Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Hustler wrote:The awards were so predictible, except for Meryl´s win. (and some technical compensations for Hugo and The Girl...) She was the best thing of the night. Great specch. Fantastic lady!

I agree! It felt almost as an Honorary oscar speech

It was the shortest show I´d ever seen, anyway, I have a bitter taste of it. It´s like having seen the same program over and over again. All the innovations that were imposed by Bill Condon ( 4 years ago) and could have been adopted this time, were definitely and dramatically out. What can you expect from a boring producer like Grazer? (he produces Ron Howard´s movies among many others).
Billy Crystal looked old and repetitive.
The In Memoriam sequence was, as usual, incomplete.
The awards were so predictible, except for Meryl´s win. (and some technical compensations for Hugo and The Girl...) She was the best thing of the night. Great specch. Fantastic lady!

Once Cirque d'Soliel came on I stopped paying much attention and did the dishes and laundry. If Billy improved I didn't notice. He may have, since the audience sounded more appreciative. That's what DVR is for, to recheck such weighty matters. But the only time I laughed was his Chapter 11 joke; I've seen 7 of the 9 Best Picture nominees and I couldn't understand a word of what he was singing; and it's a bad sign when Justin Beiber is funnier in his 10 seconds than Crystal was throughout the entire opening montage, monologue and musical number put together. Actually, that kid was funnier than Owen Wilson himself. At least he sounded like he knew who Fitzgerald and Hemingway were.

For all the dissing of Chris Rock's gig, his appearance sure woke me up last night. Had he not hosted before, I may be thinking he should host the Oscars next year. In fact, I'm thinking that anyway.

And here's good ol' Sasha Baron Cohen crashing the party. I can't understand why ABC didn't want him to appear:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02 ... 02845.html

Uri wrote:Did you really find Crystal to be even remotely acceptable? He may not have been the worst ever, but at least with Letterman or last year we had a kind of a train-wreck like excitement. Last night was just, well, mind numbing - in a Yiddish like, geriatric kind of way.

Yeah, at least Chris Rock's horrible jokes were memorable for the "did he just say that?" factor. Crystal was just tired and stale. I still think they should get Neil Patrick Harris. He may never be an EGOT winner, but he could be an EGOT host.

Uri wrote:Did you really find Crystal to be even remotely acceptable? He may not have been the worst ever, but at least with Letterman or last year we had a kind of a train-wreck like excitement. Last night was just, well, mind numbing - in a Yiddish like, geriatric kind of way.

He was fine. Granted, I watched him mainly on mute.

The Dragon Tattoo joke was good, but Crystal totally biffed the delivery. I'll side with Sabin on this one:

Robert Downey, Jr.: "What is the magic of the movies? That sounds like a perfect question for Werner Herzog to overcomplicate."

He didn't even sound smug during those twelve seconds, which is a feat for him.

Overall, the show seemed really rushed.

Did you really find Crystal to be even remotely acceptable? He may not have been the worst ever, but at least with Letterman or last year we had a kind of a train-wreck like excitement. Last night was just, well, mind numbing - in a Yiddish like, geriatric kind of way.

One of my favorite moments of the night was "the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...Angelina Jolie". I thought that was hilarious. The Kodak Theater jokes were incredibly stale. And, surprise, surprise, I thought Max von Sydow had the most moving clip of his category. That actually looks like quite a good performance.

Octavia Spencer's clip for The Help was certainly one of her best moments in that film. I'm really happy for her win and I thought her speech was very endearing. (And, god, yes, you were with one of [if not the] most handsome man in the room, Octavia. Tate Taylor is gorgeous [and gay!])

Meryl looked almost pissed off when they announced her as the winner. I think she was pretty fucking shocked (that dress, though...)

I got teary-eyed when I saw Pina come up as one of the documentary nominees as it was one of Damien's final films (and I have a text from him on his way to see it).

Mister Tee wrote:The In Memoriam sequence seemed EASILY the most classily done I can remember.

TCM's is always leagues better. Why can't they get whoever's doing it over there to help them? I thought the Oscar's sequence was lifeless. And that singing was not good.

I thought the show went smoothly with Billy Crystal a welcome antidote to Ricky Gervais and the tendancy of recent awards programs to turn these things into roasts rather than celebrations which psychologically diminishes the entire process.

