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Random thoughts and observations on Oscar 97
Enjoy life, go to a movie — before it's too late
Clap hands for Oscar!
As the recent wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, there were rumblings of canceling Oscar 97, but AMPAS held firm despite the flames. The ceremony would proceed on March 2, come hell or no water.
Even before a fawning 10-minute Oz love fest foreshadowed doom for the latest Emerald City offshoot — Wicked scored a not-so-wicked 2 for 10 statuettes — the Academy wisely chose to play it safe and open with a “We Love L.A.” homage to the city they call home. (Hollywood is a neighborhood, not a city.) A follow-up show of appreciation, in which fire rescuers were allowed to deliver the punchlines, climaxed with one of Los Angeles’ finest dragging Joker 2. Bravo!
To Ariana Grande, the world is one giant lens/highly reflective surface, just begging for her to pose. Is she even human, or just the latest Disney advancement in AI? Clad in an architecture-defying study in cocktail-table peplum, she had me wondering how many merry after-partiers mistakenly left their empties on her outfit.
Remarkably, given the hoops Universal was forced to jump through in order to avoid a Wicked courtroom face-off with 20th Century Fox, copyright holder for the 1939 MGM original, the Academy showed no such royalty loyalties, throwing in performances of Over the Rainbow and The Wiz's Ease on Down the Road.
For one of the few times in history, Academy voters got it right by singling out Flow as Best Animated Feature of the year. At the end of Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ acceptance speech, you can hear plastic surgeon junkie Goldie Hawn whisper to fellow presenter Andrew Garfield, “Yeah, I'm going to try and see it.”
Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s acceptance speech for In the Shadow of the Cypress felt longer than the Best Animated Short. That wasn’t the only marathon. A person could have found himself in need of a shave and a shower by the time the industry's 230-minute love letter to itself ground to a close.
How many hours did June Squibb spend in a beauty parlor in preparation for last night’s appearance? She looked marvelous!
Why does the out-of-touch Academy think that viewers tune in for musical tributes? O’Brien’s self-proclaimed “time wasting” musical number was just that, and the bloated tribute to 007 themes did little more than welcome Amazon to the fold.
If Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fancy man-cum-reporter Brian Glenn had been on the red carpet, he would no doubt have called out Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard for disparaging the proceedings by wearing a baseball cap.
Whoop and Ope failed to mention that Quincy Jones never won a competitive Oscar. Friend Matt Wilson opined, “And if QJ had been there, he would’ve said it himself.” And kudos to Rob Martinez for the following: “Let’s do an Oscar tribute to Quincy Jones and use someone else’s song from a movie he adapted.”
Best cutaway of the night? If looks could kill, the cameraperson assigned to a visibly pissed Jeremy Strong would be toast.
I swore off late-night comedy not long after Letterman skipped from Late Night to Late Show, so my familiarity with Conan O'Brien is limited, but not unfavorable. Cutaways to John Lithgow's look of disappointment were a monologue highlight, but the musical sandworm from Dune 2 was a conceptual bust. Stopping the show to call out Adam Sandler’s day camp counselor accouterments proved an exemplar of the comic’s credo: a solid premise leads to nowhere.
For the most part, politics were’t welcome at this year’s soiree. The promise of Kamala never materialized, it took O’Brien almost three hours to get around to harpooning Trump. At least we can all sleep better at night knowing that Darryl Hannah is Team Zelenskyy.
With no horse in the race, Scorsese skipped the ceremony, his spectre surfacing briefly in a Rolex commercial.
The CinemaStreams commercial parody in which O’Brien assured clueless millennials that when it comes to cinema, bigger is indeed better, was one of the most inspired bits in Oscar history. As was Best Director Sean Baker’s impassioned reminder of the importance of theatrical exhibition. But is it all too little, too late? Sure as video killed the radio star, covid annihilated the movie business. What the hell took the Academy so long to get around to sounding a clarion call? Call me biased, but the biggest non-human casualty of covid was the multiplex. And it only gets worse. It’s barely March and already this year we’ve lost the Landmark Hillcrest and Reading Town Square. Don’t let an American art form die on your watch. Enjoy life. Go to a movie.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Random thoughts and observations on Oscar 97
Enjoy life, go to a movie — before it's too late
Random thoughts and observations on Oscar 97
Enjoy life, go to a movie — before it's too late
Clap hands for Oscar!
