Oscars

Yesterday was the Oscars and I of course watched. I came in 4th in my pool getting only 15/24 categories right. I'll do better next year. :)

As far as the show, I was fairly underwhelmed. It struck me as particularly long and mostly uninteresting though I do appreciate some of the things they attempted to do.

Not that the red carpet show is ever great, but this was awful. Who thought to have Sherri Sheppard and Kathy Ireland do interviews? And who is Jess Cagle? Why are they spending time interviewing Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron and Tayor Lautner? And why do they have a video clip introducing the best picture nominees of 1943? If you're into the clothes thing or even semi-candid talks with stars, this didn't deliver at all.

I thought the opening was weak. They had the best actor and actress nominees walk out on stage. They were announced and just sat down but I was fearful they would make them sing. It's kinda nice to see them, but we're going to see these 10 people several times again so it didn't seem necessary.

Then Neil Patrick Harris came out and did a musical number that introduced the hosts. It was an odd reminder that he wasn't hosting which lots of people had hoped for. But oddly, I didn't find the musical number to be memorable at all ("So go go Martin and Baldwin, the biggest pair since Dolly Parton"), it's probably the worst thing I've seen him do. And through it, they cut to audience members they didn't light them, so it was, hey look at this star in the dark. Some friends really enjoyed all the flubs of the broadcast.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosted. I thought Martin had some very funny lines and Baldwin looked a bit stiff and his timing was off. It wasn't that he was just being a straight man. It would have been better if Martin hosted alone. And if you're going to have hosts, why have most presenters introduced by the announcer instead of the host? Their monologue (duologue?) had them make jokes about various nominees and had some good laughs. My favorites:

"Meryl Streep holds the record for most nominations as an actress or as I like to think of it most loses"

"Oh and look, there's that damn Helen Mirren",
"Steve, that's Dame Helen Mirren"

"Anyone who ever works with Meryl Streep always ends up saying the exact same thing: Can that woman act and what's up with all the Hitler memorabilia?"

"You know Gabourey and I have something in common, in our first movies we were both born a poor black child."

Then the rest of the show is awards presentations and other things. For the awards, they did some clever things to make the more minor categories more interesting. Morgan Freeman narrated a film clip explaining the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing (which no one knows). The first is the recording the sound effects and the second is editing (or mixing) them together (the big board with all the knobs and levers). For the screenplay awards they showed clips of the films with the script overlaid on the screen and a presenter narrating the stage directions. I thought this did a good job of showing things that people often don't realize is part of the script. For the three short film categories they started with a short film that interviewed filmmakers who got their start in short films and then went on to features, all saying it was a great learning experience and encouraging aspiring filmmakers to do the same. As in the previous few years there was a cute animated clip with the characters from best animated film.

For the two leading acting awards they brought out a co-worker of each nominee to say a few words about them. It's probably quite meaningful to the nominees to have a peer say something about their craft though it does take a lot of time at the end of the show when people would like it to finish already. Some worked better than others. Tim Robbins just make jokes about Morgan Freeman though it was funny. I thought Oprah did a great job for Gabourey Sidibe, both in making her cry for pointing out that in her first role she's nominated with Meryl Streep and for mentioning that her real personality is so different than the role she played. I was much more impressed with her performance once I saw her interviewed. Never having seen her before, it was just too easy to assume she was like the character, but she seems so completely opposite that.

With 10 best picture nominees they introduced clips for each throughout the night. Each was a little more than a minute so that was 12 minutes of the whole broadcast. It worked pretty well, though the clips did seem a little long (they seemed long in a lot of the categories). They also removed the singing of the nominated songs and I'm fine with that. They got through all 3 short film awards in just 9 minutes which seems pretty zippy. The best way to make that more interesting would be to get more people see the nominated films in the first place.. I still think they should go back to showing short films before features in the theater. Aren't the theaters looking for ways to lure an audience from their home theaters?

The best presenters by far were Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. describing what actors look for in screenplays and what writers look for in actors. It was a very funny caricature of the industry, delivered perfectly. None of the others were particularly memorable except for Ben Stiller. I found his dialog pretty lame but he was blue (dressed in Na'vi makeup from Avatar) so that stuck out. And they're back to saying "and the winner is..." instead of "the Oscar goes to..."


