Yawn. The most mind-numbingly boring Oscars I can remember. The only times I wasn’t bored out of my skull were during the Sidney Poitier tribute and Halle Berry’s acceptance speech. Even Whoppi, who I normally find somewhat funny, was at a low. Although, I did like it when she was talking about Moulin Rouge and everything it accomplished, but “all apparently without a director.” Nice one. Baz definitely deserved at least a nomination, if not the award.
Didn’t watch. Saw the winners on the IMDB.
Ever since Russel Crowe/Gladiator last year though I’ve not bothered with the academy awards.
Hell, this year even Pearl Harbour won something :P.
Yeah, but only a technical award, which it very well may have deserved. At least Bay didn’t get a friggin’ nomination. Goddamned, is he awful.
They finally stopped promising that this year’s award ceremony would be shorter. 4 hours this thing was.
Whoopie was horrible the last time she hosted. Tonight she wasn’t so bad but that’s because she didn’t trot out the lame political jokes.
The only person I was rooting for was Ron Howard.
Julia Roberts jumping on Denzel as he was walking off the stage was pathetic. You had your moment last year, quit trying to get camera time you ho. Go break up someone else’s marriage.
And Halle talking about the “struggle” of so many “faceless” people of color.
Puleez…
You’re hardly faceless. And you don’t appear to have had much of a struggle.
Considering that I don’t see movies in the theater any more and have not seen anything that was nominated, I thought it was a pretty good show. Beautiful theater, they lost the musical numbers (unless you count Cirque du Soleil, and they were brilliant), they didn’t stomp on the acceptance speeches for the most part (they seem to have abandoned that musical cue nonsense and good for them), not too much Whoopi, and I thought the presenters’ jokes and the narrator’s jokes were actually FUNNY! I couldn’t believe they got Woody Allen to present the tribute to New York City, and he was funny too. I knew they’d have to address 9/11 somehow, and I thought they did about as good a job as they could have done.
Yes it ran long, but they have a lot of business to do and I’d rather they not force the winners to rush through one of the most emotional moments of their lives. I like when the winners get emotional - it seems more genuine to me. I enjoyed the tributes to Sidney Poitier and Robert Redford, and I was happy that Jennifer Connelly, Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, and Ron Howard won.
Um… I don’t think she was talking about herself.
Horrible Oscars.
They chose the movie about the anti-Semite struggling with an illness over the clear best film of the year. This is as bad as giving the Oscar in 94 (?) to the charming retard instead of to Shawshank Redemption.
Halle Berry was way out of line. Yeah, she was great. She deserved to win. But who cares that she’s black? She didn’t know any doors down – blacks are not oppressed in Hollywood. She just walked through a door that was already open. She could have graciously accpeted her award. But instead, she made it all about race. Trashy.
If Nicole Kidman has won, and teared up about how she’d knocked down a door for beautiful red-haired Australian women, would that have been appropriate? No. And neither was Berry’s race card acceptance speech.
Denzel Washington tipped his hat to Poitier, gave a nice speech and walked showing how classy of a guy he is.
Not giving the statue to Lord of the Rings sets up problems for the next two awards shows. Pressure will be high to correct this mistake, and could lead to an awkward situation… especially if they get to the 2004 show, and the most epic film production accomplishment in history is still Oscar-less.
Twenty years from now, people will still be swept up by Lord of the Rings. No one will much remember the maudlin tripe that is A Beautiful Mind.
You know, it seems whenever there’s a massive, moneymaking blockbuster thats a critical and popular hit, but sucks, they give it the statue, like Gladiator last year. But if its a monumental epic that garners rave reviews and a ton of cash, and actually deserves the accolades, it is snubbed. That really sucks.
Kirk
Hope I’m not changing directions too much here, but. . .
I don’t care if it is a fantasy movie, the direction was suberb. But I will be patient, I believe that I can be safe in assuming that the next two installments of LOTR will be as wonderfully directed (and acted, and scripted, etc.), so I am willing to wait and see Peter Jackson get his Best Director award after all three have been released. Plenty of actors and directors are really awarded for their body of work (including Denzel–no one really thinks Training Day is the best work he’s ever done, he should have won for Philadelphia, and he wasn’t even nominated for that role! And Ron Howard should have won for Apollo 13–a movie where we all knew the outcome, but sat on the edge of our seats nevertheless–plus it didn’t have any anatonomically suspect love scenes in it!).
And, well, you may all hate me, but I kinda miss the dance numbers–the interpretive dances of each of the Best Movie nominees–cmon, admit it, those were the days!
