The 82nd annual award ceremony was held a couple of weeks ago and showed surprising winners and not so surprising wins. That’s not what I want to talk about. I assume the winners were carefully selected by the best experts in the world, in the US? Locally? It doesn’t matter. What I want to talk about is the show, the Oscars of 2010.
The hosts
I was really looking forward to the ceremony this year. I knew it was a great year for film, with the release of Avatar, Up and Inglorious basterds. So when I sat down in front of my television that night (It aired 2.00AM locally, European time) I expected fireworks. Instead I was treated with what could be some of the worst decisions in the history of the Oscars.
Let’s start with the hosts. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin did a fantastic job opening the show. Their jokes were quite funny for me but I imagine that they weren’t for some of the nominees. Most of their jokes were aimed at individuals, focussing on mistakes/looks/personality or background. The problem with that is that it can actually hurt the people which the joke is aimed at. Also bad was that the hosts became invisible after the initial joke parade. They made some short appearances and closed the show but that’s about it. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a terrific job but why them? Prior to the event the academy leaders -gray men in squared shirts – decided that the show needed to attract more young viewers. Well why Steve and Alec than.They aren’t exactly the heros for teens in difficult times these days. They should’ve assigned a more youthful host instead, no offense intended because the presenters did great this year.
Best movie award
The 82nd Oscars show was the first in years to feature 10 nominees for the best movie category. I found that pretty useless because usually there’re 2 or 3 really good films. 10 is clearly stretching it, simply put we should be lucky if 5 really good movies come out in a year, let alone 10. To make things worse the Oscars people – the gray ones with squared shirts – thought it would be a genius idea to focus on the movie nominees throughout the night just before the breaks. Well it was not a great idea. First of all introducing a movie nominee isn’t the most exciting part of the Oscars so people were more likely to change channels for a little while knowing that the break would come right after. And second of all it created an awkward moment at the end. The highlight of the Oscars for me are four awards: best director/actor/actress and best movie. But now at the end a guy tacked to the stage and suddenly said: and the oscar goes to…. hurt locker. I mean where was the big moment that builds all the tension? The academy is awarding a movie the greatest honor of all and I thought: oh right that’s it. They introduced the movies already so yeah. Great move gray haired men, the highlight of the night was ruined by a sudden burst of two lines what defined the biggest winner of the night.
I just don’t get what they were thinking. The hosts were great but completely the opposite of what the Academy wanted. And on top of that they seemed to realize that halfway through and decided to keep the hosts backstage for most of the night. But worse is the award for best movie. It’s the most important award and now it flew by quicker than the oscar for best sound mixing which almost nobody cares about. Better luck next time Academy award people.
