Week Of February 26, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri

February 26, 2007

Ten Ways The Oscar Show Came Up Short

The awards given out on Sunday night were light on surprises, big on "yeah, that works." Unfortunately, the show itself was a bit of a disaster. And if I had to point one conceptual finger, it would be that Laura Ziskin and Co seemed to have a bad case of people who are not part of the new media paradigm trying to somehow deliver a show that will appeal to the new media generation… kinda like a grandparent trying to pick out a cool rap album for their 14-year-old grandchild.

Here are my ten most problematic elements (in no particular order)…

1. The Opening Sequence - The sequence that got moved to the Road to the Oscars pre-show, with the Happy Feet penguins coming to the Kodak Theater, turned into a bit of a nightmare for Laura Ziskin and the Academy. The original concept was to have Ellen with the penguins up north, to start a journey to the Oscars, to get picked up by the Little Miss Sunshine bus, which would then pick someone up from each of the major nominated films. As it turned out, no one would play ball. The only performer who ended up involved was Abigail Breslin. One after the other, they passed. And suddenly, all they could do was to get costumes and look-a-likes. That put Ellen DeGeneres right out. And that put the whole thing into the pre-show instead of opening the awards themselves with the bus driving onstage at the Kodak.

The $500k that Warners spent on the Happy Feet sequence couldn't be stopped, as the animation process takes so long. Whoops. But after winning for Happy Feet, no one will be quite as cranky tomorrow after seeing that mess.

2. Pilobolus - What's the cheesiest think you think of when you think of cheesy Oscar moments? For me, it's interpretive dance. With due respect to the marvelous Pilobolus dance troupe, watching them do their version of Puppetry of the Penis time after time for no real reason was laugh-out-loud embarrassing. The nadir was, of course, Snakes on a Plane, which just didn't belong on the Oscars in any way.

3. The Set - Didn't that wooden looking wall with the big squares on it look like a hotel ballroom from hell? Really, nothing about the design on the evening worked particularly well. The sets I most like from Oscar's history are the ones that take your breath away a little and make you check out the detail as the night proceeds. Here. It just looked like they found some old stuff in a warehouse and made due.

4. The Directing - Louis J. Horvat has been doing this show for a long time… too long by the looks of tonight show. Over and over and over again, I couldn't figure out why he was cutting away from the emotion of the moment to show us wide shots of ugly scenery. It was like he had ants in his pants. Cutting, for instance, to Forest Whitaker's wife a couple of times and the one shot of Leo was nice… but basically, you wanted to see this man give this impassioned speech. But Louis just couldn't stop cutting. In the musical numbers, he just seemed to miss every interesting image. It was brutal

5. The Clip Packages - The writer's package and the foreign film package were unfocused and seemingly without purpose. Certainly, a purpose was intended, but it just wasn't clear. The memorial package had a certain lack of focus as well, never quite hitting home with the things that we will miss about those who have passed, especially Bob Altman. Presumably, these packages are meant to promote the love of film. Last night, they promoted the love of going to the bathroom or getting some ice cream.

6. Celine Dion - There was only one truly great clip package tonight in my opinion… the Ennio Morricone retrospective. It was clever and interestingly done and offered all kinds of stuff to see, hear, and appreciate. (I liked the Michael Mann, too.) But then they ruined it with a "world premiere" of a shitty song based on the beautiful score for Once Upon A Time In America. And did it seem to them that an Alan & Marilyn Bergman song was hip and cool and needed a world premiere? As with so much of the show, what the hell did it have to do with the evening we were celebrating?

7. The Pageant of the Masters Costume Display - What the hell was that? I was okay with the Marie Antoinette costume setting… because the models didn't move much. But the other ones were horrifying. The Dreamgirls thing, with everyone grinding like a pervert's version of It's A Small World and the gorgeous costumes for Curse Of The Golden Flower at the top looked like a moment from Night At The Museum about to spring to life. This has been done before… but so so so much better.

8. The Standing Nominees - The idea of honoring everyone just for being nominated at the start was interesting, but so ham-fisted that it just wasn't special… more like a high school graduation.

9. Chris Connelly backstage was painful. They have really stripped him of the intelligence he once brought to these things and instead, he seemed to be trying to find some clever thing to say to "the kids out there." But he didn't. Charting how many Oscar each film got or talking about what was an upset… if he was really going to say something, so be it. But it was shockingly like pandering in this situation. And Chris Connelly is better than that.

10. The Live Foley Sequence - The idea is not the worst in the world, in principle. But in effect, the sequence didn't really have anything to do with the work of a foley or voice artist. Yes, occasionally they use human voice effects to fill in for real effects, but not in any of the sequences that were shown in this segment. So what is the point? Again, it's another kinda-movie-insider thing that doesn't really to the job or add to the world's idea of how movies are made.

Also - The Will Ferrell/Jack Black number was a slo-mo car wreck with no real purpose other than to get some big names on the show. But they would have been better off doing a lounge act that actually integrated with the talent in the room. What did it have to do with Oscar? But it was only slightly more irrelevant than Jerry Seinfeld's four minute routine.

They desperately needed identification of the nominees in Errol Morris' piece. I knew who most were, but I am a rarity (and if you knew, so are you). Hated that they did a gospel choir thing twice (opening song with Ellen and Dreamgirls number). And there was an odd randomness to when they gave out the little freaky personal tidbits.

And it was a nice night for Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio, but why have them on just to do schtick about whether Gore was going to announce. If they were going to suck up a segment, why not let them announce a bloody nominee?

On the flip side, I loved Ennio Morricone speaking in Italian only with only Clint to interpret. And what he said was beautiful. And it was an actual pleasure to see "The Original Three Amigos" and for George to allow himself to be the butt of that joke.

Ellen was fine, but oddly, wholly irrelevant to what worked and didn't work about the show. For me, her highlight was getting her photo taken with Clint by Spielberg. But she never had a single great moment the way that Lily Tomlin did in a throwaway at the Independent Spirit Awards, when presenting with Robert Downey, Jr, commenting that he would remember something Robert Altman used to say… well, if he remembered anything from then. The joke required thought, it was daring, but not really unkind, and as the audience got hip to it, it got a big laugh. There were none of those last night… aside from those SLC Punks (Spielberg Lucas Coppola).

More on the blog as Monday progresses…

E Me.

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