Most Dignified Recipient: John Lithgow, who gave thanks, succinctly; who loves his wife devotedly, and who respects grammar.
Least Supporting Actress (and no wonder, because she should have won over her co-star): Jessica Lange, who seemed to have a few sour grape stains down the front of her dress.
Best Puppet Face: Quentin Tarantino
Best Supported Actress: Cher
Least Supported Actress (see above): Jessica Lange
Most Gracious and Cinema-Scholastic: Martin Scorsese, who reminds me, every time he opens his mouth, how devoted, intelligent, appreciative, hard-working and modest he is.
Most Deserving of the Fiddle Dee Dee! Prize: Drew Barrymore(“Who, me?!”), who offered up the most deliciously disingenuous speech of the decade. I was thrilled!
Most Authentic on the Red Carpet and On-stage: Sandra Bullock, the woman who used to suck her pop through licorice straws, and whose father is ill, and who wears her heart on her sleeve but always behaves sweetly and with good-humoured dignity.
Best Rehearsed Ad Lib Speech: Meryl Streep, who I can never forgive for so mercilessly and connivingly trashing Philip Seymour Hoffman on The View those many months ago. Clever, clever puss.
Least Supported Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been outstanding in a long list of films (This Boy’s Life; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; Catch Me If You Can; Blood Diamond; Aviator; The Departed…) and who seems to be endlessly applauding others.
Most ‘umble: George Clooney, who is undoubtedly a nice man, but who goes a little too far in the Goodness Department, eyes cast downward into his lap (spurning images of that naked man running from the house fire, perhaps?), Bambi lashes sweeping across his taupe-tanned cheeks.
Funniest Line from an Awards Show Host: (on introducing Mel Gibson): “I like a drink as well as the next man…unless the next man is Mel Gibson.”
Best Torch Passer, Most Confident, and Most Likely to Believe in Her Own Immortality: Tina Fey
Best Response to An Actor in a Best Performance Category: the audience, to Jeff Bridges
Least Liked Nominee/Winner: James Cameron. Whoa! Talk about trying to reverse his bad image from “I am King of the World!” -- you just know he is a man who makes proper nouns out of common ones -- Titanic days, days that also seem to include a bit of wife bashing. Whatever, no one seemed fooled.
Biggest Surprises/Losses: Gabourey Sidibe in Precious (I have not seen Precious, but from what I gathered from the previews, and given that Monique won…); Colin Firth, in A Single Man (oh my god he is phenomenal, although I suspect that Jeff Bridges is, too); Jessica Lange, who, in my view, performed head and shoulders (knees and toes) above Drew Barrymore, although I am no longer able to judge that young girl by any standards that come close to fair. But listening to Steven Spielberg’s goddaughter talk as if she had never seen a stage before!? What a pile of horseshit. And outshine Joan Allen, Anna Paquin and Sigourney Weaver? I don’t think so.
Best Come Back: Robert Downey Jr., who, while a little crazy-eyed, still breaks my heart, ranking alongside Russell Brand for the tile of Men I Wish Were My Brothers.
Worst Performance Over All: the orchestra, for cutting in on all the lesser-knowns: animators, writers, English as a fourth language speakers, and so on.
“And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.” ~ Martin Scorsese
I wish…
