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OT: The 2021 Oscar Ceremony for 2020 Oscars -- From a Psycho Viewpoint

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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(Another thread on the 2021 Oscar ceremony for 2020 Oscars was up to 102 and "squeezing down, so I have started another one here. Marked OT and with Psycho references so.. its "clear.")

I have taken the liberty of moving swanstep's comments here from the other thread.

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swanstep wrote:

OK, so The Oscars are here. I can't watch it live apart from the odd moment or two but I have noticed an alarming lack of actual film clips being shown, and all original song performances were punted to a pre-show...so this show is a lot of *chat*. Uh-oh. Regina King looked *gorgeous* opening the show. Art deco train station looked great. But if they're not going to show the movie goods this year and instead insist on 'telling us nominee stories' for hours and having super-long winner speeches then this Oscars (By Soderbergh!) is going to end up truly hated

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Its about a week after the 2021 Oscar TV show for 2020 films, and by and large "it faded out fast." .though we got the information that its ratings "plummeted to a new low and sank below 10 million people for the first time." (A day or so later, reports are that it exactly rose about 10 million...but still, abysmal.)

As for Soderbergh, predictive reviews were that the show might be as stylish as his "Ocean's Eleven" or as bizarre as some of his experimental films(evidently, the latter.)

Among the really bad choices, indeed -- and revealed early -- was the rather insane decision to let acceptance speeches run even LONGER than usual, with no orchestra in place to "play the speaker off." Truly bizarre. Modernly, for the most part, the long speeches are the worst part of the show -- the thing we viewers "put up with' in knowledge that the winners -- especially the "obscure" winners, may never get the chance to speak like this(to spouses, family, friends "the world" again.) But this....overlong speeches from people we often didn't know.

Still it makes you yearn for William Holden's Best Actor acceptance speech("Thank you very much") or Alfred Hitchcock's on his Thalberg award("Thank you very much indeed.")

Or Lee Marvin's funny speech when he won for the comedy Western Cat Ballou and dedicated half of his Oscar to his drunken horse co-star.

Or Walter Matthau -- in broken arm sling and bruised face -- deadpanning "As I was thinking as I was falling off my bicycle" (which really happened).

Or perhaps --on the distaff side -- a pregnant Eva Marie Saint saying "I think I'll have the baby right here." Or Ruth Gordon(at an advanced age) saying something like "I can't tell ya how encourgin' a thing like this is. I made my first movie in 1915."

No, for the most part, wit, brevity and a sense of entertainment were missing from these long, long, LONG speeches (some of which were unscripted and revealed the inability of the speakers to talk coherently) ..and I figure some of the "tanked ratings" came from people turning off the show once it was clear the speeches would take over.

A few articles were written almost out of obligation to "say something for clicks": "Is this the end of the Oscars?"(no.) "Is this the end of awards shows?" (no.)

I'll try here in response to swanstep to say a couple of "different" things. My two cents.

What interests me about the "less than ten million" ratings is that it means millions of people chose not to watch the Oscars at all, for the first time evidently. This means they were discerning enough to know -- without sampling the overlong speeches and the unknown people making many of them -- that this show was, in essence, a lie.

They knew that 2020 didn't have movies or movie-going, or theaters in operation. They knew that the summer movie season -- usually packed week to week with Marvel movies and other blockbusters(Top Gun II was on deck but mothballed)...didn't happen. I believe that the 2020 summer movie season consisted of "Tenet" and "Unhinged." And that's all. Empty theaters the rest of the time.

It is very possible given how the Oscars work these days that the same "little-seen prestige movies " WOULD have been nominated as we got -- but without a summer movie season and a spring movie season to give us a whole year -- there was no context. (Actually, I think Promising Young Woman, originally planned as an April release , wasn't originally envisioned by its makers as Oscar bait -- it ended up in December as Oscar bait "by default.")

So potential viewers made their choice without even turning on ABC : the 2020 Oscars were a lie, a fake, a sham...and they weren't having it.

We're well into 2021 and its clear that movies aren't back yet. Indeed, the Oscars allowed 2 months of 2021 to "count" for 2020 releases. So it will take until 2023 and the 2022 Oscars for a "regular movie season" to reappear that gives context to the Oscars.

Will the ratings go back up from 10 million? Likely so. There will be enough movies to go see EVENTUALLY. (I'm guessing 2022; this year is already crippled.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT

...the ratings can go up from 10 million to say 20 million once the movies are back; the ratings could go sky high if a movie of the blockbuster size of Titanic or Lord of the Rings gets nominated again. The modern Oscars are flexible that way-- nominate a big movie every one has seen, they tune in.

