Oscar Prattle

Well, after twelve mostly sleepless insomniac hours, here are some thoughts about last night's Oscar ceremony. A complete list of winners can be seen here.

- First off - YAY Slumdog Millionaire! The best film won last night and it was really gratifying to see Slumdog pick up eight Oscars. In terms of films at least, this year's Oscars were much better than last year's parade of bleak, dark, misanthropic, soul-destroying crap. I'm referring of course to Juno.

- Hugh Jackman was a tolerable host. He did a great job with the requisite musical numbers but a mediocre job with the interstitial material (other than a nice line about doing a downsized version of Australia called New Zealand). I guess he was preferable to Jon Stewart, who I find rather grating.

- As for the musical numbers themselves? They're usually pretty dull and tedious and this year is little different. Jackman's a great singer and dancer but he didn't have a lot to work with. I did like his song about not seeing The Reader (lucky him!) but the rest of the intro number was the usual tired Billy Crystal schtick that annoys the crap out of me. The musical homage number with Beyonce was just beyond bizarre and completely baffled me. The medley of Best Song nominees didn't do much for me either, were I to be fastidiously honest; Jai Ho is the only one I really liked anyway (and even that's not my favorite song from Slumdog) and cutting the songs into thirty second segments before mashing them together didn't work. (And it's not worth it at all if we don't have Dev and Freida jamming onstage anyway.) I did appreciate the orchestra's constant playing of the Lawrence of Arabia theme though.

- The montages and clips last year were pretty straightforward and economical, but they worked. Seeing a ten second clip of every Best Picture winner last year achieved the desired affect of nostalgia and awe on me. Editing together a seemingly random compilations of clips of past and present films, as they did this year, didn't work and was extremely awkward. The other montages were just bizarre (though the actor's montages were pretty straightforward), and on what planet does Twilight deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the Oscars, let alone prominently featured in a clip show about romantic films?

- Seeing Tina Fey and Steve Martin together as presenters made me think that Steve Martin should have played John McCain on SNL this past election season. Someone missed a bet.

- Presenters didn't do much aside from the usual wankery. The Judd Apatow short film was funny (I thought them cackling insanely at the stupidity of The Reader was loads of fun), and I liked Ben Stiller's Joaquin Phoenix impersonation, though it distracted a bit from the award being presented. Otherwise no one worthy of note. The Twilight asshole, the always-obnoxious Bill Maher (see my documentary! PLEASE), and Zac Efron were particularly bad.

- Even more obnoxious and tedious than this usual was the conceit of having five previous award winners introducing the nominees at ridiculous length. It may have seemed like a great idea on paper, but in practice it led to extremely tedious and ridiculously drawn out introductions. Not to mention, the only interest seemed to be in a) finding out Eva Marie Saint is still alive and b) who gets to wank off to what nominee. And is it just me or did Sophia Loren look like a mummy? Yikes.

- Biggest surprise of the night was Penelope Cruz. I was hoping Amy Adams or Viola Davis but was expecting Marissa Tomei. But who had money on Cruz?

- Probably my favorite acceptance speech was Danny Boyle, particularly the Tigger hop, which was silly but endearing. Kate Winslet gave a really nice, classy speech which made up for the fact that she won for a movie that sucked ape balls. And I liked the Japanese guy who quoted Mr. Roboto, though I can't fathom why.

- Heath Ledger's winning surprised no one. I'm not a huge fan of his performance but I just want to say this for the sake of the morons on Film General: he didn't win because he's dead. He won because he had pathetic competition. Everyone else was basically a seat-filler, with Josh Brolin the only other one who had even an outside chance. (And you know it's a joke when Robert Downey gets a nomination for Tropic Thunder. That's worthy of a What.) And maybe, just maybe, his performance was good.

- Sean Penn's winning over Mickey Rourke was a surprise. What wasn't a surprise, though, was his classless douchebag speech where he calls out his political enemies, something he seems unable to open his mouth without doing (see also his SAG speech where he called out Bill O'Reilly for no reason whatever). Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter for Milk, managed to get out a similar plea for tolerance in a heartfelt and touching manner, without insulting those who disapprove of his lifestyle. Penn on the other hand is a grandstanding, egomaniacal prick as usual - the fact that he's a straight white actor and not a gay screenwriter makes it all the more amusing and/or pathetic.

- An even lower point than Penn's usual prickishness, which can be chalked up to personal distaste of the man, was the In Memoriam segment. We had an absolutely atrocious directorial decision of showing various small screens displaying the window, and extremely wide shots of Queen Latifah performing. So wide, in fact, that the video monitors weren't even visible for the first two or three people! The idiot responsible for that sequence should be shot; we're paying homage to deceased artists, not gawking at your idiotic technology. If I'd have missed Paul Scofield or Charlton Heston or Paul Newman due to their idiotic boneheaded directing I would have smashed someone's head in. Even then they left off a few names (*cough* Patrick McGoohan!). What should have been the best part of the night was one of the most awkward and annoying. But at least the Pauls and Chuck were on there; I just about teared up at Scofield and Heston in particular.

All in all, it was a decent show in spite of the aforementioned rough patches, and the right film won for most of the right awards. So, I'm not overly upset, just tired.