The Oscars AKA Disappointment Abounds

That Was Boring OR Scattered 84th Oscar Event Thoughts

I watched the Oscars last night despite having planned to skip them figuring that there would be pretty much no surprises. Because at my current housing location I get so few channels however I ended up watching it with my girlfriend instead of doing school-book-learn'in-reading.

Our first thoughts about the show each were, "What in the hell is going on with all this feedback?" a thought we continued to have throughout pretty much the whole night. Seriously, a big-name show like this can't get their sound wired correctly?

The Best Film and Director  awards of course went to the Artist, which was completely predicted by everyone on the planet with 2 brain cells (so maybe members of the Republican Tea Party called it incorrectly, ZING!).

Billy Crystal tried but his jokes seemed mostly outdated and dull. Maybe the Academy should have just let Brett Ratner get away with his gay slur so that he would have produced the show and Eddie Murphy would have hosted. I'm pretty sure whatever Ratner would have made could have been more entertaining than this, as even Tower Heist had more laughs than the Oscars from what I've seen of it. Plus, again, Eddie Murphy could have hosted and when he's having a good day the man is pretty funny.

Almost no one got played off during their acceptance speech, the only people they had to essentially force off the stage were the men who won for their documentary, "Undefeated," and I think the music started playing more so because they had to, "bleep," one of them who must have sworn and less because they were going long. At least the appearance someone said a dirty word woke me up a bit from the doldrums the telecast had me in.

The only award I really went, "Hmmm, I have no clue who could win this, and actually am interested in the result," about was Best Actress, and that went to Meryl Streep, so congrats to her for winning and delivering a thank-you speech that actually was a bit humorous so I didn't want to go into a coma during it.

For an event that went so damn long why did they have to do the admittedly impressive but time-consuming Cirque De Soleli bit? Actually, I liked that enough that I want that kept in. No, we can cut the pointless skit about a focus group for the Wizard of Oz. What the hell this barely funny skit was doing in the Oscars other than sucking up time I don't know.

You know, in the old days the Academy Awards recognized mainstream blockbuster films, but as time has gone on it now is more and more artsy fare. I don't mind the art-house stuff as I love some of it too, but maybe a big-name movie could deserve to win Best Picture sometime besides a rare exception like when Lord Of The Rings 3 was thrown a massive bone in the form of sweeping one of the awards shows. You know, the year you had a big name movie taking up so much attention you actually got a lot of viewers, hint, hint.

Really, what was the deal with that feedback? It was giving me a headache!

I saw Drive recently and it really was snubbed by the Oscars other than that one nomination for sound editing or such. Then again, the last Harry Potter movie only got technical nominations for things like Makeup and that has made billions of dollars and brought joy to lots of people, so if an arty movie about a Driver can't make it, and neither can a big-blockbuster about a boy wizard, it seems you have to be in very specific categories for the Oscars. You know, historical stories (Iron Lady), touching life tales that may suck but pull on the heart-strings (The Loud and Close Movie everyone hated), cute arty films (The Artist), and of course often anything by certain huge-name directors who can be guaranteed a nomination no matter what schlock they put out even if we know full well they ain't gonna win (No, I'm not talking about Hugo even though that did have a huge director in the form of Scorsese, people actually liked Hugo).

One thing I dread about the Oscars is actually what comes after, when we start seeing floods of advertisements for movies on DVD and in theaters now bragging how they won an Oscar so you have to see the movie or somehow something is wrong with you. Yeah, a bunch of people involved in the movie industry liked you movie enough to give it an award, that doesn't really make me any more or less likely to go see it in the theaters or check it out from Redbox or iTunes.

All-in-all it was a pretty boring show and I would have better spent my time actually doing work, reading comics, or playing video-games. I don't know how to make the Oscars better, but I think we really need to.