But the 'default" position is: small films, indie films, often with good unknown actors. And that seems to be the way Hollywood wants it.

The Oscar nominations "follow the critics" these days. Gone are the days when the Academy members could see their way clear to at least nominate "Love Story" or "Airport"(which won an Oscar for Helen Hayes) or The Towering Inferno(which is both a salute to major movie stars AND a pretty good movie, at least in the Steve McQueen scenes.)

Consequently, no embarrassing movies get nominated. They have critical approval if not public approval. And the folks making a billion dollars off of Marvel movies are fine with that -- let the Oscars reign as a little "prestige side operation" to the REAL making of audience movies.

Which has meant this (for women at least.) A unknown actress like Brie Larsen can win for the little seen "Room" (which she got paid little to do) and BOOM...she's cast as Captain Marvel -- getting a "superstardom" not really earned at the box office. See also: Halle Berry(Oscar for little movie...cast as Catwoman) or Charlize Thereon(Oscar for little movie..cast as Aeon Flux.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT

One gimmick of the Oscar show in recent years is to have REAL bankable movie stars show up as presenters to give awards to the unknowns who are nominated. (Hopes being that the unknowns will BECOME real movie stars.)

The real movie stars have actually stayed away from the Oscars in recent years -- unless nominated. And at this 2020 bash, they REALLY stayed away. As the camera kept sweeping the near-empty(but elegant) Union Station, one noticed the sheer absence of known stars. They are lucky that Brad Pitt won last year(for Supporting Actor) so pretty much had to show up. Harrison Ford seemed to be there to fill the hallowed "old time star" slot. But that was about it. We had one long segment about COVID and the Hollywood Home(where so many of our Hollywood people end up who AREN'T rich) anchored by "movie star" Bryan Cranston(?) And Don Cheadle is always good to see.

Renee Zellwegger won last year for playing Judy Garland; she showed up, but alas it was clear that she hasn't really held on to stardom. Joaquin Phoenix dutifully came out at the end, rather subdued and respectful(but was he ever seen sitting in the audience?). I thought THIS was funny: we ended up with two of the nuttiest nutters in movies -- Frances McDormand with her abstract speeches , and Phoenix, with his drugged-out air, back-to-back at the end of the show, a reminder that modern stars aren't like the rest of us...let alone like William Holden(an alcoholic, yes, but otherwise a regular guy, I've read).

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

(On McDormand -- her wolf's howl on the Best Picture win for Nomadland was funny, but her speech about "we should do karaoke" upon winning her third Best Actress award seemed so un-thought out, incoherent and off the cuff that I thought: "This is the Oscars?")

Speaking of Nomadland...the lowest grossing film ever to win a Best Picture Oscar. Rather fits the lowest rated Oscars, yes? Its made about 3 million....Joaquin Phoenix's "Joker" made one BILLION worldwide (which reminds me, is Joaquin Phoenix a bankable star?)

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Speaking of bankable stars. In the Psycho year of 1960 at the Oscars. Best Actress went to Liz Taylor and Best Actor went to Burt Lancaster. THEY were bankable stars(especially Liz.) The Oscars used to be that way a lot, our major movie stars were allowed to win with perhaps a little "give" for their actual acting ability. (Liz wasn't that good in her 1960 winner Butterfield 8, but WOULD justify her 1966 win for Virginia Woolf.)

That was 1960. Two years alter, Gregory Peck won Best Actor for the beloved "To Kill a Mockingbird." And at the end of the 60's in 1969, John Wayne actually won(and quite deservedly) for playing what Wayne called "an actual character" in True Grit after a decade of profitable formula programmers(and a few bona fide classics before then).

Bankable stars can still win Oscars. I think of Julia Roberts(for Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich) but hell, that was 20 years ago. But anyway.....there weren't many stars at this event..no Tom Cruise, no Tom Hanks(but aren't those former superstars kind of tarnished now -- with Cruise on a Mission Impossible lifeline?) Had Top Gun II been a 2020 hit, perhaps Cruise would have shown as a presenter. But that would have been for a REAL Oscar show.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

No Julia Roberts. No Sandra Bullock. No J-Law. No Leo. No "old timers" like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. No Jack Nicholson(he's past 80 and very overweight...never to be seen at the Oscars again?) No Dustin Hoffman(banned from public appearances via MeToo revenge.) No Pacino and DeNiro(but they came last year with The Irishman.) No Meryl Streep. Which reminds me...do we HAVE many bankable stars of recent vintage? J-Law, kinda sorta. Dwayne Johnson/The Rock (whose Disney ride flick Jungle Cruise also disappeared from the summer.)

