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Rabble-dazzle
Miramax gives the Academy the old song and dance
BY PETER KEOUGH


Peters picks

Best Film: Chicago

Best Director: Martin Scorsese

Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis

Best Actress: Renée Zellweger

Best Supporting Actor: Chris Cooper

Best Supporting Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones

 

So which of Harvey Weinsteins films will take home the most gold this year? After hitting a high in 1998 with big winners Shakespeare in Love and La vita bella/Life Is Beautiful, the studio saw some fallow years. Its harvesting big time this year, however, racking up 40 nominations, including three for Best Picture (Chicago, Gangs of New York, and The Hours). Through a combination of schmoozing, bullying, PR spinning, and zealotry, Harvey Weinstein has become the Karl Rove of Hollywood, the kingmaker and true power behind the throne.

To judge from recent awards, Harvey is putting most of his considerable weight behind Chicago. The Producers Guild named it Best Picture, the Directors Guild named Rob Marshall Best Director, and the Screen Actors Guild awards turned out to be one big plug for the movie. Chicago should repeat these successes, more or less, on Oscar night.

And why not? Like the studios 1998 Best Picture winner, Shakespeare in Love (a far better movie), which beat out Steven Spielbergs harrowing Saving Private Ryan, Chicago is the perfect example of Hollywood razzle-dazzle and escapism, a brilliant con job distracting everyone from real issues (i.e., a war) and celebrating the triumph of artifice and illusion over substance and taste.

True, Chicago has its issues: capital punishment, political corruption, womens empowerment, the corrosive power of celebrity. But they pale before sets, costumes, and editing that fool you into thinking that this is actually a musical and that the all-star cast is actually singing and dancing.

So Best Picture is a certainty. For a while, though, it appeared Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in Miramaxs equally bogus The Hours might take the Best Actress trophy. But then those stories about her and Jude Law came out, and her denials of an affair seemed to make her real nose grow longer than the fake one she wore in the movie. Fortunately, Harvey had the irrepressible sweetheart Rene Zellweger to fall back on.

Zellweger plays a murderess, to be sure, but its all in good fun, and what a plucky kid she is to put herself on the line as a singer and dancer and deprive a real singer and dancer of a job. Besides, in what might prove a pro-war, gung-ho environment, she looks in her retro duds like a 40s pin-up, a Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth supporting the boys and shilling for war bonds. So does Catherine Zeta-Jones as Best Supporting Actress, for that matter (but not Queen Latifah sorry, girlfriend, black folks had theirs last year), so expect the pair to repeat their SAG triumphs and win matching Oscars.

Chicago leaves a void when it comes to Best Actor, though (never a viable candidate, Richard Gere probably soured it with Harvey when he bad-mouthed Hillary and Bill at a recent AIDS fundraiser). The Miramax line-up also includes Michael Caine in The Quiet American, who seems to be pushing the movie pretty much on his own. No doubt Miramax sees a film criticizing American foreign policy, albeit from 50 years ago, as a bit dicy these days.

Instead it, and the Academy, will rally behind a noisy American, Bill the Butcher of Gangs of New York, whose jingoistic opinions would make him at home on any cable-news station. Daniel Day Lewiss performance is by far the best thing in that picture, and he will no doubt make a genteel and inoffensive acceptance speech. Furthermore, his fake moustache will compensate for the defeat of Kidmans fake nose in the prosthetics department, as will Chris Coopers phony missing teeth; hell take the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Sonys Adaptation (true to the lyrics of his "Mr. Cellophane" solo in Chicago, John C. Reilly will remain invisible).

The race for Best Director, meanwhile, casts Miramax in a sinister light. Was it a coincidence that the Los Angeles DA released documents relating to Roman Polanskis 1977 statutory-rape charge just days before the Oscar voting deadline? Kind of like the anti-Semitic allegations that emerged last year against John Nash, whose life inspired DreamWorks A Beautiful Mind. Despite those allegations, Mind went on to defeat Miramaxs In the Bedroom in every category. Polanski wont be so lucky.

But what really bugged Academy members this year was an ad featuring a letter from former Academy president Robert Wise praising Martin Scorsese and Miramaxs Gangs of New York. In the end, voters will probably rationalize that excess as a fair response to an anti-Scorsese screed from screenwriter William Goldman that had appeared earlier in Variety, but it makes you wonder why Harvey is pushing Scorsese more than he is Chicagos first-time helmer and DGA winner, Rob Marshall.

I think its because: (a) Gangs of New York is more of a musical than Chicago; (b) Harveys less proud of inflating Marshall from a nobody into an auteur than he is of reducing Scorsese from an auteur to a nobody; and (c) come on: its Martin Scorsese. Scorsese therefore should win his first Oscar for one of his worst films, but, either way, we know whos really directing the proceedings.

Issue Date: March 20 - 27, 2003
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