Mr. Oscar for Mr. Nobody

When the director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin accepted the Oscar for Best Documentary last night, I expected a condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for the USA to confirm its now dubious support for Ukraine.

Instead, David Borenstein immediately spelled out the film’s lesson, and without naming any countries, it was clear that his target was close to home:

Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage, it’s that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume, we all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a “nobody” is more powerful than you think.

After it was over, Borenstein did name names while speaking with reporters:

One interesting thing about working with a team of Russians throughout this process has been my desire as an American to constantly compare the situation in America to Russia. But a lot of my Russian colleagues and friends always said, “No, no, it’s not the same situation. It’s actually happening quicker in America than it’s been happening in Russia.” Trump is moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years.

The film itself, much of it assembled videos smuggled out of Russia by a young “videographer and events coordinator” opposed to his country’s war on Ukraine, focuses on the Kremlin’s efforts to control children’s perception of that war with revised history texts and “patriotic displays.” Echoes of calls for “patriotic education” by Republican officials in DC and in state capitols across the USA are hard to miss.

Also hard to miss are the confused and frightened looks of children and their parents who are receiving contradictory news from relatives and neighbors who have been sent to the front, and where many of them themselves may be dispatched. Some teachers are glad to go along and win citations for their enthusiasm, while most go through the motions, and silently pray for change–a listlessness not lost on their students.

Screening Room patrons leaving the film call it both heartwarming and heartbreaking, no doubt due to Pavel Talankin, the videographer dubbed “Mr. Nobody” at the center of the film. He does all he can to keep students engaged and hopeful until he senses a tightening noose and defects. He, too, has an Oscar, but, like Vladimir Zelenskyy telling the world, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition,” Talankin didn’t come here seeking any award. He came here for the students of his country seeking a much stronger ally.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the Oscar choices. Can’t really pontificate on them because, unlike most years, I missed half the films nominated. Wish I had seen Sinners, nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards, but taking just four. Problem was that it was billed as a horror film, a genre for which I have no more interest than I have in roller skating.

The top awards for One Battle After Another–Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay–surprised me even as I cheered each time. Surprising because it was satire that many people took literally, and because it was as incisive and relevant to the ICED-America in which we now find ourselves. That artistic sin led several critics to dismiss the film as “liberal fantasy.”

But the second highlight of the night goes to Norwegian Director Joachim Trier. Accepting the Best International Picture Oscar for Sentimental Value, he concluded by paraphrasing James Baldwin’s observation that all adults are responsible for all children.

Would never have thought of it before the event, but that was a common theme for all of last night’s winners.

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Possible Oscars & a Docujoke

Quite a delightful surprise to see Kate Hudson nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.

I’ve seen very few of her films, but I am relieved to see Song Sung Blue gain at least one nod. The Academy tends to dismiss feel-good features when awarding its statues, and what could be more feel-good than “Sweet Caroline”? But there’s a lot more to Song Sung Blue than Neil Diamond. Listen to the lesser known songs–some tracked for the film’s most intimate scenes–and you’ll find there’s a lot more to Neil Diamond than “Neil Diamond.” Moreover, put Neil Diamond aside, and the film has a lot to say about musicians trying to make a living–in this case two who combined to form a tribute band and a few who joined it.

That may be a second reason I should recuse myself from making picks. I haven’t seen Sinners with its 16 nominations, most ever in the history of the awards. Nor have I seen four others nominated for best film, which makes for half the field of ten. Of the five I have seen, I could make a strong case for both Hamnet and Sentimental Value. Marty Supreme not so much, and Bugonia not at all.

Of the five, One Battle After Another is the one most relevant to 2026, the one with the most urgent message. A comedy so dark and undeniably real that it dares you to laugh, it’s the one I’m most inclined to favor. I would certainly like to hear acceptance speeches from those who made it, but for all I know, the others may be just as willing to speak against America’s current War against the Arts as Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Those two and Benicio del Toro all have nominations–DiCaprio and Penn were funny, but del Toro was beyond hilarious.