Famous directors were in short supply. Was Christopher Nolan even there for "Tenet"? No Scorsese. No QT. No Spike Lee. And Aaron Sorkin propped up in the front looking kind of embarrassed to be surrounded by so few other people.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

swanstep wrote:

The key joke about this Oscars is going to be that nobody much had seen a lot of these films so it was no time to start showing (bits of) them at the Awards show!

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Yes. Very odd. The bromide "the Oscars go nowadays to movies nobody sees"(said by James "Titanic" Cameron among others) is a truism for the most part....you'd think we could/should see some clips to tell us why they were nominated. But this: I can honestly say that the clip for Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman actually made me nauseous. THAT's a new one at the Oscars.

Also in the mix this year in a big way: so many of these movies were available on streaming more than at theaters. I take it that Nomadland' paltry 3 million take doesn't accommodate all the folks who have watched it on Hulu. But it was rather "Spielberg's revenge." He says that streaming movies shouldn't get Oscars(even if put in a theater for a week), they should get Emmies. Nobody watched the "streaming Oscars."

But I will say this: the Oscars do NOT go to movies that "nobody sees." Swanstep pretty diligently watches all of the nominees, each year. As do many others(10 million, at least.) I notice that, I can't do it myself and I realize that the Oscars can and DO exist for the diligent fan base who has an interest in "good movies, made well, with fine performances." Maybe some Marvel movies have that quality, but in the meantime...the Oscars will "carry on for quality" with small, good, little seen films.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Catching the end of the Oscars now.... Best Picture is being presented *before* the lead acting awards. Soderbergh has lost his mind. At least there were video clips for the Best Picture Nominees.

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By now, the "cat is out of the bag" on that one: Best Picture came early so that Best Actor could go last...in the hopes of producers that the winner would be the dead-too-soon Chadwick Boseman, who had swept many(but not all) earlier awards and had a widow on deck to make an emotional speech.

Oops..Anthony Hopkins. Not even there, represented by a photo. (I'm reminded of 1966 when Matthau won -- the only winner actually present in the auditorium of the four acting winners.) Though Hopkins did show up in a YouTube video the next morning that has turned into a bit of a meme and a joke (look here at Moviechat on Hopkins page.)

Not since Spielberg pal Harrison Ford opened the envelope on "Shakespeare in Love" instead of "Saving Private Ryan" has a hoped-for sure thing win backfired. THAT's Oscar cool. (I recall Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas showing up to give Scorsese HIS sure bet for The Departed; THAT would have been embarrassing had he lost, which he didn't.)

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Regardless of WHY they put Best Picture on early, it was so confusing and deflating a move that I was thinking "this Soderbergh is starting to get rather transparently off-script." I suppose had Boseman won his posthumous Oscar, we would have understood. But he didn't. So the whole last 15 minutes was embarrassment(including McDormand's karaoke speech, but at least SHE made some history.)

And what about Glenn Close? That was the best they could do for a skit?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've really disliked previous instances of the Oscars that have encouraged presenters to genuflect before each of the nominees (or gave each nominee a separate introducer/genuflector), and I didn't like it this time either.

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Yes...it always plays so embarrassing...for the nominees, too, as they have to sit there and get genuflected over.

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It just plays into the cynical image of Hollywood as big circle jerk of narcissists and nepotism.

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Yep. I reminded that as a kid in Los Angeles , a certain neighbor man said of nearby Hollywood -- "I try to stay out of there. That's where the phonies are." One of these books I recently read -- the one about Chinatown I think -- had an interview with Robert Towne's ex-wife, whose father worked above the line in movies. When this woman was a child in a school car pool, the mother driving asked in what business the girl's father worked. "In the movies" was the answer. Said the driving mother: "the movies aren't a business."

Actually, the movies are a BIG business...but when fronted by the actors...narcissism rather rules.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I gather that Joaquin Phoenix presenting Best Actor *refused* to do the genuflection/ego-stroking (possibly placing him on Soderbergh's shit-list) and just read the names of nominees unadorned. Good for him.

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Yes..the actor who once acted totally insane on the David Letterman show seemed rather subdued, respectful but detached. Brad Pitt was roughly the same, and stumbled over HIS cue cards.

