Sunday, March 05, 2006

Oscars: A night of thrills and chills

Oh the joy that is the Oscars. It is a time that the art world and the commercial world collide in a politically charged event that is more about the P.R. and promotions that anything. At least in sports you cannot control for the most part who will win. The Oscar is decided by a group of 1000's of voters that controls the fate of who will speak on a certain role or job in their creation of a film. That is about it. All of the films that were nominated were deserving and promoted just by the fact that they were nominated. This is something that I truly believe in my heart and soul.

Although it had been suggested by a friend to do a live blog of the happenings tonight. I however got this too late. I would of liked to do a live recap of what the highlights and pitfalls of the event were when they happened. Sometimes, it is best left to what resignates with you after the fact.

I must first throw a shout out to the comedic styling of John Stewart. Chris Rock did have a great hosting year in 2005, but you topped his attempt at host. John Stewart and his team of great satirists, poked fun at this sometimes stuffy gala event. I applaud your use of the slanderous campaign for the Best Supporting Actress category and Best Sound Editing (?). It eased the monotony of ceremony, which needs to happen from time to time.

I would say that I saw a majority of the films that were nominated this evening, save Memoirs of a Geisha, Hustle and Flow, June Bug, Pride & Prejudice, and Transamerica. Most of the winners of these awards I give my endorsement to. I even thought that Crash was highly deserving of the Best Picture Oscar. Well done! Brokeback had the momentum going into the 3rd quarter, but the last minute push that DVD sales sometimes have propelled Crash into movie history. Silence of the Lambs is a great example of what happened tonight in the Best Picture race. It too was an early release for and Oscar contender, in fact, around the same time as Crash came out. They were both in the late April and early May release.

KING KONG! KING KONG! It was only nominated for a handful of awards, four to be exact. Winning three is a damn good record. Even though the winnings of King Kong were small in comparison to the winners of the major categories, I am happy for this film. King Kong is a remake, but it was an excellent and powerfully composed film. I tip my hat in your direction Peter Jackson and all of your co-workers and staff. Bar-none, Kong was exactly what a movie should be: entertaining. Sometimes, the Oscars are built up too much into what movie had the greatest message. It needn't be that all of the time, movies need to fill the basic requirement of entertainment.

On a different note, the best additive for this years Oscar is the retro-respect. There were quite a few montages towards great actors and films in general. By far, the film-noir was the best. I will go out on a limb and say that film noir is one of my favorite genres of film. It is something that was created out of a dark and fearful portion of history, the Cold War. They did a recap of this genre in approximately 3-4 minutes, which is enough to only brush over it; but for the time being, it was sufficient.

I am a little disappointed with the actual structure of the show. It starts off strong with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but it starts to fall after that. After a good 40 minutes of uninteresting awards, they reveal the Best Supporting Actress category. It isn't until the last 40 minutes of the show that you get to see any real awards. I am sorry if I insulted these awards, but the technical awards are the filler. All peope really care about in this race are the Actors and Actresses, the Director, Screenwritters, and the Best Picture. The rest is a rather drull experience. You will notice that the Academy as stooped a little in the past few years, 2002's best song was 'Lose Yourself' by Eminem and this year happens to be 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp' by Three Six Mafia. Not that there is anything wrong with hip-hop, it just seems to be a little forced at this time. Why was there only three nominees for this years Best Orginal Song nominations? There were a handful of great songs to come out of Corpse Bride, yet none of them were nominated this year.

Fashion is always the forerunner of this night. It is something that will never cease to be a topic of discussion at this event. I will say that I am not picky with most of the choices. In fact, I really don't care about it, except for whatever the fuck Theron was wearing. That bow was huge. It was down-right distracting. I couldn't stop staring at it. Dear God it was like she took Helana's giant bow from DOA4. It was like the size of her head! Unfortunately, there wasn't a dress like a couple years ago with J-Lo. The split dress was amazing. It was if you could reach out and touch her breasts. It was almost painful. Tape had to be her best friend and my worst enemy that night.

All in all this was a good night. Crash was a pleasent surprise. That proved that you can be released 10 months before the Oscars and still be noted and rewarded for it. My favorite film for the year Kong walked away with three statuettes, not to mention the various other roles that were very deserving: Clooney, Brokeback soundtrack, Witherspoon's Carter, Hoffman's Capote, and Weistz's performance to name a few. I was glad that I was able to predict a number of them, but also pleased that I couldn't predict all of them.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dude, I was sooo bummed that I missed the Oscars! I think that was one of the nights that Mikaela and I were stuck in a creepy old woman's home.

But I'm thrilled that you got to see your beloved awards show... did you manage to watch it back at school like you had planned... or did you brave the weird looks from your parents!?

3/12/2006 9:54 PM  

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