Do the Oscar's Matter?
Hollywood continued to shine (on a slightly smaller budget) at the Kodak Theatre for the 81rst Academy Awards. Hosted by the multi-talented Hugh Jackman, this star studded event went underway on Sunday evening while producers crossed their fingers, hoping that the minor changes in the show would draw in bigger numbers unlike last year’s broadcast.
Starting off with a simple yet effective opener by Jackman (with the help from Anne Hathaway), the follow up with announcing
the nominees/winner of Best Supporting Actress came off as if the five presenters were at a eulogy. A fair portion of the evening continued the same, going completely bi-polar with the overall tone of the prestigious awards ceremony.
Performances: The musical numbers that fluttered on throughout the evening tried to reach out to a broader audience. The opening number was the most impressive, and even though they appeared to made a make shift background for each film, it was still terribly creative with very witty lyrics. Yes, I wish I had a cardboard Batpod just like Jackman did. For another number, there’s a performance by Jackman and Beyonce who seemed to sing popular songs from the 1930s to 1940s. Despite the growing cast of actors/singers from High School Musical 3 and Mamma Mia, left most people including myself scratching our heads wondering what they all are singing and why it was turning into a fancier version of the MTV Movie Awards. I’ll tap onto the performances and such during the Best Song category later in this article.
Presenters: A majority of the presenters were great, despite a couple others. One of the more awkward presenting came with the stiff Jennifer Aniston and the Pixar envious Jack Black (even though it was a joke, me smells envy). Another strange moment was between comedic actor Ben Stiller trying to pose as Joaquin Phoenix standing next to a slightly aggravated Natalie Portman. Even though they, for myself, were uncomfortable moments, the remainder of the presenters were statuesque and mainly got right down to the point.
Categories: One of the biggest things for many of us is trying to figure out through our own Oscar pools who will win which category. For this year, if you had your ballots in hand while watching the ceremony, it would have been painfully obvious. One example was prolonging the Best Supporting Actor category to futher on into the broadcast than where it normally is (Ledger did deserve that Oscar). Now they have done this kind of thing in previous years with other categories, for instance Diablo Cody winning Best Original Screenplay last year, but it came to the point of ridiculousness as the broadcast continued.
Best Song: Excuse me for a moment while I go on and gripe about this category and how it was handled last night. Out of the three songs that were nominated, two of them were from the Oscar picture favorite, Slumdog Millionaire. The other nominee was from Pixar’s Wall-E, which was supposed to be performed by the original singer (Peter Gabriel) but unfortunately stepped away from it a week before the Oscars. His reason? Not enough time to sing the song, meaning that each one of the three songs is lumped together into a 3 minute mesh, giving Gabriel only 60 seconds to sing a smidgen of the song. Now, I think that might not have been the real reasoning.
When the performance went underway, it started with the song ‘O Saya’, full of glamour and dancing, singing and all sorts of merriment. Then came ‘Down To Earth’, sung by a stiff John Legend while the dancers retire to the corner, all sorts of flashiness that was given to Slumdog Millionaire tucked away for a mediocre backdrop and performance. Then ‘Jai Ho’ started up, the attention quickly peeling away from Legend as it turns into a tribute for Slumdog. Obviously Peter Gabriel’s song did not win, but if the song from a great film was shoved aside for the Oscars to whore out Slumdog, I wouldn’t attend either.
Winners: Aside from the shoe-in win for Danny Boyle and company with Slumdog Millionaire walking away with 8 Oscars, there were some yays and nays over who was chosen. Beside the mumurs that Slumdog should not have won a couple of the technical awards (while I’m just pissed with the Best Song section), one of the outrages has been for Sean Penn winning over Mickey Rourke. Although Penn is a fine actor, to this columnist Rourke appeared more deserving of this award. Wall-E winning Best Animated Feature was something that made many really happy (surprised though it didn’t win Original Screenplay). Visual Effects rightfully went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was phenominal effects wise. Did it bother anyone else about how they were cutting to so many people during the acceptance speech for Ledger’s Oscar instead of trying to stay focused on his family? For myself it was detracting away from the moment that everyone in the audience was tearing up over.
In the end this year’s Oscars seemed to take a step in the wrong direction, despite its supposed efforts to be different than before. Trying desperately to rekindle some form of an audience it used to have to form better ratings than its dismal previous year, they still continue to be even more overly political and uninteresting. If they continue to be as overly obvious of who will win what for next year, I’ll just tune onto my web browser after the show to see who won.
Here listed below are the winners for each respected Oscar Category.
2009 Oscar Winners
Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Actor
Sean Penn (Milk)
Best Actress
Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Best Director
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Best Supporting Actress
Peneople Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Best Foreign Language Film
Departures
Best Soundtrack
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Song
‘Jai Ho’ from Slumdog Millionaire
Best Animated Feature Film
Wall-E
Best Cinematography
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Best Original Screenplay
Milk
Best Adapted Screenplay
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Documentary (Feature)
Man On Wire
Best Film Editing
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Sound Mixing
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Sound Editing
The Dark Knight
Best Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Best Short Documentary
Smile Pinki
Best Short Film (Live Action)
Spielzeugland (Toyland)
Best Short Film (Animated)
La Maison En Petits Cubes
Best Hair & Make-Up
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Best Costume Design
The Duchess
