The Oscars
aired March 24th on ABCComplaining about the Oscars lasting too long is like complaining baseball is too slow -- popular, but not going to do you any good. That said, this year's ceremony was unusually and painfully elongated past the breaking point. After a concerted effort to keep the festivities brief the last two years, this 74th Annual Academy Awards felt like a Kevin Costner movie. Speaking of Costner, has he even been invited lately?
The attendance was quite sparse overall, it seemed. No Jack Nicholson, no Billy Crystal, no Christopher Reeve, no Celine Dion. The guest list must have been restricted or something, or maybe the cameras only focussed on the primary cast. Either way, it felt oddly intimate despite the gigantic new digs and continuous plays for epic grandeur. Even Whoopi's costumes looked pedestrian compared to her last hosting gig, in which she donned more cloth than a nunnery.
Whoopi was subdued in every possible way. She only said "child" three or four times (which is 1/10 the amount of times she uses the word in a typical half hour of "Hollywood Squares"), only cracked only sexually explicit joke (and it wasn't scripted), and seemed to apologize for every quip whether it got a courtesy laugh or not. Her congratulation of certain award winners bordered on tacky, especially since the audience wasn't on her side from the beginning.
Still, Whoopi didn't have much dignity to lose. The real sad sacks were Glenn Close and Donald Sutherland, two fine thespians who were reduced to ersatz "Entertainment Tonight" reporters as between-segment hosts, manning a vintage CBS news desk (complete with geeked-out gold microphones) backstage, where a Cirque du Soleil mime would distract the cameramen and Oscar models (those mannequins who escort the royalty on and off stage) adjusted cleavage. Each embarrassed actor even got a quick walk take, something that looks forced even on Leeza Gibbons.
No, I'm not going to talk about the fashion, by the way. Stop reading now and turn to
any other Oscar report for that tangential and frivolous information that sells so many magazine subscriptions in the slow April months.
What struck me most about this year's ceremony was the theme, which was never explicitly stated, but I believe was titled: "Television Viewers Are Really Really Stupid." This is why every award was explained in excruciating detail, artistic vignettes portrayed the meaning of editing and special effects, and an untold number of "documentaries" interrupted the show the tell us something we already knew. You could tell trouble was brewing from the first seconds, when an announcer
introduced the celebrities in the audience. Even the celebrities in question seemed surprised and taken aback by this. Why this little time-wasting feature was added, I can't say. We obviously know who these people are. That's what makes them celebrities and Oscar nominees. That's why we watch the stupid four-hour-and-fifteen-minute telecast in the first place.
After the relatively sparse proceedings of 2001, this time out felt like a cake with three layers of frosting and only one layer of cake. Each award -- there are 30, if you lump all the tech awards together as a single award -- took 8.5 minutes to present. The average commercial break during something like this is 1:45. A long presentation of nominees is a minute, and an extremely long acceptance speech is two minutes. That leaves 3:30 of filler on even the most important awards, which is an eternity of television time, even when you're trying to catch a glimpse of Cameron Diaz's ta-tas. (Sorry, but it's true.)
There were, as always, some wonderful moments. Sydney Poitier's honarary award was long overdue, and his speech was both touching and accurate to the day's needs. Seeing first-time Oscars flying around the room to such worthies as Jennifer Connelly, Halle Berry, and ohmygodican'tbelieveit Randy Newman is always awesome. Once again, we learn that the non-famous people give the best acceptance speeches, especially foreign non-famous people (though Newman took the cake this year with his admonition to the musicians not to cut him off if they want to work for him again). The presenters seemed especially natural this year, almost as if they were actually using acting skills on the stage instead of mere literacy. Part of that was the writing, which must have lacked a lot of Bruce Vilanch, whose overrated one-liners were consigned to Whoopi's soggy cushion of a monologue. Having screenwriters pen presenter speeches was a wonderful, if program-lenghtening, way to inject some literacy into an otherwise vapid show. And Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon have definitely taken the crown as Hollywood's married couple that might actually celebrate a 10th anniversary (they're so cute!).
I loathe Woody Allen, so I won't even start on his self-serving and bloated monologue before Norah Ephron's unnecessary and un-New York tribute to the Beleagured Apple.
All in all, this 74th show only proved that the Oscars are still completely predictable, even down to the single unpredictable selection for a female category each year. It takes a sharp, focussed show and an even sharper host to keep a movie lover's attention through the banal proceedings. Let's hope Whoopi goes back out to pasture for the big 75th, and someone genius steps up to the task. I'm looking at you, Steve Martin. Or you, Jon Stewart. Or maybe even you, Dennis Miller (can ABC actually forgive you?).
Or, now here's a crazy thought, why not have ol' Jack Nicholson host? It couldn't hurt. Could it?
posted by Chris at 3:48 PM 
