Films
Michael Moore was booed when he denounced the Iraq war at the 2003 Oscars. This year, Kathryn Bigelow played it safe
At this year's Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow won best director and her film, Hurt Locker, won best picture despite criticisms from veterans that it failed to take into account much of the daily life of the men and women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and criticisms that the film itself was as pro-war as it was pro-soldier. Although Bigelow dedicated her award to the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, she didn't touch on the lies that sent them there to risk their lives in pursuit of a political coup.
Back in 2003, Michael Moore strode upon the Oscar stage to accept his award for Bowling For Columbine with his fellow nominees and one intention: to make his voice heard by the Oscar audience about the injustices he saw in America. At the Oscars on 23 March 2003, Bush hadn't landed on an aircraft carrier to declare "mission accomplished" even as soldiers were still fighting and dying in Iraq; America with her "coalition of the willing" had only just begun the invasion of Iraq on 20 March. Despite the prevailing sense of national patriotism and efforts by the administration to encourage the media to report their "intelligence", there were already whispers – since proven correct – that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, he had no access to nuclear materials or technology and his administration had no contact with al-Qaida. None of that mattered to a country at war, apparently.
But it mattered to Moore, and his fellow nominees. As he took the stage to a standing ovation from the audience for a film that documented and condemned America's violence-soaked gun culture, he did so with one purpose: to make himself heard. Instead of thanking a long list of people few in the television audience knew, he spoke to them as much as the audience he could see.
"I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us and we would like to ... they are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction, as we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much."
As Moore declared the results of the 2000 elections "fictitious", a few members of the audience yelled in assent, but they were quickly shut down by the assembled members of the Hollywood elite booing Moore – many of whom had just sat down from applauding his award. Ironically, Moore's industry colleagues thought he deserved an award for a movie that attacked America's obsession with guns but then booed his stance on the president's orders to turn our beloved guns against a country that our "fictitious" administration knew only a long, sustained campaign of misinformation would lead people to support.
This year at the Oscars, Michael Moore wasn't among the nominees, and since his speech in 2003, many winners have taken the stage to denounce the Bush administration and its policies on everything from the environment to the wars without fear of being booed down. But then, a patriot, he stood up and denounced to jeers and opprobrium that which the rest of the country finally realised was true: that the previous administration led us into a war on false pretences, lied to us about what they were doing there, and continues to lie to us in order to keep their entry in the history books untarnished.
So Bigelow kept quiet, maybe because, for all the rightwing carping about how Hollywood is so anti-war, when push came to shove in 2003, there were very few in Hollywood willing to stand in solidarity with Moore instead of the Bush administration.
'I would love to have had a career like Kate Winslet's – but the chance never came my way'
What got you started?
Playing Irina in a student production of Three Sisters at the Oxford Playhouse while I was at university. For some reason that play, with that director and that combination of people, really hit home with the audience. It was the first time I got swept up in the dream of what acting can really be.
What was your big breakthrough?
Getting cast as Sally Bowles in a production of Cabaret at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich while I was at Rada. I'd never done a musical before, but director Dick Tuckey took a chance on me, and got me a coveted Equity card.
Stage or screen?
Stage. Partly because I don't like having a camera pointed at me, and partly because of the way I look. I'm no screen beauty, so I've often had to play slightly simpering, ingenue types on screen. I'd love to have been in a film like Breaking the Waves or An Education, or to have had a career like Kate Winslet's – but the chance never came my way.
What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?
Fill Your Heart by David Bowie. The first time I heard it was when I was in Closer at the National – it was played as everyone left the theatre.
Are there too few good parts for women?
There are too few good parts for all actors on TV, because reality television has meant they're mainly being played by somebody off the street. In theatre, you don't find producers putting money into shows with a middle-aged woman as the lead; they either want actresses who are sexy and young, or old and established, like Judi Dench. Theatre-goers are mainly middle-aged women, so there's surely an audience for it.
What's your favourite film?
The Lacemaker, with Isabelle Huppert as a woman who has a mental breakdown after a love affair. She plays it very simply and beautifully, and it's incredibly moving.
Is there an art form you don't relate to?
Twelve-tone music. I just don't understand how people who can write melody choose not to.
Complete this sentence: At heart I'm just a frustrated . . .
Mother. Writer. Human being. Saxophone player. Swing dancer. I dabble my toe in everything, and do nothing well.
