Happy post-Oscars Monday, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life with Argo as a Best Picture winner. Well, we could honestly say that the After Argo era started weeks ago, when the actual awards were just a formality needed to make it crystal clear that the Academy learned precisely nothing from last year. Apparently, Spielberg, and the war on terror, are out as sure-fire Oscar bait. What's in, are trifling, alphabetically convenient black & white love letters to Hollywood, The Artist being visually B&W, and Argo adopting the binary when dealing with themes, character, and writing. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, and swear I'll be limiting my rambling on this subject, which has already been written about to death by much more perceptive commentators than I. So, let's just start with the old business:

Two Arrow reviews for the price of one. Well, technically, it's two for the price of any integer, seeing as I'm not charging for these. How do people make money on the internet again?
And here's the piece where I got out most of my Oscar-oriented verbosity before the actual awards, in what was once titled "The Bullshitters Guide to the Oscars." I figured the addition of a number, and a subtraction of the word "bullshit" would help the SEO traffic. This was a lot of fun to write, which makes it easier to accept that I spent 7000 words writing an article with the shelf life of a baguette.

So, anyway, back to last night's big event. Look, I love the Oscars. It's maybe my favorite night of television all year, despite the fact that that as cultural commentary, a celebration of film, or just honest to god entertainment, they're usually pretty lousy. The major winners are almost always a given, and the broadcast itself is a familiarly blended cocktail of shameless pandering, and nervous flop-sweat. Worst of all, it's never quite as bad as your more sinister impulses might hope. But like I said, I love 'em, and the mix of that love that's ironic or earnest changes each year.

This time, with Argo rolling in as the prom king waiting to be crowned, and Seth MacFarlane hosting, the balance tipped far more towards the latter than the former. I don't actually mind how the winners shook out (beyond how some of the swing categories affected the results of my Oscar pool), and there's nothing really upsetting about Argo winning Best Picture, probably because there's nothing terribly upsetting about it to begin with. It was the default, the safety choice, the cheese-and-no-toppings pizza the Academy settled on after it was apparent that picking a film that played to the middle would be less of a headache than supporting something that's even a slightly challenging. Why risk creating small pockets of dissent among the voters, when you can just make everyone shrug their shoulders in unison, mildly content with knowing that the one film that rubbed them the wrong way didn't win?

"At least it wasn't the worst thing," has become the de facto motto of the actual awards, leaving the show itself as the main attraction. This went about as well as you might imagine. The Academy hired Seth MacFarlane as a ratings bid to a younger, male-oriented audience, knowing full well that probably meant an evening of mean-spirited cracks about weight, sexual orientation, gender, and just general decency. There was a ten-second window in which it looked like MacFarlane's self-awareness would overpower his natural instincts, when his pre-recorded ditty, "We Saw Your Boobs," was cheekily pointing out the low expectations he was walking into the ceremony with. But then it kept going, and going, until you realized that the meta layer was present to let MacFarlane have his bad joke cake, and eat it too. The only thing in the opening act accomplished in a timely manner was how quickly it became apparent that William Shatner's "Ghost of Social Media Future" role wasn't an attempt at self-deprecation, so much as it was extended ass-covering (which is thematically consistent with the night, if you think about it).

The whole evening felt like it was written for the Crazy Old Racist archetype you find in a lot of TV and movies, where the jokes pretend to say "laugh at how inappropriate this person is," but really just provide backdoor entrances for the kinds of easy, racy groaners supposedly being satirized. Backhanded compliments, and other people's words, were MacFarlane's choice method of insulating himself when firing shots across the auditorium. Javier Bardem sure sounds weird huh, but it's okay, because he's pretty! I'm not making fun of Adele's weight, but remember when Rex Reed did? The thing is, there is a great Oscar host in MacFarlane, one brought out during the numerous song 'n dance skits that were the reason du jour for the overlong running time. As a comedian though, he played things as predictably as the Oscar voters, which is to say he stuck to his patented "mildly inflammatory joke, shit-eating grin" two-step. The snippy attitude infected some of the presenters, and a bit using the Jaws theme as playoff music, while amusing in concept, had the misfortune of being deployed during a heartfelt acceptance speech on behalf of recently bankrupt visual effects studio Rhythm & Hues.

Even The Onion got caught up in the general meanness, as an errant tweet about 9 year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis was quickly taken down after posting, requiring a full-on apology letter this morning. The joke itself was actually a simple jab at how we accept that half the reason people watch these things is to see which couch-bound critic can unload the most vicious twitter insults. Wallis was the "target" for the sake of maximizing comedic juxtaposition between the harshness of the name-calling, and how innocuous the people being judged by millions really are. Buuuuuuuut there's just no way a majorly read publication, satirical or otherwise, comes out looking clever or insightful for calling a child a "rhymes-with-hunt," so whatever point there was to be made got buried in some very, very poor phrasing. It's a bummer of an evening when the only laugh everyone could enjoy without reservation was seeing Flight reenacted using sock puppets.

