Of Binoculars and Periscopes

As I mentioned earlier in the day, I watched The Oscars with my friends via long distance IM connection since they get over so late that it wouldn't make sense for me to watch over there with them. They've been doing this ritual for quite some time and the last 3 or so years I've joined in. Pretty fun to discuss it with other people as it's going on.

These are probably going to be kinda disorganized and train of thought-ish, but here's my thoughts on last night's academy awards:

First of all, the voice over lady doing all of the announcing was terrible. She had the most annoying voice and way of speaking. Not nearly dignified enough for the image the awards were trying to present as usual. The first thing I noticed was that the red carpet host on ABC was Regis Philbin and he seemed to be grabbing the hand of anybody who he was talking to. My theory was that he was holding them in place so that they wouldn't run away from him because he's a pretty scary guy. Regis also had a habit of telling everyone who was going to be on stage performing that they were going to be in front of billions of people and that they shouldn't mess up because everyone would see, which I thought was a horrible thing to say to somebody just before they take the stage. Horrible.

Moving on to the actual awards show…Jon Stewart was totally awesome. I thought the beginning part of his opening monologue was a bit weak, but he got it together and was totally ON the whole night. My absolute favorite part of the show was his segment on what would have happened if the writers hadn't come back. Specifically the Oscar's salute to Binoculars and Periscopes montage. I was dying laughing. He also wins for classiest moment (although this was probably the directors decision anyway) when he invited the woman who won for best song to come up and give her thank you's after they totally cut her off after she won the award.

As far as the award winners is concerned, I only have one thing to say considering I haven't seen most of the movies this year. First, in the category of special effects, I think Pirates of the Caribiean and Transformers totally got screwed out of their awards. The Golden Compass wasn't anywhere near the level of the other two movies as far as real looking CGI effects.

The one thing I thought we were safe from was the animated character bit they usually pull, considering the writer's strike was called pretty close to the awards. I figured they didn't have time to write or record anything. Unfortunately, I was totally wrong. Jerry Sienfeld's Bee Movie award presentation was the result. Not as horrible as usual I guess, but still pretty bad.

I'm probably leaving a ton of stuff out (should have written this earlier I guess) but, there you have it. Overall, I was entertained and came out of it with a lot of movies to check out via netflix when I get the chance to. Until next year then.

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