2013 Oscar Discussion Discussion Thread

[KingRad]

As usual, there's good and bad concerning the Oscars. Argo winning best picture is awesome! I loved every second of that film and I think it deserved the win. It's good to see Ben Affleck turn his career around in such a short amount of time.

I'm happy that Daniel Day-Lewis won another Academy Award, that man deserves every award he receives; in my opinion, currently there is no better actor than Day-Lewis.

I'm a little disappointed that Jessica Chastain didn't win.

Christoph Waltz winning is good and bad. He's such an amazing actor, and he was absolutely brilliant in the role, but I feel like he won a second Oscar for the same role he already won the award for previously.

It's refreshing to see Django win best original screenplay, being that this film typically sees nothing but scrutiny for its controversial themes.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by MEB

Dear Seth MacFarlane; It will never be an appropriate time to make a wise crack about the assassination of an American president! NEVER!

That joke was in extremely poor taste!

We had a protest of "okay, shouldn'ta told that one", and for the rest of the evening, asides about "Well, we'll just let THAT joke go over."

Ever since Whoopi Goldberg--or, wait, technically Dave Letterman did it first, but we remember Whoopi for it--there's been one yardstick we measure Oscar hosts by:
Remember, starting about halfway through the monologue, five times through her evening, we heard Whoopi throw herself on the mercy of the audience with "I'm not doin' too good, am I? " If that sounds familiar, Franco and Hathaway said it too.
Seth's evening-long jokes about how his own jokes went over come dangerously, dangerously close to qualifying. It wasn't that we didn't get "Uma-Oprah", it was just that Edgy wasn't going over in the room.

If anything, every fifth joke was about how long and boring the evening would be, which made him come off as rather passive-aggressive snarky, like Jon Stewart's grumpy second hosting gig. Nobody remembers Stewart's Second nowadays, but that's as much in the immortal pantheon of Bad Oscar Hosts as much as Chris, Dave, James & Anne, or BOTH Whoopis.
When we got the Shatner joke about "You don't want to be the first host to get a bad review!", you could sense the audience thinking, "That was deliberately meant to be ironic, right? "

[blu-ray_girl_fan]

Originally Posted by EricJ

We had a protest of "okay, shouldn'ta told that one", and for the rest of the evening, asides about "Well, we'll just let THAT joke go over."

Ever since Whoopi Goldberg--or, wait, technically Dave Letterman did it first, but we remember Whoopi for it--there's been one yardstick we measure Oscar hosts by:
Remember, starting about halfway through the monologue, five times through her evening, we heard Whoopi throw herself on the mercy of the audience with "I'm not doin' too good, am I? " If that sounds familiar, Franco and Hathaway said it too.
Seth's evening-long jokes about how his own jokes went over come dangerously, dangerously close to qualifying. It wasn't that we didn't get "Uma-Oprah", it was just that Edgy wasn't going over in the room.

If anything, every fifth joke was about how long and boring the evening would be, which made him come off as rather passive-aggressive snarky, like Jon Stewart's grumpy second hosting gig. Nobody remembers Stewart's Second nowadays, but that's as much in the immortal pantheon of Bad Oscar Hosts as much as Chris, Dave, James & Anne, or BOTH Whoopis.
When we got the Shatner joke about "You don't want to be the first host to get a bad review!", you could sense the audience thinking, "That was deliberately meant to be ironic, right? "

I just remember Whoopi cussing live on TV.

[KingRad]

Originally Posted by MEB

Dear Seth MacFarlane; It will never be an appropriate time to make a wise crack about the assassination of an American president! NEVER!

That joke was in extremely poor taste!

Mark

Eh, I laughed. Poor taste or not, I thought it was funny.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by blu-ray_girl_fan

I just remember Whoopi cussing live on TV.

And admit it, the worst Whoopi had was a whole scriptful of then supposedly-current anti-Clinton Monica Lewinski jokes to a largely progressive/liberal actor audience (hssssh, awk-ward! )
She had it EASY, compared to un-PC Lincoln jokes with an audience ready to hand the award to Daniel Day-Lewis.

[metaridley]

EricJ, I genuinely find your Oscar host posts fascinating. Please, do go on! I usually avoid the ceremony although I caught the whole thing tonight and thought Seth did a decent job. Laughed @ his predictably un-PC jokes.

What happened during Jon Stewart's hosting gigs? I know that James Franco & Anne Hathaway were supposedly an unmitigated disaster as co-hosts (doesn't help they're charisma-free) but fortunately never saw them in action.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by metaridley

What happened during Jon Stewart's hosting gigs? I know that James Franco & Anne Hathaway were supposedly an unmitigated disaster as co-hosts (doesn't help they're charisma-free) but fortunately never saw them in action.

The first Jon Stewart gig in '06 (Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain) was one of the great 00's hosts--Stewart was hip, funny, shmoozed the nominees, was a good sport, ad-libbed, kidded the Best Song production numbers, was everything he was on the Daily Show, and kept a good Ellen DeGeneres informality about the whole thing.

