The Academy Awards

I am a big fan of Oscars awkwardness. Hell of a line by Niven. Redgrave's denunciation of Israel regarding Palestine didn't go over very well either. Chayefsky's response was however, well-received.

 

I don't fault that really. Sure, there were a lot of more obscure non-actors they did include on air, they only had so much time.

Other omissions (to name a few): Ed Asner, Louie Anderson, Norm Macdonald, Gavin McLeod, Mike Nesmith, Peter Scolari

A.frame

 

Besides, the departed were mere background noise for the death dance.

(I was surprised more wasn't done for the cinematographer killed on a set.)

Look, the last two shows have not been good. At all. There was some excuse for last year. Not this year. And it's going to dawn on people how hideous the smack was, and how bizarre Smith's acceptance speech turned out to be, and it's going to take some incredible skills to make subsequent years seem funny again.

 

The harder they try to gin up the Awards as a TV show, the worse it gets as a TV show. Maybe they should stop trying and just, you know, present awards.

 

That singing and dancing in front of the screen was gross and disrespectful, even for selfish twats in Hollywood. It was distracting from the people being memorialized.

 

The best actor conspicuous by his absence.

 

People old enough to have produced variety shows are now too old to be funny. People young enough to be funny are too young to remember how variety shows worked. Hence the mess we got last night.

The Oscars telecast has always been a terrible hybrid of a high school sports banquet and an EST seminar, all self-important sanctimony and daydrunk backslapping.

 

What's funny is they cut down the minor awards, yet still find time for weird "bits" -- show ran long again. With fewer awards.

 

Exactly. And the In Memoriam package - one of the few things they can produce in advance, and time - still omits people.

The network wants to sell 3+ hours of commercials. But it's a 90-minutes show, and always has been.

All three hosts did their best, but their material was awful. Why bother?

Just hand out the statuettes at the nominees' luncheon.

The movie business as we knew it is collapsing. The old tricks won't work to save it.

AMPAS 2023: adapt or die.

 

While I liked the individual tributes from Murray, Perry and Curtis - the music was just a bit too...buoyant? But dang a lot of my faves passed in the last year.

 

Isn't there a fuss over who is/isn't in the memoriam portion every year? The Academy seems to limit it only to folks in theatrical movies, not TV or other mediums.

 

They play fast and loose with it - Betty White but not Ed Asner? Asner did Up, Elf, Fort Apache The Bronx, Gus, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!, Change of Habit, a longer and more substantial list of major movie credits than Betty White did, but I get - everyone loved Betty.