Well, another Oscar season has come and gone, and I’m certainly glad that I saw Slumdog Millionaire when I did, cuz it’s been a long time since I’ve actually seen a Best Picture winner (I think Return of the King was the last one, and that was five years ago). One interesting sidenote is that I believe that Slumdog Millionaire is the only one of the five nominated films that ends on a high note (correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the other four all have downer endings). At any rate, critics are gonna complain that the ceremony was boring, as they always do, but we’ve been down that road before, and it’s really no use rehashing my old complaints about their complaints.
As far as Oscar Picks go, although we both improved on our scores from last year, my mom still edged me 11 to 9. For some reason, I was hesitant to choose The Dark Knight for ANY category, and it came back to bite me. At any rate, I got Picture, Actress, Animated Feature, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup, Original Song, and Adapted Screenplay. My mom got Picture, Supporting Actor, Animated Feature, Art Direction, Directing, Film Editing, Live Action Short Film, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, and Original Screenplay.
In terms of hosting, Hugh Jackman was certainly a change of pace from all the comedians they’ve been using recently. He wasn’t the greatest, but he wasn’t the worst either. The musical numbers fell kind of flat, even though he is a pretty good singer. I did like the tongue-in-cheek complaints that the Academy won’t recognize comic book movies, which became less tongue-in-cheek when he proclaimed himself Wolverine (which I, in turn, had to explain to my parents).
Other observations:
· The idea of presenting most of the awards in the same order they would occur in the production process was kind of neat. It looked like they had the Phantom of the Opera’s chandelier stored in the background, though.
· Steve Martin is still not funny.
· Upon further thought, it was probably only a matter of time before the Oscars featured a Bollywood dance number. “Jai Ho” was a good, catchy tune, though. One thing I don’t get is that there are a few lines of the song that are in Spanish. And why were the dancers accompanied by Japanese taiko drummers?
· A lot of the “comedic” pairups just didn’t work. I already mentioned that Steve Martin is not funny. Neither is Ben Stiller, although I realize that he was trying to imitate Joaquin Phoenix (even though I never saw the Letterman interview). The funniest presenter was probably Will Smith (“Hugh must be backstage taking a nap or something”). Jack Black is normally funny, but his routine with Jennifer Aniston totally bombed. The Pineapple Express bit would also not have worked, but having Janusz Kaminski was so randomly bizarre that it was funny.
· Another thing that I’m unsure of was what they did with the acting awards. Breaking with tradition, they had five former winners in each category laud the nominees one-by-one and then announced the winner. Not only did that deprive me of seeing the actors in clips from their respective films, it seemed to me like it took a lot more time.
· Where were Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis?
· It was a really good night for India and Japan.
· The memorial tribute with Queen Latifah singing would’ve been okay if the cameraman would stop the continuous panning. I couldn’t read half the names.
· There was a plea that I wanted to make that had absolutely nothing to do with movies or the Oscars, but I elected not to because it sounds really dirty out of context.
· Usually, when someone wins a lifetime achievement Oscar or the Thalberg award or the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, they give a really long speech. Not Jerry Lewis. His acceptance speech was shorter than a lot of the regular winners.
· Something I find somewhat amusing is that for once, the critics don’t agree on what worked and what didn’t. For instance, MSN did not like Hugh Jackman’s opening number, but Yahoo loved it.
· Now for fashion. Looked good: Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Tina Fey.
· Looked bad: Miley Cyrus, Sophia Loren, Jessica Biel, Tilda Swinton.
· Caveats: Angelina Jolie would’ve looked good except the giant ring and earrings she was wearing looked like cheap plastic. Marisa Tomei’s dress looked like it was designed by M.C. Escher. Meryl Streep looked very matronly.
· The lady who won for the Best Documentary Short must’ve been sitting WAY in the back. Also, while they were reading off the winner of another award (don’t remember which), Frank Langella was caught on camera trying to find his seat.