What work of art would you most like to own?
I'd love to own a statue by [French sculptor] Camille Claudel – though most were destroyed by the Seine in a flood. She had a tragic, fascinating life.
Is there anything about your career you regret?
Oh yes. But I think it would be indiscreet to share it with Guardian readers.
Born: Northumberland, 1961.
Career: Films include Jack and Sarah and Twelfth Night. Plays include Othello at the RSC, and The Glass Menagerie for Shared Experience, at the Salisbury Playhouse (01722 320333) until 20 March. Then touring.
High point: "Doing Betrayal at the National."
Low point: "Filming True Colours in 1991. The director, Herbert Ross, was cruel and manipulative."
Sandy Powell takes gong for The Young Victoria as fellow Brit Rob Beckett wins Best Sound Editing for Hurt Locker
It was not, the commentators all agreed, a vintage night for British talent. But while all lenses were focused on Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth trying to look gracious in defeat, the success of two of their compatriots went almost unnoticed.
Sandy Powell's triumph in the Best Costume Design category meant she has now won more Oscars than Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro – all of whom have just two to her three. "I already have two of these, but I'm feeling greedy," ran the provocative opening line of her acceptance speech, a quip which went down badly at a ceremony where faux modesty rules the day.
The other British winner was Rob Beckett, who won his first Oscar for sound editing on The Hurt Locker,Kathryn Bigelow's acclaimed but little seen thriller about a bomb disposal team in Iraq, which proved to be the underdog victor. The low budget film scooped six awards including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director – making Bigelow the first woman to take directing honours in Oscar history.
Sandra Bullock beat Meryl Streep, along with British nominees Mulligan and Helen Mirren, to win Best Actress, and Jeff Bridges got his long-awaited due as Best Actor for his role as a washed-up country music star in Crazy Heart, beating Firth in the process. The record-breaking blockbuster Avatar, meanwhile, came away with little more than crumbs – its role at the awards ceremony being, apparently, to use its box-office heft to try to draw bigger television audience ratings.
All sorts of fights that might have broken out didn't. The widely predicted smackdown between Bigelow and her ex-husband, Jim Cameron, Avatar's visionary director, did not happen. Rather, Cameron sat directly behind Bigelow and didn't seem to mind her moment of glory one bit.
The most unambiguous hostility came in the most unlikely of places, the documentary short category, whose winners provided easily the strangest episode of the night. Roger Ross Williams, director of Music By Prudence, a film about disabled musicians in Zimbabwe, started an acceptance speech only to have the microphone wrested away from him by one of his producers, Elinor Burkett.
Williams later accused Burkett, with whom he has not been on speaking terms for more than a year, of pulling a "Kanye" (after Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at at this year's video music awards). Burkett countered that Williams had improperly hogged the podium.
The British contingent did nothing so outrageous, mainly because they came away almost completely empty-handed.
But 49-year-old Powell was again recognised as one of the best costume designers in the business. Her latest Oscar, for costume drama The Young Victoria, will sit alongside identical statuettes for her work on The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love.
Known as a force to be reckoned with – Scarlett Johannson said last year she wouldn't dare talk back to Powell – she said most of her job involves sweet-talking thespians into doing what she wants. "Eighty per cent of the job is psychology, and only about 20 per cent art," she told the Times in 2008. "You should be of the temperament to deal with all types of people and understand very quickly how to get the best out of your department, get your own way with actors and fulfil your role helping to create your director's vision."
This year's Oscars were touted as many things. The producers of the telecast promised innovation and a fresh look, but delivered the same old pomposity, tired jokes, bad dance routines and endless montages.
What was most striking, in the end, was the large number of African-Americans in attendance and on the winner's podium. Precious was a big part of that – screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher won an Oscar alongside Mo'Nique, and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe earned just as much attention for her Best Actress nomination as Mulligan. But there was also Morgan Freeman (nominated for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus), Avator star Zoe Saldana (who presented an award but was not up for any) and a clutch of other black stars including Queen Latifah and Sam Jackson.
Has Hollywood finally become colour-blind in the age of Obama? Perhaps. Sidibe, who was plucked out of a New York community college to play the lead in Precious, also brought a refreshing dose of street reality to the pampered environment of the film biz. Asked on the red carpet about her dress – which, like her, was several sizes larger than the Hollywood norm – she shot out with delicious vulgarity and a huge smile: "If fashion was porn, this dress would be the money shot."
