BOOKS

Gwyn it: Paltrow at the 1999 Oscars

OSCAR WARS: AHISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD IN GOLD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

★★★★★

MICHAEL SCHULMAN HARPER

Recent Oscars have been defined by their debacles: 2017’s Envelopegate, The Slap from 2022, this year’s Al Pacino fumble. As this highly entertaining chronicle of the role the Academy and its awards have played in Hollywood over the past 95 years shows, though, a ceremony cooked up by studio moguls as a placatory sop for their underpaid underlings has always had a habit of making trouble for itself.

Take 1957 for example, when the non-existent Robert Rich – a front for blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – was awarded a writing prize. Or 1989, when a camp opening number starring Rob Lowe and Snow White led to Disney calling its lawyers. Schulman sniffs out the rivalries and frictions behind the glitz and glamour: Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine’s sibling antagonism, for instance, or the outrage that greeted Gregory Peck’s attempts to freshen up the Academy membership. A chapter on the Shakespeare in Love-Saving Private Ryan dogfight of 1999, meanwhile, delves into the tactics Harvey Weinstein used to nab the Best Picture trophy, and the even nastier things he got up to away from the TV cameras.

As its title implies, this is an Americentric affair that largely ignores the global phenomenon of the Oscars. If you’ve ever stayed up late to see what’s won Best Documentary Short, though, there’s something for you within its 600-plus pages.

HOLLYWOOD PRIDE

★★★★★

ALONSO DURALDE RUNNING PRESS

‘I just went gay all of a sudden!’ ad-libbed Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby while wearing a women’s fur-trimmed robe. It’s one of countless ‘queer moments’ dissected in an absorbing althistory that reveals how being hidden from view or denied a voice didn’t deter generations of LGBTQ+ actors, writers and craftspeople from leaving their mark on the movies. Some of the terminology employed (‘sissies’, ‘pansies’ and so on) might startle, yet this remains a story that deserves, nay demands to be told.

MARVEL: WHAT IF… LOKI WAS WORTHY?

★★★★★

MADELEINE ROUX DEL REY

While Marvel’s cinematic multiverses have been relatively rocky, the What If…? series exploring alt-MCU scenarios has fared better. This first instalment of adult novels under the same banner works equally well, imagining a Loki prank having fatal consequences for Thor. A subsequent banishment, a determined Valkyrie and a revenge-fuelled Tony Stark fill out the fast-paced adventure, with Roux adeptly tapping into the characters’ psyches.

KES

★★★★★

DAVID FORREST BFI/BLOOMSBURY

Accepting her BAFTA Fellowship earlier this year, Samantha Morton revealed how seeing Ken Loach’s Kes had ‘forever changed’ her as a child. Forrest’s eloquent study pays further tribute to ‘a classic piece of working-class cinema made by working-class people’, offering perceptive remarks on its depiction of violent masculinity, its ‘searing indictment of the education system’ and the manipulations deployed to obtain convincing performances from its inexperienced cast.

NEIL SMITH