So another Oscar season has come and gone. By most accounts this year turned out pretty well, at least as far as the ceremony goes. Even when they were stuck working with boilerplate awards-show comedy, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin proved a capable comic pair, though some of the better moments still went to others. Neil Patrick Harris was a welcome surprise as opener, but for my money Robert Downey, Jr. got the night’s best bit when he and Tina Fey traded barbs as they presented the Best Original Screenplay award. After Fey hoped for a future where CGI would replace vain and troublesome movie stars, Downey declared that filmmaking would always need its writers. “It’s a collaboration,” he said. “A collaboration between handsome, gifted people and sickly little mole people.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be the Oscars without a touch of scandal. Some people are still fuming about Gabourey Sidibe’s (Precious) loss to Sandra Bullock in the Best Actress category. Farrah Fawcett fans are furious she was purposely left out of the annual In Memoriam segment (better known as a TV star, sniffed the Academy). Juiciest of all, though, was the acceptance of the award for Best Documentary Short, when a warring director and producer practically got into a shoving match over who was going to speak. Google “Music By Prudence,” the title of their film, for the whole story.
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In the meantime, a film comes to the Valley that—like Downey—reminds us of the power of the written word.
The Ghost Writer is director Roman Polanski’s return to the thriller. Featuring an adaptation by Robert Harris and Polanski of Harris’ novel The Ghost, the film tells the tale of fictional former U.K. Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who has retired to the U.S. to write his memoirs. Called in to help knock his rough draft into shape is The Ghost (Ewan McGregor, never given a name), a journeyman ghost writer who very quickly realizes that the former PM was involved in a scandal of international import—a discovery that puts his own life on the line. It’s the kind of story that in most hands would be a throwaway picture; with Polanski it promises much more. It opens at Pleasant Street Theater on March 19.
Also this week, Amherst Cinema brings in a new print of a Truffaut classic as part of its Essential Cinema series. Small Change (L’Argent de Poche) screens just twice—Sunday at 2 p.m. and Thursday, March 25 at 7 p.m.—but is worth seeking out. Made up of a series of vignettes that focus on the lives of children, it’s a film often described—like childhood itself—as magical.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
