Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Sports night at the Oscars: A boxing flick wins big as jock pix -- Jose Canseco's "Super Size Me," etc. -- dominate, and the producers want the whole thing finished, pronto.
Feb 28, 2005 | My favorite Oscar moment was when Hilary Swank won the best actress award for "Million Dollar Baby."
That creepy female voice-over lady, the one who also tells you about how the white zone is for passenger loading and unloading only, and who in the dystopian future will remind your great-grandchildren not to spit on the moving sidewalk or think unhappy thoughts about Our Leader, informed us that this was Swank's second Oscar, which of course we already knew.
"She's also the first female in Academy history to be nominated for playing a boxer," the voice purred. Well, who could have guessed that? I thought surely Audrey Hepburn? No, wait, Grace Kelly. Nah, guess not.
Swank is really rewriting those Oscar record books. She was also the first female in Academy history to be nominated for playing a cross-dressing teenage girl from Nebraska who gets raped and murdered.
I get to talk about this because "Million Dollar Baby" was a boxing movie, and also because I'm not spending two hours and 45 minutes doing anything without putting it in the column. Not in February, pal.
And yes, only 2:45. That's how long it takes to watch the Oscars if you start late and then TiVo-skip over the commercials and nominated songs. Listen, I like Beyoncé as much as the next red-blooded American male who gets an extra few thousand page views every time he mentions her in his daily column, but I'm not sitting through Oscar songs. I'll get enough syrupy music watching the pregame features during the NCAA Tournament.
So I haven't seen "Million Dollar Baby." I've been meaning to, but haven't gotten around to it, just as I haven't seen a single one of the movies that was nominated for an Academy Award, no matter how minor the category. I feel bad about that because there seemed to be a real sports theme this year.
There were the competing Dan Quisenberry biopics, "Sideways" and "Closer." There was "Shark Tale," about Scott Boras; "The House of Flying Daggers," which examined Sammy Sosa's last year in Chicago, and I hear had a great salsa soundtrack; "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," about the hockey lockout; and "Troy," which followed the USC marching band. I heard that one was really repetitive.
"Super Size Me" was an adaptation of Jose Canseco's "Juiced"; "Hardwood" was about a former Harlem Globetrotter (really); "Downfall" examined the Lakers; "I, Robot" nearly brought Bjorn Borg to life; and "The Motorcycle Diaries" was yet another sports biopic, this one about Jay Williams, the erstwhile Chicago Bulls player who's now recording "The Basement Tapes" with the Band.
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