Eurovision. Celebrity Big Brother. The Stars In Their Eyes grand final. The Pop Idol vote. All about TV; nothing to do with unpopular relatives, unwanted presents and spoilt children....tonight is our Christma, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Diwali....all rolled into one: It's Oscar night. The Oscars have eveything we could possibly need, to call our post-nuclear family together for worship. It's camp, it's late, and it's packed with people whose love lives are more screwed up than ours. ...
Here's Nicole Kidman; no boyfriend this year, but full of plans to go naked in an experimental theatre piece at Bognor. And, oh dear, here's her old husband Tom Cruise with the lovely Penelope: the one example of a simple, straighforward and sexually-fulfilled relationship. Nice to see Tom stopping to say hello to his old rugby pal Rupert Everett. ...
And I'm rooting for Judi Dench in Iris, a performance which Empire magazine described as 'literally screaming Oscar'. Some say this was a little unsubtle of Dame Judi, right in the middle of a film. But if she's that desperate then dammit, I hope she wins."
What a lovely weekend.
Ever since Chris and I decided to split up (about 6 months ago.....) we've been trying to have one final weekend that we can enjoy and look back on as a pleasant end to our relationship. Various things; family commitments, work commitments, me being sick, him being sick, any number of things, have got in the way. This weekend, all of the signs were auspicious, and so it's proved to be. We've been out for great meals, sat in and watched Enterprise, Buffy and Angel, been to the theatre (the last night of Mother Clap's Molly House - excellent - very funny, very camp, quite outrageous), and generally enjoyed each other's company. Years from now, I hope that all my memories of our relationship are of moments like those that we've shared in the last 48 hours.
By way of building up to my Oscar-fest on Sunday, I thought I'd share the love for that most shallow and unnecessary event felt by Mr Alexander Walker. His points about the reasons for no turnout or voting figures are especially on-the-money (literally).
You can always count on Metafilter contributers to unearth articles that are at once amusing and disturbing. Generally-speaking, that description applies to everything that Ann Coulter writes (she did a spectacular piece in the wake of 11th September that took in the 'lumpen mesomorphs' that staff airport security checkpoints on the way to advocating the view that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (though exactly who 'they' were was unclear).
Her latest teeter along the borderlands of sanity focuses (if that's the right word to use) on the issue of the child abuse by priests, though along the way it also takes in a few digs at The New York Times, and 'liberals' in general. What can you say about an article that opens with the phrase:
"Despite the growing media consensus that Catholicism causes sodomy...."
Just saw on the news that 'Miss B' has won her case to be allowed to die. Dead right too - if we don't even have control over our own lives to the extent that we can choose to end them, we've lost one of the ultimate freedoms.