Diva presenters, bad dance, graceless hosts. Marina Hyde looks back at a starry night
Ladies, gentlemen, and non-members of the academy: welcome to G2's almost-live coverage of the heartbreakingly succinct Oscars telecast, which – despite the fact that no one would dream of doing anything as transgressive as swearing – is being brought to you with a 24-hour time delay.
Right off the bat I want to join the salutes for The Hurt Locker – a movie just too damn important to bother with stuff like narrative, and which will one day be deemed just as hilariously underrated as American Beauty (which, you might dimly recall, won a mere five Oscars) and Dances With Wolves (a paltry haul of seven, including a best director statuette for Mister Kevin Costner). As for James Cameron's hopes for Avatar, his groundbreaking, record-breaking movie . . . well, they are with Eywa now.
This was indeed a night that made history – David Letterman is now no longer the worst-ever Oscars host. Co-presenters Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin proved they couldn't hit a gag with a trunkload of IEDs, falling back three times on comedy misreadings of the autocue, to ever-diminishing returns. They weren't even phoning it; they were texting it in, deferring even the comedy opening number to Doogie Howser MD. As is too often the case with this marquee event, it was a night that lived down to expectations. The Oscars telecast is like one of those movies where you just know that at some point, someone is going to slide down the back of a door with their head in their hands. That someone will be you – but we'll come to the soi disant "Legion of Extraordinary Dancers" later. For now, it's time to sling out some more gongs.
Best drinking game
The one where you do a shot every time someone mentions Meryl (surname very much de trop, obviously). Ever since the heyday of the studio era, an adorably defensive Hollywood has wanted you to know that it doesn't just have sex symbols who can turn in a role. It has actors – men and women who deliver something so much more epic than mere performance. These days, the mantle once worn by the likes of Norma Shearer and Greer Garson is all Meryl's, and failure to either nominate her or mention her less than three times in any given Oscars ceremony would trigger an industry-wide existential crisis. This year's second-best drinking game? The one where you take a gulp every time a member of the motion-picture community salutes the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really puts stuff into perspective.
Most tediously predictable seating arrangement
Placing James Cameron directly behind Kathryn Bigelow. Hey, did you hear that those guys were married once? Even if you did, I'll bet you haven't listened to nearly enough yakking about the subject yet.
Best acceptance speech
This year produced that rarest of occurences, both a best actor and a best actress whom you'd love to have a drink with. For all Jeff Bridges' immense charm though, Sandra takes the speech honours. Wherever you stand on America's Sorta Sweetheart, she played it just the way you should: surprised, sweet, sisterly, self-deprecating, and with the brief threat of tears, but not so you feared she'd be overwhelmed by them. A class act. Plus, she gets triple points for the joke about Meryl being "a great kisser".
Best They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To moment
Footage of Lauren Bacall accepting an honorary Oscar at a gala a few months ago. "A man at last," drawled Bacall of her statuette. "The thought that when I get home I'm going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting I can hardly stand it." At the Oscars, this was immediately followed by a cutaway to Cameron Diaz chewing gum. Truly, it was the stars that got small.
Best diva moment
Best director presenter Barbra Streisand walking almost to the front of the stage, then waiting imperiously for a lackey to rush out of the wings and help her down three steps to the microphone. Long may she fib about the farewell aspect of her tours.
Worst cutaway
A tough category, now that reaction shots appear to be subject to the most heavyhanded ethnic profiling. Ethan Coen was the night's go-to Jew, the guy they cut to right after Steve Martin made the joke about Inglourious Basterds star Christoph Waltz playing a Nazi "obsessed with finding Jews", and observed that the contents of the Kodak Theatre were pretty much "the motherlode". Don't worry, viewers – see, Ethan's laughing! The Jews totally get the joke! The sledgehammer cutaway was also deployed each time an African-American star was mentioned. The fact that you could practically hear a producer screaming, "Close-up on Morgan Freeman! Or one of the other four, goddammit!", really added to the sense of how far we have come.
