Monday, March 06, 2006
The Pimp and Ho's Ball: 78th Annual Academy Award Show
I’m not a big movie person. I like movies, but like most Americans, I don’t actually like going out to see them. I subscribe to Netflix and have HBO, Cinemax and Showtime, so I see a lot of movies, just not at the theater. Last night the 78th Annual Academy Awards was on. If you’re hoping to get a minute by minute account of the show last night, you’re out of luck. Too be honest I recorded it and then fast forwarded through the ceremony. I watched a three and a half hour show in two hours. I should get an award for saving an hour and a half of my life. What’ll I’ll do is cover the highlights of the event; the parts that I actually found interesting. This could turn out to be really short.
The show opened with the previous hosts declining to host the Academy Awards this year. Billy Crystal is in a tent with Chris Rock going all brokeback we can assume, or let’s not, YIKES!!! Steve Martin is babysitting his two kids who have hair just like him. Whoopi Goldberg slams the door in the face of the guy who asks her to host. David Letterman can’t host because he’s babysitting Steve Martin’s kids. Jon Stewart dreams he’s asked, but it can’t be real because he’s in bed with Halle Berry. He wakes up to find out he’s in bed with George Clooney and he is happy to be there with him; funny beginning.
Jon starts making jokes about the event, I think the jokes are funny but he doesn’t get a big response from the audience. Chris Rock didn’t get that much of a response either, except to make Sean Penn mad. I think the Hollywood types want their asses gently kissed during the show. People like Jon, Chris and Letterman aren’t part of the mainstream Hollywood scene and don’t hold it in reverence. Jon wasn’t hard on them, but he wasn’t starry eyed about them either. He ends his bit with a film clip showing that movie cowboys have always been kind of gay.
The first award of the evening went to George Clooney for Best Supporting Actor. Clooney was his usual charming self. I haven’t seen Syriana yet so I can’t attest to how good he was, but if the Academy Awards is just a popularity contest, you’d know that Clooney would win. I like him as an actor and share a lot of his views so I’m glad he won.
We’ll skip some awards to get to Best Supporting Actress. The winner is Rachel Weisz from The Constant Gardener. I actually saw it a few weeks ago and I agree she deserved to win. If you haven’t seen it, go out and rent it this week, you’ll enjoy it.
Lauren Bacall comes out to introduce a film noir montage. Ms. Bacall has trouble reading the TelePrompTer; she needed one of the detectives from the montage to find out where her glasses were. I have no idea why they decided they needed to honor film noir during the program. Isn’t that better suited for the American Film Institute to do?
The highlight of the evening is the fake attack ads for Best Actress. The first one has Keira Knightley’s campaign attacking Charlize Theron for getting ugly in her roles to win an Oscar while Keira remains beautiful to win hers. The second ad is a parody of the elderly couple one that was used for the prescription drug law. The elderly couple supports Reese Witherspoon because her name doesn’t sound foreign like the other Best Actress nominees. The last one is a parody of the Swiftboat Vets for Truth, called Dames for Truth that attacks Judi Dench. One one-eyed Dame claims: “Dame Judy took out my eye in a bar fight.”
They do another montage this time covering political films giving Hollywood another chance to pat itself on the back. They forget to do the montage honoring all the pointless movies they make. I guess if they did that, the montage would still be on. Jon did have a great line after it was over saying: “And none of those issues were ever a problem again.”
After some more awards I’m not interested in, they show another montage of movies to encourage us to see movies in a movie theater. Basically it’s a commercial for theatre chains. Don’t buy or rent that DVD, go to the movies instead. I guess they forget that if we didn’t buy or rent the DVDs most of the movie studios would go broke, promptly a lot of these stars to go back to waiting tables for extra income. If they want us in the theatres so bad, start making better pictures and quit charging $3.50 for a small box of popcorn.
Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep were cute together as they introduced Robert Altman to be honored for his honorary Oscar. That was all nice and good as it set us up for the second highlight of the evening when Ludacris introduced the Three 6 Mafia singing the Academy Award nominated song It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp (tell me about it). They had hos and pimps dancing on stage. I was as happy as Queen Latifah when she announced they won. The Three 6 Mafia was truly happy to receive their award. Jon Stewart was happy they were so happy that they won. Somewhere Randy Newman is turning over in his grave. (Even though he isn’t really dead)
We’ll skip some more awards, nearly watch my girl Sydney fall on her ass (Jennifer Garner looked good though) and watch the popularity contest of “In Memoriam” to get to Best Actor in a Motion Picture. My boy Terrence Howard didn’t win (too bad pimp), but Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote. I haven’t seen that movie but Hoffman is a good actor so I’m cool with him winning. Skipping some more awards and stuff we get to Best Actress in a Motion Picture and Reese Witherspoon wins for Walk the Line. I like Reese Witherspoon, anyone who could out psycho Jack Bauer in Freeway, be Tracy Flick in Election and be that ditz in Legally Blond deserves an Oscar.
Brokeback Mountain won the Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay, while Crash won for Original Screenplay. Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain. In all the big awards, everyone who was favored to win won, but the big upset was saved for last, Crash won Best Picture. Since Crash is the only Best Picture nominee I saw, I’m happy. I thought it was a great movie, but I guess I’ll need to see the other four to know if it deserved to win. The other four are already in my Netflix queue.
In summary, the 78th Annual Academy Awards was no better or worse than they usually are. None of the presenters or award recipients did anything memorable. So they won’t have to suffer with seeing themselves make a fool of themselves every Oscar season. Jon Stewart did a good job and he should do it again some time. I couldn’t have sat through the whole show if I hadn’t recorded it and fast forwarded through all the awards I don’t care about or the insipient intros the presenters give. One thing I like, they have a lot of the presenters’ present solo, saving us from inane banter between the presenters. I’m not a fashion expert but the ladies looked nice and who cares how the guys looked. After I’ve seen most of the nominated movies and actors, maybe I can make a more honest comment on who should have won. The only three movies I saw that had major nominations were Crash, The Constant Gardener, Junebug and Hustle and Flow. I hope you enjoyed it and see you next year at the movies.
The show opened with the previous hosts declining to host the Academy Awards this year. Billy Crystal is in a tent with Chris Rock going all brokeback we can assume, or let’s not, YIKES!!! Steve Martin is babysitting his two kids who have hair just like him. Whoopi Goldberg slams the door in the face of the guy who asks her to host. David Letterman can’t host because he’s babysitting Steve Martin’s kids. Jon Stewart dreams he’s asked, but it can’t be real because he’s in bed with Halle Berry. He wakes up to find out he’s in bed with George Clooney and he is happy to be there with him; funny beginning.
Jon starts making jokes about the event, I think the jokes are funny but he doesn’t get a big response from the audience. Chris Rock didn’t get that much of a response either, except to make Sean Penn mad. I think the Hollywood types want their asses gently kissed during the show. People like Jon, Chris and Letterman aren’t part of the mainstream Hollywood scene and don’t hold it in reverence. Jon wasn’t hard on them, but he wasn’t starry eyed about them either. He ends his bit with a film clip showing that movie cowboys have always been kind of gay.
The first award of the evening went to George Clooney for Best Supporting Actor. Clooney was his usual charming self. I haven’t seen Syriana yet so I can’t attest to how good he was, but if the Academy Awards is just a popularity contest, you’d know that Clooney would win. I like him as an actor and share a lot of his views so I’m glad he won.
We’ll skip some awards to get to Best Supporting Actress. The winner is Rachel Weisz from The Constant Gardener. I actually saw it a few weeks ago and I agree she deserved to win. If you haven’t seen it, go out and rent it this week, you’ll enjoy it.