So, does that mean we're in for another soft-ball show next year, with the Academy pulling back on being "hip" by bringing back Billy Crystal, so long as he promises to leave the black shoe polish at home? Hard to say. Initial reports show that ratings did go up this year, and while critical response to the show has ranged from disappointed, to outright pissed off, the broader consensus from viewers at home seems to be that MacFarlane did a solid job ("Of course he was offensive, that's his job!"). Seeing as a bunch of old white dudes, a demographic safely outside MacFarlane's go-to material (unless a joke involving pedophile is needed), decided to gives this year's biggest prize to a work that's popular and inoffensive, then why not double down making the broadcast popular and offensive. At least when you do that, people might actually talk about the Oscars.

I realize I'm coming off as a downer, even though there have been far worse Oscars in the past, and the future will surely deliver many more. To end on a positive note, please enjoy this picture of two-time Best Director winner Ang Lee going all Richard Parker on some In-N-Out Burger.

Ben Affleck's Argo is a very good new movie about a very fake old movie, one "made" in Iran during the volatile infant months of the Iranian Republic. Animated storyboard sketches at the beginning of the film offer a colourful crash course on Iran's revolutionary history up to late 1979 -the waning months of the Carter administration-, before Affleck jumps head first into his retelling of one thread in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which saw 52 American embassy workers held captive for over a year.

The opening sequence is electric, showing hundreds of outraged students surrounding the embassy in Tehran, and the workers inside nervously appraising the situation. The only thing keeping them together is the knowledge that the embassy is American soil, guarded by marines, gates, and high walls. Then, the unthinkable happens: one of the protesters climbs over the wall. Then another. And another, leading to a full-on invasion of the embassy. Much like the barbwire over the walls, the soldiers are only there to be a discouraging presence, not an actual defence; any shots fired would risk starting a war, leaving the Americans scrambling to destroy documents moments before their capture.

An imagined sense of security is the first of many disguises, lies and imitations that constitute Argo's key fascination: falsehoods. When six of the Americans manage to flee to the home of an ambassador, the C.I.A. throws together a plan to exfiltrate the group by claiming they're a Canadian film crew, in Iran to scout locations for a new Star Wars rip-off, titled "Argo". The operation depends on creating a ruse so elaborate, and so intricate, that the mission's leader, Tony Mendez (Affleck), will be able to walk the fugitives -using assumed identities- through Tehran's heavily-guarded international airport, and onto a plane back home.

Fake people and fake organizations with real motives all collide, and the most impactful objects aren't guns, they're stamps giving a seal of authenticity. The constant subterfuge creates a tonal dichotomy of tension and farce, with all the characters spinning their own brand of bullshit in order to save lives. Argo welcomely embraces the bullshit though, particularly in its second act, when Mendez brings in a Hollywood makeup artist (John Goodman) and an influential producer (Alan Arkin) to make his phoney movie look like the real deal. While the situation in Iran only intensifies the longer the Americans stay in hiding, the L.A. crew preps the rescue as if it were a human-heist movie. Titles like Mendez's Six, or The Tehran Job come to mind.

John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Ben Affleck

Argo's mix of levity and suspense makes for a propulsive brio, but one that can create jarring contrast, such as a sequence that intercuts a convention-worthy table read of the fake movie's script, with hostages being lined up against a firing wall. While the Wag the Dog-style interplay between the entertainment business and covert government agencies is often very funny, it's sandwiched neatly between the dire opening, and the intense final third, which is mostly humourless, as it focusses on Mendez working with the hostages on their cover identities.

Mendez provides as much an anchor as can be expected from a story that's more about events and environments than people, but Affleck makes him a compelling master of deception. The biggest lie he has to tell the rattled hostages is that he knows they'll make it out alright. Of course, history has already spoiled the end of the operation for us, so Argo tries to compensate by layering onto the facts with some additional fiction, which can undercut your appreciation for seeing real events recreated when the script feels the need to embellish them.

But this is a crowed-pleaser, through and through, an Apollo 13 for the politically minded, and Affleck only ever feints at trying to deliver something more than a supremely well-executed thriller. In a recent interview, Paul Thomas Anderson claimed that having great actors was the key to his success, and if that's the bedrock for one of this generation's most celebrated directors, then it's no surprise that Affleck has managed such a strong career behind the camera, thanks to the kind of talent he can bring along with him. The actors are all excellent (Bryan Cranston in particular, as Tony's spitfire of a boss), the script is clean when doling out exposition, yet punchy when it needs to be, and Affleck directs everything with a sure hand.

And it's that slavish devotion to making high-grade product out of a familiar formula that makes Argo exceptionally good, but never great. When its blend of cloak 'n' dagger and showbiz bravado is really crackling, the film is effortlessly enjoyable, but one might hope a story of such great risks would merit a few of its own in the adaptation. I don't want to sound like i'm slagging on Affleck, but if he were to try pretending that he really is America's next great director -not simply its most reliable-, than he might turn out to be just that. Sometimes, you gotta fake it before you can make it.

4 out of 5

Argo

Directed by Ben Affleck

2012, USA