Rating: 
Summary: Fact-Filled, Insightful and Very, Very Funny
Review: "Inside Oscar 2" brings the encyclopedic "Inside Oscar" (almost) up to date, chronicling the past 5 years of Academy Awards. This is a somewhat more difficult task since the author has to make his calls on the fly without the benefit of hindsight, or the shakedown in taste that happens over the years. Damien Bona is up to it and "Inside Oscar 2" told me more than I ever thought I'd want to know about the Academy Awards of the last millennium's tail end. Trivia fans take note: every nominee and winner is listed in a section in the back.And there's a lot more. The gowns and the gossip are here, but also some real insights into the process of making these films, and promoting them. Bona is great at finding just the right quote or anecdote to represent a bigger story. He gives background information for the films (winners and losers) and tries to sort out why the film was received the way it was by the public and reviewers. The wheeling and dealing of Oscar campaigning is revealed as well as the machinations of the nominees. Bona is able to be critical of the state contemporary film and culture, yet show a real affection for good movies and the spectacle of the Oscar awards themselves. Each year has a "The Big Night" section, which details the awards ceremony and the personalities and hoopla around it. These are the funniest parts of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, Fact-Filled and Very, Very Funny
Review: "Inside Oscar 2" brings the encyclopedic "Inside Oscar" up to date, chronicling the past 6 years of Academy Awards. This is a somewhat more difficult task since the author has to make his calls on the fly without the benefit of hindsight, or the shakeout in taste that happens over the years. Damien Bona is up to it and "Inside Oscar 2" told me more than I ever thought I'd want to know about the Academy Awards of the last millennium's tail end.
The gowns and the gossip are there, but also some real insights into the process of making these films, and promoting them. Bona is great at finding just the right quote or anecdote to represent a bigger story. He gives background information for the films (winners and losers) and tries to sort out why the film was received the way it was by the public and reviewers. The wheeling and dealing of Oscar campaigning and the machinations of the nominees are revealed in all their desperation and crassness. Bona is able to be critical of the state contemporary film and culture, yet shows a real affection for good movies and the spectacle of the Oscar awards themselves.
Each year has a "The Big Night" section, which details the awards ceremony and the personalities and hoopla around it. These are the funniest parts of the book. Bona is much funnier than Billy Crystal or Whoopi Goldberg, and much, much funnier than Joan Rivers.
As I watched last night's ceremony I couldn't help but wonder what words he would use to describe whatever it was that Halle Berry was going through up there. I guess I'll have to wait for "Inside Oscar 3" to find out.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive look at Hollywood's biggest star - Oscar
Review: Baseball has the World Series. Football, the Super Bowl. And movies have the Oscars. Even those of us who sneer at the assembly line product that fills theater screens for most of the year, smugly correct our less pretentious friends when they say "movies" instead of "film," and gag at some of the Academy's choices ("...and the Oscar goes to Roberto Benigni"), this annual behemoth of often startlingly bad taste is impossible to resist. And a week after the prizes have been handed out, it's often difficult to remember who won what and why. That's where Damien Bona and the late Mason Wiley's "Inside Oscar" came in. In grand Hollywood tradition, Bona has written a sequel that continues the saga of the movie world's most enduring superstar, a bald-headed, gold-plated guy who, like Elvis, is so famous he doesn't need a last name. Oscar is in the mold of a lot of Hollywood heroes. Like Clint Eastwood, he doesn't say much and rarely cracks a smile. Yet everyone wants to take this stern looking character home. But how do you attract his attention? Like its predecessor, "Inside Oscar 2" details the cutthroat and merciless tactics that have been employed to win the golden guy's approval. The shameless campaigning, the backstabbing, and the money, money, and more money that goes into getting what amounts to a mere pat on the back from one's peers is all deftly exposed in so much detail that it makes all other Oscar books obsolete. This edition covers the eventful years of 1995-2000 when Oscar made some choices he may never live down (Begnini as best actor over Nick Nolte and Ian McKellan; "Shakespeare in Love" as best picture over "Saving Private Ryan"), and seemed to be influenced more than ever by tasteless campaigning (the Harvey Weinstein-Miramax influence on the awards are in full blossom by this time). Bona writes with a cynical and decidely liberal bent, devoting a lot of space to the controvery surrounding a lifetime achievement award for super fink Elia Kazan (whom he obviously despises). So, he's a little biased (okay, VERY biased), but for Oscar junkies, this book and its predecessor offer the best, most thorough coverage available, following each notable nominee and potential contender for the big prize through the entire awards season: from the National Board of Review's ranking of the year's best, to the various critic's awards and the Golden Globes, right through to Oscar night and its aftermath. There's also the complete list of winners and nominees for each category, as well as each year's presenters. "Inside Oscar" and "Inside Oscar 2" are the definitive biography of Hollywood's biggest star - Oscar.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive look at Hollywood's biggest star - Oscar
