2009 Academy Awards

It's a bit of a stretch but you know what, it makes sense for me to do a write-up of the Oscars on here so here it goes. This is probably going to be all over the place so I will at least try to divide all of my thoughts up into categories.

Host

Hugh Jackman was a bit of a strange choice for a host. I was curious to see how he was going to do. Well, even after watching the ceremony I can't really say for sure. The opening was quite good, I especially enjoyed The Reader musical part. It looked like Hugh was having fun and Wolverine can sing and dance like nobody's business. He told a few decent jokes, although I have no idea what he said to Brad and Angelina and I don't think anyone else did either.

The problem is that after the opening, he really had nothing to do. He would come out and say a few sentences and then take off again. I don't even think he told another joke for the rest of the show. He had another musical number which I will admit was pretty painful. It was long and completely unneeded. Then he came back at the end to say good night and that was the end of it all. So I guess he did fine, but he was in the show for maybe 20 minutes tops.

Presenters

Tina Fey and Steve Martin were definitely the highlight for me. They had several good jokes and Martin had both of the night's best lines. Ben Stiller was another highlight, doing a great impersonation of the new fucked up version of Joaquin Phoenix. I don't know if it counts as a presenter really, but the new short film based on the Pineapple Express characters was hilarious. 

I wasn't a huge fan of how they presented the acting awards and I think people are going to be very divided on this. I miss the clips. It really gave you an idea of the performance, especially if you haven't seen the movie. I liked seeing all these great actors on stage to do the intros, but it really boiled down to "you're so great" just said in different ways. The intro for Best Actress just went on...and on....and on. Oh and Bill Maher came out to take a shot at religion, which seemed a little petty and out of place, but the man must have known it would get people talking so some credit has to go to him.

Many of the presenters were out there for a long time too. Will Smith gave out 4 awards, and most other presenters gave out at least 2. Overall there were some funny moments, but I really hope they go back to the clips before the actor categories next year.

Presentation of the Show

Whoever the director of this show was better be being brutally beaten (alliteration for the win!!!) with an Oscar as we speak...or type. Mostly because of the Memorium section. First off I didn't like the live song. There's no denying Queen Latifah can sing, but this felt kind of pointless. What made it worse is the camera never stayed still. It was swooping around and zooming out and you could never clearly see the actual screen with the people on it. I missed half of who passed away because of the fucking camera being an asshole. This was terrible and unforgivable. Just show us a screen with some music playing over it, don't fancy up the In Memorium.

Speaking of the memorials, where was George Carlin? or Don Lafontaine for that matter? I mean Don only did the voiceover for every movie trailer ever? Did he really not deserve to be in there? I also think it's time they make the crowd stay silent during this section. The fact that the bigger names get more applause is just kind of cruel. Although this year was strange because one of the bigger names, Charleton Heston, got virtually no applause at all. Sure many people didn't agree with his politics, but you can't deny he was a solid actor. For shame!

That section of the show was my biggest complaint, but I had many other problems. For example, why didn't we get to hear the original songs in their complete form? We weren't even told what songs we were listening to. It's bad enough they only had 3 song nominees (leaving out great ones like Huey Lewis and Bruce Springsteen) but to not even play them? We get 20 minutes of Hugh Jackman singing but not the actual nominees? It doesn't make any sense!

There was just too much filler (which is always a problem) with the songs and the pointless genre montages. The show needed to be tighter, but then you can say that about every Oscar ceremony. Plus like I said the Memorial section was so poorly done it made me physically angry.

Nominees/Winners

The best word to describe this is 'safe'. This year the Academy had the chance to take some risks and make some ballsy-ish movies, but they didn't. This began with Dark Knight not being nominated, which didn't upset me as much as it did many others but still. Then Sean Penn wins instead of Mickey Rourke. SAFE! Sean Penn was great in Milk, but Mickey's performance was superior and he earned that Oscar. Sean Penn will be nominated again, but Rourke...probably not. Were they afraid of what Mickey would say? Afraid he might actually liven this fucking thing up?! At least Penn still gave a solid speech, one that really seems to have pissed off a lot of homophobes on the Internet. 

Aside from Penn, there was nothing that even came close to being an upset, except maybe the Foreign Language film award. As expected Slumdog just won everything, even awards I feel it really didn't deserve. The whole thing just felt very procedural, like you were just waiting for Slumdog to win and then move on. There was no real suspense or drama to the whole thing.

While there were a few good speeches, especially Heath's family coming up to accept his award, none really stood out as being exceptional. They were the usual thank yous and so on. I would say Penn and the Ledger's were the two best of the evening.

Overall Thoughts

As I'm sure you've already guessed, I was very let down by this years Academy Awards ceremony. The host was virtually ignored, the directing was high school drama class bad, the filler was more pointless than usual, and the whole thing felt very safe and boring. Aside from a few good jokes and moments, the 3 1/2 hours was simply not very entertaining.

5.5/10