82nd Oscars - Telecast

HarryGoldfarb
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Post by HarryGoldfarb »

COMMENTS ON A NIGHT THAT HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO...
A night of ups and downs...

First of all... Hi Guys... been away for a long time! Some troubles, some of them quite serious; but guess I'm on my way now again. One of the things that made me realize I was extremely busy or stressed out was that I began missing this site...

For the firts time in three years in a row I catched the ceremony in an almost peaceful night. Zero working and with nothing important pending to do. My brothers via Twitter and BB Messenger were my companions.

As I've said during the last years I kinda have lost any hope or expectation with the Academy itself. It begun on 2005, maybe the year before... The ten-nominees thing in the Best Picture category only made me to have more serious doubts about the eventual ceremony. After seeing Avatar a few days aerlier I couldn't believe it was one of the front-runners! So I crossed my fingers expecting the eventual win by The Hurt Locker. As it is easy to figure out, I was very happy in the end.

So... the show begun... with extremely corny close-ups at the acting nominees, but N. Patrick Harris did a nice job inmediately afterwards. The segment was kind of out of place, out of touch with the rest of the evening. A misguided attempt to make a throw-back to days of greater glory. Uneventful, but in a childish way enjoyable. The man was great with his ¨Tonight¨ version at the end of the Tony's. This wasn't even close in quality but I enjoyed it.

The first jokes by Martin and Baldwin reminded me that by that time I was already too tired of the Streep-Bullock race and I started to pray for a Sidibe surprise win! Then Penelope came out with Nine´s score playing aloud and it felt classic. The extended versions of the clips showing the nominated performances was a well received come-back just like the use of the scores from the winning films when the winner was announced (instead of the generic fanfarre used last year). I got scared again when Walts won: I breathed deeply expecting the most boring and predictable night of all time.

Not knowing it was a deliberated thing, when I heard "The winner is" I was quite shocked: Penelope´s honest mistake? whent the night moved on I was wondering what was up with this specific change...? It took me three days to find out... and that was a lame reason to do it.

The description of The Blind Side when it was being presented as a Best Picture nominee made me think that it was a film to avoid, specially outside the US. Still on my list of films-to-see so I'm not judging it but man, that sounded atrocious. Then Up won to confirm my suspicion (as far as that point) but reminded me how beautiful its score is! It sounded great at that moment!

The win for Star Treck placed a smile on my face considering it is (with all its ¨mistakes¨) my guilty-pleasure of the year. Hey! I would have endorsed a BP nod for it! :laugh:

When Precious got the BAS award I got excited with the possibility of a Sidibe win! Can't believe I even pray for that! But then again I got mad when I saw Bacall just sitted there! Just a mention and that was all... that was wrong on so many levels!

Monique speech was one of the best of the night...

I hated Avatar´s people attitude: ¨Jim Cameron, this award sees you...¨ WTF!!! These guys actually believed they changed the world with that film? The BVE award was worthy, true, but they need some humility! They were acting as if they had made a favor to humanity!

As for the Horror montage... I liked it. If I have to see some random clips placed together... this was at least fun. And afterwards, I was jumping in awe when The Hurt Locker won the two sound awards! But then again, I watched the worst presentation ever of the Technical and Scientifical Awards... Just a minor mention and a simple "congrats".

And then... it couldn't get any worst (and eventually it didn't), not even with a win by Avatar as Best Picture (a thing at least I could have understood): One of the things that I would remember my whole life with bad mood, the worst award of the night: Avatar got the Cinematography award. I'm still asking why... how could this happened??? I just couldn't believe it... And I'm still mad about it.

(by this time I was fearing I was developing a rare case of acute bipolar disorder... happy and laughing a minute and then mad the next one!)

They corrected last year's shaky camera on the singer during the In Memoriam segment that made impossible to watch the remebered ones... an improvement. And James Taylor is such a wonderful artist. Felt way better than any diva...

Then there was the over-commented dance routine with the scores. The dancing was terrible, awful at times and as a whole it felt like a mess. But I catched my first Oscar telecast back in 1991 and that year the used dancing to introduce the nominated scores. So, somewhere in my mind this is like the way to do it! I can enjoy/hate it in a weird way that I can not defend! I still believe that 1997´s way (just the orchestra in the scenario with clips from the films, like DWS1982 pointed out) is the best way to do it. Some other good examples were 2000 and 2005. In the end I was happy Up won but right now, the score that I hear the most is Desplat's.

After that, some pleasent moments: THL winning editing was a relief and the win by El Secreto de sus Ojos made me jump!! Just to make way for another downer...

The friends saluting was just bad! Couldn´t stand it... Once again, the performances were put aside and the people just talked about ¨how wonderful¨the nominee is! So absurd!

When Barbra came out I was almost sure of the Bigelow win... but Crash always comes to mind... In the end I was happy.

It was a nice night... it was an Oscar telecast that had some effects on me I wasn't expecting. I started to watch it with some distance and in the end it gave me these kind of unexpected things... boring some times, great surprises and very bad mood... all in one night. My final thought was that the Academy needed THL to win and not the opposite (THL didn't need to win to be a great film). The Academy needed this to keep themselves a a serious organization. Too many changes to seem in touch with general audiences (the ¨nice mood¨ feeling of the night, the Bullock affair, the new faces presenting, etc... were just harmy... Had Avatar won, I guess I wouldn't have been the only one to loose all hope with these people.

Sorry for the lenght... I guess I missed this...
"If you place an object in a museum, does that make this object a piece of art?" - The Square (2017)
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Post by OscarGuy »

I'm also reticent to join onto a fan page where spelling and grammatical errors are so abundant. It looks non-professional and if you want a professional organization to take you seriously, regardless of the validity of your talking points, you need to be more clean and approachable.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Good points all, but one wonders how much "the Academy" will take them to heart.