As for Kate Hudson’s chances, she’s contending with Jessie Buckley in Hamnet and Renata Reinsva in Sentimental Value. I could make strong cases for all three. Buckley has the advantage of being at the center of Hamnet‘s finale, which might make the Academy consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Scene. However, I haven’t seen If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and since I found Bugonia about as watchable as Fox “News,” I’ll neither pick nor predict a winner.

Speaking of the unwatchable, I wonder if it is mere coincidence that the so-called documentary, Melania, is released the very week that Oscar nominations are announced. Reviews make it sound like a worthy rival to Blair Witch Project for the most vacuous, pointless slop ever put on a screen, most all of them as brutal as Karoline Leavitt’s treatment of the White House press corps. Which reminds me that my next project will be a spoof of a Neil Diamond song I’ll rename: “Sour Karoline.” (…Lie! Lie! Lie! Lying never felt so good! So good! So good! So good!)

The predictions of failure at the box office, however, proved wrong, as the MAGA faithful packed cinemas, buying up tickets as willingly as they purchase $400 Trump sneakers, $200 Trump bibles, $99 Trump trading cards, and on and on. Can the MAGA crowd sustain these grosses for a film that the Hollywood Reporter calls “an unabashed, fly-on-the-gilded-wall fawn job”?

From what I’ve gleaned, the Epstein “associate”-turned-First Lady comes off about as warm and charming as her “I don’t care do U?” jacket and her Boris & Natasha hat. Even more damning are the memes proclaiming, “If syphilis was a movie…” or the mock–but very truthful–advertisements proclaiming: “She’s in the pedo-files!” Not only is she in the Epstein files, so too is a photo of Melania director Brett Ratner cozying up with one of Epstein’s trafficked girls. Bet you didn’t know that MAGA prefers movies over government files.

Not to worry, all may not be lost. My friend Kurt Kaletka in his history-rich and linguistically playful blog, “Truth or Better,” proposes that Melania might “have some worth” in the years ahead:

I can see Rocky Horror-type screenings of it, where the boys come dressed in suits and super-long red ties, blond wigs and orange makeup plastered almost entirely on their faces. The girls can show up with makeup and prosthetics to recreate the Mar-a-Lago Face phenomenon. You can go with other Trump White House characters, too! Use ghastly white face paint to copy Stephen Miller’s cadaverous look! Dress up like a Kristi Noem-style buckarette! Or copy the style of your favorite January 6 rioter!*

Kaletka obviously does not work in a cinema. Nor did I when Rocky Horror was released in 1975. But from the time I was hired in 1998, I did hear the Screening Room’s owners still bemoaning the mess they had to clean up every night of its run. After 23 years, they could laugh a bit, but the anger was still there.**

Let my friend make his appeal to the cineplexes with their high-powered cleaning machines. I’d rather watch Kate Hudson. Come to think of it, back in 2000 when still a new face, she had a moment in Dr. T and the Women that is as memorable as any I’ve ever seen. When her ringtone sounds during an exercise class, the annoyed instructor motions for her to leave the room. Hudson’s character holds up phone and announces, “It’s an emergency.” Far from any urgency, she says it as if talking about a napkin falling to the floor.

Yes, a three-word line, but at that moment I realized that cellphones had already turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of language. The Academy may also want to consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Word.

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*For Kurt Kaletka’s entire case for Melania Horror Picture Show, go to:

https://trueorbetter.blogspot.com/

**True story: About 2/3rds into a showing of Rocky Horror in Portland, Maine, some fifty years ago, a projectionist stopped the film to ask the audience to stop throwing things at the screen. Screens are delicate, easily stained, torturous to clean, and quite expensive to replace. He turned up the lights, but before he could get down from the booth and into the hall, the audience simply thought that the film was over. They were getting up, smiling, laughing, and ready to hit the nearby bars. He held his tongue and let them leave, which is exactly what I’d have done.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as “Lightning & Thunder” in *Song Sung Blue*:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30343021/

Hollywood’s Holiday

While we prepare for the holidays, Hollywood, as always will release the big-budget, star-studded films that open with Oscar-buzz.

