February 27, 2012

Omnibus Oscar Post

Yes, a horrible show as always. The jokes were all either lame, old, or lame and old, Billy Crystal's schtick is beyond dated, and the presenter banter was some of the worst stuff I've ever seen. Why does Bruce Vilanch get to keep writing the Oscars? He's like the Bob Shrum of comedy writers.

And if there's such a time crunch that we have to cut off all the winners, why do they make time for nonsense like Cirque du Soleil, three different montages and an overlong, subpar Christopher Guest comedy sketch?

- Get Neil Patrick Harris to host, please.

- As for the winners, as someone who loved both "The Artist" and "Hugo," I didn't have a whole lot of complaints about who actually got the Oscars. I'm also thrilled that the Muppets won for Best Song, although it was the wrong song ("LIfe's a Happy Song" was much better) and there should've been a live performance.

- Quote of the night from Dave Itzkoff on Twitter: "Maybe if Kermit had punched Piggy in the face, the Muppets would have gotten TWO musical performances. #teambreezy."

- Matt Zoller Seitz, on the show you imagined:

You knew you were in for an extraordinary Oscar ceremony, the most exciting and surprising in history, when Billy Crystal’s traditional “I am the movies” opening montage cut to a re-creation of the tender hospital bed scene in The Descendants, but with Crystal in the bed, and the movie’s star George Clooney leaning in to kiss the host and giving him a staggering 43 seconds of tongue. Then came a string of toppers: The show certified its contempt for the technical categories by having a talking garbage can read the list of nominees for cinematography and production design, burp the names of the winners, then make them root around in the bin to claim their statuettes. Steve Whitmire, Jim Henson’s replacement as Kermit the Frog, paused in the middle of Kermit and Miss Piggy’s introduction of Cirque du Soleil, then hung his head and muttered, “Guys, sorry, I’m just not feeling it, and I know you aren’t, either. We all should have hung it up after Henson died. Cirque du Soleil, ladies and gentlemen, like you care.” TheCirque du Soleil performers spun menacingly over the assembled crowd at the Kodak Theater and dropped shards of broken Oscar statuettes on their heads while the director cut to tight shots of terrified spectators shielding their Botoxed faces. Statler and Waldorf put shotguns in their mouths and the show cut to a commercial. The broadcast returned for the “In Memoriam” segment, a stream-of-consciousness Proustian montage done in the style of Tree of Life, alternating home-movie footage of the deceased with shots of Sean Penn walking his dog on a beach. Oh, all right — none of that actually happened.

- A SuperCut of all the cursing from the Best Picture nominees. Yes, "The Artist" had some:

- Two great pieces from Drew Magary on the Oscars: a "haters guide" preview and his Gawker liveblog.

- Also from the Deadspin/Gawker axis A.J. Daulerio with his annual Top Ten list of nonexistent movies.

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 27, 2012 03:02 PM
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