I'm reminded that Phoenix was ALMOST Norman Bates for Van Sant back in 1998. But he couldn't clear his schedule in time and we got Vince "miscast" Vaughn. How much different it might have been if Phoenix -- now a pretty known star -- got the role.

By the way, we've had four movie Jokers since 1989 and two of them won Oscars -- Ledger(another posthumous win) and Phoenix. I think that's half right. Nicholson should have won, too(he wasn't even nominated)...I guess he had to settle for a $60 million payday. Jared Leto was awful and sorry...I didn't think much of Phoenix either. His climactic scene with Robert DeNiro(which I watched just last week) is really, really bad, too obvious in the writing and implausible. Oh well. A billion dollars helps buy an Oscar sometimes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The worst part of the 2020 Oscars -- arguably -- was something that used to be one of the best:

The "In Memoriam" section devoted to saying goodbye to the actors(hah, narcissism or not, they are the ones we REALLY care about) directors and "below the line" people.

Years ago, this was truly a moving segment, because they allowed the audience to applaud, and as they got to the end, the biggest star or stars of the year came on screen and the applause got thunderous. I recall when Walter Matthau(a favorite) was the last one -- the biggest name -- coming down a staircase in Hello Dolly in top hat and tails. The applause was HUGE, and the moment was bittersweet.

Well...they got rid of the applause...too disrepectful to the little-knowns who got little applause...and the emotion went away. (Didn't someone realize that "curtain calls" ALWAYS build to the biggest star and the biggest applause.)

But this 2020 "In Memoriam" was worse than that. The clips of the deceased were cut to the beat of Steve Wonder's "Always" -- a sweet song, but too FAST...and thus the clips went rolling by so fast that it looked like they were on fast forward. By the time they got to the biggest names at the end -- Sean Connery(such a long career) and Chadwick Boseman(such a short career)...they were practically thrown away. Disgraceful.

And this: the presenter -- Angela Bassett? Overdoing her gestures -- attempted to mix the deceased movie people with both the 3 million people dead of COVID and the people killed by cops -- it was as if this "bundling up" of deaths ended up mutually disrespecting ALL of the deaths. They should have kept the segment to the passing of the movie people -- the other deaths were discussed elsewhere in the show(another reason it wasn't too entertaining, I guess). Oh well.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Oh, about that Psycho viewpoint.

I didn't go back to check, but it used to be you could watch a lot(all?) of the 1961 Oscar show for 1960 films and on review...its pretty boring in the speechifying, too. There's no way to AVOID the boringness of the "under the line unknowns" saying their peace...though their speeches did have to be shorter.

But the remedy was to make sure that the presenters were pretty big stars or at least glamourous. As I recall, "glamour couple" Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh came out to present a minor award and THEY were the center of attention. Janet was up(Supporting) for Psycho, so that gave her added "bona fides." She would lose later that night to Shirley Jones "abrupt about-face as a trollop" (Stephen Rebello's great phrase) in Elmer Gantry.

Alfred Hitchcock was at that Oscar show -- to lose Best Director(one of his few nominations) for Psycho. I think John Wayne was there for The Alamo. And Billy Wilder won a bunch for The Apartment -- Picture, Director, Screenplay ("Time to stop , Billy, said a friend -- as it was for Hitchcock that year. No way.)

I suppose all the stars and writers and directors were white that year. It would only be three years til Sidney Poitier won Best Actor for "Lillies of the Field," but we've come the requisite long way in the decades since...and yet, maybe , not. That's for others to judge, not me.

Bob Hope shot off his usual staccato one-liners in the opening monologue(including a weak one about Psycho, which really didn't seem to matter at this ceremony at all). He looks old fashioned now, but in 1960, Hope was an only-starting-to-fade comedy superstar of movies, radio and TV(Woody Allen said he patterned his "coward" act on Hope's 1940s performances.) So...Hope was a big deal, too. As the handsome and funny Johnny Carson would be in the 70's and 80's. As the funny Billy Crystal would be later on.

None of that here.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And:

There used to be an "entertainment reporter" named Nikki Finke, who had an internet magazine called "Deadline" (or Deadline Hollywood.)

And Finke got famous after awhile for writing an annual "Oscar show blog" in which, minute by minute, award by award...she mercilessly dissed everything going on. It was lacerating and funny and mean. (One quip I remember: "Here's Annette Bening. She could blossom as a star if she didn't have to hang on the arm of elderly Hollywood has been Warren Beatty." Ouch.)