For years you have surely noticed how many open on Christmas Day and wondered why theaters would target a day associated with family gatherings. The logic is rather simple. The industry figures that most of those families gather on Christmas Eve for dinner and song and good cheer, followed by breakfast and opening of presents on the morning of the day itself, and then there’s lunch. The logic holds that, after lunch on the 25th, people are now getting tired of each other, but it’s Christmas and they want to stay together without having to listen and respond to each other. Plus, there’s a lot of good food and drink remaining to put on that dinner table. What could fill that void better than a movie?

This year it’s a biopic of Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown, that figures to meet that need by opening on Christmas Day.

From another angle, it’s saving the best for last. Or, more to the point, making Hollywood’s best efforts fresh in our minds by qualifying for a year’s Oscars in the final week of that year. This also guarantees that most of their audiences will see these films in the first two months of the next year, which takes us right to the time of the Oscar awards ceremony.

If you ever wondered why you and so many others haven’t been able to see most of the nominees before the list is announced, or even before the winner is picked, this is why.

With apologies for that, it is also why I do see most of them before a ceremony. Some, especially the hyped-up block-busters based on spectacle and fantasy, such as Wicked and Gladiator, are films that I avoid. Easy to do because they are never on the Screening Room’s menu. As for the rest, let’s just say that I’m no fan of special effects, car chases, explosives, or slackers. In a category all its own are films with F-bombs punctuating every phrase in every sentence. No, I’m not a prude, but in this case I have to say, “Fuck that!”

Last month, the Screening Room ran Anora about a sex-worker who may or may not have gotten married in one of those Las Vegas “chapels.” More accurate title would have been Annoyingra. While in the lobby that first night, I was thinking that if you took out the obscenities and the screaming, you’d have a silent film which might be called Somewhat Less But Still Annoyingra. Unable to kill the sound–which would have improved the film but prompted an audience rebellion–I, for the first time ever since becoming an SR projectionist in 1998, actually considered calling in sick. But I must admit that audiences, including men and women my age and older, praised it.

Last year, all ten nominees for Best Picture played the Screening Room. I saw them all, most of them more than once, and told anyone who would listen that all ten were worthy of the award.

Nominations are at least a month away, but I’m quite certain I have seen at least four films that will be on the list for the top award. All four are worthy. My last blog reviewed A Real Pain. Only reason I reviewed that but not Lee or Conclave or Small Things Like These is that I wasn’t able to view them until the end of their Screening Room run. Here’s three short reviews:

Academy members may pick Small Things because the story is told more visually than in dialogue, and because it is two stories. In the foreground we have a man paralyzed by his conscience and struggling to act, while in the background we see and hear scenes from Ireland’s infamous Magadeline Laundries that turned “fallen women” into slaves for three centuries ending just 30 years ago. At times, we overhear the horror even when it’s out of view, a device that made last year’s German film, The Zone of Interest, a contender.

Conclave, a thriller from start to finish, fast-paced despite its contemplative setting, will gain the votes of Academy members who favor plot twists, MacGuffins, and superb ensemble acting. Ralph Fiennes will likely gain a nomination for Best Actor, as will Cillian Murphy for Small Things and Keiran Culkin for Real Pain. That’s already a heady line-up, and we have yet to see Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Also recommending Conclave are its parallels to the political, social, and cultural turmoil now erupting around the globe.

My favorite to date is Lee. This was Kate Winslet’s project from the start, and she finished it with a tour de force performance that ranks with the best of Frances McDormand. Really a dual performance portraying the very real Lee Miller as an older woman in the late ’70s and as a young American photo-journalist who broke gender barriers in Berlin 1944-45. Her scenes under bombardment and in the line of fire are memorable enough, but what sticks more than any are her feuds with editors who, while they want to get the story out, do not want to risk upsetting their readers too much.

Lee (Winslet) grabs her graphic photos of victims at a concentration camp: “And what about them! What about upsetting them!”

