And The Oscar Goes To...

One week ago today I got to hold an Academy Award.

It was amazing.

Let me explain.

Have you heard of Jim Cameron's Titanic? Yeah, well, it's being re-released for the 100th anniversary of the event that inspired it, and in 3D no less. Because, you know, nothing says respecting the lives of the dead like watching them die in the third dimension! I joke, but I not-so-secretly love this film. It was one of the very best films of 1997 and it's 3D rerelease will make it one of the very best films of 2012. I don't begrudge it any of its success, whether that be grossing over one billion dollars or taking home a mammoth haul of Academy Awards.

Speaking of the Academy Awards... Titanic's producer, Jon Landau, visited our fair shores to do a bit of promotion and while the full 3+ hour screening of Titanic in 3D isn't until next week, they did screen 40 minutes of the final product for us (mostly innocuous stuff like Gloria Stewart seeing herself on the TV, Kate Winslet's big hat, the staircase meeting, followed by a hefty chunk of the stunning sinking sequence) before getting into a Q&A with Landau. Towards the end he produced the golden statue and, hilariously, the Titanic fan who he allowed to hold it was also just kinda allowed to exit the cinema with her hands clasped around it with nobody here nor anywhere looking out for it. They quickly cottoned on that Landau's Oscar had gone walkabouts, but by that time I had already gotten my grubby lil mits on it and it was a glorious feeling.

Then we lined up to have our picture taken with Mr Landau and the Oscar, and boy... it was something. As somebody who actively follows the entire award season circus and who makes no apologies about loving the Academy Awards, getting a chance to actually hold one was incredible. I kinda felt, for those few brief seconds, what the fuss was all about. I'd seen them before - Oscars won by Adam Elliot and Cate Blanchett have a home on show at ACMI in Melbourne - but to actually hold one was something entirely different. It's like the statue has a gravity pull that just drew me in, even if the base was a bit wobbly. Landau needs to send that baby to the Academy's repair shop! It's a wonderful piece of work and I imagine many people who year-after-year bemoan the movie industry's slavish devotion to the Oscar tradition and who spout the same tired "who cares?" arguments would find the experience quite something.

And I love how Leonardo DiCaprio is peeking behind my shoulder there looking all intense and grumbling "I want one of those!"

Review: Smash His Camera

Smash His Camera
Dir. Leon Gast
Year: 2010
Rating: PG
Running Time: 87mins

Ron Galella made a name for himself by taking photographs of celebrities when they didn’t want them to be taken. He is a paparazzo and, like the literal Italian translation for the word, he buzzes around his subjects like a mosquito. Leon Gast’s (When We Were Kings) documentary Smash His Camera charts the 80-year-old’s career, which has seen him taken to court by Jackie Onassis in 1972, get punched in the face by Marlon Brando in 1973 and exhibited in the New York City’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art in 2007. He’s a man that looks incredibly feeble, but once on a footpath with a celebrity he’s quick as a whip. His storage room is filled with boxes and boxes of photographs of every celebrity imaginable; there’s an entire box dedicated to photos of “Jackie Onassis with windswept hair”.

Read the rest at Trespass

Smash His Camera has a very limited season at Melbourne's ACMI theatre, in Federation Square. They've been on a role lately with exclusive titles like this, White Material (season ending tomorrow) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which begins its season in a couple of weeks), yet again confirming that they are one of Melbourne's true treasures. But you knew that already, didn't you?