There must have been a leak. An insider must have gotten hold of all the Oscar ballots some late night last week. This shadow insider must have ducked into a heavily guarded Academy of Motion Pictures vault, snatched up those prized, crimson-ribboned envelopes, and let the information out into the world.
Either that, or this year’s gala was simply a predictable affair with statues going strictly to fan favorites. Because it seems the world, including Malibu, knew beforehand who the mysterious and closed-lip Academy would tap with Oscar last Sunday evening.
In The Malibu Times’ Oscar ballot contest, in which readers could take their guess at who would “win,” the nominee receiving the most votes was, in almost every category, the same one the Academy placed in the winners circle.
Lynne Masri, Malibuite and official Malibu Times Movie Guru, must have been paying close attention. She correctly predicted 11 out of 15 winners — though, oddly, she missed best movie, best actor and best screenplay. Masri topped more than 100 other guessers, who sent in ballots from as far away as Cote St. Luc, Canada and New York City. The average score was 10 correct, but one shot-in-the-dark guesser managed to get only two right. For her astuteness, Masri wins 10 free passes to the New Malibu Theatre.
The categories with the highest amount of successful predictions were best actress (Julia Roberts), cinematography (“Crouching Tiger”), and best makeup (“The Grinch”). The slots most often missed by ‘Bu-ites were best supporting actress (Marcia Gay Harden, whose win for her role in “Pollock” supplied one of the few surprises of the evening) and best film editing (“Traffic”).
Every single ‘Bu-ballot predicted that Roberts would claim best actress for her performance in the real-life-hero role in “Erin Brockovich.” Of course Roberts did, in fact, go home with Oscar on Sunday. And even way before the four-minute acceptance speech there never seemed to be any doubt in the matter. Perhaps the dead giveaway was when one network’s pre-show announcer asked her colleague, hours before the show began, why it had taken Julia Roberts so long to finally win an Academy Award.
“Gladiator” took just about every statue that ‘Bu-ites predicted it would. A moody Russell Crowe accepted his award for best actor, and the effects-laden period epic stormed off with the best-picture statue.
Maybe the hottest and most closely watched category was that of best director. The talk of the banquet — the one-time knight of independent film and now Hollywood’s hottest captain, Steven Soderbergh — came to the show with two invitations (Best Director nominations for “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic”), as the first director to get two nods in the same year since 1938. Ang Lee, director of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” had won the Directors Guild of America award in the category earlier in the month. And Ridley Scott helmed the massive fan fave “Gladiator.”
While it looked as if Soderbergh had an advantage by holding two out of the five slots, his double nomination more likely hurt him by splitting votes for him between two movies. Academy members couldn’t simply vote for Soderbergh; they had to pick one of his movies. And to win, the double nominee had to pull in more votes on one movie than Lee or Scott did on theirs. Soderbergh did just that to win Oscar for “Traffic,” which also brought Steve Gaghan a statue for best adapted screenplay.
Host Steve Martin, citing the format change from “and the winner is” to “the Oscar goes to,” noted that, of course, this cannot be considered a competition. But if it were, the category for best supporting actor was probably as great a rout as that of best actress. “Traffic’s” golden boy, Benicio Del Toro, hailed as the Latin Brando, breezed to the podium to grab the award that presumably will go right next to his new Screen Actors Guild statue of the same class.
And for the future? Keep an eye on Hollywood goldie girl Kate Hudson, who floated into the Shrine Auditorium as gracefully and as confidently as she played Penny Lane in “Almost Famous,” a role that garnered her a Golden Globe award.