The Oscars

Well, what a night. My official score is 6 for 8, not as good as last year (when I successfully predicted all 8 major categories and really would have liked to have been wrong on several of them), but much better than 1997, or really most of the last few years, in which I've gotten 4, maybe 5, correct. It was great to see Scorsese finally win, but I really thought the academy would take the chance to right two wrongs. Instead, they opted to fix one, and just up the IOU they handed O'Toole 40 years ago. I'm also, even though I loved Little Miss Sunshine, very pleased with the Best Picture pick. There was a lot of nay-saying going around that the Academy would be turned off by the gratuitous blood, gore, and profanity in the The Departed to give it the top prize. True, there is a lot of blood, gore, and profanity, but it is not gratuitous. It was integral to the story and played an important part, and I'm glad the academy was willing to look past the hype and see the movie for what it was (although an argument could be made that the academy loves seeing people killed in grusome ways but still can't stomach a love story between two cowboys). Plus, by giving Best Picture to The Departed, the academy put to rest any speculation that they really gave Scorcese the award as recognition for his body of work instead of for the movie he was nominated for. There were also naysayers proclaiming that The Departed really isn't his best movie and not even the best of the nominees, and that if Scorsese won, it would indeed be for his body of work, and that Best Picture would go to another movie. The academy decided to really make things up to Scorsese and knock that rumor down before it could really get started. It was a great cap to a mostly decent evening.

Ellen was a great host, but the show overall dragged, partly because they frontloaded it with all the technical awards. While it seemed like a good idea to let the suspense build, I think it works better to give a couple of the big ones up front (traditionally the supporting performance Oscars) and then go to the technical awards. Imagine this year, if they had opened the show with Alan Arkin's win, it really would have pumped some life into the proceedings. Instead, the show had to fight an uphill battle all night. I enjoyed the contortionist's representations of the major movies of the year, but once the show ran long, they should have just axed the remaining ones, they took up time without really adding anything substantive. Also, they knew Morricone was going to get an honorary Oscar. Could they not have arranged to have running subtitles for his acceptance speech instead of having Clint interrupt every few seconds to poorly translate what was said. It doubled the time needed for the segment and was painful to watch. Really, the people involved are responsible for the greatest on-screen magic and technical wonders, were subtitles really beyond their abilities? On a related note, in the future, any presenter who does not fully rehearse their lines should be axed from the show and replaced with a well-rehearsed understudy (and I'm talking about Eastwood, Ken Watanabe, and Kathryn Denueve). If Abigail Breslin and Will Smith's son can flawlessly pronounce the names of all the foreign short nominees, there's no excuse for the adults to hem and haw online while trying to spit out a half-baked joke or stumble over the names of the nominees. Then, nominees, no matter how much of a long shot you may be considered, please rehearse your speeches in advance, especially if English is your second language and you plan on giving your acceptance speech in English (and I'm talking to you, Miss Best Costume winner). Either rehearse it until you can give it in the shortest amount of time possible, or just give it in your native language, as a few of the winners very classily decided to do. Lastly, as awful as the Dreamgirls were (and kudos to the academy for giving Melissa Etheridge the Best Song Oscar), who the fuck invited Celine Dion??? I'm sure she needs to develop new revenue streams now that her Vegas show has less than a year to go, but this was not the place for her. And what was up with that face she made at the end of the song? It looked like she was getting collagen injected into her lips. It was by far the low point of the night. Next year, let's bring Ellen back, ax anything done by Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, or any of their ilk, cut the video montages in half, and keep giving out awards to deserving winners, and we'll have a show.