Most never-ending segment
If you had spent the last few weeks wondering what the score from The Hurt Locker would look like interpreted via the medium of modern dance, this was the night for you. In what felt like a 47-minute medley, each and every nominee for best score was ... glossed, would you call it? . . . by a troupe called the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, who really know how to distil the tension of bomb disposal into a soft-shoe number. This year's ceremony was produced by one of the judges on So You Think You Can Dance, which goes some way toward explaining that excruciating segment, but nowhere near excusing it.
Best reminder of what Hollywood dreams are made of
Oprah Winfrey's tribute to Gabourey Sidibe. "She was a student trying to earn some money to go to college. On Monday she skipped school to audition for a movie called Precious. On Tuesday they called her back to meet the director ... On Wednesday, she got the part. And tonight, she is sitting at the Academy Awards in the same category as Meryl Streep." Ain't that the movies? Nicely done, Oprah.
Best fauxhemian
Sean Penn. Even though Sean knows that real outsiders simply wouldn't show for the Oscars, he agreed to present best actress, and used the occasion of someone else's big moment to announce, "I never became an official member of the academy", before taking an incoherent swipe at them for failing to acknowledge his ex-wife. I know! You can almost smell him mocking the institution. Still, while Sean is only a country member of the academy, fans of Team America will recall that he is a leading light of FAG, the Film Actors' Guild – a powerful lobby coincidentally led by Oscars co-host Arec Bardwin.
Most awkward staging
As a tribute to the various 12-step programmes with which so many attendees are familiar, the best actor and best actress nominees are now bigged up in a segment that resembles an AA sponsors' meeting. Julianne Moore eulogised Colin Firth, making it clear they had "only worked together for three days", while Colin Farrell recommended Jeremy Renner with a reminiscence about "that trip to Mexico, which I wish I could remember more of", while saying "man" and "brother" a lot.
Worst sound design
The Oscars ceremony. I fell asleep in that desperately called-for discourse on the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, so I might have missed the explanation as to why, in the year 2010, the Oscars telecast sounds as if it was engineered by a competition winner. Is it really beyond the wit of early 21st-century TV professionals to raise the level on the auditorium announcer's mic to "discernible"?
Best lecture
Courtesy of best supporting actress Mo'nique, who thanked her husband for advising her that "sometime you have to forego doing what's popular to do what's right". Blithely undermining her fellow nominees, the Precious star praised the academy for rewarding "the performance not the politics", apparently under the impression that Oprah's campaign juggernaut for the movie is about as far away from power-player politicking as you can get.
Worst definition of horror
No-time Academy Award-winners Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart introduced a tribute to the horror movie genre, which took some bizarre detours. Movies you never realised were horror flicks include Marathon Man, Edward Scissorhands, Little Shop of Horrors, Jaws, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Beetlejuice and, um, Twilight, which was really flattered by being interspliced with The Shining. Do adjust your records accordingly.
Most self-regardingly graceless hosts
The academy, which banned The Hurt Locker's producer Nicolas Chartier for sending the most innocuous email to a circle of acquaintance, in which he asked them to vote for The Hurt Locker "and not a $500m film". This is apparently an "ethical lapse" in breach of the academy's negative-campaigning rule, so the man who financed and produced the movie wasn't there to see it have a night he could only have dreamed of. Yet Zac Efron is given pride of place up front near Meryl. Where's the justice?
Worst fact-checking
Demi Moore introduced the "in memoriam" section to people we've lost, in a montage that failed to include her pre-2003 bodywork. Rather more glaring, however, was the omission of Farrah Fawcett, whose failure to make the cut an academy spokesman would have you believe was totally intentional. "Major fail" is Roger Ebert's view on the matter.
Most arresting emergence from the Where Are They Now files . . .
Is Judd Nelson – how to put this? – going through some stuff? The Internet Movie Database indicates the Breakfast Club star will feature in six TV movies or straight-to-DVD releases this year, but his appearance during the John Hughes tribute was certainly eye-catching, and all information as to where Bender's currently "at" would be gratefully received.
Finally, best technical innovation
Sky +. Because of your vision, Sky +, and that of the trailblazing TiVo that went before you, I will never know what Sky pundits Ronni Ancona and Mark Dolan made of it all. I absolutely could not have done it without you.
Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win an Oscar for best director. But is Hollywood really changing?
After every Oscar ceremony, observers traditionally attempt to distil a zeitgeisty trend from the proceedings, and the one available here would appear to be obvious. Yesterday, on International Women's Day in fact, we woke up to hear that Kathryn Bigelow had become the first woman to win the best director award in the Oscars' 82-year history.
