Oscar 2015 thoughts

Whew! That’s a relief; I don’t know if I could have lived in a world where the actor from Beetlejuice and the director of Dazed and Confused were Oscar winners.  Not that they didn’t deserve it (especially Michael Keaton).  This is the first time in over a decade that my favorite film of the year has won Best Picture, and I think I am a little disappointed.  The Academy used to be dependable; when confronted with a brilliant film (The Social Network) and a nice one (The King’s Speech), they always chose the nice one.  I wonder if this will become a habit.

Can we please PLEASE eliminate the award for Best Original Song?  This was the worst line up of best song nominees since 2009 when two of the three nominees was in Hindi and the other was a rap song.  How bottom was the barrel they were scraping?  They had to nominate a song from a documentary about Glen Campbell (first, someone had to say, “I think I’ll make a documentary about Glen Campbell.”  Then someone had to write a song).  I don’t think anyone in America will be humming any of these tunes tomorrow morning.

The ratings were a major drop off from last year; one doubts if people in advance knew that Neal Patrick Harris was going to be telling people to watch a box containing a briefcase for the entire evening.  There us a distinct link between ratings and the popularity of the favorite film to win Best Picture, and it had pretty much boiled down to two small indie films, Boyhood and Birdman (note—how annoying was it that they insisted on using Birdman’s full title every time they said its name? Did adding “or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” really add anything?).

The irony is that the Academy expanded the Best Picture field from 5 films to 8, 9 or 10 in order to get a few summer blockbusters in the mix, the occasional Guardians of the Galaxy or maybe a Transformers 4.  Instead, the voters just nominated even more small indie films.  Yes, American Sniper made a ton at the box office, but nobody thought it had any chance at winning (well, no one who follows the pre-Oscar awards season; in my office an on-line survey found that 42% of the people I work with were convinced Bradley Cooper was going to win best actor).  So the TV audience was comprised of everyone who Boyhood and Birdman, which would barely rate above Sermonette these days.

I am amused by all the breast beating about the nominees being so White.  First of all, most of the creative people behind Birdman were from Mexico and didn’t look like they’d blend in at any country club I know.  Second, before Sunday night four of the previous eight winners in the Supporting Actress category were Black (I can’t say African-American because Lupita Nyong’o is Mexican/Kenyan).  I’d say winning half of the awards in one category is pretty impressive given all the, you know, racism.

Apparently there is a major hubbub over Joan Rivers being “snubbed” in the In Memoriam sequence.  Quick, what’s your favorite Joan Rivers movie? Remember that time she won the Oscar?  I thought not.  She wrote and directed exactly one movie (you remember Rabbit Test?), and she’s going to bump some costume designer from the “Who died” list?  There are also protests in Italy because Francesco Rosi, the director of Christ Stopped at Eboli, was left off the list.  A few years ago there were complaints that Gene Siskel was overlooked.  Pretty soon things will be so touchy they’ll just skip the whole thing.

The show had its moments (I liked NPH singing off JK Simmons with the Farmers Insurance jingle) but it was an exercise in tedium that ran 30 minutes over time.  If you are going to bore us, at least come in on time.  Maybe less John Travolta would help.