This week I heard that echoed in Real Pain when Benji cries, “Why does everyone have to be happy all the time?” The same statement describes the dilemmas faced by the coal merchant (Murphy) in Small Things and by cardinals Lawrence (Fiennes) and Bellini (Tucci) in Conclave. Whether mere coincidence or not, it’s spot on that these leading contenders for Oscars all pit the call of conscience against the love of ease. Each of these four films mirrors us, insisting that we answer a question:

For the sake of what is right, for the sake of truth, are we willing to upset the comfortable? Are we willing to upset ourselves?

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Kate Winslet as Lee Miller: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5112584/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_1_nm_6_in_0_q_lee

Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11563598/

Oscar for Best Time Warp

Back in the day–1963 to be exact–and well into the day or two after, there was a weekly TV comedy that spoofed the news, a predecessor to Saturday Night Live that also aired on Saturday nights: That Was the Week That Was.

As someone who never watched much television as a high-schooler, and who lived without a television through all of my college years and well past 1985 when the show ended its admirable run, I rarely saw it. But I recall a few nights when I enjoyed its political satire with friends, particularly when David Frost was on.

This past Weekend That Was had me doing the time warp again.

Like many folks, I spent last Friday and Saturday awaiting SNL‘s cold open take of Sen. Katie Britt’s 1-800-KITCHEN Republican response to Pres. Biden’s State of the Union Address on Thursday. But I was also already counting on whoever the host of the next night’s Oscars might be to add another stab. In his opening monologue, Jimmy Kimmel did not disappoint with his comparison of Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things to the Alabama senator as “an adult with the brain of a baby.”

People from Alabama might be forgiven for yawning or shrugging, “What’s wrong with that?” Their other senator, Tom Tuberville, is now nationally renowned for his use of a technicality of senate rules to block all military promotions through most of 2023. And before that, for taking phone calls from Rudy Giuliani while on the senate floor on Jan. 6 asking him to delay certification. The rest of us might ask which Alabama Republican senator Kimmel had in mind.

Following that one quip, the Oscar broadcast was surprisingly free of political content unless you count the subjects of nominated films, little of which figured in the speeches of presenters or winners. Only sustained exception I recall was the acceptance speech for 20 Days in Mariupol as Best Documentary, the first Oscar won by a citizen of Ukraine. But the spell was broken near the end when Kimmel announced that he had received his first review and proceeded to read a laughably ridiculous social media post from “a former president.” Kimmel had to wait for the laughter to die down. “Glad he’s watching,” he began before looking away from the audience and directly into the camera:

Isn’t it past your jail time?”

This year’s Oscars may have been tame, but the quality of all ten films nominated for Best Picture more than made up for any lack of excitement. And you could make the case that Ryan Gosling’s tour de force rendition of “I’m Just Ken” with a guitar solo from Guns & Roses’ Slash was excitement enough.*

Low points were few. Almost all memorial tributes were impossible for me to read on a modestly sized screen, and the nude man shtick struck me as hopelessly juvenile at the time–although I learned why the next day when I read that the presentation of…

… the Costume Design category [was] tied to the demand the Costume Designers Union is making. Their slogan is ‘You’re naked without us.’

So many high points, that, fearing inevitable oversights, I won’t risk a list. Instead, I’ll pick the highest: 92-year-old Rita Moreno singing America Ferrera’s name and reminding us that Ferrera’s soliloquy in Barbie was the most riveting, talked about, and memorable statement in any film released last year–as was Moreno’s sizzling rendition of “I Want to Live in America” in 1961’s West Side Story.

Friends are wishing that Killers of the Harvest Moon won a few awards or that Jeffrey Wright won Best Actor or that Greta Gerwig had been nominated for Best Director. I agree on all counts, but as a projectionist at a cinema, I had an easy time seeing all ten nominees for Best Picture–not only do I not pay to see them, I get paid. All ten were worthy of the award, and of awards in every category for which they were nominated.

At heart, the problem is a single category that lumps all films together. The result is an inate bias for films that are straightforward, realistic. Satirical films such as Barbie, American Fiction, and, to use a glaring example from 2021, Don’t Look Up are easily dismissed as unrealistic no matter how spot-on the implied comparisons. The Golden Globes avoids this with two categories, dividing drama from comedy/musical. Not only does it give satire–comedic by definition–a fair shake, but it also spares its voters the absurdity of measuring, say, The Holdovers against The Zone of Interest.

