C’mon Hollywood #118

… Oscar Schmoscar ‘07
by Sturdy

Last year I was pretty upset at the results of the Academy Awards. I felt strongly that CRASH was an overrated film and didn’t deserve the hype it received. This year, however, I was very pleased with all of the winners and I feel the Academy finally got it right. In fact, this is the first year in many years that I feel that way. I absolutely loved THE DEPARTED and it’s nice that Marty finally got the award he’s deserved so many times before. Also, for the first time since RETURN OF THE KING, the best picture Oscar winner was also the best picture Golden Schmoe winner!

I’ve read some negative feedback on this site and others about the hosting job of Ellen Degeneres. She wasn’t as great as Steve Martin was a few years ago, but personally, I thought she was pretty damn good. She was funny, very comfortable and did a great job of keeping things going. It wasn’t her fault the show ran too long. Granted her musical thing in the beginning was pretty lame, but at least it wasn’t Billy Crystal. Zing!

Classiest woman on the red carpet.

But this isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. The Academy still has some serious work to do. At just over four hours, the show is waaaayyyyy too long. I’m glad they finally sped up the Academy president’s speech, but they still need to get rid of the montages. I can understand one in the beginning to get things going and then one to honor those that passed away, but that’s it. We don’t need one to celebrate the history of America in film. Also, there’s no need to have the best song performances. It’s a complete waste of time and unless it’s a musical, most of them aren’t used in the film until the credits roll. It’s a celebration of FILM, not MUSIC. Save the performances for the Grammy’s. Throughout the show, I can easily pick things that I thought were lame (Eastwood “translating” for Ennio Morricone) but I’ll let those slide since there were other things that I liked (Jerry Seinfeld).

Ok, this was funny too.

I’d also like to pause for a second and rant about the short film categories. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend next year you find a city near you that’s playing all of the short film nominations and go watch them. I did that this year because I wanted to impress my friends. Aside from being called a geek, I also discovered that picking the best short film is like picking which fork to cut your eye out with. I don’t want to offend people that make short films, but wow were they bad. Not only that, but the winners were by far and away the worst of the films. This leads me to believe that a) none of the Academy members saw the films and b) no one cares. Therefore, I recommend nixing these three categories altogether and give them their own award ceremony. The Academy can probably trick whatever young, popular actress hosted the tech awards into hosting the short film awards. Then we can add that in as an afterthought in the middle of the Oscar ceremony.

Where the hell were these two?

The Academy will never please everyone, but they’ve got to make changes to the planning of the ceremony. It’s way too long and implementing some of the suggestions will shorten it by at least an hour. I’d also really like for them to release how many votes everyone gets, but I know that will never happen. Baby steps.