Oscar Highlights

This year’s Oscar ceremony was a mix of excellent and horrible.  In an attempt to draw in more viewers (as their ratings dropped heavily last year) they changed up a lot of the formulas for the show.  The first major obvious change was the host.  Usually they choose someone funny who makes a lot of jokes about the films and the celebrities in attendance.  This year Hugh Jackman stepped in as a singing/dancing/trying-to-be-funny-and-not-succeeding host.  He couldn’t deliver comedic lines at all and got a lot of courtesy laughs.  I guess that’s the bonus to performing in front of an audience of actors: they can all act like you’re a great host.

Then there were the musical numbers…I really don’t even need to say anything about these because if you saw them you will know that it was worse than watching a grade school production.  Nothing was even cohesive; it was just a big mash up of badly performed song and dance routines with a few celebrities thrown in to try to hold your attention.  The Hugh Jackman/Beyonce/Disney mix of songs made me feel that they must have interrupted the Oscars with an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”  But nothing could be worse than the opening performance: it took 20 minutes to get to the first award, Anne Hathaway did a horrible acting job for being nominated for Best Actress, Hugh Jackman made a total fool of himself, and they made The Reader seem insignificant.  Here’s the clip if you want to torture yourself or someone else today:

Another change this year: they had 5 former award winners present the awards to the Best Actor/Actress/Supporting instead of just last year’s winner which has been the tradition.  At first I was upset because I liked the tradition of handing over the Oscar to a new winner, but this turned out to be pretty great.  Each of the 5 former winners gave a little speech to the nominees and then they announced the winner.  It gave it a little bit of a personal touch and seemed to mean a lot to the nominees.  It also successfully got them all crying before they got on stage, so more added drama.

The clip compilations they put together for each category were worse than usual this year.  They had horrible music with pictures flashing by so fast you couldn’t figure out what they were even supposed to be presenting half the time.  Apparently the theme this year was “How to Induce a Seizure.”  During the tribute segment where they remember those who have died this past year, Queen Latifah performed a cliche song (“I’ll Be Seeing You”) and they didn’t make the names full screen so I had a hard time even seeing who was being remembered.  The worst compilation was the one before Best Picture.  They showed the current Best Picture clips mixed in with old winners so unless you knew what to look for, you had no idea which were the actual nominated clips.  They always try to bring back the old Oscar memories, but sometimes you just need to focus on the new ones.

Some of my favorite moments of the night:

When Kunio Kato accepted his award for Best Animated Short (“La Maison en Petits Cubes”), he thanked his pencil and also thanked Mr. Roboto.  This has to be one of the best acceptance speeches I’ve ever seen:

“So heavy. Thank you very much. Thank you, my supporters. Thank you, all my staff. Thank you, my pencil. Thank you, Academy. Thank you, animation. Thank you my company, Robot. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto. Thank you very much.”

Then we have Kate Winslet’s acceptance speech for Best Actress.  I thought I might make it through this year’s awards without crying for once, but then she got up there and I lost it.  Some people thought it was cheesy that she talked about performing this speech in front of the mirror with a shampoo bottle as a kid, but if you’re an aspiring actress, that means so much to hear that someone like you made it.  I also loved how she called out for her parents.  You could tell it meant so much to her that they were there.  She’s such a sincere person, and I admire her so much.  Here’s the speech:

Dustin Lance Black’s acceptance speech for Best Screenplay for Milk was also amazing.  He managed to be inspiring without being over the top politically:

I loved the Slumdog Millionaire song performance of O Saya and Jai Ho by A.R. Rahman, but I didn’t like how they mixed together the Slumdog songs with the Wall-E song.  That’s why Peter Gabriel refused to perform his own song (John Legend performed for him), because he said a short mix of it didn’t do it justice.  However, I still think that’s pretty snobby if you’re offered to perform at the Oscars for an award you may win.  So I’m glad that Jai Ho took the award instead, plus it’s an amazing song.  Gotta love a little Bollywood.  (The clip below also has A.R. Rahman’s acceptance speeches, so skip to 2:44 if you just want to see the performance.)

As far as funny moments, I really liked Ben Stiller’s mockery of Joaquin Phoenix.  He deserves it for how he’s been acting lately and I think it’s great that Ben Stiller isn’t afraid to make fun of a big actor in front of all his peers. I thought it was the funniest moment of the show.

Sean Penn won for Best Actor and gave a speech that was good, but a little too political.  He can’t go more than about 30 seconds without getting his politics going, so it was expected.  He also forgot to thank his wife, even though he’s been quite a horrible husband lately.  I was also bitter that Mickey Rourke didn’t win, because his performance blew Sean Penn’s away.  But I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  I think Hollywood wanted to prove something after the Proposition 8 drama this year.  Which is fine, but let’s recognize the best actor and not the one who made the biggest statement.

Of course Slumdog Millionaire won almost everything, including Best Picture, which was totally expected.  I wasn’t happy about it at first, but it was nice to see how much all the people involved appreciated it.  I like how so many unknown people and real kids from the slums were involved with the film, and it’s nice when that gets recognized.

The biggest question of the night: Where was Jack Nicholson?  He’s always sitting right up front with his sunglasses on, bantering with the host.  I wonder what happened this year?

And, finally, I’ll leave you with a scary image from last night’s ceremony.  Sophia Loren was there to help present the Best Actress category.  I’m still not sure if it was really her or if they just borrowed a wax figurine from Madame Tussad’s museum, so I’ll let you be the judge…