Enjoy these leisurely 3 minutes of distinctive warmth and wit while you can because you won’t be hearing any speeches this passionately expansive on Oscar night when the winners are forced to shoehorn their natural emotions into 45 pressurized seconds of Beat-the-Clock.
A modest proposal: so long as we’re giving all the Oscars to Brits this year anyway, could we please give the UK producers control of the whole broadcast? The BAFTAs understand and respect the word “ceremony”. The red-carpet interviews were informed and articulate. The clip montages were woven with filmmaker interviews and vastly more fascinating than what the Oscars do: plugging in abbreviated trailers like product-placement mini-commercials. But most of all, the BAFTAs truly honor the winners by allowing them ample time for the wonderful spontaneity of effusive thoughts unspooling in natural rhythms. The BAFTAs still manage to keep the show moving along a brisk pace. It’s edited for broadcast, I’m aware of that. But if the excess nonsense can be trimmed in quick post-production tightening then how come nobody in the Oscar control booth can control any button except the one marked, “Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat”?
