Another Oscar Season Over
Another Oscar show is history. I'm a certifiable Oscar geek, so it's always a big night for me. I haven't missed a show since I first started watching back in 1972, and it's one my favorite nights of the year. For the last twenty plus years I've watched the show with a small group of friends, and we have a pool that costs a buck to join, which is a great way to experience the show. There have also been years when I watched at home all by myself, and I still enjoy myself.For me, the Oscars combines a love of film with a love of sports, because it is essentially a horse race, and can be discussed in similar terms. Instead of zone match-ups, we get guild award precursors, and a seventy-nine year track record that makes for statements like, "Little Miss Sunshine would be the first film to win Best Picture without a director or editing nomination since Grand Hotel." Many film aficionados hate the whole thing, and I can see their point, because it does reduce an art form to the gaudiest of spectacles, but I eat the whole thing up like guacamole.
This year, I got 11 of the 21 categories I predicted right, not a great average, considering others got 18 (out of 24, I don't pick the short subjects), but upsets make for a better show. Our viewing crowd cheered the Alan Arkin win, not out of animosity for Murphy but more for an affection for Arkin's performance (and I did pick him). On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Peter O'Toole, who now stands alone with the record for Oscar futility among actors (he does have an honorary award). The look on his face as Forest Whitaker accepted the prize seemed to be a combination of incredulity and heartbreak, as if he was thinking, "Why do I continue to subject myself to this?"
As for the show, I thought it was dandy. Every year the telecast gets pilloried by TV critics, and I'm not sure what they expect. The Academy Awards was not designed as a TV show, and will always resist making concessions to a network covering it. They will not delegate "lesser" awards to off-camera, and they will always do a series of baffling montages, and give honorary Oscars to people who are not well known to the public. This just has to be accepted. If you want a made-for-TV awards show, watch MTV. That being said, I think this was decent TV entertainment. Ellen DeGeneres was a good host, if not as wickedly funny as Steve Martin, and her interplay with nominees Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood were enjoyable. I could have done without the sound effects/choir thing, or maybe one less montage, but hey, that goes with the territory.
So now it's time to look ahead at this year's releases and see what's on the horizon. Incredibly, a writer for the New York Post has already declared Johnny Depp an 80% likely winner for Best Actor for Sweeney Todd. Now that's hubris.
Wow, 1972? I know I started watching before 1978, but the earliest thing I can remember is from those awards (for 1977) when they paraded out the nominees for costumes, and it was Star Wars against pilots and flight attendants from Airport '77 etc. If John Mollo hadn't won for his stormtroopers etc., it would have been a crime.
ReplyDeleteThe Academy Awards have lately become my Super Bowl night, due to my interest in the NFL waning into disinterest, and there's no other yearly event like that I can think of (who knows how many World Series games will be played?). But there's not enough interest from my friends to have a large get-together where they're willing to stay up that late to see it through to the end, so it's usually just me and one or two others, and sometimes if it goes late enough it's just me.
I even miss those Bill Maher specials that would follow it up afterwards, with sometimes sloshed celebrities showing up to talk to Bill. That was when he came the closest to fully emulating the old Playboy After Dark show he so admires. Why does Jimmy Kimmel even bother having a live show on later when he does so little to tie it in to the night's events in any way that couldn't have been pre-taped almost in its entirety? (I fast-forwarded through the whole thing last year and this year, so I won't bother next year.)
Yep, 1972. I was ten years old, and I was rooting for Fiddler on the Roof, which was the only one I'd seen (The French Connection won, although today I recognize A Clockwork Orange as the best film of that year).
ReplyDeleteI haven't missed a minute of one since then. I've also seen all of the Super Bowls, but I could live with missing one. For a while I was making a point of watching every pitch of the World Series, but I've let that slide. The games are on too late for people who have to get up to go to work. I may have to retire to the West Coast so I can watch them in their entirety again.