By D. W. O'Dell
Some things are reliable - you can always count on Republican presidents to increase the deficit, the Detroit Lions to lose, and The Academy Awards telecasts to be bloated and overly-long. This year’s Oscar telecast proved the rule. Except . . . I kinda liked it.
Let’s dispatch the negative first. The show ran 30 minutes over, and even if it had come in on time it still would have been 30 minutes too long. Mostly that is due to the insistence by the Academy that the “minor” awards (e.g. short films, sound mixing, etc.) will never be relegated to a separate awards ceremony, as the Tonys now do. It’s hard to speed things up when a bunch of irate sound editors demand their 45 seconds in the spotlight.
The show could have also trimmed the “salute to musicals” featuring Hugh Jackman and Beyonce. It was well done, Jackman was wonderful, Beyonce looked great, and Baz Lurhman did a terrific job on the production. But WTF? Were those all songs from films? I thought I recognized some older standards in the mix, but the others... In any event, it was meaningless filler.
Believe it or not, that’s it for my griping (mostly). If I can express my disapproval in only two short paragraphs, you have done your job well.
Let’s start the praise by singling out Hugh Jackman as host. Less snarky than either Jon Stewart or Ellen DeGeneres, but still with a devil-may-care gleam in his eye, Jackman exuded easy charm and elegance. His musical talents were well used in the opening “low-budget” production number, with a very able assist from a game Anne Hathaway (it probably helped her to know that she had NO chance of beating out Kate Winslet). Sign Jackman up to host the 2010 Oscars NOW.
Perhaps the biggest departure from tradition was the invention of “panels” of ex-winners to speak directly to the acting nominees. While time-consuming and sort of cheesy, it was a far less impersonal presentation than the standard idiot banter between two presenters who were just there to hawk their own movie. I only wish that Adrian Brody and Cuba Gooding Jr. had passed along some advice to the nominees on how not to screw up your post-Oscar career.
I also liked the video “yearbooks” concept, which brought entertaining but non-Oscar worthy films to the show. The Academy usually includes montages from film history, but the Oscar show is supposed to be about the films from the preceding year. The montages were a tad frenetic, making it difficult to recognize all the actors or movies, but I thought throwing a bone to non-nominated romances, comedies and action films was a deserving use of time. That being said, Space Chimps in the animation sequence? Come on.
I loved the fact they presented the technical awards in the sequence they occurred in the film production process: script first, then set/costume design, lastly post-production editing. It put the categories in a context that educated the viewers. The method used for the screenplay nominees was especially clever, with presenters Tina Fey and Steve Martin reading the non-dialog while showing the sequence. Oh, memo to Tina Fey: you are gorgeous, smart and funny - marry me!
There were other “time-wasters” that I enjoyed, notably the Pineapple Express bit, especially when James Franco and Seth Rogan watched James Franco kiss Sean Penn in Milk. And bringing in a twice Oscar awarded DP to the bit? Genius! There was also an excellent decision to show clips from the Best Picture nominees edited together with similar clips from previous winners (although, again, the editing was a bit too choppy).
Bottom line, I approve of almost every tweak to the show’s format. But what of the awards themselves? As usual, there were few surprises. The only major upset was Sean Penn beating out Mickey Rourke, but I predicted that. Penn is a respected workmanlike actor, while Rourke just got lucky with the right role at the right time of his life. Yeah, Penn won before for Mystic River, but a) no one remembers that and b) that award was mainly an apology for the Academy choosing Return of the King over Mystic River for Best Picture.
Penelope Cruz became, I believe, the sixth winner from a Woody Allen film (Dianne Wiest twice for Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters; Michael Caine for Hannah and Her Sisters; Diane Keaton for Annie Hall; Mira Sorvino for Mighty Aphrodite, and now Cruz). In the usual “sweep or else” mentality Slumdogwon in nearly every category it was nominated in, losing only to itself in the Best Song category and Sound Editing (you know, I walked out of Slumdog Millionaire complaining about the lousy sound editing). His win may have been inevitable, but the acceptance speech by Heath Ledger’s family was moving and upbeat.
So, kudos all around to the 2009 Oscar presentations. Who knows, maybe the show was so good, it’ll win an Emmy! And Tina, seriously, call me!