Women have, of course, been extravagantly admired as prizewinning actors at the Oscars and always been expected to provide the glamorous media faces of the Academy Award ceremony, the red-carpet icons and fashion queens. But never before has a woman actually been distinguished for being at the creative and administrative helm: and it is difficult to tell if there is really any feminist meaning to this, or if Bigelow is a Thatcherite anomaly. Either way, for her to have won so massively with such a male-orientated film in such a male-orientated industry is a significant victory. And the fact that so little fuss is made about it is, arguably, a heartening sign – an indication that the academy will be unself-conscious about picking a woman next year, or the year after that.
The Hurt Locker itself was a classic Oscar landslide: like Slumdog Millionaire last year, the consensus tipping-point was reached that this film was a very good thing, propelled by great reviews and also, perhaps, by its perceived underdog status. Quite suddenly, as if by some mysterious chemical reaction, everything went its way and Avatar, the hugely hyped box-office behemoth, was disappointed.
The Hurt Locker really is a brilliant film about the strain, fear and sheer boredom of war, but also, like many anti-war films, it also provides a lot of the old-fashioned excitement that is generally associated with action films. Jeremy Renner, playing the sociopathic, cigarette-smoking bomb-disposal technician, terminally addicted to the army life, does bear a strong visual resemblance to Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, who became famous in the US after being snapped by news photographers in Falluja in 2004, smoking a cigarette in an unconscious "Marlboro man" pose.
Everything about this film is intensely male; there is a sweaty, sour and defeatedly masculine tang seeping out of every frame. Perhaps, in retrospect, it was not so startling for a woman director to have made it, and to have provided the shrewd perspective on this maleness.
Elsewhere, well, there was not too much to cheer about at the Oscars on the feminist front, or any other. Jane Campion, a brilliant director with her Keats movie Bright Star – the best film of her career – was nowhere to be seen. Jeff Bridges was a popular winner, though the sentimental Country & Western drama Crazy Heart was not his best work, all heart and no crazy. The prize for Sandra Bullock (surely the least deserving winner of the five nominees) seemed to tap into a robustly Palinesque admiration for tough-minded hockey moms everywhere, and any perceived liberal-feminist trend in the Bigelow prize has to be balanced by Bullock's unlikely triumph. Bullock has never been nominated before and has never exactly been an awards contender, but is instead notable chiefly for having garnered a guarded industry respect for being a solid box-office draw outside the US. She also won a Razzie this weekend for the unspeakable All About Steve, becoming the first performer to get an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. Perhaps it won't be long before someone gets the Oscar and the Razzie for the same performance. The best supporting actor awards for Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique were the right decisions, however.
The Union flag was certainly not being raised, and in fact no flag other than the star-spangled banner seemed to be terribly important. It was an awful night for Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, confined to the best foreign film ghetto where they were defeated by the Argentinian thriller The Secret of My Eyes. The Haneke and Audiard films were both widely hailed as modern classics but ignored by an academy that is highly receptive to critical kudos where these opinions appear to be sympathetic to the US military and US concerns, but pretty indifferent otherwise.
This was a clunkingly disconcerting moment at the Oscars: a reminder, if we needed it, that the Academy Awards will always give us a vivid, muddled snapshot of the American mood, but no very compelling or focused view of what's happening elsewhere in the world of cinema.
The 2010 Oscar ceremony saw only two Brits carry off an Academy Award. Which were the UK's best years - and what won?
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After the huge success of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire last year, it was always going to be a lean year for British Oscars.
That's not to detract from the achievements of Young Victoria costume designer Sandy Powell and Hurt Locker sound editor Ray Beckett.
But as it was, neither Colin Firth, Carey Mulligan, Helen Mirren, or even Armando Iannucci got lucky this year.
So, we wanted to know which British actors and directors have won the Academy Awards, since their inception in the 1930s.
Thanks to the British Film Institute, we've got the full list here. In their words, it includes:
Individuals who were either born, and lived and worked, in Britain into their adult lives, or those who were not born here but took on citizenship.
Which means some of you may not agree with the results - is the Deer Hunter a British film, for instance?
Take a look and let us know what you can do with the data.
