Least Surprising Awards Ever? Oscars 2008 fails to wow…

Where were the surprise winners? The fashion disasters? The mad speeches? The classic zingers? The answer – to everything in Hollywood lately, it seems – is the writers’ strike. With the Writers Guild Of America forging a pact with Tinseltown studios only two weeks before Oscar day, organisers were fully expecting to lay on the Awards with stars, writers and directors still on the picket line.

 

Their gameplan? Less fun. More montages. ‘Plan B’ involved endless clip-reels, musical interludes and stand-in presenters. So instead of Halle Berry, we get Seth Rogen pretending to be Halle Berry (not as funny as it sounds). We get John Travolta ‘waltzing’ (not as funny as it sounds). We get a 10-minute educational video on the Academy voting process (even less interesting than it sounds).

 

No surprise that US TV station ABC apparently told advertisers not to expect high viewing-figures for yesterday’s ceremony.

 

One other minor problem: everyone already knew who was going to win. The Oscars have a history of head-slapping decisions. (Just ask Chinatown star Jack Nicholson if he remembers losing to someone called Art Carney in something called Harry And Tonto.) But not this time. Yes, No Country For Old Men would win Best Picture. Yes, Daniel Day Lewis would win Best Actor. Yes, Javier Bardem would win Best Supporting Actor. Yes, Atonement would lose out.

 

Yes, they all did.

 

As far as Awards eyebrow-raisers went – Travolta’s spray-wig excepted – there were some twitches when La Vie En Rose thesp Marion Cotillard (young, unknown, subtitled) beat Away From Her legend Julie Christie (old, revered, doing mental illness) to Best Actress. Still, impossible to dodge déjà vu as Cotillard uncorked her acceptance speech. Gasping, teary and trembling, it would have been the night’s one moment of genuine, spontaneous emotion. If we hadn’t already seen Cotillard pull exactly the same act at the BAFTAs, the Globes, the London Critics’ Circle Awards…

 

Another oh-so-familiar sight was host Jon Stewart – back from Oscars 2006, but less good. Fumbling his ad-libs and misfiring awkward political jokes, Stewart managed just one vintage gag all night: "Normally, when you see a black man or woman as president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty." Good shot, sir.

 

But maybe this is all a little churlish. For the second year running, the Oscars went to some truly worthy winners in an extraordinary year for American cinema. Michael Moore didn’t get one. Neither did Norbit. And it was the shortest Academy Awards in aaaages. Plus, in fairness, there was one shocker that didn’t come from an aerosol can: The Golden Compass beating Transformers to Best Visual Effects. Apparently, Ian McKellen as a giant polar bear is more convincing than Optimus Prime. Hell, you have to love the Oscars.