Oscar Night in Hollywoodland

We’re staying not too far from where the Oscars were held last night. Hollywood on Oscar night reminded us a little of Boston during the DNC, but without the protestors. Instead of cars full of cops in riot gear racing down the street, we saw cars full of valets racing down the street to the next party. We tried to stay away from the main area around the Chinese theater, but no matter how far away, your were liable to turn a corner and bump into an Oscar party. Sure sign that you were driving by one: Traffic cones in the street in front of the place, and at least 10 valets and many more uniformed cops and bouncers hanging out in front.

So how did we spend Oscar night? We went to the movies. A great time to go- all the hard core movie goers were at home, glued to their TVs. The place was empty. The movie we saw was Letters from Iwo Jima. We liked it. Some thoughts on the movie:

• Depressing, given the subject matter, but very well made. It was graphic without being exploitive.

• Death by hand grenade is not a pleasant thing to experienceDid a great job of showing us the Japanese point of view, of being invaded by legions of faceless American soldiers.
  

• One lesson we took away from the film: When a commander actually has to tell his troops to stop committing ritual suicide in the middle of an engagement, maybe things aren’t going your way.

• Oscar worthy? Who are we to say? But if its eligible for Best Picture, then we think some of the actors should have gotten a nomination. As hard as it is to be an actor, imagine having to memorize all your lines in Japanese.

• One little detail we really appreciated was that Eastwood cast very distinctive looking actors in each of the signature roles. Our biggest war movie pet peeve is when directors present soldiers who all look and sound alike and make it impossible to sort out who the characters are. This was the biggest problem with Band of Brothers and the Thin Red Line- once you put the helmets on, most of the rank and file soldiers all looked alike. (Quick- tell us one of the names of the soldiers from either movie. Bet you can’t. Aliens and Saving Private Ryan are two examples of movies that did it the right way- the characters all looked, acted, and sounded very different from one another. Same thing with Iwo Jima: the main character is a skinny frail actor with a boyish face; his best buddy is tall and thick. The old-school admiral is thin and grey haired; the charismatic colonel who arrives just before the battle always wears a white shirt and riding boots, etc. A small detail, but once the fighting starts, this type of stuff really helps you keep all the characters straight.