The Academy Awards (2021) The producers of this year's event (including film director Steve Soderbergh) wanted something bigger and better than the Zoom Meeting awards shows we've suffered through since the beginning of the year.......
Somehow, (and this is still unclear to us), the plan involved making the Oscar ceremony look and move like a movie itself.......
Yeah, right.
Well they did broadcast it in the 2:35 widescreen movie theatre ratio. So, okay.....it sort of resembled a movie, visually.......
.......a really, really, long boring movie, filled with long winded speeches and some overwhelmingly stupid re-arrangements of the Academy Awards format......one of which turned the show's penultimate moment into a flat-footed, disaster of a finale that rivaled the infamous "Moonlight"/"La La Land" mixup by Warren Beatty.......
Enough overview griping......let's move on to random thoughts........
No jokes, no songs......we're betting most viewers didn't realize the Best Song nominee performances had already been kicked over to the pre-show. No host makin' with the jokes either, unless you could amuse yourselves with the idea of convicted murderer Derek Chauvin preferring anal rape in prison rather than face the wrath of Regina King.......
No clips..... since millions of people opted not to stream the depressing line-up of downers that constituted this year's films, maybe some peeks at 'em might've helped. Yes? Said the producers...."Uh uh......whaddya think this is? A show about movies?"
"West Side Story" and "In The Heights" trailers.......holy shit, real movies that someone besides the filmmakers' immediate families would want to see......watching these trailers was like having two bottles of frosty iced tea dangled in front of us while we crawled through the deserts of 'Nomadland'.......
Harrison Ford.....like everyone else, we dearly love Indiana Cranky-Pants, but if he's really going to play Indy at age 80, he'd better dig up that eternal life Holy Grail cup and fill it with Red Bull and uppers. His opening remarks were instructive for anyone still wondering why there's 4 or 5 different cuts of "Blade Runner".
The winners' speeches....memo to all of them from us. Say "thank you" and SHUT THE **** UP!!!!
The Death Parade.......a stroke of true imbecilic genius here. We didn't think it was possible to find a whole new way to make the "In Memoriam" segment even more offensive and disrespectful than any previous year. That's a damn high bar to jump over. But never underestimate the malignancy behind this segment....they did it! Der Bingo! And all they had to do was scroll through the list faster than the closing credits of a Marvel film being shown on TBS.
Union Station.....a good reason for all of us to get vaccinated. If we don't stop this pandemic, next year's awards will probably be held under an L.A. freeway underpass....or maybe at that last remaining Blockbuster store up in Oregon or wherever.....
Frances McDormand......is it just us or is that Crazy Aunt Fanny behavior starting to wear a little thin.....
Glenn Close.......not for one single solitary second do we believe that whole "Da Butt" bit was spontaneous. But it was still funny as hell and even if Oscar passed over her for the 8th time, her dance wins her the award for Good Sport Of The Year, and furnishing the only true entertaining moment in the entire horrendous 3 hours and 17 minutes.
The Best Actor finale disaster.....we've never seen an awards show wrap-up that so deliberately flaunted its stupidity. The producers rolled the dice here, betting that Chadwick Boseman's posthumous win was a sure thing, guaranteeing them a bittersweet but uplifting fade-out. What they got was a no-show by the actual winner Anthony Hopkins.......which only guaranteed them the most blah, undramatic and nothing-to-see-here finish in Oscar history. Nice effin' job, guys.
And as every local news reporter says.....there you have it. See you all in the popcorn line at "West Side Story", "In The Heights" and "No Time To Die"......
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