So the morning after, what are your memories/thoughts/peeves/pleasures?
As a viewer of the show since 1974, mine are:
Loved it when they cut away from the guy who tried to hold up the dolphin sign
The Adapted Screenplay winner’s speech was riveting moment (and I liked Steve Martin’s followup crack)
Like a whole lot the way Clooney played along with the “rivalry” with Steve and Alec
They really should have let Roger Corman get his Lifetime award on stage. It could have taken the place of the horror clip crap. So what if the show ran a few more minutes.
Hollywood to moviegoers (who voting with their money have roundly rejected “Hurt Locker”: You know nuthin! Nuthin!
I found the group introductions for the best actor and actress painful to watch. Way too long, and in some cases just embarrassing. It seemed like the kind of testimonials given for lifetime achievement awards, not for being nominated for a role in one movie.
Also, what happened during the acceptance speech for best documentary when the director (?) was giving his speech, and some other woman came up and basically pushed him aside and gave her own speech instead?
During the ‘dearly departed’ montage, I noticed there were a few omissions. Farrah Fawcett and Bea Arthur, both of whom made several films, but neither one was depicted. I noticed this mainly because they DID include Michael Jackson (whose only film role was the forgettable “the Wiz”) who died on the same day Farrah did. Why’d they mentioned him, but not either of them?
Yeah, this really doesn’t work for me. For the Hollywood royalty (Streep, Mirren, Clooney, Freeman) hearing someone gush over them, or joke about them, is just soooooo old hat by now. And for the newbies (Renner, Mulligan, Sidibe) it’s like “who are they again? Are we ever going to see them again?”
I watched the whole show despite the fact I’ve seen ZERO of the nominated movies or performances. My thoughts:
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were humorous, not overly funny–I’m still confused why they needed both of them to host the show.
Loved the tribute to John Hughes. Seeing the “brat pack” actors (minus Rob Lowe) was a bit jarring to me, though, shouldn’t we all still be teenagers?
James Taylor was sublime
The tribute to horror movies seemed to be in there only to give Martin and Baldwin a chance to tell some other semi-funny jokes. I’m a bit befuddled about why this was highlighted this year anyway, was it because of the Twilight movies? It was a waste of time.
I don’t know anything about the relationship between James Cameron and Katheryn Bigelow other than they used to be married, but I found it hilarious that she didn’t acknowledge or look at him before she went up on stage to get her first Oscar. He was sitting right behind her! Cameron was smiling, and she turned around to hug someone before going up the stairs, but Bigelow totally ignored him. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
I still think it’s surreal that Sandra Bullock won for BA. I guess I need to see that movie now!
Jeff Bridges - long overdue!! One of our great actors, glad he finally won.
So many gorgeous dresses and handsome men!!
How classic that Barbra handed out the Oscar to the first female Best Director winner!! Loved that.
No, but when a movie doesn’t do well at the box office, then maybe it isn’t good enough to merit an Academy Award. Hurt Locker didn’t live up to it’s hype.
Martin and Baldwin were just meh. Martin by himself would have been better. I enjoyed his hosting in the past. I thought Neil Patrick Harris’ opening number was great. Wouldn’t be surprised if NPH is next year’s host.
Of course that would’ve make it all the more awkward if Bigelow hadn’t won. Especially since Babs’ intro was: this award could go to the 1st woman! or the 1st African-American! or one of the 3 white guys.
Hate the gushing intros to the Best Actors. Time to get rid of it.
For the 2nd year running, they blew the In Memoriam at the beginning, using a long shot of the stage while the 1st dearly departed’s clips is rolling, who will forever be unmemorialized.
I don’t care if film clip montages are irrelevant and time-wasting. I love film clip montages. I’d have more of them if I ruled the Oscars.
Considering there were two potentially historic wins*, I thought her announcement was really stupid. "All she said was “And the time has come!” followed by a big dramatic pause in which we were meant to assume she was talking about Bigelow (since they’re both women) and not Daniels (since she’s white). The audience was slow to applaud so you could tell not everybody knew what she was doing.
*And that angle is itself overplayed. I take it Hollywood wants credit for breaking down a barrier it created itself?
Hated Steve Martin & Alex Baldwin as co-hosts. All those lame back-and-forth jokes… Damn Helen Mirren instead of Dame, for example. Jeez… So NOT funny.
Then the recognizing and commenting on people in the audience went on FOREVER. No, you don’t have to mention everybody. You mentioned a couple; we get the idea. Even the audience looked uncomfortable as it went on and on and on… I’d rather they spend more time on the red carpet actually talking to people and asking them who they’re wearing.
Then go inside, give out the awards one after another and get out in an hour. Done. Because what we saw wasn’t entertainment.
What happened to the Best Song? Or did I fall asleep… Or weren’t there enough entrants for that category?
There were the usual 5 entrants. But this year there were no live performances of the songs – they just played a short clip from each as performed in the film, then gave out the award (to a song from Crazy Heart).
:smack:Duh… oh yeah. Thanks! I did see the 2 guys go up to get it. One of them was T-bone Somebody. The little guy talked and the big guy said nothing… I totally forgot because I’m so used to seeing someone perform the entire number live. Yeah, like actual entertainment…
I was stunned to find out that Katherine Bigelow is almost 60 years old. I think she’s had some work done.
Agree that Sandra Bullock’s acceptance was one of the best moments of the night. I’ve always written her off as a nice looking but lightweight actor, but she was really funny and touching at the same time.
I would rather have seen a good Roger Corman retrospective instead of whatever the hell that horror tribute was. Young Frankenstein, Twilight, Misery…Really? At least they could have had it introduced by someone with some horror street cred like Peter Jackson.
And Miley Cyrus has some reeaally bad posture.
I actually loved the mini-roast intro, if only to see Woody Harrellson cringe at being called out as a pothead–and George Clooney can apparently only be irreverent on his own terms since he was giving the disapproving schoolmarm scowl throughout.
