Oscars 2013

I am really 100% over Seth McFarlane, so maybe I'm biased, but I found the show to be painfully unfunny. The bit with William Shatner went on FOREVERRRRR. I actually left the room to do something else and when I came back it was STILL ON.

The Onion has at least apologized for their tasteless tweet. That poor girl. I'm glad she's being assertive about her name. Somehow I doubt any Oscar voter refused to vote for Sigourney Weaver because she had an unconventional name.

And I don't remember Saoirse Ronan getting the same crap.

I'm trying to find a clip of the Sound of Music joke because it's already one of my all-time favorite Oscars jokes. OMG. I was dying.

MacFarlane, blah. He started off not being an asshole with the cute joke about making Tommy Lee Jones smile, and it was all downhill from there. The world is not in such desperate need of another "Clooney dates jailbait" joke that Quvenzhane needs to be dragged into it. That, the Rihanna joke, and the joke about Hayek/Cruz/Bardem were the lowest of the low. Really, in 2013, we have jokes about Spanish/Hispanic people are hot and have incomprehensible accents? As a friend of mine put it, "I'm surprised he didn't make a joke about Asian drivers after Ang Lee won."

The Jaws theme was mean but very funny at first, and then became just plain mean when they played it over the Life of Pi winner while he was talking about their visual effects company going under. Also, uh, why was Anne Hathaway played off to the theme of The Godfather?

Loved sockpuppet Flight because I'm a sucker for that kind of silliness. In the musicals montage, Jennifer Hudson got the biggest round of applause in our apartment - until Aaron Tveit graced the stage, because we are all extremely shallow.

In terms of winners, I can't be too upset about Argo winning, even though I thought others were more deserving. It's not the best Best Picture winner of the last ten years but also not the worst. Besides, I am much too delighted about the fact that Ang Lee and Quentin Tarantino won Oscars in the SAME YEAR to be annoyed about Argo. Also, Christoph Waltz needs to send Quentin a fruit basket every day for the rest of his life.

I just...I can't stand MacFarlane and I finally gave up at the point where he made a joke about Jessica Chastain's character being an example of how women never let anything go. Yeah, an Oscar-nominated performance of a character based on several women who had the strength and determination and sheer balls-out badassery to spend TEN YEARS risking their lives to catch and kill a terrorist who murdered thousands of people is TOTALLY the same as when your girlfriend bitches at you for leaving your socks on the floor. Go die in a fire, you frat-boy hack.

(I cackled at the "cocaine trees as far as the eye could see" comment, though. I wish more of the jokes had been like that--pointed, but smart.)

I thought McFarlane did okay. Better when NOT talking. I think that's the case for most Oscar hosts, though. If they're too snarky, the celebs cry foul, if they're too safe, the audience wants to die (this is the route typically taken). If they can sing and dance, that's win-win. I would love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Amy can get away with really biting comments, but she's funny!

I was kind of astonished by the lack of montages. Other than in memorial. I liked the more performances, no matter how random (Chicago...ok...?).

I found out that this is only the 3rd time the big 6 categories have all gone to different movies, which is pretty interesting. I bet they up the director category to the same number as the the picture category.

Queenofdenile, ABC has a clip of that joke.

I actually laughed quite a bit more at McFarlane than I thought I would. The Flight sockpuppets had me in stitches, as did the goofy Sally Field sketch. The Sound of Music thing was hilarious. He was funny enough without being outright mean to people, so hey! Maybe I just went in with such LOW expectations that he won me over? Hmmm.

I had two weird moments of dissonance last night. One, was coming home from a show, where a comic basically crushed the room by wanting the good old days when parents could hit their kids in public, and some rant about what "fuckin' homos" firemen are, and seeing Seth McFarlane, who used to do stand-up comedy in Rhode Island, do jokes that for all their crassness would go over that room's heads.

The second is that Jack Kirby co-created the property that would go on to be the year's biggest blockbuster, and play a real-life role in the plot of the year's best picture winner, yet most of the populace doesn't know him by name.

Yeah, things like that are why I won't go to comics anymore, sky. When there are a whole bunch of them going one after the other, you're virtually certain to get at least one of those types.

I liked a whole lot of things about the show, just none of them had to do with Seth (except the sockpuppets, which I did enjoy). I liked Adele and Shirley Bassey and the Chicago and Les Mis songs and Jennifer Lawrence and Brave.

WHY is no one pointing out that Nicole Kidman's dress made her look like she was wearing a Batman belt buckle?

Eh, I wasn't super offended by anything that was said or done during the show. I thought McFarlane was okay. I thought the winners were chosen wisely, I thought most of the attendees looked good, and I thought the musical numbers were fine, if a little unnecessary. I guess I've seen so many of these awards ceremonies that nothing really registers anymore, but that's not a bad thing. I have fun looking at all the sparkly gowns and twinkly lights.

The only time I was excited was when Christoph Waltz won for Django Unchained. Love him, loved his acceptance speech. He seemed genuinely surprised by his win, so it came off very sweet.

I'm just happy no one showed up in black face again. Still not cool Billy Crystal.

Every time they try for a younger demographic, they think they have to do it with racism, sexism, shock tactics, etc. They really have a low opinion of the younger demographic!

Thanks for the clip, Escape!

Every time they try for a younger demographic, they think they have to do it with racism, sexism, shock tactics, etc. They really have a low opinion of the younger demographic!

Seriously. Fey and Poehler proved that you can be funny and biting while hosting an awards show without being nasty and misogynistic/racist/anti-Semitic. But no, they want EDGY. Edgy by...making jokes about women not letting things go, Spanish accents, and the like. Yeah, I haven't heard any of that material before. g

Did they seriously leave Andy Griffith out of the In Memorium? That's gotta be one of the more ridiculous exclusions I've seen from them if so.

So... that thing with RDJ and SLJ. Looks like they had a joke to do but got a prompt to skip it instead and RDJ refused to play along. Does that seem like a fair reading to you? Because the tension around that moment seemed genuine and I'm wondering if RDJ and SLJ had some drama on set that's still between them or if that was simply a heat of the moment bit of confusion and testiness.

I didn't really pick up any testiness.

So him being huffy/contrary was scripted, scrapped, and then he did it anyway? Well that's even more amusing to me, because I love him but he can be a total ass, and when directed at another total ass I'm fine with it, but then why did the director accomodate him by going with the cuts?

I just thought that was the actual bit.

A lot of the presenting banter was weird like the thing with Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy.

Kiran wrote:I just thought that was the actual bit.

Same here. It seemed timed like a bit.

TiffanyNichelle wrote:A lot of the presenting banter was weird like the thing with Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy.

Yeah, WTF was that?

swsa wrote:Did they seriously leave Andy Griffith out of the In Memorium? That's gotta be one of the more ridiculous exclusions I've seen from them if so.

They did! Damn.

Apparently they put up a slideshow of more people in the In Memorium on line on their website but I don't get why they couldn't have shown more people when Barbra was singing.

I think a bit of the confusion about the Avengers thing is because you couldn't actually see RDJ and Sam Jackson in the same shot so it looked like it wasn't planned.

The camera work was AWFUL last night in general. No real crowd reactions, and showing Riva when they were supposed to show O'Russell.

The sound work was bizarre too.