The heavy favorites won the big six awards, so it was predictable. Both screenwriting awards were a little bit of a surprise. Most winners got just 45 seconds though the leading actors got 3 minutes. The better ones were the acting ones, maybe they should let everyone speak for for a minute or a minute and half. If they had a little more time they could thank people and say something interesting?

Sandra Bullock gave the best speech. It was funny, thankful, touching, and genuine. She was the only one to praise her fellow nominees and did it in a funny way (though everyone seemed to make jokes about Meryl Streep). Jeff Bridges just listed a number of names and rambled through some thank yous and sounded a bit too much like The Dude to me. Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique both gave good speeches.

Geoffrey Fletcher won for Precious' screenplay and seemed a bit lost for words but quietly thanked his family and others in a very heart felt way. Steve Martin had one of his best ad-libs saying afterwards, "I wrote that speech for him".

I thought the worst speech was Sandy Powell who won for costumes. Oddly, I thought her dress was pretty bad and could hear Michael and Nina saying too costumy. But her speech was worse. She said: "Wow, well, I already have two of these, um, so I'm feeling greedy. I'd like to dedicate this one to the costume designers that don't do movies about dead monarchs or glittery musicals. The designers that do the contemporary films and the low budget ones actually don't get as recognized and they should too and they work as hard. So this is for you...but I'm gonna take it home tonight. Thank you." There are some nice sentiments in there, but they are awkwardly expressed.

The strangest thing was a Kanye West moment when some woman in a purple dress took over a speech by the best documentary short winner. Here's the background story on that.

And then there was the other stuff in the broadcast. The yearly In Memoriam tribute seemed long but it was only 3 minutes. And still they managed to leave out some people like Farrah Fawcett and Bea Arthur, though apparently it was deliberate. They did have time to mention some PR guy.

John Hughes got a tribute all to himself and it was twice as long, though very good. During the (long) clips I was thinking they should have all of these actors come out on stage and then they brought out seven of them. But why only have 4 of the 5 breakfast club? Where was Emilio Estevez?

I could have done without the 5 minute horror film tribute. It just seemed like an excuse to bring some Twilight stars out on stage.

They removed the performances for nominated songs, but somehow felt the need to spend almost 6 minutes on interpretive dance for each of the nominated scores?!?! Robot mime for Up? Breakdancing Na'vi? Is that what you think of when you think of natives? This was the most egregiously bad part of the night. Apparently one of the Oscar producers also produces So You Think You Can Dance and I'm guessing wanted some of his dancers on the show. I would have thought someone would have reminded him of the last time they did something like this, which I think was the debacle of Debbie Allen choreographing interpretive dance for Schindler's List.

If you move the lifetime achievement awards to a different ceremony, why spend 3 minutes to show clips from that night? And then if you have them in the audience and stand up, put them someplace so people giving a standing ovation know where to face. Maybe on stage would work. And if they're there, let them speak.

The sets were really strange. What was with the lamp shades?

At 3 hours and 37 minutes, that makes it just about average over the last 10 years. The three before that were considerably longer. I don't know why they don't just schedule it to be 3.5 instead of 3 hours. And yeah, I did count, there were 38 minutes of commercials. Though they were oddly structured, with 10 minutes in the first hour, just 8.5 in the second and 17 minutes of commercials in the third hour and just 2.5 in the fourth. I suspect they don't want to loose people early on with too many commercials, but having so many in the third hour does make that drag on very long. And there was a break in the first hour that was almost 5 full minutes and a couple in the third hour that were almost 4.

So next year:
Schedule it to be 3.5 hours, it's going to be anyway
Have just one host, someone who can ad-lib
Cut out the interpretive dance
Give the saved time to the speeches and ask them to not be a list of names or to be short
Instead of a tribute to horror films, how about show clips of other movies of the year. There were a lot of good films that I would have like to have seen at least mentioned. Cut out the extra five best pic nominees and do a clip show of lots of films from the year that didn't get nominated.
To cut down walking time, move all the nominees of the current category down to the front row so the winner has a short walk and the losers can still hide in the audience.
Don't leave out famous people from the memorial.