My Thoughts on the Oscar Telecast

Like every Oscar blogger in the country, I will now share my thoughts on last night's lively and (in my opinion) quite excellent Oscar telecast.

The Good

Ellen Degeneres

It could not be easy for Ellen to sell a show where the biggest surprise was in the Animated Short category.  However, I feel like she aced the show, particularly the tough in-between presenters bits.  The pizza joke, which at first seemed like a nervous hypothetical, actually landed with aplomb when she brought out actual pizza (anyone know if the pizza guy was an actual pizza guy or an actor who clearly should have had a stack of head shots to go with every slice?).  Even better was the tweet that broke Twitter (I was one of the more than two million people who did my Oscar civic duty)-a photo that is about as fun as can be (and don't you love the chutzpah of Lupita Nyong'o's brother, not only jumping into the sea of A-listers, but in front of Angelina Jolie no less).  After a few year's of rocky hosts (Alec/Steve, Franco/Hathaway, and MacFarlane), Ellen was a perfect choice to cater both to those in the room and at home.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out my single favorite moment of the night though-a deceptively simple one.  Ellen proved that getting the A-listers in the audience (there's never a shortage of them) in on the action is brilliant (we watch the Oscars to see the movie stars, so let's bring them out), and Pharrell Williams in an otherwise excellent performance rocked my world by getting Lupita Nyong'o, Meryl Streep, and Amy Adams dancing in the audience.  I don't even care if all of these bits were rehearsed-they were a rousing good time.

And while I have a few caveats (below), can I say how thankful I am that after last year's "pick and choose" strategy (where only the very famous Adele, Norah Jones, and the cast of Les Miserables got to perform their nominated songs) that all four of the nominated songs (it should have been five...still not feeling right about that revoked nomination, introduction-necessary Cheryl Boone Isaacs) got to be performed?

There are a few other things I could get to, but I also want to commend the producers for not cutting anyone off, not even the tech categories.  I felt like in a couple of instances it felt like a few tech winners were going to be cut off, but overall, I thought that there was great restraint there, and it paid off-emotional moments like Lupita's call for dreamers and Matthew's clearly moving (and meandering) moment-in-the-sun and Cate Blanchett's (very true) call to arms for makers of films about women are what the Oscars are made for, and I think we can all agree were highlights in a night with a lot of them.

The Middling

Bette Midler

I know that ultimately there isn't a lot of control over this one with everyone and their mother creating their own awards show, but the dearth of surprises deprived us of a show capper like Adrien Brody kissing Halle Berry or Anna Paquin hyperventilating or the giant question mark hanging over the 2007 Supporting Actress race.  The Academy needs to figure out a way around that, because when I can get 21 out of 24 right in a year with a pretty spread-out field of winners (and the final three were all my second places), there's a problem that needs to be solved.

I know that everyone is going to be starting their "Give Leo an Oscar!" campaigns right  now, but we have the OVP (I'm eight films short...nine if I decide to include Alone Yet Not Alone for the 2013 OVP) and so we'll get to that probably in the next month or so, and so I'm not going to get into who deserved and didn't deserve their Oscars...with one exception below.  But I do want to say that even when I knew everyone was going to win, all four of the actors at least proved that they could balance surprise with modesty (they are all Oscar-winning actors, after all).

And before we head into the bad (there wasn't a lot of middle ground this year-about 70% good, 25% bad, and 5% in-between), can we talk about the In Memoriam and Best Picture nominee presentations?  The In Memoriam is a necessary part of the night, but is it really necessary to have the song performance instead of just the fade-to-black at the end?  It has never been a strong addition to the show, and when Bette Midler, Celine Dion, and Barbra Streisand singing cannot add to your ceremony, it's time to start blaming the segment and not the players.

The Best Picture nominees are trickier-I know that with nine, there's a lot more of a struggle to get people connected to each picture, but short of moving back to five nominees (...still a good idea, Academy), you need to find a way to work this-perhaps you should start each return-from-the-commercial with a few clips for the audience at home of the nominated Best Pictures?  Something that seems both respectful to all nominees without feeling obligatory (and anyone else still grimacing at the way that Goldie Hawn jumped from excited to somber to excited again during her presentation?).

And speaking of Best Picture and presentations, while Will Smith was a first-timer to the honor and so bravo to the Oscars, he probably wouldn't have crossed a top ten of the list of actors who should get the honor...you had Goldie Hawn right there and she's never done it, is all I am saying.

The Bad

Angela Lansbury

Since we're close enough to continue the In Memoriam segway, I'm just going to get this one off of my chest-a lot of people work in the entertainment industry.  A lot.  And Each year the Oscars forget some very important filmmaker or actor and the entire industry acts with utter outrage.  It happens every year, without fail.  It would probably behoove the Academy to have some sort of rule surrounding this and make it very public that they'll be handling it that way.  Perhaps having only AMPAS members and Oscar nominees/winners/hosts?  That seems to be a pretty fair way to handle such a situation.  Of course, in that case a person like Paul Walker could very well get cut, which doesn't seem right, so this is clearly an imperfect science.  Give me a membership to the body, AMPAS, and I'll shoot out some more ideas.

However, I don't want to quite blame AMPAS on this year's uproar.  With the exception of Alain Resnais, who died on Saturday and the Academy can be forgiven for skipping him (and should and likely will probably put him in next year's telecast), the names coming up do not seem like big misses.  Cory Monteith, Dennis Farina, Jonathan Winters, Jean Stapleton, and Lee Thompson Young were principally television, not film actors.  The Academy can be forgiven for missing these people since they were not large parts of their industry.

I also just in general want to put in a complaint regarding the internet reaction-could you be any more predictable?  I feel like regardless of what happened during the show, websites were going to complain about Ellen not having enough teeth in her monologue, U2 was going to "totally rock," the show would be "too long," and we'd have the same sort of mentality about how "I'm never watching the Oscars again."  People-if you complain regardless of the quality of the show (and there's little argument that this show had a different vibe from Seth MacFarlane, who had a different vibe than Billy Crystal), your complaints become less valid.

And at least make the complaints consistent-when no host will satisfy you (Tina and Amy can't do everything, people), that's a problem on you.  However, the Governors Awards still are a wildly inappropriate way to cut the show down in time-depriving us of our moment with Angela Lansbury or Steve Martin or Angelina Jolie-this is just a bad idea and bad for the emotional thrust of your television program.  I'll say it every single year until they find a better way to handle the situation, but moments like Charlie Chaplin's standing ovation or Kirk Douglas's tear-soaked acceptance speech or even the "who stood, who didn't?" moment for Elia Kazan are iconic moments in the Oscar pantheon, and you're cutting them when you don't give major motion picture figures their moment in the sun.  Cut some of the damn montages and gives us more movie legends!

Finally, though I said above that I wasn't going to complain about the winners, I will say who is the person who thought Helium was a better movie than Just Before Losing Everything?  I have had very few reactions as tense and involved as I did to that thirty-minute French film, and I almost fell asleep during Helium.  Again, just saying.

The Ugly

Idina Menzel

I still cannot get over the fact that John Travolta mispronounced Idina Menzel's name.  You've been acting for over forty years, have largely been a champion of the musical, and yet you mispronounce the name of the very famous Tony winner you're introducing?  You have like six lines-how is this remotely possible?  If you need your glasses, just use them.  This is unacceptable, and clearly shook up Menzel right before she sang.  Travolta should not be allowed back on the telecast until he makes a film as good as Pulp Fiction again.

And those are my thoughts-what were yours?  What did you love/hate about the Oscars last night?  Share in the comments!