Review: Baseball has the World Series. Football, the Super Bowl. And movies have the Oscars. Even those of us who sneer at the assembly line product that fills theater screens for most of the year, smugly correct our less pretentious friends when they say "movies" instead of "film," and gag at some of the Academy's choices ("...and the Oscar goes to Roberto Benigni"), this annual behemoth of often startlingly bad taste is impossible to resist. And a week after the prizes have been handed out, it's often difficult to remember who won what and why. That's where Damien Bona and the late Mason Wiley's "Inside Oscar" came in. In grand Hollywood tradition, Bona has written a sequel that continues the saga of the movie world's most enduring superstar, a bald-headed, gold-plated guy who, like Elvis, is so famous he doesn't need a last name. Oscar is in the mold of a lot of Hollywood heroes. Like Clint Eastwood, he doesn't say much and rarely cracks a smile. Yet everyone wants to take this stern looking character home. But how do you attract his attention? Like its predecessor, "Inside Oscar 2" details the cutthroat and merciless tactics that have been employed to win the golden guy's approval. The shameless campaigning, the backstabbing, and the money, money, and more money that goes into getting what amounts to a mere pat on the back from one's peers is all deftly exposed in so much detail that it makes all other Oscar books obsolete. This edition covers the eventful years of 1995-2000 when Oscar made some choices he may never live down (Begnini as best actor over Nick Nolte and Ian McKellan; "Shakespeare in Love" as best picture over "Saving Private Ryan"), and seemed to be influenced more than ever by tasteless campaigning (the Harvey Weinstein-Miramax influence on the awards are in full blossom by this time). Bona writes with a cynical and decidely liberal bent, devoting a lot of space to the controvery surrounding a lifetime achievement award for super fink Elia Kazan (whom he obviously despises). So, he's a little biased (okay, VERY biased), but for Oscar junkies, this book and its predecessor offer the best, most thorough coverage available, following each notable nominee and potential contender for the big prize through the entire awards season: from the National Board of Review's ranking of the year's best, to the various critic's awards and the Golden Globes, right through to Oscar night and its aftermath. There's also the complete list of winners and nominees for each category, as well as each year's presenters. "Inside Oscar" and "Inside Oscar 2" are the definitive biography of Hollywood's biggest star - Oscar.
Rating: 
Summary: Well worth the wait
Review: Finally, after seven years of silence, Damien Bona has released an update to the classic Inside Oscar. Much as he and late coauthor Mason Wiley did in the first book, Damien Bona covers the latest couple of years of deplorable nominations, outrageous omissions, and unbelievable star antics that make the Academy Awards such an irresistible farce. Picking up where the first volume left off, Inside Oscar 2 covers the Academy from 1995 through the year 2000. Along with giving detailed accounts of each year's "Big Night," (and fans of the first book should rest assured that the subtle yet savage humor that distinguished the first book returns just as strong for the update), Bona also gives us the details of each year's prenomination race -- the surefire winners that fizzled, the behind-the-scenes battles of some of recent history's most popular films, and as always, the amazingly bizarre statements made by the folks that make up Hollywood. (In many ways, reading the book was like revisiting a fever dream and discovering it wasn't a dream at all. When one reads of James Cameron jumping up and down while screaming "I'm King of the World!" on national television, one's initial instinct is to think that the writer is simply being cartoonish but then the long-block memories come flooding back and we realize that yes, we actually did sit there and watch as he did that.) Delayed, in part, by the death of Mason Wiley, Inside Oscar 2 is written entirely by Damien Bona, one of the most acerebic and opinionated of current film historians. Without the presumed tempering influence of his collaborator, Bona's sardonic wit stings whenever Bona gets onto the subject of films that he obviously felt didn't deserve their Academy accolades. As a result, Inside Oscar 2 actually carries a bit more bite to it than the previous volume. As opposed to the first book, no attempt is made to hide the author's cinematic opinions and he delivers them in sharp, double-edged prose that will the warm the heart of anyone who watched pop culture evolve over the past decade and thought to themselves, "I just don't get it." His critiques of such Oscar winners as Braveheart and Gladiator are often both devastatingly funny and insightful. While Bona's savage ridicule of Titanic will probably generate the most emotions, perhaps the most surprising object of his venom is American Beauty, an Oscar winner that would, at first, seem tailor made for one of Bona's outspoken views. However, Bona is instead unfailingly critical of the 1999 Best Picture winner which he faults for being basically a TV sitcom version of a satire, for being blatantly anti-female, for being blindly homophobic, for actually managing to miscast Kevin Spacey even while winning him an Oscar, and for basically being a great deal of fury signifying