Here’s a theory: Had Oppenheimer not been made, Killers of Harvest Moon (which won nothing), American Fiction (which won Adapted Screenplay), and Barbie (Best Song), would have split its seven awards–and Barbie would have had at least three more nominations, including Greta Gerwig for Best Director.

But no complaints. In my book, 2023 was film’s Year That Was. To have its highlight reel one night following SNL’s cold opening on the Weekend That Was was exquisite timing. Had there been an Oscar for Best Impersonation, Scarlett Johansson might have accepted it in character, doing a time warp again.

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*Turns out that Slash worked on Barbie‘s soundtrack. Also, Gosling himself planned for the pink stairs and costumes as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” performance in 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:

https://variety.com/2024/awards/awards/ryan-gosling-im-just-ken-marilyn-monroe-tribute-oscars-1235938402

https://www.looper.com/1536351/ryan-gosling-im-just-ken-oscars-2024-revealed-barbie-secret-ken-slash-guitar-solo/

A very young David Frost raises a pencil and perhaps a question or at least a point. This is from the British show that ran for two years before emmigrating (with Frost) to the USA. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057789/

Ranked Choice Oscars

Before the Oscars were announced, the one that seemed most certain was for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

All inside speculation, including that of my small-arts-cinema projectionists’ grapevine, was that Brendan Fraser would win for his portrayal of the aptly-named title character in The Whale. That, despite much buzz at various times for each of three other contenders.

Reminded me of 2016 when all the buzz was about a toss-up race between The Revenant and The Big Short for Best Picture. Both films had strong, fervent support, but, as actor Michael Keaton later explained, voters who ranked either film high ranked the other low.

Keaton had a role in Spotlight, another of the Best Picture nominees. Before the ceremony, he bucked up his fellow cast members who were accepting a loss before it happened, telling them of his hunch: Those who voted for either film first would pick Spotlight second. His hunch was right: Due to ranked choice, Spotlight won.

Because it is all kept under wraps by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is possible that Spotlight gained the most first-place votes. But all of the talk at the time makes Keaton’s explanation far more probable. Nor does a ranked choice make it any less of an award. If anything, it strengthens the choice as one made by consensus.

This year’s contest for Best Actor had a similar dynamic. Austin Butler had impressive critical reviews for the title role in Elvis, a huge box office hit which never hurts. Bill Nighy had equally strong endorsements for his role in Living, an arts cinema favorite which always helps. Colin Farrell had both in Banshees of Inisherin which was both. The differences between their three characters and those three films–one vibrant and flashy, one subtle and contemplative, the other evocative and mystical–would have favored Brendan Fraser in a film that commanded curiosity.*

Fraser didn’t need it. Best Picture is the only category determined by ranked choice due to the number of nominees. Every other category goes simply to the most first place votes.

Still, there’s a lesson from 2016 that might be drawn regarding consensus:

Ranked Choice Voting–or Instant Runoff Voting–is a political initiative that has been adopted by the states of Maine and Alaska and by a few dozen counties, cities, and towns across the country. Reports are that Minnesota is about to pass it. So far the results have proved that it favors candidates who are realistic and practical while keeping flamboyant extremists out on the margins.

The most often used example of the difference it would make is the 2000 presidential election. If either Florida or New Hampshire had RCV, third-party candidate Ralph Nader’s votes would have been redistributed, and the deregulatory disaster of Bush-Cheney would have been avoided. Put another way, it would serve as a built-in runoff when no candidate reaches 50% of the total vote.

As a long-term advantage, far more votes would have gone to Nader as a first choice from people who preferred him but voted for Gore out of fear of electing Bush. And they were many, all of whom would have ranked Gore second. Since percentages of votes in elections are what determine a party’s standing in future elections, this in time would make a third party viable.

If America is to ever have a third party with any chance of success, if we are ever to attain government by consensus rather than a tug-of-war of us-versus-them, RCV is the necessary first step to it.