The studios went after Finke. Sue her? No. Ban her? No. Arrest her? No. Kill her? No. What they did was to buy her and her "Deadline" out (millions) with a clause that she couldn't insult anybody anymore. (I'm reminded of George Clooney''s line in the so-so Michael Clayton -- "you don't kill me off, you buy me off.") Done.

So Deadline and the other entertainment blogs went easy on the "COVID Oscars." Along the lines of "given the circumstances, it was OK."

Not it wasn't . Because there was no movie year in 2020. It was all a lie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I figure the Oscar movies will pretty much stay the same going forward, most of the time: good, but indie and little seen.

So its a good moment to reflect on the Best Pictures of the 70's

1970: Patton
1971: The French Connection
1972: The Godfather
1973: The Sting
1974: The Godfather, Part II
1975: Cuckoo's Nest
1976: Rocky
1977: Annie Hall
1978: The Deer Hunter
1979: Kramer vs Kramer

...Incredible, isn't it? I think they were all big hits except Deer Hunter, and some were gigantic blockbusters of all time. Also most of them were immensely entertaining, though I'd say that The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs Kramer at the end were overly-dramatic "wobblers" that pointed to the prestige winners of the 80s.

And the ones that DIDN'T win included MASH, The Last Picture Show, Cabaret, The Exorcist, Chinatown, Jaws....

There's no going back, is there?

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The worst part of the 2020 Oscars -- arguably -- was something that used to be one of the best: The "In Memoriam" section....Disgraceful.

Yes, and for all the whizzing by they still managed to omit people needlessly: Jessica Walter was the big one but there were lots of others too. But, really, the "whizzing by" effect was so intense that by the end it was impossible to remember who'd been included or not so the insult to the dead was arguably even more intense from *inclusion* (I thought Honor Blackman & Tanya Roberts - Bond girls both - had been omitted but, no, they were there. But not together! Ian Holm and Yaphett Kotto were both there but not together as in Alien where Kotto knocks Holm's head off. No imagination from the segment makers!) What a disaster. Put that together with all the Honorary awards (as usual these days) being booted to the separate Governor's Awards Event (except for Tyler Perry's Jean Hersholdt Award being made a grand exception presumably because he's a very-of-the-present-black guy - WTF Oscars?), no clips packages and booting all song performances to a pre-show. The upshot is that these Oscars felt very cut off from both film history and from showiness/performance itself.

What one is left with was a very present-centered, very political, very self-regarding wordiness; lots and lots of telling not showing. It's a little like the occasional politics-heavy moments of the '70s Oscar shows I watched as a kid (Marlon Brando, Vanessa Redgrave, etc.) have expanded and swallowed the show.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The worst part of the 2020 Oscars -- arguably -- was something that used to be one of the best: The "In Memoriam" section....Disgraceful.

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Yes, and for all the whizzing by they still managed to omit people needlessly: Jessica Walter was the big one but there were lots of others too.

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Yes...the "in memoriam snub" is its own sub-category at the Oscars(and other such shows)...it seems that the snub usually doesn't mean that someone was forgotten...but rather...purposefully dropped for some reason(not enough movies, for instance)...that aren't good reasons.

On a more benign note...often an actor passes right before the Oscar show, and the In Memoriam has already been "locked in." So that dead actor has to "wait"(hah) almost a year from their death to be recognized.

The end of this year's In Memoriam revealed a decision of a different sort. Sean Connery was "clearly" (I would say) the "big one" to whom the sequence was to lead; he probably should have been the last one on the screen. But with his too-early, stunning death and stardom from the mega-hit "Black Panther," Chadwick Boseman was moved to the front of the line. This with Connery's career stretching back to the fifties(Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People before Dr No in 1962.) Boseman trumping Connery made sense...even if in some ways, it didn't.

My female companion was having none of this when I spoke to it -- "Sean Connery was a pig; he's lucky he even got on the list at all." Who knows, maybe that also explains the rapid-fire nature of the segment, at the end at least(in the past, the "big name" sometimes got several shots from different movies as he/she was shown; Connery -- no.)
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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But, really, the "whizzing by" effect was so intense that by the end it was impossible to remember who'd been included or not so the insult to the dead was arguably even more intense from *inclusion* ...

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Good point. Look, when this segment used to be slower and more caring towards the individuals lost, often with more sad orchestral music and dissolves from one to the next, the effect was truly moving...for movie buffs, these stars were a big part of the backdrop of our lives -- when and where we saw them, which theaters, with whom, and over how many years (George Segal, for instance, is from the 70's I loved in my personal life as well as at the the movies -- he's meaningful that way.) But sped up and rushed through -- almost all the emotion was gone.

