Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Oscar Watch: Post-Show Blues


The sadness is starting to kick in. Another 365 days till we get to do it all over again. The Oscars have come and gone, and now I'm in the mourning period till about September and Oscar season starts to pick up steam once more. Regardless, it was a fun season, though towards the end there it became pretty predictable, even if you were one of those weirdos buying into the potential for surprise due to the preferential voting system (like me). The great thing is, I now know how this new method of Oscar voting works, so I can maybe repeat my record year I had with the 2009 Oscars, getting almost everything right save for Sound and Sean Penn (I went for Mickey Rourke). The 2010 Oscars, I went 14 for 21, which isn't bad, but is a big drop-off from the high I experienced last year (not to mention, Slumdog was my favorite film of '08, so I couldn't help but be ecstatic). Though looking back at this years Oscars, there were still, some definite surprises.

The biggest surprise of all was Geoffrey Fletcher upsetting the Up in the Air scribes in Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious. No one saw that coming, and if you say you did, you're lying through your teeth, cause Up in the Air was believed to be a lock. As a matter of fact, Up in the Air got zilch Sunday night, where as Precious walked away with that and Best Supporting Actress. The Hurt Locker was the definite dominant force, winning 6 out of 9 awards, but I am real surprised it beat out Avatar for the Sound categories, and it managed to pull out Original Screenplay, which it now looks as if Pixar will have to wait a little longer to finally get recognition for their screenwriting. Avatar only managed to secure three awards, and all three, aside from Cinematography, I agreed with.

Please, someone tell me how Avatar can win Cinematography? And don't tell me that the craft is still the same, having to add lighting and whatnot to the image inside the computer, cause if you're gonna use that lame excuse, then something like Up should have gotten nominated for cinematography. It's still an image. Okay, rant over, back to the post.

As for the actual show part last night, I thought it was a bit bland compared to year's past, but I found it to be an improvement over last year's show which seemed to have kind of lost the glitz and glamor that I love about the Oscars. This year, the glitz and glamor did return, and Neal Patrick Harris delivered a real showstopper to open the night, but after that, the cogs just kind of kept running their course. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin didn't do all that much, aside from a very funny opening speech. They mostly just introduced the presenters, and that's it; it really felt as if they had less to do than the Oscar host usually does. I will say, it made me miss Ellen Degeneres, the best Oscar host ever.

One reason I felt the show was a touch bland was that there was not any real interruption to break up the constant string of awards. Now you watch the Oscars for the awards, that's a given, but I always found it nice in years past when they had the nominees for Best Original Song perform in between awards to keep things from getting stale. I really missed that last night, I think it could have really livened up the evening. Though, they did finally do something special with the Best Original Score category, which is something I had been hoping they'd do for some time now. I loved the dance troupe dancing to the five nominees' themes. It was fascinating and the definite highlight of the night for me. I really hope this process is repeated every year from now on, or at least something similar.

Actually, the most grinding part of the ceremony for me was one of the better parts of last year's show, having five fellow actors come out and talk about the five actors nominated for Best Actor and Actress. In a way, the novelty kind of wore off this year I guess, cause it just kind of droned on, not to mention the slate of presenters was nowhere near as impressive as the slate they had for these awards last year. Though, I felt the presenters as a whole did a good job the entire night, in particular Ben Stiller dressed as a Nav'i, and I thought all of the acceptance speeches were very good, in particular Jeff Bridges (save for the awkward speech given for Documentary Short).

As a whole it was a night filled with laughs, a few surprises here and there, but it wasn't the best Oscar telecast I'd ever seen, but it's definitely not the worst. So now history has been made, a woman has finally won for Best Director, and it is time to start looking forward into a new decade of Oscar. That is what I'm going to be doing over the next two weeks. Two more weekly editions of Oscar Watch and then I'll take a break and check back in at the start of the Summer to see how next year's Oscars are shaping up.

Next week I'm going to do a special Oscar Watch talking about what I want out of Oscar in this coming decade, changes and whatnot, so stay tuned. Then the following week, I will assemble, the best I can, a Best Picture ballot for next years Oscars from films that are getting a ton of buzz in the industry and could be big contenders come next awards season. Till next week!

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