Oscar Reactions

Another Oscar night has come and gone. This one was quite the snowy one up here in Maine, but the fam still had a great time, and the party was plenty swanky. TRC stayed up the whole night, which I suppose means the show must have been at least somewhat interesting, although he assured me he was much more interested in the commercials. Apparently those zombie unicorn commercials were aimed squarely at the 8 year old audience, which must mean Samsung is playing the *really* long game, abandoning hope of winning over today’s buyers in hopes of stealing the next generation right out from everyone.

The show itself was . . . a mixed bag. Some things I enjoyed quite a bit. Goldfinger, the In Memoriam piece was better than usual–and I really liked how it wasn’t a show that was dominated by one movie. That’s always nice. Seth MacFarlane as a host was less than impressive. I found his jokes hit or miss, his musical numbers/comedy routines mostly miss, but he wasn’t as awful as I worried he would be. (There’s your lesson, folks: manage expectations.)

The James Bond tribute was one of the lamest tributes I can recall. Yes, kudos for the Goldfinger number, but the montage? Awful. And how do you really celebrate James Bond without a single James Bond?

I was also interested to see how much emphasis they placed on music this time around. While I enjoyed it, I can’t help but think that the TV audience as a whole . . . didn’t. Why pick MacFarlane as the host for the Musical Oscars? That seems like a study in contrasts. And are the Tonys really doing so well, Nielsens-wise, that the Oscars have decided to try to steal their thunder? Again–I enjoyed it, but not all in my Oscar party did.

But really, when you get down to it, the Oscars is about celebrating movies, and I’m all for that. It was an entertaining way to spend an evening. And as for my picks, I did the best I’ve done in a long long time. 18 out of 24. Which likely goes to show that the show was less than surprising from an awards standpoint. But again, the awards got scattered around, so yay for that. The thank you speeches were also blessedly brief, for the most part. (Honestly. What person out there is a big enough jerk who would get offended if they weren’t mentioned by name in an Oscar thank you? And yet everyone seems so terrified that they’ll forget someone.) I won the honorary Oscar hat, although I don’t have time to post the pic at the moment. Look to Facebook soon . . .

Unfortunately, I still haven’t seen the majority of the movies. I see a lot of films, but I don’t get to the theater nearly as often as I’d like. So I guess I’ll be getting my money’s worth from Netflix in the month or so to come. I look forward to it. This seems like a very good crop of movies this year.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours? To read even better analysis, do check out my agent’s liveblog of the event. (UPDATE: I put the wrong link in. Sorry!) I always enjoy his responses, usually even more than I enjoy the show. Great job, once again, Joshua!