Ellen did just as good for '07, but when she passed on '08, everyone said "Bring Jon back!" Unfortunately, the big idea for '08 (No Country vs. There Will Be Blood) was that the show would be shorter if they cut out all that nasty extraneous entertainment--Who wanted more than one pointless Best Song number anyway? (Yes, the ghosts of Debbie Allen's dance tributes to Saving Private Ryan die hard.)
As a result--like Seth constantly harping on the "long" show--Jon's second time came off as rather bitter and contemptuous of the "fun" parts of the ceremony, as if we in the audience were idiots for wishing Cirque du Soleil would show up and delay the whole thing off schedule--He tried to do a satire on the Chuck Workman classic-moments montages, but when we got "A salute to classic Binoculars", there was an awkward laugh-free pause as we heard an audience murmur of "wait, show some more of that! " With no-frills entertainment all evening, the awards became a sort of graduation line--"Okay, here's the Sound guys"--and Jon became next Monday's Entertainment Weekly headline. (Hence Seth's joke.)

[L-Rouge]

actually I have only seen one segment, one thing I found offensive was the treatment of the recipients of the Visual Effects oscar, it was less than 1 minute before the jaws music cut in and then killed the micro phone. was rthis a similar timeline for every one?. Main Recipient was about to speak on the health of the VFX industry, which is fair to say bottom of the heap in terms of heirarchy of importance

an interesting interview there after

http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/C.../oscar_winners

[Dreamliner330]

MacFarlane Jokes
MacFarlane Musi....DVR Skip
DVR Skip
Chuckle
DVR Skip
DVR Skip
Interesting
DVR Skip
DVR Skip
Ben Affleck redeemed
Delete recording

20 Minutes.

[Tony208]

Out of the best oscar nominated film/performance no one has seen, where would u rank the impossible

[EricJ]

So what did the Oscars do right this year?--
Fixed back all the "improvements" from previous years:

- In Memoriam with orchestral music, and famous writers/editors/composers identified by their famous movies
- Technical awards now identified for what innovation they won for
And the big long-awaited one,
- Clips of nominated Actor/Supporting performances, no gushy testimonials!

We are three steps closer to sanity. Five Best Picture nominations may be next.

(Oh, and did Hal "Cannonball Run II" Needham actually win a Lifetime Achievement award, or did I just fall asleep for a moment and dream that after the Smokey gag in the Sally Field sketch?
If it was, I seem to remember Jeffrey Katzenberg actually getting a second Oscar. And a Humanitarian award, at that. Must've been the nachos. )

[spanky87]

Meryl Streep announcing DDL's win was funny. Obviously she opened the envelope and saw the winner while they were playing Denzel's clip, but it still looked odd.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by MEB

Daniel Day-Lewis is the first person in history to earn THREE leading actor Oscars! WELL deserved, each and every one!

Mark

One up on both Spencer Tracy and Sir Lawrence Olivier. Got to say nice work mister DDL

[Galactus]

Hugh Jackman is nothing but class running to help Jennifer Lawrence up.


Much respect for you Mr. Jackman

[Atreyu]

Two things I didn't lilke about the telecast.
First off: When Tarantino won the announcer said it was his second win in the catagory and went on to name the first Pulp Fiction. Now when Lee won best director it was mentioned it was his second win, but did not state that his first was for Brokeback Mountain...an oversight?
Second: I am sad that the Bond reunion did not materalize. I read that Brosnan was the hold out so it did not happen...boy do I think a lot less of him now. Seeing all six actors who played Bond together on one stage would have been one of the greatest Oscar moments ever!

[Galactus]

Originally Posted by Atreyu

Two thing Ididn'tike about the telEcast.
First off: When Tarantino won the announcer said it was his second win in the catagory and went on to name the first Pulp Fiction. Now when Lee won best director it was mentioned it was his second win, but did not state that his first was for Brokeback Mountain...an oversight?
Second: I am sad that the Bond reunion did not materalize. I read that Brosnan was the hold out so it did not happen...boy do I think a lot less of him now. Seeing all six actors who played Bond together on one stage would have been one of the greatest Oscar moments ever!

Brosnan was the holdup? I thought it was Sean Connery?

[spanky87]

Sounds like a rumor. Why would the oscar producers scrap the Bond idea if Brosnan was the only hold out? I would assume they would just go through with it and make Brosnan look like an ass if he didnt want to participate. 5/6 is better than 0.

[s2mikey]

It's just good to see Christopher Knight getting his career back, hosting the oscars and all. Did they really have to parade Michelle Obungo out there? I didn't watch much at all but this Oscar show was even longer feeling than Tree of Life....and that's saying something!

It's over now, everyone can get back to their miserable existence.

[JohnWayne]

That Anne sure Hathaway with her...

(Sorry mods for posting something that stuck out at the oscars)

[Angel Eyes]

Originally Posted by MEB

Dear Seth MacFarlane; It will never be an appropriate time to make a wise crack about the assassination of an American president! NEVER!

That joke was in extremely poor taste!

Mark

Really? Seriously? .....150+ years and none of his relatives are even living. I was actually hoping he would have gone with "So other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?"

So glad that DDL won Best Actor. Has to be up there in my top 10 acting performances of all time.