Perhaps instead of citing the Bush v. Gore example, advocates of RCV should cite the Oscars. Unlike the reaction to names such as Republican and Democrat, no one thinks that Elvis or Everything Everywhere All at Once are threats to western civilization.

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*My omission of Paul Mescal is only because I have not seen Aftersun, nor do I recall any speculation that he might win.

On this 2009 Academy Awards Oscar ballot note the instruction for members to place numbers in each of the circles next to every film title in the list. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

Literally, a Smash Hit

Had Will Smith not slapped Chris Rock, what would have been the Oscars’ most memorable moment?

After reading so many commentaries that harp on the act with no mention of the provocation, the question feels like a 21st Century version of: “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

In this case, however, the show went on, and though we were left wondering what actually transpired–if there was a backstory, what was said when the audio was censored, was it staged?–our attention was taken elsewhere.

Which is, after all, what Hollywood is all about. And which is why I offer four speeches for most memorable moment. In no particular order:

Kevin Costner’s could-have-heard-pin-drop-on-a-pillow reminiscence of entering a theater on his own at age seven and watching a four-hour western that redirected his life. Who doesn’t have at least one transformative story set in a movie theater at an early age? In what was easily one of the two most moving speeches by an Oscar presenter that I’ve ever heard, Costner illuminated what we overlook: Every film’s every detail can trigger our imagination, and the best directors are always taking aim.

Jessica Chastain’s acceptance for Best Actress in a Leading Role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Almost as a sequel to Costner’s remarks about imagination, Chastain spoke of a film’s possibilities as a call to action. Her scope was sweeping, from inadequate healthcare in the USA to war in Ukraine, but her intent was specific: We cannot be bystanders. Put the Reagan-era politics of Tammy Faye Baker aside, and Chastain was true to character.

Troy Kotsur’s signed acceptance for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in CODA. He gained the best laughs of the night while also offering an honest, welcome, and long-overdue entry into the world of deaf people. No need to put anything aside to know that Kotsur’s speech, which had the interpreter choking up, was true to the spirit of CODA.

Before I get to the fourth, let’s rewind to the Oscars of 2005 when that year’s host ridiculed actor Jude Law’s lack of a nomination for a role in a film that gained bad reviews:

You want Tom Cruise and all you can get is Jude Law? Wait. It’s not the same thing. Who is Jude Law?

Law may not have been present, but his friend Sean Penn was soon on stage to present an award. Before he did, he said this:

Forgive my lack of humor. Jude Law is one of our most talented actors…

Penn then mentioned his work with Law before ending with a defense of the craft regardless of what critics say and what nominations are made. The message was as moving as Costner’s last night. Unlike Costner, the look on Penn’s face and the timbre of his voice were of barely controlled rage. Rage directed at the evening’s host, one Chris Rock.

Which brings us to the last but not at all least candidate for most memorable speech last night. Admittedly, this one would never have been made if not for the hit:

Will Smith’s acceptance for Best Actor in a Leading Role for King Richard. We can only wonder what he had prepared to say if his name was called. Instead, we got a man repentant for what he had just done but still felt the justice in having done it. We got a man who reacted to public ridicule of his wife’s medical affliction made by a guttersnipe. We got a man who thanked Denzel Washington for his counsel after the fact and quoted it: “In your highest moments, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.” We got a man devoted to family, very much in the character of Richard Williams. And we got this description of how he views his work:

I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know, to do what we do, we’ve gotta be able to take abuse. You’ve gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you’ve gotta be able to have people disrespecting you. You’ve gotta smile and pretend that that’s okay.

We even got a touch of comic relief: “Love makes you do crazy things,” as he began. “I hope the Academy will invite me back,” as he concluded.

His remarks gained endorsement from a presenter soon to follow, one Anthony Hopkins who drew another round of applause for Smith. No one cared that Smith apologized only to the Academy and to the viewers with no apology to, not even a mention of, the guttersnipe.

Last night, as an actor and as a man, Will Smith displayed the full range of human emotion. Chris Rock, as ever, was nothing more than a punch line.

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