Saturday, Jul 5, 2008
Cintra chews up the Oscars Plus: Should Elian stay or should he go? What's become of Joni Mitchell?
Mar 29, 2000 | CORRECTION
Due to a typographical error, Salon's story The Conversation stated that a woman is raped in America every two seconds. The correct figure is every two minutes. Salon regrets the error. The story has been corrected.
Oscars 2000
BY CINTRA WILSON
(03/27/00)
If Cintra Wilson could stop choking on her spleen for three minutes, she might have been able to shed some light on why this year's Oscars, garish light and all, sent a clear signal that not only is this awards thing over, but the industry it's celebrating is on its last legs. Never has Hollywood looked so tacky, so barrenly nostalgic, so de trop. Wilson needs to get over the fact she is not herself a cause cilhbre. She might then actually find interesting stuff to talk about.
-- Tom Matrullo
Cintra Wilson complained that Penilope Cruz and Antonio Banderas were basically token Latin stars brought in to celebrate the win of another Latin winner. Had she dug a little deeper into the careers of Banderas and Cruz, she would have realized that both actors have close connections to Almodovar. Banderas actually made the best movies of his career with Almodovar, and Cruz appeared in "All About My Mother," the film Almodovar won for. Almodovar's film was basically a lock for best foreign film, and having Cruz and Banderas as presenters made sense, even more sense than the Sophia Loren/Roberto Benigni pairing last year.
I'll give her the gratuitous reaction shot of Gloria Estefan, though.
-- Katy Demcak
The "minority reaction shot" is insulting. Does the director assume that when Pedro Almodovar wins an award I immediately wonder how the other Spanish-surname attendees feel? And what was the deal with cutting to Latinos during Chow Yun-Fat's presentation? Had Lucy Liu gone home already?
-- Douglas Tonks
Just a note to say that Cintra Wilson's Oscar evaluation will keep me laughing for many weeks. She nailed every perverse, strange quirk of the whole event. I wish she'd taken a swipe at the grotesquerie that is the Riverses pre-game "fashion" review. Perhaps that would have been too much guffaw to take in one article; perhaps she'll write a follow-up?
I'd like to say I only marginally tuned in, or was paid to watch, but I sat through the entire five-hour ordeal. The world may not be coming to an end; it only seems like it when you subject yourself to this kind of bearing witness. Thank God for Cintra Wilson's ability to make all us gawkers feel a little less hollow for having tuned in.
-- Sue Roberts
Boston
Denzel Washington has been robbed -- again. Kevin Spacey is a fine actor, but the best performance this movie year was given by Washington in "The Hurricane." I wonder if the Washington Post's unfair criticism movie influenced academy voters. If so, the Post is hypocritical for panning "The Hurricane" for stretching the truth in spots. After all, how many true-to-life movies render the facts faithfully? Did the "Post" pan "Boys Don't Cry," another movie that takes liberties with the facts? I will not label the academy's action racist, but putrescence smells even if no one says so.
-- A.S. Perkins
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