Yes, of course I watched the 84th Annual Academy Awards. Because what else do I have to do in my life right? A few weeks ago I put out a blog where I reviewed and attempted to predict 10 of the major categories. I actually got 9 of the 10. Only one I missed was the toughest one to predict which was Best Lead Actress. I thought it would be Viola Davis for the Help because she was pretty dominating in the precursor awards. But it was 17 time (a record) nominee Meryl Streep who won for her work in the critically panned The Iron Lady. It was her first Oscar in damn near 30 years, so it was cool to see her win.
The rest of the ceremony was extremely predictable and boring however. That's typically the case though when it comes to the Oscars. There is no excitement with them. It's because of the millions (no, not literally) of precursor awards that happen in the months before. You have the Golden Gloves, the Screen Actors Guilds, The BAFTAS, The Writer, Director and Producer Guild Awards, the Critics Choice Awards, and not to mention the slew of local critics awards all over the country. They all chose their winners, and the winners for each ceremony typically stays the same. So by the time we get to the Oscars we already know what to expect. The voters at the Academy aren't people like you and me. The average age of an Oscar voter is around 65 or so. Meaning they aren't going to actually award movies that are universally known and loved. You won't see movies like The Dark Knight taking home the top prize because it doesn't attract to the older crowd.
2012's Best Picture? The Artist. Everyone knew that was coming. It won four other Oscars as well including Best Director and Best Lead Actor (for a man who spoke two words the entire time). You know how many people I know in my life have even heard of The Artist? I think maybe two people. I'm not knocking the film, because it is a great movie and deserved to win. But the Oscars claim to be the biggest night in Hollywood yet the rating are always crappy. No one watches them or people to start to watch them then fall asleep or decide they'd rather organize their spice rack for better entertainment. Nothing spectacular happened last night at the awards. Rango won for Best Animated Feature which was awesome! But I think that was the most well known movie of the night that won something. The Muppets was another big movie that won an award, for Best Original Song ("Man or Muppet") which scored Flight of the Concords Brett McKenzie an Oscar. There were two nominees in that category! Why the hell do you even have the category if you don't nominate anyone for it? There weren't 5 original songs in the entire year of 2011 that were worthy? Come on.
Octavia Spencer won for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Help. Good movie and good performance but a more daring winner would have been Melissa McCarthy for her insanely scene stealing work in Bridesmaids. But that would have been to risky to the Academy. I don't see why though...they gave Eminem an Oscar a few years back. I'm just saying they should spice up the awards a bit. Maybe more people would watch and care if they weren't as uptight as they are. I know they are supposed to be classy, but this is 2012, and movie goers are becoming younger and younger. If you want them to watch your show, you need to appeal to them. Maybe they can eliminate some categories like Documentary Short, Animated Short, Sound Effects Editing and put in something like Best Action Movie, Best Rising Star, Best Comedic Performance...something with more appeal and umph. Yes, I'm aware this isn't the MTV Movie Awards and the Oscars are supposed to be prestigious. But come on, live it up a little bit. At least people watch those MTV Movie Awards.
The fact that movies like Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Rise of the Planet of the Apes get passed up for major awards is sad. They should finally put in a category for Best Stop Motion Performance or Voice Over Work because Andy Serkis has now been passed up twice for his amazing work (Lord of the Rings as Gollum and now Rise of the Planet of the Apes for his work at Cesar). Harry Potter couldn't even score a Best Picture nomination to award the series as a whole. It was a fantastic, well loved movie. Yet they nominate Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A movie almost no one really saw and definitely almost no one even enjoyed. Where is the reasoning in that? It was one of the worst reviewed Best Picture nominees in history. Yea, totally makes sense to pass up HP or Apes. Totally.
So how did Billy Crystal do? Eh, he was OK. Not like the Billy Crystal Oscar host of the past though. Yes, he was a huge step up from the James Franco/Anne Hathaway fiasco of last year. Yes, he is THE go to Oscar Host. But it's as if they didn't give him any inspiring or funny material. His opening monologue was alright, but he's been so much better in the past. He seemed very toned down and reserved. Not like he's a Ricky Gervais type host, but usually he's pretty hilarious. I didn't get that this time around though. The format was back to normal this year as well. He was classy though, as the show was.They have tried some new things lately and changed a lot, but this year it seemed to be back to normal. It only ran a few minutes over. I'm glad they did away with the Best Actor/Actress presentation where they have 5 people come out on stage and give some moving speech about each of the nominees. I think they did away with that last year now that I think of it. But that really made the show drag on. This show was definitely more fast paced, which was nice.
If you missed last nights ceremony you didn't miss anything special. Biggest shock of the night was Meryl Streep beating Viola Davis for Best Actress, but it wasn't even that big of a surprise. It was another boring night in tinsel town as they got all dolled up to take home golden statues that no one in real life actually cares about. It was full of people and movies most normal movie goers have never heard of. The show itself was boring, with only a few brights spots: Robert Downey Jr., Emma Stone and Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakis.
See ya next year Acacemy.
UPDATE: 39 million people watched the telecast last night. More than I expected. It just means about 39 million people intended to watch them but then left their TV on while they got distracted with counting the dots/holes on their ceilings. Seems more entertaining.
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