nothing. These are the same feelings that I and a lot of others felt when we first saw this film and they are feelings that grow with each subsequent viewing. However, to my knowledge, nobody has better explained those feelings and made a case against the most acclaimed film of the '90s with the skill and wit displayed by Damien Bona. If I did have any problem with this book, it was that Bona's witty barbs -- so powerful against overrated films -- are less strong when he directs them towards politics, which Bona does often. While his film commentary carries the ring of hidden truth, Bona's occasional comments about each year's political headlines often go beyond sarcasm and into the realm of truly nasty bitterness (though this could be my own politics speaking; if I were a liberal, I'd probably love Bona's attacks on Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Orrin Hatch). It's a nastiness that, the few times its surfaces, is dreadfully out-of-place in what is otherwise an insightful, informative, and hilarious social history of American film in the 1990s. But that's a small quibble. This book is a must have for anyone who loved the first Inside Oscar, anyone who considers themselves to be a lover of Hollywood's vulgar rituals, and especially anyone who happens to have a sense of humor. And if you don't have a sense of humor -- well, buy the book anyway! Just skip over the parts about Titanic...
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the wait
Review: Finally, after seven years of silence, Damien Bona has released an update to the classic Inside Oscar. Much as he and late coauthor Mason Wiley did in the first book, Damien Bona covers the latest couple of years of deplorable nominations, outrageous omissions, and unbelievable star antics that make the Academy Awards such an irresistible farce. Picking up where the first volume left off, Inside Oscar 2 covers the Academy from 1995 through the year 2000. Along with giving detailed accounts of each year's "Big Night," (and fans of the first book should rest assured that the subtle yet savage humor that distinguished the first book returns just as strong for the update), Bona also gives us the details of each year's prenomination race -- the surefire winners that fizzled, the behind-the-scenes battles of some of recent history's most popular films, and as always, the amazingly bizarre statements made by the folks that make up Hollywood. (In many ways, reading the book was like revisiting a fever dream and discovering it wasn't a dream at all. When one reads of James Cameron jumping up and down while screaming "I'm King of the World!" on national television, one's initial instinct is to think that the writer is simply being cartoonish but then the long-block memories come flooding back and we realize that yes, we actually did sit there and watch as he did that.) Delayed, in part, by the death of Mason Wiley, Inside Oscar 2 is written entirely by Damien Bona, one of the most acerebic and opinionated of current film historians. Without the presumed tempering influence of his collaborator, Bona's sardonic wit stings whenever Bona gets onto the subject of films that he obviously felt didn't deserve their Academy accolades. As a result, Inside Oscar 2 actually carries a bit more bite to it than the previous volume. As opposed to the first book, no attempt is made to hide the author's cinematic opinions and he delivers them in sharp, double-edged prose that will the warm the heart of anyone who watched pop culture evolve over the past decade and thought to themselves, "I just don't get it." His critiques of such Oscar winners as Braveheart and Gladiator are often both devastatingly funny and insightful. While Bona's savage ridicule of Titanic will probably generate the most emotions, perhaps the most surprising object of his venom is American Beauty, an Oscar winner that would, at first, seem tailor made for one of Bona's outspoken views. However, Bona is instead unfailingly critical of the 1999 Best Picture winner which he faults for being basically a TV sitcom version of a satire, for being blatantly anti-female, for being blindly homophobic, for actually managing to miscast Kevin Spacey even while winning him an Oscar, and for basically being a great deal of fury signifying nothing. These are the same feelings that I and a lot of others felt when we first saw this film and they are feelings that grow with each subsequent viewing. However, to my knowledge, nobody has better explained those feelings and made a case against the most acclaimed film of the '90s with the skill and wit displayed by Damien Bona. If I did have any problem with this book, it was that Bona's witty barbs -- so powerful against overrated films -- are less strong when he directs them towards politics, which Bona does often. While his film commentary carries the ring of hidden truth, Bona's occasional comments about each year's political headlines often go beyond sarcasm and into the realm of truly nasty bitterness (though this could be my own politics speaking; if I were a liberal, I'd probably love Bona's attacks on Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Orrin Hatch). It's a nastiness that, the few times its surfaces, is dreadfully out-of-place in what is otherwise an insightful, informative, and hilarious social history of American film in the 1990s. But that's a small quibble. This book is a must have for anyone who loved the first Inside Oscar, anyone who considers themselves to be a lover of Hollywood's vulgar rituals, and especially anyone who happens to have a sense of humor. And if you don't have a sense of humor -- well, buy the book anyway! Just skip over the parts about Titanic...
