01 March 2004

Oscars

I'm not sure if I've ever watched an entire awards show before, but last night I sat through the Oscars. The opening bit with Billy Crystal was pretty fabulous, I must say. He did a good job throughout &mdash clearly he had come to rehearsal, unlike just about everybody else involved. If these people are professional actors why do they find it so incredibly difficult to read a teleprompter? Tom Cruise and Robin Williams were the only ones who looked completely at ease, and poor Tobey Maguire sounded like a total robot: he used no punctuation and read the lines as if he had no clue what he was about to say next.



As far as the awards themselves went, I hadn't seen that many of the films so I didn't usually have a very informed opinion. The two biggest letdowns for me were the Best Actor and Best Song awards. You could just see how badly Bill Murray wanted the Oscar. They had a five-way split screen when they announced the winners and the losers for every award would smile and applaud politely. Not Murray. He was so pissed that Billy Crystal made what I assume was an unscheduled joke about it after Sean Penn took the award. I haven't seen Mystic River yet (anyone wanna go with me?) so I'll withhold judgment about who should've won. And the crummy LotR song that won that award was the worst of the nominees (they played them all during the show, so this time I have a real opinion). Mighty Wind should've got it just for the amazing live performance by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara.



The highlight of the night, however, had to be Peter Jackson's complete dishevelment. He badly needed a haircut, his shirt collar was unbuttoned beneath his tie, and he looked like he had had about a dozen drinks at the pre-party. He was like Jabba the Hutt sitting behind the five primly decked out hobbit actors. Yeesh.



No comments: