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SUSPENSE-FREE OSCARCAST  A bomb-defuser on his way to possible death in "The Hurt Locker," the Best Picture award winner at the 82nd annual Academy Awards Sunday night. |
All the Academy's efforts
made for a really dull show
of TheColumnists.com
It's clear now what the future of the Academy Awards show is going to be: Doing remakes of earlier awards shows and trying to find some way to make them seem just a little bit fresh.
That was clear with Sunday night's 82nd Annual Academy Awards gala on ABC. There was no suspense because the same people and same films had all won awards in pretty much the same categories at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild awards, the Directors Guild Awards and all the other movie award festivals that now pre-date the Oscars.
"The Hurt Locker," a harrowing film that not many moviegoers saw when it first came to theaters, beat out "Avatar," already the most successful money-making movie of all time, for the biggest award: Best Picture of 2009.
Sandra Bullock, the surprising winner in several earlier award competitions, took the Best Actress award for "The Blind Side" and Jeff Bridges was named Best Actor for "Crazy Heart," a choice so popular that nobody gave anybody else much of a chance.
The same thing happened in the supporting awards: Christoph Waltz, the preening Nazi of "Inglourious Basterds," earned another Best Supporting Actor award and stand-up comic Mo'Nique continued her collection of awards with the Best Suypporting Actress statuette for playing the abusive mother of a teenager in "Precious."
It wasn't even a surprise that Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win the Best Director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker." Everybody knew that was going to happen, which is surely why they picked Barbra Streisand, a sometime director herself, to present the award.
Were these bad choices? Not really. I would have preferred "Avatar" over "Hurt Locker," a film that had no characters I really cared about and no truly unique message, but "Avatar" is a world unto itself and doesn't need any glory that true film fans haven't already awarded it in praise and box office dollars. I think "Avatar" director James Cameron even knew this was going to happen because he even began to suggest it would be a good idea if Bigelow, who happens to be his ex-wife, might win the directing Oscar. After all, he already has one for directing "Titanic" (1997), the second most successful film of all time.
I also would have preferred Meryl Streep to win her third Oscar for "Julie and Julia," but Bullock's performance is certainly a good one and was a step up for her that probably deserved some honors, especially since most Americans already know that Streep is the best actress working on screen anywhere today.
Without any real suspense over the award winners, that meant something else had to keep us entertained for the nearly 3.5 hours of the lumbering telecast. But there wasn't an awful lot else going on Sunday night.
The show opened with its only big musical number, a so-so routine by Neil Patrick "Doogie Howser" Harris singing and dancing to the theme that he would do ithe big number since nobody else wanted to do it. Harris obviously is aching to be recognized as a competent musical comedy performer--and he isn't bad. But the number itself had little going for it and, if the song was serious, I'm sure he figured out why nobody else wanted to do it.
Steve Martin co-hosting with Alec Baldwin turned out to be a fairly good idea because they weren't exactly boring, but they weren't good enough to make up for the lack of drama and poignance in the long, long show.
Here's an obvious problem: The Academy has worked hard to rein in the long acceptance speeches and to prevent any political comments or other "abuses" of their airtime. Unfortunately, the result is a growing ennui. Where are all the outrageous outfits of the past? The ladies all looked reasonably nice, but very much like each other. I began to seriously miss Cher and even Bjork.
The Best Song category has gradually self-destructed after too many years of inane tunes from cartoon features. Even the Academy finally admitted that this year, so, for the first time in decades they didn't have anybody perform the nominated songs. "The Weary Kind," one of the country songs from "Crazy Heart," won the Oscar. It's hard to imagine it standing up next to "Over the Rainbow," "Moon River" or even "Sweet Leilani" and the other legitimate hits of the past.
In place of the usual songfest, the Academy instead had dancers dance to the nominated musical scores. I found this to be an exercise in futility. I watched the dancers and could see no special connection with what they were doing and the films they were supposed to be representing. Bad idea.
One idea that I thought was good was, unfortunately, mishandled. It was a tribute to the director John Hughes, who died last year. The producers managed to re-assemble much of the old 1980s "brat pack" that Hughes made into stars with his teen-oriented pictures, but didn't know what to do with them. Some of them haven't worn so well over the last 20 years, such as Molly Ringwald, who now looks like Vampira with red hair.
It also must have seemed like a good idea to send comic actor Ben Stiller out in blue makeup and a tail to present the award for makeup. As Stiller remarked, it probably went over better in rehearsal than it did on the air.
I'll give comedian Robin Williams some credit for trying to turn his brief gig as a presenter into a comic moment. Of course, it involved his use of the expression "holding balls," so I imagine he'll be pre-recorded next time.
By limiting the winners to 45 seconds of speech time, the Academy probably prevented a good deal of boredom, but it also made truly special moments more unlikely. Jeff Bridges managed to use his brief time well, looking heavenward and thanking his parents (Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges) for starting him on the path to an acting career. Sandra Bullock also scored some points by opening with the remark, "Did I really earn one--or did I just wear you all down?"
I expected something more meaningful from Kathryn Bigelow after becoming the first Oscar-winning female director. She might have mentioned some of the great female directors of the past who never were honored, but helped pave her way to the award stand. Instead, she proclaimed it a "moment of a lifetime" and thanked all the usual suspects.
Mo'Nique thanked Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar way back in 1939's "Gone With the Wind," for blazing the trail for her to win an acting Oscar, but the fact that Halle Berry had already thanked McDaniel when she won her Best Actress Oscar earlier in the decade took something away from Mo'Nique's gesture.
As I mentioned earlier, the women all looked respectably good, but I thought the standout for me was last year's Best Actress winner, Kate Winslett, who presented the Best Actor award to Jeff Bridges. She looked better than I've ever seen her.
I think the notion of expanding the list of Best Picture nomineees from five to 10 this year was a misfire. It all came down to a shootout between the most successsful movie of all time, "Avatar," and a film hardly anybody saw--"The Hurt Locker." The Aacademy thought the show's TV ratings would boom if more popular films were raked into the competition. Instead, the award went to another small, independent picture with little drawing power to potential viewers of the TV show.
It's too early for ratings yet, but overnights will be available later today and final ratings by Wednesday. Then we'll know if America also thought this show was a yawner.
©2010 by Ron Miller. This column first posted March 8, 2010.
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