In case you were wondering, the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929. Some speculate that Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd, received the most votes for best actor that year but could not win the award because the Academy decided it should be limited to humans.This is not a cool fact, minus the dog part, since anyone who can do basic math knows that if the 86th Academy Awards are being televised this weekend, the first ones would have occurred in 1929.
Despite the long and overwrought ceremony, I’m a big fan of the Oscars. I like the pretty dresses, and I’m all for self-referential musical numbers. Plus, Ellen DeGeneres is hosting.There are three things I miss about not having a TV: the Olympics, Shark Week and the Oscars. Every other viewing experience can be more or less replicated on a computer.
On Oscar night in the Sinclair household, the broadcast plays in the background during dinner. The only occasions that allowed for TV at dinner time were the Oscars, figure skating and University of North Carolina football games. And I’m a sucker for pomp and circumstance. Give me a montage with uplifting music, and I’m hooked. Even though I don’t really go to the movies at Dartmouth, unless you count the critically acclaimed features that make it to the Hop three months after their release, I am still invested in the Oscar race.
I could give you my predictions, but The D’s arts and entertainment section is probably more equipped to handle that particular task. But I will give you my opinions. Sandra Bullock should win an Oscar for “Gravity” (2013), one of the most traumatizing movies I have ever seen, but she won’t. Likewise, I really don’t want Jennifer Lawrence to win Best Supporting Actress for “American Hustle” (2013), not because I don’t like Jennifer Lawrence, but because it seems that actresses are more likely to win awards for playing hysterical, crazy messes than for portraying fearless adventurers. I’m still annoyed that Lawrence won for “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012), beating Jessica Chastain for “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), when Chastain played a conflicted, hardcore CIA agent and Lawrence just played herself with more sex and screaming.
Even though no one at Dartmouth has free time, we still seem to find the time to watch Netflix. I firmly believe that Dartmouth students are permanently bonded by their desire to procrastinate by watching TV and movies. Though sleep deprived, we’re all magically caught up on “Sherlock,” “Downton Abbey,” “Game of Thrones” and “Breaking Bad.” You can’t deny that we have excellent taste.
Some of my most memorable college experiences have involved watching movies with friends -— falling asleep watching “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012) the first day of junior spring, seeing “Brave” (2012) at the Nugget in the pouring rain during a sophomore summer thunderstorm, choosing to watch “Pulp Fiction” (1994) on a date — for some reason, I always watch incredibly violent, bloody movies on dates. Looking back, that was probably a sign that things wouldn’t work out.
If Dartmouth were an Oscar-winning movie, would it be a Woody Allen-esque exploration of the neuroses of upper-middle class college students who wittily banter with each other over a game of pong? Or would it be a bleak, Coen brothers-style film, with long, lingering shots of the desolate Hanover landscape? I have no idea how a Quentin Tarantino film set at Dartmouth would turn out, except a lot of people would end up murdered.
If Dartmouth were a movie, I would like to believe that I would be the main character. But in all honesty, I would probably be cast as the witty sidekick who pops up to say something funny every couple of scenes and then either dies or is written out of the film.
Movies set at colleges always perpetuate the same notion that all students drink a lot, get laid and quote Marcel Proust, while remaining impeccably well-coiffed. Makers of college movies have clearly never set foot in Baker at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, when everyone is a little worse for the wear.
If I made a movie at Dartmouth, I would emphasize that no one seems to wear real pants on the weekends, and everyone has bags under their eyes. For every wild and crazy party, hours are spent hunched over a computer writing papers. But who wants to watch a bunch of over-educated, poorly dressed adolescents write a paper, unless it were a trippy, stream of consciousness affair like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)?
We like movies and TV so much because they aren’t true. When else can you imagine yourself as an astronaut and then realize that being an astronaut is a terrifying prospect? Seriously, “Gravity” really freaked me out. When else can we pretend to be kings and queens, planning our own political schemes? And yes, I know this has turned into a “Power of Movies” montage, but I’m okay with that. So this weekend, let’s all open the champagne, turn on the Oscars and make snarky comments about what everyone’s wearing.
