I’m sure you’ve heard (and groaned at) all the boxing puns about Million Dollar Baby beating The Aviator for Best Picture, so I’ll leave those out. The Best Picture announcement this year seemed anticlimactic as compared to last year’s, but on the whole I would say it was a good ceremony. The entertainment commentators are complaining that it was boring. They say that every year. They like to complain about it, but they never seem to offer suggestions on how to make it “not boring.” I thought Chris Rock was funny, especially in the monologue. I have read two blow-by-blow reports: MSN’s and Yahoo’s. I read them every year even though they almost always insult a moment I liked, a performance I enjoyed, or a win I supported. This year was no exception, but I nonetheless read them because I like to see what made a lasting impression on people. By the way, I won this year’s Oscar Picks. The Academy and I agreed in 7 categories: Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Animated Feature, Documentary Short, Makeup, and Sound Editing. Marisa had 5, which were Animated Feature, Foreign Language Film, Makeup, Original Score, and Sound Editing. Mandy also had 5, with Actor, Supporting Actress, Documentary Short, Sound Mixing, and Original Screenplay.
Here are some of my observations:
- Much talk has been made over the new styles of presenting some awards. I do think it’s kind of unfair because it’s like the Academy’s saying only the “important” people like actors and directors get to take the glamorous walk to the stage (although I do find it reassuring that we editors are actually regarded as “important” people). That said, if they insist on doing it again, I think the “Miss
- One of my pet peeves continues to be the insistence that someone presents an award alongside an animated character. It’s dumb. This year, it was an under-the-weather Pierce Brosnan who got to suffer the indignity.
- The only other preplanned routing that didn’t work was the one with Adam Sandler with Chris Rock “pretending” to be Catherine Zeta-Jones.
- I’m not sure why they kept showing the top balcony when it looked like half the seats were empty. There were also a few “caught-in-the-act” shots of stagehands who didn’t get out of the way fast enough (including one handing a microphone to Chris Rock).
- Not only did Pierce Brosnan have to suffer through the animated character stunt, you could hear him hacking and coughing all through the nominee reading.
- Tim Robbins has a sense of humor. Sean Penn apparently does not. (Chris Rock made a joke about Tim Robbins boring us to death with politics, and he came out laughing along with it. Chris Rock had made a joke about Jude Law in his monologue and Sean Penn later came out defending him).
- That tribute to Johnny Carson was nice, but the only other former Oscar host they could get to talk about him was Whoopi Goldberg?
- One of the blow-by-blows I read make a joke about the Visual Effects Club having a “no girls allowed” sign that went into the “sad but true” category. The same observation was made for the Sound Editing group.
- As far as fashion goes, I thought Zhang Ziyi, Emmy Rossum, and
- Why was Usher there?
- There seemed to be a lot of odd noises coming from offstage. Most of the time they seemed to go unnoticed by whoever was on camera. Jeremy Irons noticed, though. During his intro to presenting the short film award there was a particularly loud bang off camera. He stopped his speech and said dryly, “I hope they missed.”
- Orlando Bloom got insulted by an Access Hollywood reporter interviewing him and I’m not sure he noticed (“Before you were a big star, you were a serious actor” or something like that).
- The blow-by-blows were mixed on the Memorial Tribute montage. The Yahoo one said nobody cared. The MSN one said the tears were flowing. Go figure. I cared about it, but it didn’t induce tears.
- I suppose now is as good a time as any to devote space to discussing what seems to be my favorite of the so-called “tech categories”: Best Original Song. MSN’s blow-by-blow managed to insult every single performer except Counting Crows (which is odd, since you’d think they’d be first in the line of fire). Yahoo’s spent the time either insulting Clay Aiken (who wasn’t even there) or defending him; I can’t tell which. For my part, “Accidentally in Love” was actually the most boring of the five songs. I heard that the guy who originally wrote and sang “Al Otro Lado Del Rio” in the movie wanted to sing it at the Oscars, but Gil Cates decided to go for Antonio Banderas and Santana instead (much to Susannah’s delight). The Beyonce overload wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, although I think the only song that was necessary for her to sing was “Look To Your Path.” Did anyone else notice she seemed to be wearing about 5 pounds of eyeshadow in every performance? She must also have the fastest wardrobe, hair, and makeup teams in the world. The thing about Beyonce is that I think she is a very good singer and she has a very nice voice, but she doesn’t normally sing in styles that I like. Last night she did. First, I think it was awesome that she stuck to the original French lyrics of “Look To Your Path,” and she sounded very good too. Then there was “Learn to Be Lonely” (which featured Beyonce wearing what had to be the biggest necklace ever). What I don’t get is that the song was introduced by Emmy Rossum, who played Christine in the movie. Why didn’t they just have her sing it? Beyonce’s performance was very good though. I liked the brief cameo from the Phantom (One of the blow-by-blows made a bad joke about the Phantom being played by Rob Lowe). The last performance was “Believe,” which was inexplicably turned into a duet featuring the original singer and Beyonce (IMDB has taken to calling this performance the “dry ice duet”). I’m still not sure why they would do this (other than ratings), but it makes more sense than having the song introduced by P. Diddy. One of the blow-by-blows did point out that having trains as the backpiece just opened the door for more bad puns. Then I found a photo of the performance somewhere and the caption said that it was Beyonce and Santana (that would be incorrect). I did find Chris Rock’s comment after the performance to be funny, though.
Well, I suppose you’re all thoroughly bored so I shall stop now. Perhaps I will have more later, perhaps not.
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