For the first time since I can't remember when, I am happy with the winners in the top six categories. My first choices won Best Picture, Director and Actress and my second choices won in the other three acting categories.

This was a very good, unmemorable show. You can only dress these films up so much.

Billy Crystal started off pretty shaky with a very mediocre opening, but he got much better. His 14% income tax/Romney slam killed at my party even though it didn't go over great in the room. For the most part, the audience seemed to enjoy him. No matter how lame and tired his bits have become, I can't find much to complain about. His "what is the audience thinking?" bit was ripe with a anxious energy on his part as he looked back and forth nervously, almost as though he wasn't sure if people still cared about these jokes anymore. Then he got to Nick Nolte's boozey growl and he grew more confident. I don't want Billy Crystal to become a permanent host again, if only because he is starting to resemble one of the relatives he would always do impersonations of back in the day, but after three years of trying to fix the Oscars it was kind of fun to just watch a show that didn't have many kinks in it. I don't like what the necessarily means, but it was a relief of sorts.

The clips were a little too short. I love how they incorporated interviews into some of the nominated categories but not all. I wouldn't have minded it for all of them. I want them to spell out the differences between Sound Mixing and Editing, but the Writing Awards were very well produced.

A solid show and we haven't had one in a bit. My new favorite part of the show is becoming the montage of all the Best Picture nominees and how these editors manage to find thematic parallels between Midnight in Paris and War Horse. These films to some degree all bend to nostalgia, but this montage goes beyond that. It makes a case for these films that some flat out do not deserve. And I want more of that throughout the ceremony. If there was a problem with the show this year, it's a fundamental one that they've had for ages now and that is this theme of "Going to the Movies" being something to tangibly evoke. And that always comes off as condescending and fake. Cirque de Soleil doing an inscrutable homage to going to the movies! I liked the stars talking about their favorite movie experiences, but that's because they are talking about the movies themselves, not something abstract. And it produced the biggest laugh of the night for me:

Robert Downey, Jr.: "What is the magic of the movies? That sounds like a perfect question for Werner Herzog to overcomplicate."

I can't possibly scroll through all those threads at this time of night, so my overall take:

I'm not sure where I stand on Meryl Streep's win as a matter of cosmic Oscar justice, but I can say that, simply as a moment in this Oscar season, it rated close to a Halelujah. I was sitting there thinking, there had been surprises around the edges, pleasant (Dragon Tattoo editing) and un- (sob...cinematography), and The Artist had shown itself, like The KIng's Speech last year, to be not the full-on sweeper its most ardent fans imagined. But, in the top echelon, everything was going distressingly to form, and I was wondering if it was even necessary to watch the Oscars anymore, with the Oscar-industrial complex decreeing the consensus choice well ahead of time and apparently never being contradicted.

But then it was. Streep's win was the closest to a major surprise we've seen in several years, and it sent a jolt through our room. That she then got (and rated) such a thunderous ovation, and then delivered a wonderful speech, was icing on the cake. Her win made the evening.

Speeches in general, from the major winners were, I thought, way over par. Plummer's speech was quite glorious; Spencer not all that far behind. And who would have bet on her getting the evening's first standing ovation?

The night started with the disheartening Tree of Life cinematography loss, which eerily mirrored Lubezki's '06 loss: in each case, the winner was someone many of us would have happpily endorsed in a year where Lubezki wasn't doing something extraordinary. I think BJ pointed out some time ago that cinematography has been a uniquely disappointing category over the past decade or so; even years when something good wins, there's someone most of us think is just a bit better (as in Jesse James and There Will be Blood, or Man Who Wasn't There and Fellowship of the Ring). What's the last straightforward outstanfding choice they've made? I'd say The English Patient, but for those who don't like that film as I do, how far back do you go? Glory, maybe?

I know Billy Crystal gets alot of heat here, but I thought he mostly did a decent job (though I'll have to replay the tape to be sure).

The In Memoriam sequence seemed EASILY the most classily done I can remember.

Hugo's visual effects win means Tora Tora Tora's feat of beating a best picture nominee remains our last such case.

And The Help proves it's hard for a movie not really in the best picture discussion to win two acting Oscars.

More tomorrow, no doubt. Way past my bedtime.