I'm glad that Billy Crystal was back as the host - although he's not spectacular, I don't think anybody could have done a better job. Why can't there be any younger, classier actors or comedians who can succeed Crystal? Last year's James Franco and Anne Hathaway were disastrous, but the Academy should keep looking and not simply give up on the young, promising talents. There are a lot of gifted and funny comedians in Hollywood, but none of them is as classy as Crystal. David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock have all tried and failed. I'm not sure if Eddie Murphy hadn't backed out, he could have done a better job. Ricky Gervais is funny, but his jokes would have been too irreverent for a formal and traditional ceremony like The Oscars. Why don't they try Jerry Seinfeld next year? Here's a comedian who's classy and quick on his feet, and if I may add, a celebrity whom everybody loves.
I was thrilled that The Artist won three awards - Best Director, Best Picture and Best Actor. If Jean Dujardin lost to George Clooney, that would have been the biggest insult in his entire career! So I was in a great mood until we came to The Best Actress Award being handed to Meryl Streep. But I guess I can live with this one 'loss' for me so long as The Artist swept the rest. I was, of course, delighted that Woody Allen won the Best Original Screenplay even though I think Michel Hazanavicius of The Artist should have won that as well. And typical Woody - he just chose to snub The Oscars again by not showing up.
A couple of likes and dislikes: a lot of impressive gowns on the red carpet - Natalie Portman, Cameron Diaz, Gweneth Paltrow, Rooney Mara, Angelina Jolie and even J.Lo looked stunning. I don't know why Tom Cruise deserved to give out the Best Picture Award at the grand finale, but even he looked amazing at 50! Esperanza Spalding looked and sounded amazing when she took us through who passed away during the last year.
The sharing of experiences with short anecdotes from stars didn't quite work for me. They were neither charming nor funny. But one of the worst moments for me last night had to be Angelina Jolie shamelessly strutting her stuff on stage - one hand on her waist and one leg out of her gown's slit - what's that all about? Her bad taste was shared by Will Ferrell and his sidekick Zach Galifianakis who behaved like bozos and totally out of place on that stage.
Even though Billy Crystal did an okay job as host, The Oscars remains one of the longest and most boring events that we have to sit through once a year. It's definitely high time for the Academy to come up with innovative ideas to jazz this up next year in order to do justice to all the award recipients!
Regarding the show host - my thoughts exactly. Crystal was so much better than last year's disaster with Hathaway and Franco. Jerry Seinfeld would be like a breath of fresh air that's badly needed. Very happy that Christopher Plummer won!
ReplyDeleteI agree--its such a pathetic display of Hollywood self indulgence I can barely stand watching it--I was flicking between that and HGTV shows!!! Cmon Hollywood--can't you do any better than this?? Good Grief!!
ReplyDeleteHear, hear! Totally agree. The viewing public deserves more. Well done, Lina. Maybe they should hire YOU to refresh the Oscars!!
DeleteA Millennial here:
ReplyDeleteI felt the new producer, Brian Grazer, did his job well as directed by the Academy - keep the event PG-13 and return to Oscar tradition. Crystal is always the safe consistent host as of late - especially when you compare him to Gervais as host of the Golden Globes, or Hugh Jackman as the great show started and then have nothing left for later.
Grazer covered all the demographic bases at some point. You can probably separate each category winner and host into a demographic. I also felt he had more control over the event than previous years to account for speech length, the expected politically incorrect jokes and political speeches on this internationally televised stage ("the Pakistani on stage," speech from the Iranian producer, Sascha Baron Cohen on the red carpet). Industry inside jokes were toned down, and jokes the public could appreciate were probably encouraged.
A new touch was the announcements of geographical locations various actors and international films were from, perhaps addressing past criticism of being too American-centric - the effort seems to be there. As well, the video comments from fellow cast and crew attached to nominations was a very nice touch, I thought. The event itself felt more "safe" and "plain" than in recent years, and seemed to allow the focus to be on the films and the artists, which seemed like a breath of fresh air to me compared to recent Oscars.
I agree with the prospect of Jerry Seinfeld as host. I wonder if his body of work being mostly Emmy material would prevent the Academy from considering him at all.
As for which won and which didn't, I'll leave that to speculation on the preferences and voting habits of the 6000 Academy members and the lobbying budgets of the various distribution companies.
And did anyone else notice how Martin Scorsese seemed like the Technical Godfather in the industry? Any technical teams working with him always seem to get the Oscars.
And Cirque du Solei was a nice change from the usual. And the music was great.
All in all, I think with this new producer, we cannot continue to expect next year's event to outdo this year's - it is not his style it seems. And in the bigger picture, I think Billy Crystal was right in that it seems out of place "to have millionaires give each other golden statues."