Like I said last year at this time, live-tweeting and going batshit-crazy with social media during the Oscars is exhausting in the best possible way. Had I simply watched the show without any "distractions" whatsoever, I would've been bored out of my mind.
Unlike her previous hosting gig, Ellen wasn't so bad this time around. She kept her opening monologue brief, and as spontaneous interventions go, that pizza delivery gag was inspired. The late Gene Siskel had a unique litmus test for movies, one where he asks, "Is the movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" The fact that actors eating pizza was more entertaining than most of what the telecast had to offer is a perfect, and I mean deadly accurate, example of this. As for the other gimmicks, yeah the selfie broke Twitter. Hardy-har-har. Sorry, but maybe because I'm a man, I generally don't find selfies funny or memorable, just irritating. I'd like Seth MacFarlane back, even though it will never happen because he's too offensive, or something like that.
Positive points? The In Memoriam segment for sure, which nearly brought me to tears, and, surprisingly enough, the speeches! The documentary winners and the Best Song winners sang and rhymed their way through acceptance speeches, and that's enough to jolt any bored viewer out of an award-worthy slumber. Lupita Nyong'o's gratitude and emotion felt real and unvarnished, shades of Halle Berry's win for Monster's Ball more than a decade ago. And McConaughey's proclamation of "all right all right all right" tops even that of Kevin Hart. All in all, while the grocery-list-of-thank-yous Syndrome hasn't completely dissipated, we saw a lot less of it than in previous years, and I pray it's only a matter of time before it's out the door for good.
My complaints are the same as usual. I don't care that the show's tone is unabashedly self-congratulatory. Its been that way for decades and just goes with the territory. But why perform the songs (including Pharrell's obnoxiously childish act) at an award show that should be about movies? Why waste time with random montages (this time a look back at animated films)? Who cares about the Shorts? Why can't trained professionals read a damn teleprompter properly? Ultimately, a lot of these gripes, as fun as they are to type up and let out, won't amount to so much as a drop in the ocean if the ratings don't reflect them.
Then there's the sheer, mind-blowing predictability of this year's installment. The NBA Playoffs may have to hand over the crown as Kings of Predictability after what I saw last night. Google "Oscar betting odds" and you'll find that all of the favorites won. Seriously. Every single one of them. My total was indeed an improvement over last year (17/21, or an eyelash under 81%), but considering that many fellow prognosticators set personal bests (including the great James Berardinelli, who got a perfect score), my performance relative to the field was about the same as before. At least 12 Years a Slave, my favorite movie of the bunch, took home Best Picture. And American Hustle, my least favorite of the nominees, walked away empty-handed.
Maybe next year we'll see some surprises. And a shorter show. It's a strange conundrum that most of us who love movies are forced into. We watch the Oscar telecast because it's too big to ignore. Then we gripe about the same things every time out and they take forever to change. But maybe it doesn't need to. Maybe it's the ultimate audience-participation show, where you can watch with one eye on the screen and the other on Twitter/Facebook. When tweeting about celebrities, are we promoting them or are we really promoting ourselves and our opinions, casting our lines for Likes, Comments, Favorites, and Retweets? Hey, I do it too. Perhaps that's the appeal of award shows in general nowadays.
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