Oblong
Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be that she was happy that someone she’s known at least since they starred together in The Pelican Brief and who as far as I know remains her friend won the Oscar, could it.
a35362
I was appalled by Tom Cruise’s opening remarks. “We’re even more important after 9/11 than we were before!”
I was really surprised in several categories. I was sure Ian McKellan, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe would win. I was stunned that Randy Newman won, because he sucks. I guess Sting and Paul McCartney split the vote. Did anyone else notice they arranged the songs in order of least to most sucky?
Gwyneth Paltrow, what were you thinking with that top? Jennifer Lopez, why the quilting on your ass and what was up with that horrifying hairdo? Best dressed were Sandra Bullock and Halle Berry.
Was that Mikhail Gorbachev in the opening bit? If it was I barely recognized him. And were all those other people famous or did they intersperse celebirties with regular folks?
Julia was actually quoted recently as saying recently that she had a hard time acepting a world in which she had recieved an Lead Actor Oscar and Denzel hadn’t.
They are in fact friends, and her excitement upon opening the envelope was becasue she got to give him to good news and had her wish come true as well.
I didn’t watch much of the show, but the Denzel’s speech was a recent oscar highlight as far as I am concerned. He is a classy guy. And I thought the Julia hug afterwards was sweet, a moment between friends that happened to be broadcast to 100 million viewers around the world. It just didn’t feel like it was for anybody’s benefit but the two of them.
Halle actually bugged me a little. Though I certainly can’t blame her, and it was a big moment for black actresses, and looong overdue, so I’ll give her that.
but Ron Howard? come on… seriously…
Spielberg, the Cohens, Lynch, Scott, Jackson, Nolan, all of em made better movies that. seriously. I’ll never cease to be amazed by the mediocrity of the Academy.
ugh…
CJ
It took you that long?
In fact, instead of starting lots of Who Was Robbed In The Oscars threads, it would be a lot quicker and easier to have a They Deserved Their Oscar thread.
Kathy Bates (1990, Best Actress)
Well, that’s me done.
When Gwyneth Paltrow announced the winner in the category she presented she could [sarcastic]barely[/sarcastic] contain her excitement because her movie didn’t win that category.
Berry’s speech put me off a little. Annointing herself Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson is a bit much. Denzel was much classier.
If she had lost would she have run away, like the car accident?
It would be a bit much if there had been an African-American actress that won before. There have been performances that many thought would garner the Oscar before, The Color Purple leaps screaming to mind, but none have.
Let us hope that this was not token night and this is just a sign that the best actor and actress will win regardless of race.
My thoughts exactly. In all the shots immediately after his speech, Julia was hogging camera time. But then, I can’t stand her, so I may be biased.
Halle Berry’s a dickhead
She’s faceless, huh? Is that why she couldn’t stick around after she could have killed someone?
I didn’t watch all of the show, did Jim Carrey present?
Wait, I thought Whoopi’s joke meant that usually the types of things that go on at the Moulin Rouge (the historical place as portrayed in the movie, NOT the movie itself) were the sorts of things you expect in Hollywood. But the funny thig is, all this took place in late 1800s France, with no director. I thought that’s what she meant, though I immediately saw that people didn’t hear it that way.
The “faceless comment” was NOT about Berry herslef!
It was about Louise Beavers, Butterfly Mcqueen, yes, and even Hattie McDaniels, who was the first African American to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Mammy in “Gone With The Wind.”
A maid.
That’ was the only role a black actress in the studio days could expect to get. The lone exception was Lena Horne, who usually played bad girls.
There were no black actresses who played leading roles, who starred in glamorous Technicolor musicals, who got to kiss Clark Gable or John Garfield at the closing credits
Black women shuffled, said, “Yes, ma’am” to the white leading lady, and played characters like Beulah, Sassy, Prissy, and Mammy. They were faithful plantation servants, clowns, slaves, comic relief.
You people have to educate yourselves on the history of race in the arts before you DARE to criticize Halle Berry’s moving acceptance speech!
I didn’t expect LOTR to win best picture. (wanted it to, didn’t expect it) Had a LITTLE more hope for PJ as director (arguably the HARDEST directing job-3 movies, sometimes 6 units filming, 50+ [100+ ?] speaking roles, crew of thousands), but I had decent hopes for Best Supp Actor and/or Adapted Screenplay.
And costumes, LOTR had lots of these, some in two sizes!
Oh well, did get those BAFTAs and innagural(sp?) AFI award.
And we have two more movies to go…
Brian