Watching Bruce Weber short films and getting depressed.

I just watched a quintet of shorts from filmmaker Bruce Weber [his recurring motifs include Hollywood glamour and an abiding love of dogs] currently airing on the Sundance Channel.

One short was dedicated to River Phoenix. And it's fascinating how Phoenix has been near-completely forgotten in the fifteen-plus years since his death. No definitive biography. No retrospectives. Not even a remote comparison to the attention paid to Heath Ledger since Ledger's passing (Ledger's final film, Terry Gilliam's THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, is likely to have a decent-enough opening weekend due to the curiosity factor).

The final short, LIBERTY CITY IS LIKE PARIS TO ME, is now spectacularly poignant and depressing. The viewer gets to watch African-American citizens of Liberty City, Florida celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama--plus a dance number (set to a soundtrack recording of Sammy Davis, Jr. singing a PORGY AND BESS song) that, in a good way, resembles the song-and-dance interlude in Spike Lee's SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT.

But it's now clear that Obama's not the President and Leader of the Free World that the citizens of Liberty City (and other American towns and cities) hoped for. Instead, he's in the Oval Office to make sure corporate trains run on time and business interests aren't too disturbed by calls for the kind of oversight that decreases profits. And Obama, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are willing to rope-a-dope liberals (or that antiseptic synonym "progressives") on health care and likely any other key issues until the folks on the Left are worn down from fruitless battle and are willing to accept toothless "compromise" because it's "something to build on."

Sort of like what businesses do when union members go on strike.

Post-Academy Awards comments, plus what Ebert had to say.

In past years, Roger Ebert was one of the hosts of the post-Oscar local telecast on KABC-TV Channel 7. Here's a link to Roger's recently-posted article on the 81st annual ceremony: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090222/OSCARS/902229997

I didn't see all of the telecast, but thought that Lawrence Mark and Bill Condon did a surprisingly not-bad job of production. Perhaps the only major debit was the decision to have Queen Latifah (again adopting her Dana Owens vocalist persona) sing "I'll Be Seeing You" over the In Memoriam segment. Let the clips speak for themselves, please.

A minor debit for the Judd Apatow PINEAPPLE EXPRESS-themed clipshow, which mostly existed for Apatow to extend a "my movies make a lot of money for the Industry and all I get is a Blackberry message to make a short film for the Oscar show" middle-finger to Hollywood. Note to Judd: with the sort-of exception of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, most of the films I saw that you had an active or passive hand in creating for release last year aren't going to be considered comedy classics (and that especially goes for STEP BROTHERS). Even the JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE commercial with Kimmel and Tom Cruise was funnier.

Otherwise, the awards were predictable, except for Foreign Film (thought it would go to THE CLASS or WALTZ WITH BASHIR), Feature Documentary (thought something intended as more conventionally ennobling such as TROUBLE THE WATER or THE GARDEN would win over the generally good, overly-adoring-of-performance-art MAN ON WIRE), costumes (glad to see THE DUCHESS shown a tiny amount of love) and Best Actor (equally happy with either Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke taking the prize home).

And congratulations to Kate Winslet and (posthumously) Heath Ledger for winning what can be partially considered Body-of-Work awards.