Writing for the Carpetbagger, Tony Scott:
A Small Oscars
By A.O. ScottIt looks like they might bring this one in at under three hours, so I’ll curb my complaining. And I’ll close by noting that this seemed not only like a relatively brief Oscar ceremony, but a small one. Maybe this is a harbinger of things to come. Like it or not, the movies have lost their pop-cultural supremacy, and the fate of the Oscars may either be to go after a vanished mass appeal or to scale down, acknowledge the shrinking of the audience and turn into something like the Tonys. More of a coterie affair, appealing to the aficionados and the curious. It would be an honorable outcome.
And the 3 hour, 20+ minute Oscars telecast ended, fittingly for tonight, with more Tony’s-style music. On a dark stage devoid of color or interest. Followed by a tacky montage of upcoming movies at the end of the show. And, once again, AMPAS committed public suicide.
I have a lot of thoughts right now. The amazing show that Bill Condon and Larry Mark should be so, so proud of, a glorious night for what I feel to be the year’s best film, pleasant surprises and strangely easy-to-handle disappointments…this is the best Oscar telecast I’ve ever seen. And it’s doubly sweet, since I don’t believe I’ve gone 21/24 on my predictions in a long, long time — if ever.
36 Responses for "More Reactions"
It’s all about that opening number for me. “I haven’t seen the reader.”:
http://gotchamedia.blogspot.com/2009/02/oscars-i-havent-seen-reader.html
Like anything they could have done would have pleased Nikki Finke and Matt Drudge.
I like the opinion of the New York Times’ A.O. Scott. The difference is, that the Tonys do recognize the best in its biz, while the Oscars don’t. Even if the Oscars ceremony becomes smaller and smaller each year, etc., as Tony Scott proposes, it will still fail to recognize the best in the film industry, which is all the more upsetting.
Yes, film attendance has been dwindling since the invention of television, but there are those select films that capture pop-culture, such as The Dark Knight. Is it too much to ask to recognize that?
Worst show of the last 15 years…at least.
Too bad…a poor show caps off a poor year for the AMPAS.
I wish we could climb in a time machine and do the following:
1 – Nominate TDK, Christopher Nolan and BRUCE.
2 – Allow Peter Gabriel & BRUCE to perform.
3 – ELIMINATE the horrific & pretentious event of former winners blabbing on with sweet nothings for the current nominees (Cotillard talking to Winslet…are you kidding me???)
4 – SHOW MORE FRIGGIN MOVIE CLIPS!!!!!!!!! Let’s celebrate the Art for God’s sake.
Someone save the OSCARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ms. Finke is so unpleasant, yikes.
I just think it was a great show, the Oscars are not a show everyone wants to see, it is a show people who really love movies watch. So this idea of turning into a intimate show is great, because people who love movies will feel included in this wonderful night. I think the show was amazing, perhaps the dancing moment with Beyonce was unnecesary but the rest of the show totally worked. Kudo to the Academy for finally bringing change to the show.
All in all, a pretty ho-hum show, no better and no worse than many previous Oscarcasts, IMO. Some of the aspects I liked — such as the new format for presenting acting winners, with 5 former winners onstage. It gave the award some in-the-moment significance. Besides, who wants to see a 30-second acting clip for the 8th time?
The Apatow film was good, too.
Finally, it’s not that Jackman was bad — he wasn’t — but the material wasn’t all that great, either.
Queen Latifah’s song was good, too.
At least Jerry Lewis was brief. I’m glad he was there and I’m glad he was brief.
That Oscar head up there under A.O. Scott’s name is creeping me out, dude. Reminds me of the gimp in Pulp Fiction.
By the way celebrating the arts doesn’t mean to show clips from movies, which by the way they actually did a lot. It means to celebrate artists and their work, that is why I think it was great to see past winners celebrating their peers. That was a great idea and should be installed as an always in the ceremonies.
I thought this was a fantastically brisk and interesting show. I’m surprised to see negative reviews. It was fresh and different, perhaps a bit to retro for some tastes. It felt more ‘insider’y than other telecasts in recent years, but that appeases film lovers like me.
Last year’s show was so much better in comparison. And I didn’t even particularly like the winners last year.
