This year’s Oscars were as bad as this year’s Super Bowl.
Lots of excitement leading up to the big show, but almost immediate and total
crushing disappointment once it got started. I’m talking about Ellen.
Look, she seems like a lovely woman. Obviously, with a talk
show that survives on celebrity guests, she wasn’t going to make fun of them on
a Sunday and then try to book them on a Monday. I get it. However, she was so
far from biting wit that she was nothing more than a toothless mutt gorming
wetly onto a blanket. Give me a song and dance number, or some mean-spirited
jokes, or anything that shows the host prepared, even a tiny bit, for the evening.
Instead, we got selfies and pizza. That is comedy?
Other lowlights included the gallery of dead people montage.
I believe this section is officially called In Memoriam and while those in
attendance have finally figured out that they should not clap when their
favorite person is shown on the screen – as this is essentially a wake, not a
popularity contest – it still leaves the audience at home scratching their
heads trying to remember if they knew such and such was dead. It is the perfect
time for a potty break, refills, etc. This year, they did the entire bloody
thing and THEN had Bette Midler stride out in all her glory and belt out Wind
Beneath My Wings. Um. What? Couldn’t she have sung during the montage and
killed two birds with one warbling stone? Did the slowest, most boring part of
the evening have to be TWICE as long?
This was an especially bizarre choice because they also let
Pink sing the entirely of Over the Rainbow in appreciation of Judy Garland. Let’s
parse this problem out slowly. Judy Garland’s own children were in the audience.
One of those children is Liza Freaking Minnelli. This is a woman who already
owns an Oscar for singing in a musical. She has pipes (and an EGOT, but I’ll
get back to that.) So why, exactly was she sitting in the audience watching
someone else salute her own mother? It’s a mystery.
There were just so many strange choices. They brought out big
name celebrities to rush through three best picture choices at a time, barely
showing scenes or moments or even title cards. The best song choices got to
sing at best, half of their songs. That left plenty of time for a montage of
heroes (conspicuously free of any heroines) another one of animated characters,
and the aforementioned shout out to the very dead Judy Garland. This type of
producing drives me crazy. Focus on the essentials – the actual shit actually
nominated. Then, if you have time, throw in some bonus stuff, but make it
relevant and make it entertaining.
The presenters were also problematic. It felt as if someone wanted
old Hollywood represented so they raided the closest old folk’s home to see who
they could dig up and throw onstage. I am not disparaging the acting ability of
Kim Novak or Sidney Poitier. However, she was an advertisement for The Joker’s
makeup line and he was the textbook definition of doddering. While it was nice
to see how gently Matthew McConaughey and Angelina Jolie dealt with these poor
souls, I honestly felt they both should have been left wrapped in blankets,
with a nice cup of tea back in their own homes.
And then there was John
Travolta. Jesus Mary and the oft-forgotten Joseph. I don’t know if he was
channeling the Crypt Keeper, dead Elvis, or Castor Troy, but dear God, whatever
they stuck on top of his head was terrifying. He had one job to do – introduce Idina
Menzel. Now I realize that is an unusual name. However, I know they ask the
actors to show up the day before to practice. For those who announce nominees,
they actually pre-tape the names so that they don’t mess them up (which is why
they always cut away from the actors on stage to show clips.) What John Travolta
did to her name was a travesty. He got up on stage, seconds before she had to
belt out the frontrunner for best song, a song beloved by millions of children,
a song many people had spent the entire show waiting for – and he called her
Adele Dazeem.
Uh-deen-a does
not equal Adele.
Men-zell does
not equal Dazeem.
Asshole.
There is also such an obvious cool kids vs non-cool kids
vibe during the telecast that I thought things got weird. The first three rows
are the cool kids. They get the pizzas. They get to dance with Pharrell. They
are the ones who get to walk onstage. The rest of the audience, even those up
for awards? Relegated to the cheap seats. A man won an EGOT last night. I
yelled so loud in triumph that my husband, sound asleep on a nearby chair,
almost fell off it in shock. An EGOT! Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony! One guy,
all those awards! That is something worth shouting about. But did it get any
more than a passing mention on the telecast? Nope. Because he is a songwriter,
so no one gives a shit. There are only 12 EGOT winners in existence. If Bette
Midler had won an Oscar and earned her EGOT, balloons would have poured down
from the ceiling and a marching band would have come out. But it was just a
song writer (even if he is the youngest person in history, at 38 years of age,
to have accomplished this) so the show just went on.
I am not going to discuss the awards. I haven’t seen most of
the movies, so my opinion is invalid at best. I did like the general bitchy
vibe of Cate Blanchett’s speech and the goofy earnestness presented in Matthew
McConaughey’s. He managed to throw out both a “Just Keep Livin’” and an “alright,
alright, alright” so he’s still aces in my book. I still wish Channing Tatum
didn’t insist on wearing clothes and wish some of the actresses wore more of
them (bras, for starters), but overall, they were all no doubt deserving and
hopefully were gracious in defeat.
One day, I am going to throw my own Oscar party. But until I
have some skin in the game and it is a race for Matt vs. Ben, or a project I
loved, or actors I can actively root against, I’ll just have to keep bitching
on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
