Mad Ramblings of a Movie Geek 02.25.09 The 81st Annual Academy Awards

Posted by Jordan Bruns on 02.25.2009

Now that the Oscars are behind us, what did I think of the show itself?




Welcome to this week's Mad Ramblings of a Movie Geek! Another Oscar ceremony has come and gone. It turned out to be just as predictable as most people thought it would, as the projected Slumdog Millionaire sweep has now come to fruition. It won eight awards total, one more than I predicted it would. I thought for sure The Dark Knight would take Best Sound Mixing, but we all know how that worked out. I'd consider that the only upset for Slumdog as it was pretty much expected to sweep. Speaking of which, I went 19 for 24 on my overall predictions, which is a 79 % success rate. However, on the major awards, I went 7 for 8, which is almost 90 %. Where did I go wrong on the major awards? I, like so many others, predicted sentimental favorite Mickey Rourke for Best Actor. It was no surprise that he didn't win, as most insiders were calling for Sean Penn to take home his second Oscar.





There is one major debate that remains: Would Heath Ledger have won Best Supporting Actor, or even been nominated, if he hadn't died? Well let's assume that he had lived and still got nominated alongside the same competition. Of course he still would have won. Michael Shannon was a dark horse candidate if ever there was one- his nomination was his win. Josh Brolin… some other year maybe, but not this time. Robert Downey, Jr.? Although his performance in Tropic Thunder was downright brilliant, he too is in a similar position with Michael Shannon: his nomination was victory enough. Ledger's only real competition was Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I just don't see this as having played out any other way. Besides, history has shown that dying is actually more likely to hurt your chances at winning. Just look at James Dean: two posthumous nominations, no wins. And we're talking about one of the most iconic actors to grace a screen. Heath Ledger won because he deserved to win, and in the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "that's all I have to say about that."





I know most of you will be tired of all the Oscar talk by the time this column goes online, but how could I spend all these weeks hyping up the awards and then not talk about the ceremony itself. This will be a little shorter than usual, since I had to until after the awards to begin preparing this column. Here are my mad ramblings on the 81st Annual Academy Awards.

My Mad Ramblings
First off, Producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark promised to keep this year's ceremony under three hours. I called "bullshit" the minute I heard that, and I was right. It was three and a half hours, which is pretty much the average length of the show these days. I've thought it over in my head many times and I've concluded that there is only one way to keep the Oscars under three hours: get rid of all the clip shows, song and dance numbers, and just give out the damn awards. Of course, this will never happen because it's the Oscars and they just have to have all that extra stuff to "entertain" people. Another way to cut down on the length would be to take some of the smaller-scale awards, like Animated Short and Live Action Short, and hand them out the night before or during commercial breaks instead of during the telecast. Every year they promise to make the Oscars short, they end up being just as long as ever.

Here's another thing that contributed to the producers' inability to avoid running over. They restructured the way the acting awards were presented this year. All the acting awards were preceded by the introduction of five of that category's previous winners, who then introduced one nominee, with the most recent recipient of the award announcing the winner. While it might have been fun for some Oscar buffs to see past winners like Christopher Walken, Shirley MacLaine, and Joel Grey, it took up entirely too much time. If they had stuck to the traditional format of having one presenter and showing clips of the nominated performances, they could have easily reduced the length of the ceremony by 20 minutes. We didn't need to hear Alan Arkin clamor on about the genius of Philip Seymour Hoffman when he couldn't even get his name right. Hey, Alan, it's Philip Seymour, not Seymour Philip.

Hugh Jackman tried his best to be a good host, but just couldn't pull it off. He told a few funny jokes, I'll give him that much, but he did too much singing and dancing. That might have worked for him at the Tonys, but not at the Oscars. We don't want to see Broadway, we want to see Hollywood. Then again, he also had the misfortune of being the first non-comedian to host in nearly a quarter of a century, so it's only natural for him to come under fire. Maybe history will be kinder to him, but for now… well, he shouldn't expect to be invited back.





Where was George Carlin during the "In Memory" segment? It's true he wasn't a big deal in the movie industry, yet neither was Richard Pryor but they mentioned him when he died.

I didn't have a completely negative view of the ceremony, though. There were some highlights as well. The Pineapple Express short by Judd Apatow felt like a strange hybrid of the Oscars and the MTV Movie Awards... which I happened to like. At least the Oscars are trying to appeal to a new crowd. The Joaquin Phoenix spoof with Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman was funny and a nice surprise, as I didn't expect them to go there. The Heath Ledger win was a really emotional moment- even Mickey Rourke got choked up. What else did I dig? Well, I don't care what anyone else thinks, I loved it when Sean Penn began his acceptance speech by saying "You commie, homo loving sons of guns!" His whole speech was a big "Fuck you" to all the Milk protesters and Proposition 8 supporters. The guy may be somewhat of a douche in real life, and some may decry him for pulling a Michael Moore and using his Oscar win to make a political statement, but I think bigots deserve to be called on their bigotry.





For the most part, though, I was disappointed with the ceremony. I'm all in favor of making changes, but some traditions shouldn't be broken. Hopefully next year they'll go back to the traditional showing of clips for the acting and Best Picture nominees. After all, a large portion of the viewers probably haven't seen all the nominated films, so seeing a clip of them during the Oscars might make someone out there say "Hey, I want to see that movie." The Oscars should be as much about selling the movies as they are about honoring them- take advantage of the fact that tens of millions of people watch this show every year.

Hands down I think this was one of the worst Oscar telecasts in recent memory. The producers tried a lot of new things and most of them fell flat. I've been a loyal viewer of the Oscars since I was 11 or 12 years old, but I think next year I might just record the show and watch it later so I can fast forward through all the bullshit.

That's it for this week's Mad Ramblings. Next week I'll be back with something totally non Oscar-related.

Until then…