The Oscars were handed out last night in Hollywood and while there were a few surprises here and there, the vast majority of winners were predicted.
The King’s Speech didn’t pull off a major sweep but managed to take home four of the top Oscars, including Picture, Director (one of the night’s surprises, as David Fincher seemed to have been the favorite), Lead Actor, and Original Screenplay. All were deserved, even though I would have preferred to see either Black Swan or The Social Network snag Best Picture (since The Kids Are All Right didn’t stand a chance).
The Social Network missed out on Director but still snagged Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Score. No complaints about the first two but Score should have gone to Inception. I’m listening to the score for The Social Network as I’m writing this and, apart from the main themes, it’s not memorable at all, while the score for Inception is still seared in my brain about eight months after watching the movie.
Inception, snubbed in the Best Director category and overlooked in many of the more prestigious ones, still took home four Oscars, including the all important Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, and Sound Effects. All well deserved and too few in my opinion.
Two Oscars each went to The Fighter (Supporting Actor and Actress), Alice in Wonderland (Costumes and Art Direction), and Toy Story 3 (Animated Feature and Song). Again, all prizes well deserved. The nominated songs all felt underwhelming, so I really had no preferences.
The last two Oscars went to Black Swan (Lead Actress) and The Wolfman (which I haven’t seen but my friend Vittorio says is terrible -– for Makeup) and they both were well earned. Portman was phenomenal in Black Swan and from the clip of The Wolfman the makeup looked AMAZING!
Overall, the prizes got spread out nicely among a field of very deserving motion pictures, satisfying most appetites, even though some deserving movies (case in point the virtually perfect The Kids Are All Right) went home empty handed, as is often the case.
What turned out to be very disappointing was the ceremony itself. Scared by its plummeting ratings, both ABC and the Academy decided to streamline the show as much as possible and make it more appealing to younger people. I think both decisions were wrong and here’s why.
I started watching the Oscar ceremony because I’m in love with movies. I love watching them, analyzing them, remembering them, so it was only natural that I’d be inclined to watch a ceremony that recognizes their excellency. I can’t imagine anyone deciding to watch the Oscar ceremony only because there are going to be fewer montages or dance or song numbers and younger presenters. People who never cared never will, but by choosing to cater to them the Academy risks alienating the loyal viewers that always follow the ceremony.
I’m not saying I won’t watch next year, because I know that no matter what I’ll always watch the Oscars, but I will say this: This year’s ceremony was by far the worst I ever watched. The magic was gone. There was no fun, no charms, no exploits. What we were given was a bare bone stream of presenters (or presenters of presenters – more on that later) and recipients giving largely boring and predictable acceptance speeches.
The hosts, two young actors that I both like very much, didn’t come out of the whole affair as winners either. Franco, always charming and unassuming started out fairly well but then, almost realizing that the whole thing was just a bore, seemed to lose steam and interest and started acting forced, tired, and unwelcoming. He was also very stiff the whole time, something I wouldn’t have expected of him, but that perhaps was dictated by the show’s producers, who might have nixed more gags out of fear of alienating someone in the audience. Problem is, Franco is great at gags and poking fun and here he looked positively harnessed.
Hathaway, always charming, was at times overly bubbly and her comedic timing and abilities (so greatly displayed in The Devil Wears Prada) were, as in Franco’s case, overlooked or underutilized at best. She’s also a great singer apparently, and the producers obviously decided to showcase that by giving her a solo act, but what was the purpose of it? She virtually just sang about the handsome Hugh Jackman deciding not to join her for a duet (and why would he?). Again, to what purpose did she sing that song? It had absolutely nothing to do with the ceremony or the movies, which were what we were all there for after all. A waste of time if you ask me. Oh, how I wished they had used that time to showcase a couple minutes from each of the nominated Scores instead...
There were plenty of other oddities. How about the introduction of Hilary Swank to introduce Kathryn Bigelow to introduce the Best Director winner? Why not introduce Ms. Bigelow directly? Did the producers think that she’s so poorly known to the general public that it would be best to introduce her first by someone more... appealing? Or what about those three recipients of special technical awards from the night before, three out of many, who were welcomed onstage for an extra applause only to be quickly whisked away??
No wait, there’s more!! How about the appearance by Billy Crystal to pay homage to arguably the greatest Oscar host ever, Bob Hope. Halfway through this boring mess, his half-a-century-old jokes felt positively exhilarating and seeing Crystal only reminded us of his brilliant opening numbers, poking fun and showcasing the most varied nominees. By the time Hope’s digital rendition faded to black all I could think of was how lame Franco and Hathaway’s opening mash up had been and how boilerplate their exchanges were. Alas, they weren’t bound to get any better.
Was there anything I liked about the ceremony? Sure. The stage was great, absolutely fabulous. The references to the glorious years of Oscar’s past were very nice, although they once again made us pine for those ceremonies instead of the current one... The handing out of the awards moved very swiftly, which isn’t a bad development. What didn’t work was that in between awards there was nothing left!
I did like the warm introductions given to the ten Lead Acting nominees, even though they unwittingly minimized the Supporting Acting ones and also caused such a trimmed down ceremony to go overtime anyway. And the In Memoriam segment was paired with a song that wasn’t too mournful, which felt good.
The best thing was the return of the presenters announcing the winners by saying, And the Oscar goes to, which is great, ‘cause I hated, And the winner is...
I also didn’t mind the kids chorus at the end, singing one of my favorite songs ever, and the grouping of all the winners on stage for a final bow. It felt good and original. Better than the hosts saying a quick Goodnight and see you in a bit at one of the parties...
The last bitter pill for me though, was the only real montage of the night, which came at the end to introduce the ten Best Picture nominees. Superimposing The King’s Speech’s final speech over images from all the nominated movies showed little respect (other than spoiling the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet). It’s as if the other nine deserved only to be seen but not heard. Given that The King’s Speech was already the favorite to win, that thought was hard to keep at bay. Furthermore, the mash-up felt confusing and bewildering, throwing in scenes from ten movies that were as disparate as night an day with only the voice of the likely winner to tie them together. A dreadful decision.
Overall, while I can say that I was fairly pleased with the winners, I was totally disappointed by the ceremony itself. A long and boring affair that hopefully will get a total make-over next year.
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