Lauren Bacall comes out to introduce a film noir montage. Ms. Bacall has trouble reading the TelePrompTer; she needed one of the detectives from the montage to find out where her glasses were. I have no idea why they decided they needed to honor film noir during the program. Isn’t that better suited for the American Film Institute to do?
The highlight of the evening is the fake attack ads for Best Actress. The first one has Keira Knightley’s campaign attacking Charlize Theron for getting ugly in her roles to win an Oscar while Keira remains beautiful to win hers. The second ad is a parody of the elderly couple one that was used for the prescription drug law. The elderly couple supports Reese Witherspoon because her name doesn’t sound foreign like the other Best Actress nominees. The last one is a parody of the Swiftboat Vets for Truth, called Dames for Truth that attacks Judi Dench. One one-eyed Dame claims: “Dame Judy took out my eye in a bar fight.”
They do another montage this time covering political films giving Hollywood another chance to pat itself on the back. They forget to do the montage honoring all the pointless movies they make. I guess if they did that, the montage would still be on. Jon did have a great line after it was over saying: “And none of those issues were ever a problem again.”
After some more awards I’m not interested in, they show another montage of movies to encourage us to see movies in a movie theater. Basically it’s a commercial for theatre chains. Don’t buy or rent that DVD, go to the movies instead. I guess they forget that if we didn’t buy or rent the DVDs most of the movie studios would go broke, promptly a lot of these stars to go back to waiting tables for extra income. If they want us in the theatres so bad, start making better pictures and quit charging $3.50 for a small box of popcorn.
Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep were cute together as they introduced Robert Altman to be honored for his honorary Oscar. That was all nice and good as it set us up for the second highlight of the evening when Ludacris introduced the Three 6 Mafia singing the Academy Award nominated song It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp (tell me about it). They had hos and pimps dancing on stage. I was as happy as Queen Latifah when she announced they won. The Three 6 Mafia was truly happy to receive their award. Jon Stewart was happy they were so happy that they won. Somewhere Randy Newman is turning over in his grave. (Even though he isn’t really dead)
We’ll skip some more awards, nearly watch my girl Sydney fall on her ass (Jennifer Garner looked good though) and watch the popularity contest of “In Memoriam” to get to Best Actor in a Motion Picture. My boy Terrence Howard didn’t win (too bad pimp), but Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote. I haven’t seen that movie but Hoffman is a good actor so I’m cool with him winning. Skipping some more awards and stuff we get to Best Actress in a Motion Picture and Reese Witherspoon wins for Walk the Line. I like Reese Witherspoon, anyone who could out psycho Jack Bauer in Freeway, be Tracy Flick in Election and be that ditz in Legally Blond deserves an Oscar.
Brokeback Mountain won the Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay, while Crash won for Original Screenplay. Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain. In all the big awards, everyone who was favored to win won, but the big upset was saved for last, Crash won Best Picture. Since Crash is the only Best Picture nominee I saw, I’m happy. I thought it was a great movie, but I guess I’ll need to see the other four to know if it deserved to win. The other four are already in my Netflix queue.
In summary, the 78th Annual Academy Awards was no better or worse than they usually are. None of the presenters or award recipients did anything memorable. So they won’t have to suffer with seeing themselves make a fool of themselves every Oscar season. Jon Stewart did a good job and he should do it again some time. I couldn’t have sat through the whole show if I hadn’t recorded it and fast forwarded through all the awards I don’t care about or the insipient intros the presenters give. One thing I like, they have a lot of the presenters’ present solo, saving us from inane banter between the presenters. I’m not a fashion expert but the ladies looked nice and who cares how the guys looked. After I’ve seen most of the nominated movies and actors, maybe I can make a more honest comment on who should have won. The only three movies I saw that had major nominations were Crash, The Constant Gardener, Junebug and Hustle and Flow. I hope you enjoyed it and see you next year at the movies.
