Whatever questions you have about Oscars 2019 – for 2018 movies – they will be answered in tonight’s three-hours-plus live event on ABC-TV. Next year, the Academy Awards will be at the beginning of February – the Berlin Film Festival has already taken note and adjusted their calendar to open two weeks later, after Oscar.
Fearless Oscar prediction: There will be many jokes about the hostless night.
Big Question for the Memorial section honoring those who have passed since the last Awards ceremony: Will Stanley Donen, the great director of “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Charade” who died on Thursday, be included? When the BAFTAs aired, their memorial began with Albert Finney who had died just two days earlier.
I love how Saturday’s Independent Spirit Award salute, broadcast live and uncensored, began with host Aubrey Plaza saluted the event’s director in his booth: None other than the divine John Waters who is observing the 50th anniversary of his very first film. Asked about how he planned to direct the Spirits, Waters deadpanned, “It’s television, it doesn’t need a director. Just like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’” The Spirits frequently honor Oscar nominees who are not likely to win with a Spirit Award. Cases in point: Richard A. Grant, who was visibly moved nearly to tears, as Best Supporting Male for “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” which won the Spirit for Best Picture. Their choice of Best Lead Male – Ethan Hawke’s remarkably moving portrait of a cleric in crisis in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” wasn’t even Oscar nominated! Hawke is starring in the Broadway revival of “True West” but a thank you note was read in which he quoted the Trappist monk Thomas Merton about evil in the world. Merton’s book is on Hawke’s priest’s bedside table in the film.
Which brings me to the most glaring omission in tonight’s line-up: The absence of Rosamund Pike among Best Actress nominees. Pike didn’t so much as act but seemingly channeled murdered American journalist Marie Colvin in “A Private War.” Sorry, Oscar voters, you really screwed up.
NEW DVDs:
Was “Instant Family” (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital, 2 discs, Paramount, PG-13) even with its slapstick physical comedy and appealing exuberance a bit too real in its humorous take on a middle-aged couple adopting three kids? Co-written and directed by Sean Anders (“Daddy’s Home”) and inspired by his own experiences with adoption, “Instant Family” is a smart feel-good picture that was critically embraced but skipped over in the holiday shuffle. It’s loopy and silly and sad and real, a mix that is sustained by its terrific cast. Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne are the complicated couple who have no real idea of what they’re getting into when they bring three kids from one family home: a teenage girl, an adolescent boy and a little girl who each have their own distinct issues. Add mothers in law (Julie Hagerty, Margo Martindale), two social workers (Octavia Spencer and a drily hilarious Tig Notaro) and a weekly group session for adoptive parents and “Instant Family” is admirably expansive as it hits belly laughs and tear ducts. The hour-plus bonus features include a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, featurettes on real-life inspirations and “Mr. and Mrs. Fix It.”
Not only did Melissa McCarthy triumph in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (DVD, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, R), so did Africa’s Swaziland native, English actor Richard A. Grant. McCarthy’s Lee Israel, a bitter, criminally inclined, very broke celebrity biographer who really lived this sad but somehow upbeat saga, befriended a homeless gay guy – Grant’s Jack Hock. It’s the early ‘90s when Manhattan was far from its glittering present and Jack is dying of AIDs and Lee is about to be evicted when they collaborate on a criminal conspiracy – selling supposedly famous celebrities’ signed letters that are actually forgeries. Both actors were Oscar nominated as was the Best Adapted Screenplay by Jeff Whitty (Broadway’s “Avenue Q”) and Nicole Holofcener (the writer-director of the James Gandolfini-Julia Louis Dreyfus romcom “Enough Said”). DVD specials include deleted scenes, an engaging commentary by director Marielle Heller and McCarthy and featurettes on that now long-gone New York era, the cat loving Israel and the expansion of Jack Hock who is literally one paragraph in Israel’s memoir.
Demonic possession figures prominently in “The Possession of Hannah Grace” (Blu-ray + Digital, Screen Gems, R) where exorcisms don’t kill but simply move the evil entity into another body. Shay Mitchell, a standout from TV’s “Pretty Little Liars,” is beleaguered night shift operator Megan Reed in the morgue. It’s a lonely post and it becomes pretty creepy when Megan starts to see things she hopes are only hallucinations. We know better. The bonus material includes a deleted scene, the featurette “Megan’s Diaries” and another on the “Killer Cast.”
The late writer-director Curtis Hanson’s reputation rests on “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” (’92), “L.A. Confidential” (‘97), “8 Mile” (2002) with Eminem and “Wonder Boys” (2000), a tour de force for Michael Douglas. Hanson is a monumental American filmmaker and that’s almost apparent in his early effort, the 1983 “Losin’ It” (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R) which will probably remain better known as the first movie to star Tom Cruise. It’s a road trip movie, set in 1965, where four high schoolers, motivated by teen lust and adventure, ride a ‘50s red Chevy convertible to exotic Tijuana, the once notorious Mexican border town. Shelley Long (before “Cheers”) co-stars as an hysterical runaway wife, the kind of role Goldie Hawn made famous. Cruise, chunky and diminutive, somehow suggests Bucky Beaver; he’s easily overshadowed by a bellicose Jackie Earl Haley. Two other Curtis Hansons to check out: “The Bedroom Window” (’87) with Isabelle Huppert (!)and Elizabeth McGovern which may not even be available on DVD and 1997’s “The River Wild” which pits Meryl Streep against Kevin Bacon while rafting for their lives and evokes a non-sexist salute to Marilyn Monroe’s “The River of No Return.”
An exuberant example of absurd Sixties political satire, Hy Averback’s “What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came?” (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, PG) is a potent time capsule that is so very much of its era. Beautifully restored from the original negative with a brand new HD 4K scan, “What If” (’70) is a nonsensical “battle” between civilians and the army personnel on a nearby base. The military sends a trio for community PR, which is disastrous. Tony Curtis, at the end of his movie stardom, lead the soldiers but is only focused on Suzanne Pleshette’s waitress, a military advance which riles town sheriff Ernest Borgnine. With Don Ameche and Brian Keith. Two film historians offer an audio commentary.