American Madness

Intelligent Criticism in the Service of a Better Nation




Real Time Thoughts on the Oscar Ceremony

Posted by Jason Ihle | 3 Comments

I’m just so thrilled to be watching the Oscars for the first time since 2005 that I’ve decided I’m going to post some thoughts as they occur to me while I watch (as long as I have access to this live stream anyway). Also, I’m watching this on my own with no one to talk to.

These first thoughts are post-dated, as I’m writing this during the first commercial break (after the presentation of The Blind Side).

Neil Patrick Harris is not exactly a Broadway caliber singer, but the number was amusing and an energetic start to the show.

Alec and Steve took a bit of time to settle into a comfortable back-and-forth. The jokes were mostly good, typical banal and easy-going Academy Awards jokes. Good poking fun at lots of stars.

Christoph Waltz wins for Supporting Actor – absolutely no surprise. He gives a truly elegant thank you speech and I’m glad he won.

Ugh, The Blind Side nominated for Best Picture. What a travesty!

2:58am – Getting Animated Feature out of the way quite early. Up is the winner, without much fanfare. And I’m 2/2 on predictions.

3:04am – A truly deserving award for Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett for “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart. Saw the movie last night and the song was a beautiful and perfect close to a very good movie. T. Bone Burnett is a huge man. I’m now 3/3.

3:05am – Hey Chris Pine, your movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture so could you please introduce the other sci-fi film that was? District 9 was a pretty good movie, but without the bloated 10 nominee list it wouldn’t have a chance in hell of being there.

3:16am – Having live stream difficulties. Mark Boal has just won for his The Hurt Locker screenplay. I’m now 4/4.

3:18am – Where did they dig up Molly Ringwald for this John Hughes tribute?

3:23am – Almost a full Breakfast Club reunion. Where the hell was Emilio Estevez? It was a nice tribute, but I don’t really miss John Hughes because the last good movie he made was more than 20 years ago.

3:32am – Okay, Logorama was not the best animated short. It was clever, yes, but I really thought the story and writing were not very good. Poor Nick Park doesn’t get to take home a 5th Oscar. I’ve dropped to 4/5, dammit!

3:34am – Leave it to the short films to screw up my prediction statistics. Music by Prudence for Documentary Short brings me down to 4/6.

3:37am – Great! I guessed right with The New Tenants for Live Action Short. I’m at 5/7 now.

3:39am – Ben Stiller donning Na’vi makeup to present the Makeup award. “The ironic thing is Avatar isn’t even nominated for makeup.” Pretty good line.

3:42am – Star Trek wins for Makeup. No surprise at all and I’ve got 6/8.

3:45am – A Serious Man is a worthy Best Picture nominee.

3:49am – Here we go with Adapted Screenplay: A genuine surprise! Jason Reitman is going home empty-handed I think. Precious wins the award. Wow! And let me say that I like how they’ve done away with “And the Oscar goes to…” in favor of “And the winner is…” Geoffrey Fletcher was honestly shocked, I’d say. Good for him, but I’m down to 6/9.

3:55am – I understand why they gave the Honorary Awards at the Governor’s Ball (in order to shorten the ceremony), but I like to see tributes to old great filmmakers. I miss it in this show.

3:59am – If you didn’t know Mo’Nique was going to win you’ve been under a rock. I’m now 7/10. I like her comment about being able to win an Oscar without campaigning.

4:07am – Avatar’s Art Direction win brings me to 8/11.

4:10am – How many Oscars can they give to Sandy Powell? Well she’s not going to catch Edith Head’s 8 awards. I’m down to 8/12. Ouch!

4:20am – Can anyone else believe not one, but at least 2 clips from Leprechaun made it on the Academy Awards? There were some chill-inducing clips in that horror tribute.

4:25am – The Hurt Locker was honestly deserving of the Sound Editing award but it kicked me back to 8/13. I’d say this is the first sign that this film will go on to win Best Picture.

4:27am – Well then, what can I say? The Hurt Locker takes the Sound award. Avatar may go home with only 2 awards tonight. And I may not do much better than my current 8/14 predictions.

4:28am – Why was the E.T. music used to introduce Elizabeth Banks?

4:36am – Bullsh-t! Avatar was probably the least deserving of he 5 Cinematography nominees and I’ve now missed 4 in a row for 8/15.

4:37am – Is Demi Moore still a star?

4:41am – That was a stunning number of well-known actors who died in the last year. I forgot that Ron Silver had died. And I don’t even remember Dom Deluise’s passing.

4:51am – The choreography set to the nominated scores was quite extraordinary. Adam Shankman must have had a hell of a time choreographing dance to the score for The Hurt Locker, but he pulled it off. I thought the number presented with the Up score was incredible and then they had the dance set to the Avatar score – unbelievable. Michael Giacchino’s win for Up gives me another point: 9/16.

4:55am – Well if Avatar hadn’t won the Visual Effects award there would have been something seriously wrong. 10/17.

5:04am – The Cove wins for Documentary Feature. I saw that movie. I wish I could get all worked up over killing dolphins, but I find I have no argument against it without also being against killing cows or chickens other than that dolphins are more intelligent. Oh well. 11/18 now.

5:07am – The Hurt Locker wins Film Editing. This is one of the best predictors of the Best Picture winner, so watch out. 12/19.

5:08am – This show is moving along briskly, but will still stretch well beyond the 3 hour mark.

5:10am – Actually I take that back. I just realized there are only 5 awards to give out. They won’t rap it up in 20 minutes, I don’t think, but pretty close.

5:17am – I’ve got to say I’m so pleased El Secreto de Sus Ojos won the Foreign Language Film award because it was really such a good movie. I do think The White Ribbon is the better movie, but I predicted this outcome so I’m happy. 13/20.

5:20am – But they haven’t cut the practice of adding more commercial breaks as we get closer to the end, thus stretching the length of the show.

5:32am – I liked what they did last year by having past winners sing the praises of the current nominees in the 4 acting categories. Granted it took way too much time, but I’m glad they did something similar by having co-stars of the nominated lead actors talk about them. Glad Jeff Bridges has an Oscar now, he truly deserved it for Crazy Heart. 14/21.

5:40am – Here we go with Best Actress and the same format as the Best Actor presentation.

5:45am – Gabourey Sidibe absolutely deserves this award. Please please please don’t let Sandra Bullock win it.

5:48am – It’s just not fair. No, Sandra, you didn’t earn it, you did just wear them down. 15/22

5:55am – Kathryn Bigelow, who started her career with a cheesy low-budget horror flick called Near Dark, becomes the first woman to win Best Director. 16/23

5:59am – Tom Hanks comes out and does a “blink and you miss it” award deliverance. Not even a recap of the nominated films, just open the envelope and read the winner. So glad Avatar didn’t win. And I go 17/24 on my predictions. I think that’s my best since the year of Titanic when everyone knew it would sweep every technical award. So The Hurt Locker comes away with 6 awards and 3 for Avatar. Other multiple winners with 2 awards were Up, Precious and Crazy Heart. Jesus, I’m going to bed now.

Posted on March 7, 2010 in American Madness

Comments

3 Responses to “Real Time Thoughts on the Oscar Ceremony”

  1. Josh
    March 7th, 2010 @

    Reading your notes is so much better than watching the awards!

  2. Josh
    March 7th, 2010 @

    That Oscar really ties the career together, man.

  3. Joel Friedlander
    March 8th, 2010 @

    Your comments are suitably pithy and very interesting. More interesting by far than the awards presentation.

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