Here's the confession
right up front. For the first time in about two decades, I didn't watch
the Oscars live. I was simply too busy with other commitments to be
able to set aside three hours for an awards show. Instead I checked in
on livebloggers throughout the evening and caught up on the highlight
clips a few hours after the ceremony was over. I have the whole thing
recorded so I can fast-forward through it at my leisure over the next
few days. And the funny thing is, this really didn't hamper my
enjoyment of the Oscars much.
The only major
categories where there was any suspense about the eventual winner were
Best Animated Feature and Best Actor. In the former, I knew that my
favorite, "Princess Kaguya," had no real shot at winning. In the
latter, all the really interesting contenders - David Oyelowo, Jake
Gyllenhaal, and Ralph Fiennes - weren't even nominated. The whole
business of waiting in happy suspense for a winner to be announced has
been off the table for years because I'm way too savvy to how the whole
process works now. If you follow the Guild awards, you know who wins
long in advance. The announcement of the nominations is a far more
interesting event.
If you can put aside personal
feelings toward who actually deserved what, it's still a lot of fun to
follow the Oscar politicking. This year, none of the Best Picture
nominees got shut out. Everyone went home with something, so everyone
was a winner, even if some of those kudos were very minor - "American
Sniper" left with Best Sound Editing, and "Selma" got Best Song. The
clear victor, however, was"Birdman," which carted off Picture, Director,
Original Screenplay, and Cinematography. "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
also got a lot of love, winning four Oscars that covered the bulk of the
design awards, This year's scrappy underdog "Whiplash" emerged with
Best Editing, alongside its Best Sound Mixing and Best Supporting Actor
trophies. The once heavily favored "Boyhood" clearly suffered a loss of
momentum, coming out with only a Best Supporting Actress win for
Patricia Arquette.
I had no particular issue with
any of the winners this year. Three of the four acting awards went to
performers who have been around for a long time and were very worthy of
the recognition. Julianne Moore in particular has been overdue for her
statuette for a while. The exception was the Best Actor category,
which was a mess this year, as previously stated. I'm fine with Eddie
Redmayne's win as he was really the least objectionable choice. And
while "Birdman" wasn't one of my favorites, certainly there were enough
good things in it that make the choice a decently palatable one. I
could quibble about the outcomes of some of the smaller races like Song
and Animated Feature, but it feels petty to do so when I liked all the
winners to some degree anyway.
The ceremony itself
had its ups and downs, as they usually do. Neil Patrick Harris finally
got the opportunity to host after years of giving us a reason to tune
into the Tony's, and he ended up being merely okay. Not as fun as Ellen
Degeneres last year, and clearly not as comfortable delivering
one-liners. His big opening number was nothing to sneeze at though -
not quite at the level of the epic Hugh Jackman opening in 2009 -
but good enough. I'd love to see him back for another round next year.
There were a lot of nice surprises among the other performances too -
Lady Gaga, John Legend, and Lonely Island were all at their best. I'm
absolutely delighted that they managed to get Will Arnett into a Batman
suit to growl "DARKNESS. NO PARENTS," at the assembled throng. And
an awful lot fthe speeches turned into platforms for various causes, but
none egregiously so.
Getting down into the nitty
gritty of the show, I thought the graphics packages looked great, the
set design was a little lackluster, and the projected effects were
awfully gimmicky but not bad. Whoever was writing the jokes needs to be
kicked to the curb, and whoever keeps choosing spoiler-ful nominee
clips doesn't seem to grasp the purpose of the Oscars. And who didn't
cheer when Paweł Pawlikowski had his standoff against the orchestra and
won?
All in all, it was an entertaining evening. See you next year, Oscars.
---