Nikki who?
Felt old Hollywood! Loved it!
The set was great but too close to those front rows. There was poor lighting, awkward, camera shots, sound problems and too many unessesary segments which made the showw long. Did Latifah have to sing the in Memorium? Too many musical numbers. But, when you read the words BILL CONDON as producer you better expect that. Great job by Hugh Jacksman who showed the world that he may be one of the best all around entertainers of this generation. He’s a true talent.
I also said it in previous thread and I’ll say it again. Can we please make Halle Berry stop talking about her Oscar win?
Every moment she gets, she plugs her own win. Pay Leo a sincere tribute. We already know why you are on stage.
Nikke Finke is pathetic. She should get over her love for Dark Knight and realize that everything that should have won did win!
It was one of the best telecasts I’ve seen in a long time.
I loved how they actually brought you into the process of putting a movie together, which gave context to the technical awards, which got you interested in them. Now, if that isn’t an achievement, I don’t know what is.
Oddly enough, the atrocious production numbers were just blips in the all-around fabulous that was the rest of the telecast.
PS. Anne Hathaway has stolen my heart. You were the best part of that opening number.
PPS. “Oh, Nixon…”
really liked the acting presentations.
the musical number wasn’t great, but wasn’t embarrassing either.
Jackman is charming.
yet, the surprises forecast by the new producers never happened.
nothing seemed particularly novel.
tho, it was odd to hear certain themes of great movies orchestrated in different ways by the band. the weirdest was BEN HUR’s Parade of the Charioteers done in a kind of jazz, be-bop rhythm.
they returned to a finale that echoed the past…much as i’d hoped they would: showing extended clips/montages of the nominated movies as a way of wrapping up the evening for the final award. it was a nice touch.
best part of the night….no Cameron Diaz.
“best part of the night….no Cameron Diaz.”
bahahaha good point. She always gets in on these things somehow. I did like Jennifer Aniston being there though…I can’t say I’m above thinking that was a bit exciting.
From the beginning through writing awards: Outstanding.
And whatever lens, camera, what have you, they used for the audience shots was the best ever. As well as the live editing. (Aniston–>Jolie, oh-no-they-didn’t).
The Oscars have lost their relevancy, or as Nikki puts it, “AMPAS has committed suicide”.
They really need to infuse new life and ideas into the Academy.
We had some suggestions in another thread. I would love to see some of them enacted.
How anyone disliked it is beyond me…oh wait…TDK fans. Oh well. They’ll get over themselves eventually. Seriously, the fact that Joe the Plumber liked the movie makes it better than Slumdog Millionaire? Please. Art and Popular Culture are very very very VERY different things. Very different.
TDK was fine art. It deserved a nomination. Don’t get me wrong. Please don’t get me wrong. Ben Awful should have gone straight to DVD. Hell I think Wall-E deserved best pic nod too instead of Frost/Nixon. I happened to like Rachel Getting Married and Frozen River more than any of the movies that got nominated (though I think Milk and Slumdog were objectively better movies).
Does the fact that most of America is too stupid to appreciate either of the movies I like make their lack of inclusion somehow easier to take than TDK’s inclusion? TDK got 8 nominations and 2 awards, including an acting award, FOR A SUPERHERO MOVIE! I think it should have gotten 10 noms and 3 awards (add Sound Mixing) but oh well.
Next year, Tina Fey and Steve Martin in the balcony with a running snarky commentary
Not bad, by the way. The show, I mean.
“best part of the night….no Cameron Diaz.”
bahahaha good point. She always gets in on these things somehow.
Hehe, so true.
Even though I am an admitted TDK fan and was pissed it wasn’t nominated, I actually thought the ceremony was fine – it moved fairly briskly and I liked many of the winners and speeches.
The show is getting absolutely savaged by many of the critics though and I fear the ratings will be awful, giving validation to the wingnuts who laugh every time Hollywood fails. It’s sad how some people want the Oscars to have poor ratings just to prove a point, whether it is political or related to movies.