Rating:
Summary: Too highly opinonated to deserve five stars
Review: I have been waiting months for this book after I engulfed the first edition and wore out the pages from the countless amount of times I paged through it to find out things like who was up for Best Actress in 1944.
The latest edition starts where the first left off, in 1995, and covers the Oscars up until last year's ceremony in 2000 with "Gladiator," taking home the Best Picture nod. Bona basically follows the same chapter agenda of the first by going over the top movies of the year, what critics across the country thought and the early Oscar buzz. He follows with the nominations, who was happy and who got snubbed, which leads into the section "The Big Night." That section is a run-down of Oscar night and includes all the corny jokes told by the MC, who was wearing what, and what awful dance pieces Debbie Allen made the audience suffer through. Bona follows by running down the reactions to the winners and all the juicy bits from the post-parties.
And of course, he included my favorite part which is a list of all the winners and nominations in the back. He also includes the lists of pictures that didn't get nominated and foreign films that got snubbed year by year. But as eager as I was for this edition, it so far has left me a bit disappointed. Though this book is as funny at times as the first, Bona is a bit too opinionated for my liking. He lets the reader know right away what he thought of a film and takes cheap shots at people, like calling Ridley Scott "a hack." He is also more than happy to let us know how he felt on the 2000 election and brings it up numerous times. Wait...isn't this a film book? Obviously, with partner Mason Wiley not around for this edition, Bona was free to let his opinions fly and is not afraid to take pot shots at anyone. He also has a tendency to cheerlead at times in the book. It's quite obvious what film or actor he felt should have won.
Of course, the first book took it's fair share of shots at people but there were far fewer, they never went on for more than two sentences, and they were always filled with humor. Bona's slams in this edition are less for humor and more to state his opinion.
Of course, it's his book and he can write what he wants but it just doesn't flow as well as the first and if Wiley were still alive, I doubt it would be so politically opinionated. That being said, I'd still recommend this book to any Oscar fan as it has more info than you can find in any other publication and it's a nice update from the first edition which stopped at 1994. And as Milos Forman once said "The Academy awards are a wonderful game, but if you take them seriously, you're in trouble."