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Who looked like a winner before the Academy Awards even started? Jess Cartner-Morley and Imogen Fox present the fashion power list
Tim Burton's 3D extravaganza had an even bigger opening weekend than Avatar – but left the critics cold. What did you think of it?
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland may have wowed audiences – it opened to a spectacular $210.3m global haul at the weekend – but the critics are divided over whether this latest reimagining of Lewis Carroll's famous stories is a worthy addition to the canon. Some suggest this is Alice seen through a disconcerting Hollywood action movie filter, with weak characterisation and tepid dialogue. Others are bowled over by the vivid imagery and a terrific performance by Helena Bonham Carter as the sinister, sickly sweet Red Queen. Meanwhile, Johnny Depp's performance as the Mad Hatter seems to delight and annoy in equal measure.
Burton's film sees Alice returning to Wonderland (now known, for some obscure reason, as Underland) as a 19-year-old, having almost forgotten her previous visit as a young girl many years before. Confused and embarrassed after being forced to turn down a marriage proposal in front of hundreds of assembled guests at a garden party, the teenager soon finds herself tumbling down the rabbit hole into an even more frustrating situation.
Not only is she required to eat and drink in order to shrink and grow herself to negotiate various obstacles in the Wonderland architecture, but the residents suspect she may be "the wrong Alice". Furthermore, those who do believe are keen to release Wonderland from the tyranny of the evil Red Queen by slaying the Jabberwocky. Alice's reaction to all of the above is a sort of resigned, callow exasperation – at least at first. To all intents and purposes, this is Kevin the Teenager in Wonderland.
Our own Peter Bradshaw, for one, is not impressed. "As ever, I can't rid myself of the feeling that for all the funkily crepuscular mood that Burton creates, this is a pretty conventional work," he complains. "There are some funny exchanges, particularly between the Red Queen and the Mad Hatter, but for me the weightless, frictionless, whimsical world of fantasy is often, frankly, dull."
"Any purists who argue that this Alice doesn't work because it strays so far from the text are wrong," writes Channel 4 Film's Catherine Bray. But she adds: "This Alice doesn't work for the far more essential reason that the characters are too often missing a basic lifeforce of their own, possibly a result of being enbalmed in stunning-looking but airless CGI. They're not helped by dialogue that feels like an afterthought to a long-planned series of conceptual character designs."
On the flipside, the Times's Kate Muir reckons "the kooky costumes and creepy fantasy landscapes have gestated brilliantly from Burton's drawing board into a 3D world with touches of the Avatar forest about it". She adds: "If you could ask Lewis Carroll to choose between Disney's saccharine Alice in Wonderland cartoon of 1951 and Tim Burton's new gothic monsterpiece, you feel the author would pick the nightmarish vision over the giant teacup rides in theme parks. While Burton has forsaken Carroll's narrative for a postmodern mash-up of Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and the Jabberwocky poem, his hallucinogenic humour stays true to the original."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times is another (qualified) fan. "Alice plays better as an adult hallucination, which is how Burton rather brilliantly interprets it until a pointless third act flies off the rails," he writes. "Burton is above all a brilliant visual artist, and his film is a pleasure to regard."
It strikes me that if Carroll's original Alice in Wonderland was based on a deck of cards, with its sequel patterned on a game of chess, Burton's film most clearly resembles a giant theme park. All the characters one expects from a trip to Wonderland are present and correct, but too often they are larger-than-life representations of the originals who maintain very little of the magic that encouraged us to care about them in the first place. The film's art design is (fittingly) a thing of wonder, but as the Guardian's Xan Brooks has pointed out (in a positive review, it ought to be said), there is very little more to the movie than that.
I also think Burton has rounded up too many odd numbers from the original stories, and smoothed off rather too many pleasedly jagged edges. Carroll's tales had a dream-like quality, with episodes often dissolving into one another without any real resolution. A blockbuster movie, perhaps, requires firmer foundations, yet one can't help thinking that the "real Alice" ought to have been built on shifting sands.
Did you manage to catch Alice in Wonderland at the weekend? Do you agree with the critics who wish they had never fallen down this particular rabbit hole? Or is it one Burton that's well worth going for?
Hadley Freeman sees the stars strike a serene pose on Academy Awards red carpet – while the reporters lose the plot
"I'm loving the colour! I'm loving life! Let's talk beauty!" Those of an innocent nature might assume this to be the final line of a pre-Raphaelite poem, or the chorus of a 1960s folk song. Those of a more seasoned bent will identify this as your average exhortation from a TV presenter on the Oscars red carpet.
