Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:35 pm
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...
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...