The 73rd Academy Awards show was one of the best ever and it was full of surprises. A risk was taken this year when the producers had Steve Martin as the MC, but their risk paid off Martin kept the show going at a great pace and the show seemed shorter than any other in recent history. What made the oscars great were the surprises which took place during the night, many of the predictions I had read stated that Ang Lee was the sure thing for best director and that Crouching Tiger could easily steal Best Picture from Gladiator. When Marcia Gay Harden upset the best supporting actress category with her completely unpredicted win I had a feeling more surprises were in store. Traffic and Gladiator were my two favorite films of this year and I considered Crouching Tiger to be all Hype which it was. So when Steven Soderbergh took best director and Gladiator won best picture I was relieved. The biggest surprise though was probably that Russell Crowe won best actor I presumed I was the only one who thought he deserved it, I thought it would either be mainstream Tom Hanks or the edgy and talented Ed Harris. While the film clips for best picture nominees could have been better I don't have much bad things to say about this years Awards ceremony.
Reviews
3 Reviews
A nice looking film with no substance
4 May 2001
This film is nice to look at, impressive fight sequences but not much more than that. What probably bothers me most about this film is that most critics praised it as a masterpeice calling it a grand love story and brilliantly directed when it is so obviously anything but. The story has a plot that is so mindless and stupid the audience I was viewing it with just had to laugh at certain bizarre parts. It goes like this a young woman is secretly a talented ninja, an older woman is a skilled fighter too, and Chow Yun Fat plays the male lead totally unconvincingly. They are all either trying to get or protect a special sword and that is pretty much the story. Their isn't anything I don't understand about this film, I know the plot, I know why it has the title crouching tiger, hidden dragon (it is making reference to hidden strength), but what I don't understand is the critics praising. While I was watching this film I found it exciting but rather slow in between the fight sequences (due to horribly boring dialogue) but by the end I felt ripped off. If there is one positive thing I can say about this whole bizarre CTHD phenomenom is that when I watched the oscars I had a bad feeling this stupid foreign film might grab best picture because since it took best director at the DGA awards it was pretty much a shoo-in for that category, but when the best director was announced and Steven Soderbergh won I was so relieved, and even better was when the much more complex and exhilarating Gladiator took home best picture.
Traffic
(2000)
A brilliant film of today's corruption
4 May 2001
Traffic is a fast paced, wild and extremely unconventional yet realistic as to how the world of drugs actually works. Steven Soderbergh took home a well deserved best director oscar for his work on this film which ranged from much more than simply director. What makes this film truly work is it's documentary style look at how the drug world works, none of the shots in the film look or feel like anything is set up you simply feel as though you are peering into another lifestyle. Three stories take place intertwined to help show the many different aspects of the drug world. First we have a story of a father (Michael Douglas) who has just been promoted to drug czar of the united states, and he is only soon to find out that drugs have infiltrated into the life of his top of the class daughter. Next there is the story of the tijuana cop (Benicio Del Toro) who gets paid next to nothing and has many opportunity's to be corrupt and profit from it. Finally there is the story of the unsuspecting wife (Catherine Zeta Jones) of a drug lord, she only finds out of her husbands true business when the FBI takes him away and she has to learn to cope with the new situation she is in where two FBI agents (Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle) spy on her to find out what she knows. My personal favorite story would probably have to be the one with Michael Douglas because it shows a man in his fifties who is as anti drug as a man could be, come to realize that drugs are basically unstoppable. Films like this don't come around as often as they ought to because this movie is the rarest type a film that not only entertains it educates.
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