What had just happened? I think someone had spotted that Maggie Gyllenhaal was wearing a blue dress. Hey, I'm loving life! It was a funny old Oscars night. If the nominees seemed like an awkward balance between the small (The Hurt Locker, An Education, A Single Man) and the bloated (Avatar, Avatar, Avatar), then the red carpet was an enjoyable imbalance between the hysterical presenters and the decidedly blase celebrities.
"Were you FREAKING OUT all day?" the hyperbolic AP presenter asked Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner, looking as if she might need cardiac assistance soon. "Nah, I just had a sandwich," he shrugged. The AP woman tried again with Up in the Air's Vera Farmiga. "I'm zen," replied the fabulously cool Farmiga. Lenny Kravitz had spent the day eating takeaway chicken.
Poor AP woman. Where's Mariah Carey when you need her, right? The most telling disjunct was apparent long before the presenters had re-whitened their teeth and mic'd up. There were so many suggestions of behind the scenes scandals (Kathryn Bigelow versus her ex-husband James Cameron for best director being the big one, a fight that upset the media much more than it seemed to Bigelow and Cameron) that it didn't take an Avatar-sized imagination to wonder if all this media hoo-hah wasn't just a distraction from the ho-humness of the nominees.
But let's not be cynical and instead focus on the question of the night: would Mo'Nique shave her legs for the event? "Of course not," shrieked Mo'Nique, best supporting actress nominee and, more importantly in TabloidLand, razor phobe. "I haven't even shaved my arms!"
Inside the Kodak Theater it was down to Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to get the party started, a pairing that began uncomfortably. And in the early minutes, stilted seemed to be a running theme. This being a British paper, one is obliged to focus on the British nominees. All countries do this to their own, of course. This weekend the Toronto Sun bemoaned the unlikelihood of any of the Canadian nominees wearing something that reflected their nationality to the ceremony. "Not that they should wear fitted Mountie or hockey uniforms," the paper conceded. Just "a small strategic maple leaf pin." Ah, Canada. Good to see that the Olympics haven't dented your inferiority complex a jot. And speaking of the Canadians, Cameron may have made himself a candidate for the stupidest comment of the night when he compared his nominations to his children. But which of your children is the best director nomination, James, and which is the best visual effects?
Anyway, to the obligatory Brits who were adorably normal. Carey Mulligan said her Prada dress let her get away without wearing Spanx; Helen Mirren, as beautiful as a Gainsborough portrait, compared the Oscars with Disney World's Magic Mountain (Magic Mountain is scarier.)
It's easy to bemoan the stupidity of the celebrity world but, actually, it's not the celebrities that have become dumber, it's the celebrity presenters. And for that, I blame the E! channel, the entertainment network that is presumably named after the product one needs to take in order to watch this channel without weeping for the future.
After you've watched presenter Ryan Seacrest talk to Mariah Carey about her diamonds, and then turn to High School Musical's Zac Efron to find out where his suit was from, you'll have a newfound empathy for the recently lobotomised.
As for the presenter on the AP network who said best actress nominee Gabourey Sidibe would "have to have her dress specially made" and how "hard it is for people like her", he will come back in his next life as a dung beetle. And for the record, Sidibe looked completely gorgeous in her blue dress. I'm loving the colour – let's talk beauty.
Brand makes TV debut with campaign claimed to be 'David Lynch meets Desperate Housewives'
The pudding brand Gü has drawn inspiration from David Lynch's cult 1990s series Twin Peaks in an unsettling ad campaign that marks the brand's debut on TV.
The TV campaign, described by ad agency Mother as also having a touch of the ABC hit series Desperate Housewives, features a well-dressed middle-aged woman "drawn into a dark world of sensual abandon", and can be seen for the first time here.
The woman is drawn into a room of a house where a stranger seems to be entertaining a number of woman with the promise of food and the bizarre question "Gü you Ganache?", which has echoes of the backward speaking dwarf in a red suit from Twin Peaks.
However it is not a delicious slice of cherry pie, the favourite of Kyle McLachlan's special agent Dale Cooper in the series, that is the food obsession in the ad but a decadent Gü pudding.
