87th Annual Oscars:More Bad Than Good
Posted by Leah on
2/23/2015 1:10:55 PM
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You may think it would be hard to sum up a 3 ½ hour award show in one word, but there was one word that kept repeating itself in my mind all night long: awkward! We may not all be fans of Neil Patrick Harris, but after hosting the Tony Awards and the Emmys numerous times it seems pretty safe to say that we should expect a certain level of humor, professionalism and pizazz from him. Unfortunately all of this was lacking from his performance as host at this year’s Oscars.
The show opened with what (to me anyways) seemed to be the longest tribute song to “moving pictures” ever. About half way through the number Anna Kendrick joined Harris on stage, which made the whole thing slightly more tolerable…that is until Jack Black attempted to play “the bad guy” and cut in. I’m not sure who’s idea that was, but it seemed to set up what turned out to be a very long night of jokes that didn’t work. (In an effort to keep this to a reasonable length I didn’t include any of the specific jokes, but they’re easy enough to find if you care to see them).
Some of the other odd and awkward occurrences of the night included Harris’s reference over and over and over again to his own Oscar predictions lock box, ABC’s live online Oscar feed cutting randomly to a few minutes of the movie The Social Network, Harris attempting to do a bit from Birdman in his underwear and John Travolta’s less than gentlemanly behavior.
To me Travolta’s conduct was the oddest and most shocking of the night. It started with him sneaking up behind Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet, wrapping his arms around her while caressing her stomach and kissing her; all while she was trying to pose for pictures. Episode two of “Weird Travolta” came when Idina Menzel came out to announce Best Original Song. In a throwback to last year’s mispronunciation of her name by Travolta, Menzel introduced him as her friend “Glom Gazingo”. After a fairly normal moment, (not a long one by any means, but long enough for a sigh of relief as you start to think that the weirdness is over), of Travolta giving Menzel a hug, he then held her quite tightly around the waist and continued to stroke her face and grab her chin. Because of these incidents, and an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show afterwards that didn’t help matters, Travolta has now been dubbed “Hollywood’s creepy sexist uncle” and I agree whole- heartedly!
Another moment that was not so much odd as it was glaring omission came during the traditional “In Memoriam” segment. I’m typically surprised at just how many awesome people have passed away in a given year, and this year was no different. What surprised me even more than the long list of names included in the segment, were the many names they left out for no good reason. Joan Rivers, Richard Kiel, Elaine Stritch, Gottfried John, Taylor Negron and director George Sluizer were markedly absent from the segment, leading the Academy to make this statement afterwards:
“Joan Rivers is among the many worthy artists and filmmakers we were unfortunately unable to feature in the In Memoriam segment of this year's Oscar show. She is, however, included in our In Memoriam gallery on Oscar.com."
Maybe at the end of next year’s In Memoriam they should tack on a “People We Forgot About” segment. To add insult to injury, rather than fading to black and going to commercial to let the weight of the segment settle, they instead went right to Jennifer Hudson performing “I Can’t Let Go”, one of the nominees for Best Original Song.
But for all of the bad and mind boggling boring, there were some great moments as well. My favorite, and perhaps the best highlight of the night, was the performance by The Lonely Island and Tegan and Sara with special guests Will Arnett, Quest Love and Mark Mothersbaugh performing “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie. This was the most upbeat and entertaining part of the evening by far! It even included people giving out Lego Oscars to the likes of Steve Carell, Oprah and more. Cheers to the makers of that movie, because although they were snubbed out of a nomination, they were still able to steal the show!
Another one of my favorite moments came as Pawel Pawlikowski accepted the award for Best Foreign Film for the Polish movie Ida. In traditional awards fashion, after whatever the allotted speech time is, the band began to play as an indication to wrap it up and get off stage. Pawlikowski paid no mind to their bullying and not only talked over them, but right on through them in order to squeeze in everything he wanted to say! This was met by huge cheers from the audience when he did finally leave the stage.
Some of the more touching speeches included J. K. Simmons telling us all to call our parents and thank them, Patricia Arquette pushing for women’s equality, Eddie Redmayne dedicating his award to all of those with ALS and Stephen Hawking in particular, Dana Perry’s hope that we’ll begin to talk out loud about suicide and John Legend and Common letting us know that they’ll be with us as we march on for equal rights for all. The speech that I felt had the best message of all came from Graham Moore as he accepted the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Imitation Game. He said:
"I tried to commit suicide at 16 and now I'm standing here. I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she doesn’t fit in anywhere. You do. Stay weird. Stay different, and then when it's your turn and you are standing on this stage please pass the same message along."
It didn’t take long afterwards for #Stay Weird to start trending.
As for my own predictions, I didn’t do too bad this year, which kind of surprised me! Boyhood only took home one award with Patricia Arquette winning Best Supporting Actress despite all of the hype surrounding it. The Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman tied for the most awards with 4 each, which of course makes me very happy (don’t worry…I’ll review Birdman soon)! I guess I’ll have to add Whiplash to the “must see list” since it took home a total of 3 awards. Once I finally saw The Theory of Everything the Saturday before the awards I knew Eddie Redmayne would be a shoe-in for Best Actor, and I was right (I’ll be reviewing that soon as well). I guess the only real surprise to me, (other than Boyhood’s overwhelming losses) was that The Imitation Game only received one award, the one for Best Adapted Screenplay. Don’t let that stop you from seeing it though; it really is a great film!
With all of the controversy, bad jokes, great speeches, awkward moments and the rest of it over for this year, we can now get back to the pure enjoyment that movies bring us. I’m sure it won’t be long before we start hearing about next year’s possible nominations and the big changes the Academy will make for next year’s show. In the meantime I’ll keep working to find the best obscure titles and hidden gems to tell you about, and who knows…perhaps I’ll try going a little more mainstream as well. Of course, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you!
And now, here is the complete list of 2015 Oscar winners:
· Best Picture: Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
· Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
· Best Actress: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)
· Best Supporting Actor: J. K. Simmons (Whiplash)
· Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)
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· Best Animated Feature: Big Hero 6
· Cinematic Acheivement: Birdman
· Costume Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel
· Best Director: Alejandro G. Inarritu (Birdman)
· Best Documentary (Feature): Citezenfour
· Best Documentary (Short): Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
· Best Editing: Whiplash
· Best Foreign Film: Ida (Poland)
· Best Makeup: The Grand Budapest Hotel
· Best Original Score: Alexander Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
· Best Original Song: Glory (Selma)
· Best Production Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel
· Best Animated Short: Feast
· Best Live Action Short: The Phone Call
· Best Sound Editing: American Sniper
· Best Sound Mixing: Whiplash
· Best Visual Effects: Interstellar
· Best Adapted Screenplay: The Imitation Game
· Best Original Screenplay: Birdman