Some of those people on the Nikki Finke site desperately need therapy – so much freaking anger over there. If you don’t like Hollywood, what the hell are you doing on a Hollywood site?
was anyone else distracted by the movie images as they were getting ready to reveal winners? Particularly I am thinking of the friggin Kung Fu Panda shot under all of the Best Actresses…
was anyone else distracted by the movie images as they were getting ready to reveal winners? Particularly I am thinking of the friggin Kung Fu Panda shot under all of the Best Actresses…
YES! Why did Kung Fu Panda show up under there so much?? For some reason the ones of The Duchess really distracted me, too.
Brett, I was thinking the same thing. I also noticed the Kung Fu image during BAress..
Unsurprisingly Kris is the only of the three posted to say anything so bold (or stupid) as “amazing”. What a terrible show.
I did miss the acting clips, but the new format was refreshing, certainly better then last year’s “The next award is for………..the next award is for………..The next award is for…………[insert Enchanted number]………..”. The worst and most awkward part for me was the medley of the Original Song contenders, and I acknowledge that that was partly because of the odd grouping of two Slumdog songs and the WALL-E number. John Legend’s singing was pretty rough around the edges, but I guess he did decently for the little time he probably had to rehearse between Peter Gabriel dropping out and now.
They presented the technical categories beautifully, and I’m curious as to how they can top that next year. The whole thing really did feel like a fun show, and reminiscent of the golden Hollywood days. Don’t believe me? Watch a YouTube clip of Audrey Hepburn or Marlon Brando winning their Oscars in the black-and-white era…the presenters were goofy and it just seemed like they weren’t tied down by stuffy protocol that has bogged down the ceremonies of the past few years.
During the In Memoriam part, they shouldn’t have kept changing shots between Queen Latifah and the screens. Sometimes I could barely read the names. (And did they forget Eartha Kitt??)
At one point during the ceremony I heard “Roar! Overture” from Cloverfield played by the orchestra and it made me smile wide.
So I could have gotten a perfect score on my dormitory Oscar picks (which excluded several technical categories and the live action/documentary/animated shorts) if I had just gone with the frontrunner instead of rogue on three categories (Original Screenplay, Score, and Actor).
I liked a lot about this show. Having Will Smith do four awards moved things along quite nicely without denying the recipients their due. Grouping them together is an excellent way to shorten the show AND feel like a lot is going on. I like how they grouped the technical awards together and actually make them interesting.
I think that having previous acting winners paying tribute to this year’s nominees is a great idea. Shorten it for next year though.
I almost loved it. The ONE thing I did not like was the awful, awful musical number with everyone lip-synching. What was that????
But I did LOVE everything else … everything else about it. It came in under 3:30 hours, the presentation of the acting awards was a phenomenal idea. And thank GOD for no acting clips. We’ve seen them all a million times this year already.
Nothing can improve oscars because there are too many categories that must be addressed and they prefer clean, old fashioned format. So yawn.
Hugh was excellent but I was disappointed the show they gave him was so old school, hats, suits and Siegfield girls, music and dance. I expected something more modern (well, those sleavless shirt rehearsal clips were promising).
And I didn`t like previous winners gushing over nominees. Just show us clips. This way, it wasn`t about nominees but who of oldies wore what and what a speech each gave.
It wasn`t a disaster but it wasn`t improvement either. watched on justin.tv online.
While not as good as the awards show 5 years ago, I would say this year’s was a step up from previous ones. I also did not know how great a singing voice Ann Hathaway had.I liked how they traced a film from the writer’s keyboard to the screen. I felt that had a better rhythm to it than the usual approach of mixing everything around or cramming all the big awards at the end. While I wish Peter Gabriel had sung “Down to Earth”, John Legend did a decent job.
What I did not like:
- that musical number in the middle of the show.
- those movie images used to fill up the screen when they announced the winners (too distracting)
StickIT is absolutely right about Finke’s bunch. I don’t know what their problem is, but they either need a thearapist or a series of heavy medications. While I appreciated her coverage of the writers’ strike, Finke’s permanent you-know-what mode is simply intolerable, and I don’t find her to be all that bright either.
I like that Mickey Rourke was Mickey Rourke and didn’t try and be somebody he wasn’t. He dressed his attitude and he can go out a winner. Now somebody give him a job.
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