Monday, February 28, 2011

Two Thumbs Down on the Oscar Telecast

The closing credits are rolling on the Oscar telecast.  I am underwhelmed, to say the least.  What a colossal snooze fest!

Ixnay on the ostshay, okay?  Franco has the personality of a sedated gerbil and Anne Hathaway is so damned adorable it’s sickening. Who yells “Woooo!!!!!” after each introduction? No Oscar host I’ve ever seen.  I say bring back the old school hosts.   Pronto!

Since all the money was on The King’s Speech, I was hoping for at least one or two upsets to spice up the telecast.  Not one time was there a surprised gasp from the audience.  Did I say gasp?  Hell, there was barely any applause, mostly due to lack of interest, I’d say.  I think I saw that madcap Roberto guy – the one who walked on the backs of the theater seats and jumped up and down a while when he won for Il Postino that year – nodding off in the fourth row.  

The one thing I could always count on for Oscar night entertainment in the past didn’t even happen tonight.  I didn’t see one Bork-worthy get up.  Even Helen Bonham Carter looked half-way put together…well, for her.  I never thought I’d live long enough to say this, but I miss Cher and her Bob Mackie nudie costumes.  Tonight there were only gorgeous, colorful and well-fitting dresses.  Well, I did wonder what milkmaid Cate Blanchett
CATE-BLANCHETT-OSCARS-2011
 Photo:  HuffPo
 
mugged to steal her dress.  The silly Ms. Hathaway did set a new land-speed record for costume and hair-style changes in one telecast, I suspect. 
 
What happened to all the shtick?  Remember Palance and his one-handed pushups?  How about Billy Crystal riding a horse to the microphone?  Oh, and remember this:  Uma, Oprah…Oprah, Uma?  The only thing that happened off-script tonight was the decidedly inelegant F-bomb lobbed by Best Supporting Actress winner Melissa Leo for The Fighter. (Which, by the way, I predicted in an earlier post)

There were moments in the production that left me totally confused.  No less than Celine Dion sauntered onto the stage with no introduction and started singing “Smile” (you know…when your heart is aching)  And because there were pictures of people who had died during the year flipping by on the screen over her left shoulder, no one applauded.  Awkward.   

The last dead person’s photo on the screen was Lena Horne.  Suddenly, Halle Berry is standing there in all her splendor reciting…no, make that reading…words to the effect that Ms. Horne had opened the doors of Hollywood so that people like her and Denzel and Jennifer Hudson and Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding, Jr. could win Oscars.  Well, okay, but…  Do you think they did that because of all the hoopla about there not being any actors of any color other than white among this year’s nominees? Awkward.

Surely, the Academy of Motion Pictures blah, blah, blah can do better than this.  Even I could have produced a show that bad.  Sheesh!

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