I didn't catch the clip of Jennifer Jones in the Jean Simmons montage. Did it happen or was the guy mistaken?
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Post by Reza »

Damien wrote:Somebody has started a Facebook page "Shame On You, Academy," protesting a litany of offenses from the Oscar show, which eventually will be forwarded to the Academy.


http://www.facebook.com/#!....1507..1
Just joined that page............it is still in an infant stage.
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Post by Damien »

Somebody has started a Facebook page "Shame On You, Academy," protesting a litany of offenses from the Oscar show, which eventually will be forwarded to the Academy.


http://www.facebook.com/#!....1507..1
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Rewatching the Actor and Actress presentations, my wife noticed that four of the five presenters for Best Actress used the word "generosity" to describe each nominee. Bridges: "generosity". Clooney: "generosity". Firth: "generosity". Renner: "generosity"... on the set of "S.W.A.T.", no less. Morgan Freeman was the sole exception, the stingy bastard.

For Actress, there was a variation of the word "heart". "Heartbreak" (for Mulligan), "heartbreaking" (for Sidibe), and just plain "heart" (for Bullock and Mirren). Meryl Streep, that cold harridan, was bestowed nothing of the sort.

Okay, when I resort to this, it means the Oscar season is officially over. Next!




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Post by ITALIANO »

I liked it too. It had an old-times feeling about it; not many great jokes maybe, but a pleasant, warm general mood.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Damien wrote:I've loved Steve Martin as a host in the past, but this year it just seemed as if he was doing a tired old act. And Alec Baldwin only served as an enabler.
But wasn't that the point? Unless I'm totally wrong - and I'm 99.8% positive I'm not - they were satirizing an out-of-fashion style of comedy and hosting. I liked it a lot.
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Post by mlrg »

Hustler wrote:I´ve just seen Mickey Rooney on the red carpet
And Ryan Seacrest had no idea who he was
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Post by Damien »

I was disappointed in that it wasn't the deliciously awful mess we were anticipating. It was just dull. Gilbert Cates redux. In fact, if I hadn't known, I would have guessed that Cates was back.

I've loved Steve Martin as a host in the past, but this year it just seemed as if he was doing a tired old act. And Alec Baldwin only served as an enabler.

The introductions for the lead acting nominees were embarrassing because none of them felt heartfelt, that they actually came from the personal experiences from which they supposedly emanated. It came across as schtick.

My favorite moment, seeing my friend and early mentor Robert Anderson in the memorial section.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I usually write a huge summary of the show after it ends. Not this year. But I'll note a few things.

As expected, the show was at its best when it got down to business: presenting the clips, announcing the winners, and giving the acceptance speeches. And it was at its worst whenever it delayed the awards-giving. There were a few exceptions, of course. Tina Fey and Downey were terrific, and I actually felt I learned something from the Sound Editing instructional video (voice by Morgan Freeman - now THERE'S a beautiful sound). But history has taught us long ago that "the interpretive dance segment during the Academy Awards" is code for "oh no, not again". It hasn't worked in the past, it never works. Why continue to prove the naysayers right? And the John Hughes tribute was a disgrace. It was a bad idea anyway, but it would have been a tolerable sit if it were two minutes or so. But you'd have thought this was the death of a president or something. On and on and on and on.... Hughes never wanted to get old, they said, so why devise a tribute that got old by minute three?

But this is what DVRs and attention deficit disorder are for. If I ignored or blocked out of my mind the unnecessary segments, I found I enjoyed the necessary stuff well enough. Two hosts, it turns out, helps with the pacing considerably. None of this joke-pause-joke-make funny face when joke doesn't work-"I'm just enjoying myself here tonight, you know what I mean" (that's Whoopi)- rinse and repeat. Instead, it's BAM-BAM-BAM with the repartee, and if a joke doesn't work (and most did), we just move along to the next one. The presentation of the Supporting clips were the best I've ever seen. (Too bad they didn't replicate it with the lead categories). And you know something? I didn't miss the song performances one bit, even though leaving them off felt like all kinds of wrong. So yes, no song performances, no honorary presentations, etc. did help with the broadcast's pacing. But there's a downside to such streamlining. When you don't see the performers sing, when you don't celebrate a Hollywood veteran's career with a grateful 'thank you' speech, and instead replace them with a Workman montage of horror films, there's a vital human connection that's been lost. Before the heartfelt tributes to the Best Actors and Actresses, we had the coldest, most emotionally distant broadcast (outside of the awards) I've seen.

So, the drama came down to the awards themselves, and I was digging it this year. The screenplay award for "Precious" threw a spanner in the works, and that led me to thinking if maybe Gabourey Sidibe might benefit from an unexpected groundswell of "Precious" support. Never did the two sound categories feel so exciting before, since in a David-and-Goliath race like this one, every win counted. Then "Avatar" advanced a length with Cinematography, and... well, you know. It's the increments that matter.

Oh dear, this was long after all, wasn't it? Good night!
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Post by OscarGuy »

They won't expand those categories.

But, it was not a great show...and the set design was uglier than anything I've ever seen before...
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Post by Snick's Guy »

Not impressed at all with this show -- unfortuantely i think the slate of ten nominations for best picture stays put -- just pray they don't decide to extend the number of nominations to ten in the acting categories as well.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I want to change my prediction ballot to Sidibe!

(Something impulsive just came over me.)
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Post by OscarGuy »

There was also a clip from The Silence of the Lambs, which won 5 in 1991. And then there's Misery which won in 1990. And The Omen won Original Score in 1976...
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