Oscars? Carnaval? Oscars? Help!

The unthinkable is happening this evening, Sunday. The (for me) all-important 86^th Academy Awards are scheduled to start at 9:00 p.m. Brasília time, the very same hour at which the Império da Tijuca samba school is scheduled to step onto Rio’s Sambódromo runway as the first of the evening’s six samba schools. What a conundrum! Well, this would not have been a conundrum if, like most normal people, Mark and I had cable television. If we did have cable television, I could watch the Oscars on TNT and Carnaval on Globo’s channel 1, and switch back and forth to my heart’s content. But this year I have been hoist by my own petard. Globo, which usually transmits the Oscars live, chose instead — and rightly so — to stick to its Brazilianness and just transmit Carnaval. So no Oscar broadcast on Globo. No TNT in our house. No Oscars, period.

In past years I’ve watched the Oscars on Globo, even though they start an hour late (after the novela) and translate the proceedings in a loud voice-over, leaving me to strain to hear the original English. I mean, the translations are very competent, but not every reference or joke translates well. Every year I try to find someone on the Internet who livestreams the Oscars, but I’ve never succeeded. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences keeps a tight hold on its intellectual property, and even in this day and age of "everything’s available on the web," this show is most emphatically not. So I know what is going to happen this evening. I’m going to be relegated to getting written updates on the Oscars from the various sites that can at least do that. What a bore. Globo’s only sop is that tomorrow, Monday, it will offer a cobbled-together special program called "Tapete Vermelho do Oscar" (Oscar’s Red Carpet) at the ridiculous time of 3:34 p.m. Too little, too late.

These people know their movies!!

One year we tried to satisfy my Oscar cravings by going to an Oscar party at Cavídeo, a real film buff’s video store in Rio. They show the Oscars in English, with nice, quiet subtitles, in a room above the store. But they also have a hard-fought film trivia competition before the show starts. Well, Mark and I felt pretty smug when we learned of the competition. After all, we’d been watching films since — well, for a long time. I admit to thinking that my knowledge of film was most likely superior to that of anyone else in that room. This thinking was fueled by a Brazilian who, hearing us speak English, came over and asked if he could join our "team"; he figured we’d do well. Well, we didn’t. We were pathetic. Awful. A disgrace to Hollywood. We lost, and lost badly. Brazilian moviegoers are really something. They know their movies.

I really haven’t felt like watching Carnaval at all this year; I haven’t seen anything in the papers or on television to excite me. Mangueira, the only school I really care about, will not be coming out until one or two o’clock or later in the morning, and that’s w-a-a-ay past my bedtime. The schools that parade tomorrow? Do I care? One thing for sure, I’ll probably still watch the apuração, when the winners are announced, on Wednesday. Except — oh, no — the apuração collides head on with the amistoso, the friendly soccer game, the last one Brazil will play in before the World Cup, against South Africa! Both are on Wednesday afternoon! They’re going to overlap! Which one will Globo broadcast? Here we go again!

Judging Carnaval

Getting ready to read the scores

That's it, carnaval is over. Yesterday was the apuração, the judging, the final tally, the crowning of the winner. The apuração is always broadcast at 4:00 p.m. on Ash Wednesday, and anyone who calls me during that time gets a "she can't be disturbed" from Mark. I love watching the apuração almost more than watching carnaval itself, even though I don't really have a dog in the fight. I love the guy who reads out the scores in his deep, stentorian voice, with his carioca accent. I love all the self-important rustling of papers and whispered, last-minute consultations behind hand-covered microphones. The heart-wrenching emotions of the samba schools. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

And it's not as if the judging is easy. All the samba schools in what's called the Special Group are excellent, or they wouldn't be there. This year, an astonishing eight of the 13 schools vying for the title had near-perfect presentations, and this is not just the opinion of a foreign lay-person. The results were tight, and depended more than ever upon fractions of points and the subjectivity of the judges. Here's how the final judging went:

My tally sheet

Champion — Unidos da Tijuca (The samba school of my favorite carnavalesco, Paulo Barros!)

Vice Champion — Salgueiro (How? Why? This school had loads of technical problems that caused huge holes in their parade . . . they should have lost points left and right! But they didn't.)







Unidos da Tijuca —

Standard-bearer and Master of Ceremonies

Another live float from Paulo Barros

I've dedicated a good part of February to carnaval blogposts in the hopes of introducing aspects of the spectacle that are barely known outside of Brazil. But for those of you who have had your fill of carnaval, and of my carnaval posts, rejoice! Not one more carnaval  peep out of me until February of 2013. Those cars that jammed our streets since the day after Christmas have turned around and gone home. High season is officially over, life officially returns to normal. Deep breath, everyone, and let's all let out one long, big "Whew!"

Bye-bye for now