As the recent wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, there were rumblings of canceling Oscar 97, but AMPAS held firm despite the flames. The ceremony would proceed on March 2, come hell or no water.
Even before a fawning 10-minute Oz love fest foreshadowed doom for the latest Emerald City offshoot — Wicked scored a not-so-wicked 2 for 10 statuettes — the Academy wisely chose to play it safe and open with a “We Love L.A.” homage to the city they call home. (Hollywood is a neighborhood, not a city.) A follow-up show of appreciation, in which fire rescuers were allowed to deliver the punchlines, climaxed with one of Los Angeles’ finest dragging Joker 2. Bravo!
To Ariana Grande, the world is one giant lens/highly reflective surface, just begging for her to pose. Is she even human, or just the latest Disney advancement in AI? Clad in an architecture-defying study in cocktail-table peplum, she had me wondering how many merry after-partiers mistakenly left their empties on her outfit.
Remarkably, given the hoops Universal was forced to jump through in order to avoid a Wicked courtroom face-off with 20th Century Fox, copyright holder for the 1939 MGM original, the Academy showed no such royalty loyalties, throwing in performances of Over the Rainbow and The Wiz's Ease on Down the Road.
For one of the few times in history, Academy voters got it right by singling out Flow as Best Animated Feature of the year. At the end of Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ acceptance speech, you can hear plastic surgeon junkie Goldie Hawn whisper to fellow presenter Andrew Garfield, “Yeah, I'm going to try and see it.”
Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s acceptance speech for In the Shadow of the Cypress felt longer than the Best Animated Short. That wasn’t the only marathon. A person could have found himself in need of a shave and a shower by the time the industry's 230-minute love letter to itself ground to a close.
How many hours did June Squibb spend in a beauty parlor in preparation for last night’s appearance? She looked marvelous!
Why does the out-of-touch Academy think that viewers tune in for musical tributes? O’Brien’s self-proclaimed “time wasting” musical number was just that, and the bloated tribute to 007 themes did little more than welcome Amazon to the fold.
If Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fancy man-cum-reporter Brian Glenn had been on the red carpet, he would no doubt have called out Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard for disparaging the proceedings by wearing a baseball cap.
Whoop and Ope failed to mention that Quincy Jones never won a competitive Oscar. Friend Matt Wilson opined, “And if QJ had been there, he would’ve said it himself.” And kudos to Rob Martinez for the following: “Let’s do an Oscar tribute to Quincy Jones and use someone else’s song from a movie he adapted.”
Best cutaway of the night? If looks could kill, the cameraperson assigned to a visibly pissed Jeremy Strong would be toast.
I swore off late-night comedy not long after Letterman skipped from Late Night to Late Show, so my familiarity with Conan O'Brien is limited, but not unfavorable. Cutaways to John Lithgow's look of disappointment were a monologue highlight, but the musical sandworm from Dune 2 was a conceptual bust. Stopping the show to call out Adam Sandler’s day camp counselor accouterments proved an exemplar of the comic’s credo: a solid premise leads to nowhere.
For the most part, politics were’t welcome at this year’s soiree. The promise of Kamala never materialized, it took O’Brien almost three hours to get around to harpooning Trump. At least we can all sleep better at night knowing that Darryl Hannah is Team Zelenskyy.
With no horse in the race, Scorsese skipped the ceremony, his spectre surfacing briefly in a Rolex commercial.
The CinemaStreams commercial parody in which O’Brien assured clueless millennials that when it comes to cinema, bigger is indeed better, was one of the most inspired bits in Oscar history. As was Best Director Sean Baker’s impassioned reminder of the importance of theatrical exhibition. But is it all too little, too late? Sure as video killed the radio star, covid annihilated the movie business. What the hell took the Academy so long to get around to sounding a clarion call? Call me biased, but the biggest non-human casualty of covid was the multiplex. And it only gets worse. It’s barely March and already this year we’ve lost the Landmark Hillcrest and Reading Town Square. Don’t let an American art form die on your watch. Enjoy life. Go to a movie.
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