The Oscars 2016: The Bear Thing.

Okay, this is my last bit on the Oscars. I promise.

Last Sunday (28/2/16) Leonardo DiCaprio one the Best Actor Award at the Oscars for his role in "The Revenant." It was obviously to reflect his role in that movie along with a 25 year career that has seen him unsuccessfully nominated for the award five times.

However I like to think that it was equally for his role in combating climate change which has seen him appointed a Global Ambassador for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of which the 2015 COP21 Summit was part.

To put that role in perspective in UNFCCC negotiations - particularly in the areas of finance and technology - people often end up arguing about what are termed International Intellectual Property Rights (IIPR's). These are essentially the patents on climate technology that people must pay to use.

For a number of these green technologies the patent holder is actually Leonardo DiCaprio because his eponymous foundation invented them. He is certainly a lot easier to negotiate with then entities such as Monsanto.

The Best Movie award of course went to "Spotlight." I like to think that this was to reflect the contribution of all the anonymous people who quietly work on green technologies and the agreement itself in contrast with DiCaprio's star power.

The Oscars for Best Director and Best Cinematography went to Alejandro González Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki respectively for their work on The Revenant. I think it should be obvious why this was deserved.

Back in 1998 everybody was raving about the movie "Saving Private Ryan" which won 5 Oscars including the Best Director and Best Cinematography awards for Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski. What impressed everybody was a 20 minute tracking shot at the start of the battle at Normandy. This revolutionary technique really helped to convey the horror and chaos of those beach landings.

Watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time now it is hard to understand just how ground-breaking that technique was because absolutely everybody has attempted to copy it numerous times ever since.

Early on in The Revenant there is a battle scene between DiCaprio's fur trapping party and Native American warriors. People who know about this sort of thing compare it to the scene in Saving Private Ryan but talk about how Iñárritu and Lubezki have taken it to a whole new level with techniques that will no doubt be extensively copied over the next 15-20 years.

I like to think that this connection to Saving Private Ryan was entirely deliberate. That's because it invokes memories of a specific moment in the 2012 COP18 Summit in Doha that makes me look amazing and all powerful.

With Doha supposed to be the place that the UNFCCC went to die the COP18 summit was going horrifically. With I think one day left on the clock everybody was at everybody else's throats there was a real danger of nothing being agreed. 

Then in a moment of drunken inspiration I invoked the song "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" by "The Pogues." This is a song about an Australian soldier lamenting on his experiences of the Gallipoli beach invasion of 1915.

There is something about the slow, repetitive bassline that has quite a calming, almost metronomic effect. I like to think that it was this effect that helped COP18 come together right at the end and extend itself for a further three days to produce the Doha Amendment that kept the process alive until COP21 where sadly it finally died.

So the big contrast between DiCaprio's star power and the anonymous diligence of Spotlight was even referenced within The Revenant. I think Iñárritu's going to find himself banned next year.

I should also take a moment to put to bed this rumour that Leonardo DiCaprio was raped by a bear during the making of The Revenant. After all it is a perfect example of how sometimes people can project their own issues on to art.

It all started when the movie was show to journalists at - I think - the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. One Italian journalist saw the movie and concluded that DiCaprio was being raped by the bear. He then went off and wrote a long explanation about how this was a metaphor for man's rape of nature.

He brought this theory up at a Q&A session with the cast and crew of the movie. This prompted the entire room to stop and stare at him as if to say;

"No. That's not what we meant. Dude, I think you need some therapy."

17:05 on 6/3/16 (UK date)