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(I thought Honor Blackman & Tanya Roberts - Bond girls both - had been omitted but, no, they were there. But not together! Ian Holm and Yaphett Kotto were both there but not together as in Alien where Kotto knocks Holm's head off.

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I missed the Bond girls disconnect -- was Blackman near Connery? -- but I will say that "even apart" I registered Kotto and Holm from "Alien" -- were not their head shots in their "Alien" scenes?

Side-bar on Alien: As the years go by, I see that original film as quite the ground-breaking classic in so many ways, and yet this wars with my initial disregard for it when I saw it in 1979. What bugged me then -- a little less now --- was how longt it took to get going and then how long it took to get to the climax after Kotto and Cartwright are killed. But that original trouble with the movie seems to have fallen away over the decades. I stand with North Dallas Forty as my favorite of 1979 but -- as i saw Kotto and Holm zip by during the "In Memoriam" and got that "nostalgic Alien jolt" -- I think I have a solid "Number Two" for the year now.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

No imagination from the segment makers!) What a disaster.

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Yes. And here's something. In the olden days with the In Memoriam, did they not use "shots in motion" from movies to show actors? They could only use photos of agents and editors for the most part, but actors have "moments in time" that could be used in the In Memoriam segment. Its not quite so powerful to see a still shot.

I know that there were producers other than Soderbergh here -- ones who may have made the decision on this super-fast In Memoriam segment. But I guess he's gonna take the hit on this.

Meanwhile, Turner Classic Movies DOES do great "IN Memoriams", both on individual actors when they die, and year-end retrospectives. Go there, ignore the Oscars.

After all this year proves that the Oscars sort of ignored us.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Put that together with all the Honorary awards (as usual these days) being booted to the separate Governor's Awards Event

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Yes -- this outrage started long before COVID -- and, as you note below, detached the movies of today from their history.

In that book on Chinatown that I'm reading, a part is reached about how Young Countercultural Jack Nicholson elected to attend the Oscars every year in the 70s. He said "I do it to honor the people who came before me here." That's being lost, isn't it?

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(except for Tyler Perry's Jean Hersholdt Award being made a grand exception presumably because he's a very-of-the-present-black guy - WTF Oscars?),

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Well...

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no clips packages

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A show about the movies with no movies...except just a few clips of the current stuff.

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and booting all song performances to a pre-show.

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I tuned in when the main show started and didn't even know that had been done. Perhaps the audience was too small in Union Station, but that shouldn't have mattered if the camera focused on the musicians.

By the way, the big near empty-room populated by about 20% of the usual Oscar audience and socially distanced "communicated" something to me: this is what the Oscar academy really represents now: a very small sub-segment of a very big industry and an even bigger world audience. "Show not tell?" This shot showed us the state of the movie industry outside of Marvel/blockbuster world right now.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The upshot is that these Oscars felt very cut off from both film history and from showiness/performance itself.

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Yes. As I've mentioned before, sometimes it seems that film history has been removed from the Oscars because the sheer variety and size of "what came before" embarrasses these tiny , starless indie productions that get nominated today.

That said...I suppose that Frances McDormand is a star of Kate Hepburn/Meryl Streep proportions now(even if her movie only made 3 million) and Anthony Hopkins is hardly a young unknown.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

What one is left with was a very present-centered, very political, very self-regarding wordiness; lots and lots of telling not showing. It's a little like the occasional politics-heavy moments of the '70s Oscar shows I watched as a kid (Marlon Brando, Vanessa Redgrave, etc.) have expanded and swallowed the show.

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The politics of the Oscar show "kicked in" in the late 60's and really took hold in the 70's, but only in "segments." What Marlon Brando did(in rejecting an Oscar for a truly iconic performance) always smacked of "amateurville" at an event that is meant to salute film as a "top craft" at least.

That same show had Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds as presenters (the big stars showed up even if they had no movie in competition) and the great bit where Eastwood got pushed out on stage to do Charlton Heston's "Moses" intro(Heston had a flat tire) while Reynolds laughed from the audience. THAT was amateur too, but that was the Oscars as they can be -- fun, a bit silly, big stars trying to pull things off in the face of mistakes, etc.

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This Oscar show reminded me that evidently part of the "necessary change" we are seeing in the entertainment world is...the elimination of humor? (A distressingly elderly-faced Glenn Close doin' "Da Butt" doesn't count.)