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative & Very Funny
Review: I received this book for a Christmas present from my friend, and I've hardly scarcely been able to put it down and do other things. I am learning so much about the Academy Awards that I didn't know regarding how they are campaigned for and what actually happens on "The Big Night." And I am also laughing so much. How can anyone not esteem a book that contains such funny things as: "Lasse Hallstrom got booked for an excellent gig. He was invited by Academy Award winner Rabbi Marvin Hier to screen The Cider House Rules at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance, followed by a question and answer segment. Hallstrom would be representing a pro-choice stance a day after an appearance by George W. Bush, the simpleton Texas governor running for the Republican Presidential nomination. Bush was there on behalf of the `pro-life' side - even though he had never seen anything so forlorn as an electric chair not in use." And this, on The Green Mile, "The silver-tongued Frank Darabont told Premiere, `I have a deep, abiding fear of turning out something crappy,' and then he went and made The Green Mile. One sat in the theater dumfounded because Darabont seemed to have a kind of genius for piling absurdity upon absurdity to such a point that it got to seem utterly post-modern. . . Not only are the prison guards decorous and unfailingly civil, the death row inmates likewise - with one exception - are grand hail-fellow-well-met types, and the Depression-era prison itself is the most immaculate and pleasant institution imaginable. A lot of fuss is made about a mouse in the cell-block - as if a backwoods penitentiary in 1935 wouldn't have been crawling with rodents. Moreover, this little mouse was so precious that he could have had the title role in Stuart Little." And this, "On Poltically Incorrect the next night, host Bill Maher complained that so many fashion critics were gay men. "I'm a little tired of hearing gay men telling me what's sexy about women. How would they know?" he groused. `They don't know what's sexy about a woman." One of the guests was Richard Roeper, the man whom Roger Ebert had personally selected as his post-Siskel television partner, even though Roeper had no background in film. If Siskel and Ebert could fairly have been called Tweedledum and Tweedledee, then now it was Tweedledee and the Village Idiot. Roeper piped up to disagree with Maher, declaring that gay men "know what's sexy about women's clothes -- they wear them." Inside Oscar 2 even quotes hilarious anger from Barbra Streisand fanatics who posted their thoughts in consternation on the internet when they thought their diva wasn't treated with respect on Oscar night I'm so glad I have this book. Maybe it will not succeed to change my life, but it does succeed to make my life much more enjoyable. Thank you Mr. Damien Bona.
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative & Very Funny
Review: I received this book for a Christmas present from my friend, and I've hardly scarcely been able to put it down and do other things. I am learning so much about the Academy Awards that I didn't know regarding how they are campaigned for and what actually happens on "The Big Night." And I am also laughing so much. How can anyone not esteem a book that contains such funny things as: "Lasse Hallstrom got booked for an excellent gig. He was invited by Academy Award winner Rabbi Marvin Hier to screen The Cider House Rules at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance, followed by a question and answer segment. Hallstrom would be representing a pro-choice stance a day after an appearance by George W. Bush, the simpleton Texas governor running for the Republican Presidential nomination. Bush was there on behalf of the 'pro-life' side - even though he had never seen anything so forlorn as an electric chair not in use." And this, on The Green Mile, "The silver-tongued Frank Darabont told Premiere, 'I have a deep, abiding fear of turning out something crappy,' and then he went and made The Green Mile. One sat in the theater dumfounded because Darabont seemed to have a kind of genius for piling absurdity upon absurdity to such a point that it got to seem utterly post-modern. . . Not only are the prison guards decorous and unfailingly civil, the death row inmates likewise - with one exception - are grand hail-fellow-well-met types, and the Depression-era prison itself is the most immaculate and pleasant institution imaginable. A lot of fuss is made about a mouse in the cell-block - as if a backwoods penitentiary in 1935 wouldn't have been crawling with rodents. Moreover, this little mouse was so precious that he could have had the title role in Stuart Little." And this, "On Poltically Incorrect the next night, host Bill Maher complained that so many fashion critics were gay men. "I'm a little tired of hearing gay men telling me what's sexy about women. How would they know?" he groused. 'They don't know what's sexy about a woman." One of the guests was Richard Roeper, the man whom Roger Ebert had personally selected as his post-Siskel television partner, even though Roeper had no background in film. If Siskel and Ebert could fairly have been called Tweedledum and Tweedledee, then now it was Tweedledee and the Village Idiot. Roeper piped up to disagree with Maher, declaring that gay men "know what's sexy about women's clothes -- they wear them." Inside Oscar 2 even quotes hilarious anger from Barbra Streisand fanatics who posted their thoughts in consternation on the internet when they thought their diva wasn't treated with respect on Oscar night I'm so glad I have this book. Maybe it will not succeed to change my life, but it does succeed to make my life much more enjoyable. Thank you Mr. Damien Bona.
Rating: 
Summary: A History of the Academy Awards or a Political Diatribe?
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the first Inside Oscar with its biting wit and humorous anecdotes. This one is more of a straightforward history minus a lot of the humourous quips and observations of the first. The late Mason Wiley is truly missed. Damien Bona also runs the risk of offending about 53% of the audience (after the 2002 election) with his subjective statements like "as if Republicans were dear hearts and gentle people" and general nasty comments about everyone from Bob Dole to George Bush (43).
It's enough that we have to hear these comments from the Hollywood "elite" (Barbara Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Bill Maher, et al.) Recommended only for a read through, it's not quite as captivating as its predecessor.
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