I do agree, MovieMogul, that it was nice to see the race come down to two movies that took risks and did not follow worn-out formulas. I thought Boyhood was the more accessible of the two; but certainly respect the artistry of Birdman. I really wanted Keaton to win in his category.
Birdman didn’t even stand the test of the time it took me to watch it – the grotesquery and mood it put me in made me want to leave the theater and that doesn’t happen often. I’m still glad it beat Boyhood which was a series of glimpses of life interspersed with Very Important Lessons someone is set up to deliver to The Boy.
Anyhoo, just came in to say I was very disappointed in NPH – I expected something much more dynamic. Were his writers playing it safe or something?
Low point: John Travolta and the face touching.
High point: JK Simmons!!
Gaga absolutely nailed it. But her tattoos drove me to a bit of distraction when she did any kind of flourish.
Well, she HAD to have the tattoos visible. It’s not as if she could have come out to sing Sound of Music songs in a liverwurst dress. So there had to be something else about her appearance going on, to let us know she’s Unconventional.
Is there some reason why Shonda Rhimes’ opinion is relevant? Or is she just another jerk with a twitter account?
But on the Idina Menzel side: she actually has a film credit, and is responsible for the most ubiquitous song in recording history. Lady Gaga has, to the best of my knowledge, no connection at all with the movies, other than being in the audience. But…she nailed it.
It would have been great if she came out covered in Schnitzel with noodles. I had to grudgingly give it to her, although I resent that she played pop star and now wants us to see her as a Serious Vocalist.
I gotta start lightening up.
I was going for “German/Austrian-associated meat product” with “liverwurst”…but “Schnitzel with noodles” is much better.
Anyway: I hear that the telecast was a ratings disappointment. Any bets on whether the Oscars show goes back to Mondays? (Fighting both Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead–that’s hubris!)
Nice to see two mentions of that. I was really rooting for Feast to win. Just five and a half minutes, and all of it pure delight. Also good to see Julianne Moore get Best Actress, well deserved and a talented, deserving person. The Academy usually gets everything wrong IMHO and this year they got quite a few right. Redmayne’s win was well deserved, too.
I’ve seen most of the BP nominees and honestly had no strong opinions this year, though among the excellent selections there’s no way I would have picked Birdman.
And I’m with John Mace – NPH in his undies no one needed to see.
I wonder if he dieted and worked out especially for this event.
OK, I get now that he was parroting a scene from one of the movies (Birdman?), but I still did not to see it. Or, they should have had Tom Cruise do it! 
And was anyone else annoyed by the announcers always quoting the subtitle of that film, Birdman, every time it was mentioned? Yeah, we get it. It had a quirky subtitle. But we didn’t need to hear it all…night…long…
I think the entire thing is the official title, hence the reason for saying all of it.
I guess I got used to that sort of thing in 2009. How many times did we hear “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”…(answer: a bunch).
This past August he finished playing Hedwig on Broadway, where every night he was on stage performing in latex hotpants, so he already was in great shape.
Blech!
Yes, Feast was great but I want Disney and Pixar to remove themselves from competition in this category forever. It’s like the Lakers playing against Our Lady of Peace Girls Junior Varsity. The shorts categories feature works by people just establishing their careers and it is a grueling labor for them to get their films made and seen. Disney and Pixar can knock these things out over lunch. I hate it when they’ve got a short in competition.
ETA: I loved A Single Life and The Dam Keeper and would have been happy to see either one win.
I disagree, for several reasons…
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the purpose of the Oscars is to recognize the best achievements, not to lend gratuitous encouragement to beginners or the disadvantaged, for which there are other venues. IOW, if Our Lady of Peace Girls Junior Varsity can’t hack it against the Lakers, they’re not ready for the big leagues. I’m reminded of the line from Whiplash, “the two most destructive words in the English language are ‘good job’.”
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it’s in the nature of shorts that imagination and creativity count for a lot, and a big budget is no guarantee of success. I agree with you that it’s prime competitive ground for young filmmakers, and judging the film objectively in a venue that is open to everyone is no obstacle to that.
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there are a lot of things I greatly dislike about the movie industry in general and Disney in particular, but that’s no reason to ban them. If they have a lot of good creative people, then more power to them. And while I don’t know a lot about the making of Feast, I do have the impression that it was the work of a small dedicated team and not some corporate juggernaut trying to snag an award.
Because Feast was attached to every screening of Big Hero 6, far more people saw it than would ever have the opportunity to see any of the other shorts. When voters vote for “the one I saw” over “the four I didn’t see and know nothing about”, that’s not exactly a fair vote. This also happens for the major awards when not every voter has seen every nominated film, but with the Shorts it has far more significant an effect. Add to that, name recognition will always have sway in any competition decided by vote. No one making Shorts will ever be able to stand against Disney or Pixar on name recognition.
And I didn’t say they should be banned. I said they should remove themselves from competition.
How about, instead, voters should remove themselves from voting if they’ve only seen one of the five nominees?
My big problem is that they often win out of familiarity more than quality (Feast is cute, but slight, IMHO). Of course, Disney doesn’t win every year (Get a Horse lost last year, and that had Mickey) but it does make more independent productions tougher to win. The years Nick Park and Miyazaki won Animated Feature were years that Pixar was not competing and Disney not a significant factor. With Pixar delivering two films next year, that should make the result slightly more unpredictable…but perhaps not much.
This used to be the case for the short, documentary, and foreign language categories. You received a separate ballot only when you attended an Academy designated screening. Now, they provide screeners with all these films to AMPAS members for home viewing, and while this is a relatively new development (only 2 years, IIRC), there are already signs that the films with the highest newsworthiness (CitizenFour), visibility (Feast), name recognition (The Phone Call had Jim Broadbent & Sally Hawkins), and giveaway title (Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1). In half these cases, I’d argue the winner wasn’t even close to being the best film. But even when it’s a film I love (20 Feet from Stardom last year), you still get the suspicion it won less on the merits of balanced viewing and more from the publicity it’s gotten.
No, he wasn’t. In fact, pretty much no winner ever sez anything important, let alone really important.