As I'm sure you know, the Oscars were held Sunday night. The King's Speech won most of the big awards, which upset me just a bit, but I'll get over it. Harder to get over is the truly awful ceremony. Despite my previous protestations, I did watch about half of the show and what I saw was horrendous.
Co-host James Franco is getting torn a new asshole for his antics Sunday night. Well, let's be fair: calling them "antics" is really a stretch. All he did was mumble semi-intelligibly and act like he was high or impossibly bored. Heck, he literally spent half the show tweeting on his Blackberry, uploading little five second videos for his fanbase of drooling teen girls and hipsters to marvel over. Even in a drag segment he just made a puerile Charlie Sheen joke, which a gopher could do at this point. To compensate, the pretty Anne Hathaway had to overact hysterically. It was like watching a high school talent show hosted by a bored stoner kid and a perky cheerleader; in other words, it wasn't pretty.
Many commentators have already roasted Franco to unrecognizable char over this. Anne Hathaway apparently agrees with this criticism, and she should know. There's even a piece arguing at length that he was "baked." It seems that Franco may actually have hurt his career with his performance. As someone who suffered through just enough of the ceremony to pass jugment, I'd say this criticism is fully deserved.
I can't say I have much feeling towards Franco either way; I've only seen him in Spider-Man and Milk, so I'm not jumping on or off any bandwagon. All I know is that on Sunday, I saw a smug, self-satisfied douchebag dicking around, wasting 37 million people's time and ruining Hollywood's biggest awards ceremony. Franco's own comments on the issue - bascially a "fuck you" to anyone who watched - seem to reinforce this idea. If you really don't give a damn, you stupid prick, why the hell did you agree to host the show in the first place?
Some of his defenders are claiming this was "performance art" like his turn on General Hospital, but if so it was the worst performance in histrionic history: worse than Tom Laughlin as Billy Jack, worse than Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster, heck worse than Mrs. Hay's 4th grade production of The Wizard of Oz. No, I think Franco just thought he could get away with sleepwalking through the Oscars. Fat chance.
I have no idea why Franco and Hathaway were paired up in the first place, as neither is exactly known for being funny (and starring in awful romcoms doesn't count), and certainly they had zero chemistry. Presumably this was to get the youth audience to watch, but with a show crammed with the same old shit - horredous musical numbers, navel-gazing tributes to Hollywood's past glory, overlong presentations, unfunny jokes, and awarding Best Picture to a safe piece of Oscar bait - its effect was neglible. And Mr. Franco, pretending like you don't care about anything stopped being cool in the late '90s. Franco and Hathaway were about as "cool" as Hank Hill.
Either way, barring a hilarious Kirk Douglas bit, the Oscars were a disaster Sunday night, and I was reminded of why I skipped the show last year. And James Franco: you suck.
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