The campaign breaks tonight and will be supported by press ads and a digital campaign.
"We wanted to give the audience a glimpse into the world of 'Ganaching', a dark and sensual place where normal women submit to their desires and indulge in Gü," said Stephen Butler of Mother London. "It is intriguing and indulgent while all the time feeling a little uneasy – David Lynch meets Desperate Housewives."
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Miley Cyrus was weedy, the Brat Pack survivors were scary, and the director of Crazy Heart built his part up. Here are the Oscars the Academy should have dished out
Biggest cop-out
While Neil Patrick Harris was ace, it felt completly disconnected from everything else in the Academy plan: It was like "Hugh Jackman was good last year" + "NPH was good at the Emmys last year" + "audiences like things that are old and safe and unthreatening like Steve Martin. Let's mix all of those without actually letting them intersect in any interesting fashion, yeah?"
Weakest hosting hit
Some hosts manage to make that bit where they run through every important nominee and namecheck them, by rote, without leaving anyone out and with equal weight given to their mention, with complete dignity. Addressing James Cameron with the 3D glasses was less than sledgehammer-obvious; he stared at them like the tall guy hearing the "what's the weather up there like" joke.
Weakest host
Miley Cyrus – who, of all the very slight presenters was very much the slightest: wins the not-eating-solid-food award for this day and perhaps the last week. That they do it isn't the bad example to teenage girls. That Miley looks like it at all, is.
Best hosting moment
Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr had the temerity to be quite funny about the relationship between actor and writer; the actor being beautiful, magnetic, memorable. The writer, in the words that Downey Jnr carefully and sometimes mispronouncinglyly read off the teleprompter: "sickly little mole people".
Greatest invasion of the stage by the undead
After the John Hughes montage. The stage suddenly filled with deeply-eyebagged, hollow-eye-holed 80s actors, staring into the camera, telling a faceless world about the moments (long ago) when they were famous. It was deeply, deeply chilling.
Kanye-ism of the night
Elinor Burkett and Roger Ross Williams. Who knows (or cares, really?) what the deep and complicated backstory of why the producers of best documentary short - Music by Prudence – raced each other up to the stage then had an undignified shoulder-battle for the microphone. It's just good for the Academy that they did. Because seriously, by that point? We were rubbing the Oscar-come-alivey paddles together. Yes, that's a technical name.
Best argument for the existence of Sacha Baron Cohen
Questions abound about what would have been worse – Baron Cohen saying something mildly offensive about Cameron, or Ben Stiller saying absolutely nothing funny whatsoever. With all votes (except the show's producers') plumping for the latter.
Most multi-layered acceptance speech
Luckily, when everyone in the world is expecting you to win the award for best supporting actress, you can get away with giving a speech that is so well planned and tightly nested it will take weeks to unpack, politically, creatively and grammatically. Including the part where Mo'Nique called out Tyler Perry and Oprah, saying "Because you touched it, the whole world saw it" – which frankly just sounds filthy.
Best juxtaposition
The making of whores jokes didn't seem off colour, but suddenly when they made horse jokes, the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker was the next celebrity seemed a little close to the bone.
Unclassy moment of the night
Sam Worthington arrived on stage as a presenter this year: sadly, under my newly instituted "people who chew gum onstage are excluded from the Oscar ceremonies FOR EVER MORE" rules.
Biggest non-award split of the night
This seemed to be the division between people who thought that interpretive dance by hip-hop/modern dance crews was a right thing to do and ... other people. One does wish they had had a longer time to listen to the world's best party music before this moment. That's all.
Most dedicated to making the most of his moment
The director of Crazy Heart, thanked by Jeff Bridges, stood up, waved his arms and just kept waving them, like a man lost in the ocean of "knowing he's not going to be winning the best director award anytime soon", waving down that "milk-it" boat until everyone forgot what they were doing ...
Most distracting audience member
If you have the chance to watch it again, look out for the man sitting behind Helen Mirren, who looks like either a) a robot, b) Mickey Rourke's plastic surgeon (who, it turns out, also did his own face) or c) Robert Downey Jr in 30 years' time.
Greatest missed opportunity
Watching Kathryn Bigelow collect not only the best director but also best picture Oscar, shaking ever more by the second, was a powerful experience. If she'd actually shouted "Who's king of the world NOW, bitch!?" it would have been completely brilliant.
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