48 Weeks To Oscar: Reviewing The 2014 Oscar Show
The best thing I can say about this year’s Oscar show is that there isn’t a whole lot to say.
Ellen was good. Someone on Twitter found exactly the right note… it was like a sleepover. The only real downside is that only about a dozen people in the room were really included. Meryl Streep and Brad Pitt were at the center of it all. Kevin Spacey was the camera hog who found a way into every picture. Lupita Nyong’o’s brother was the kid from another school who found a way to fit in. Ellen didn’t dance. Smart.
Was this great? No. Was it lacking discomfort? Pretty much.
I always say about movies that I don’t start picking apart the details unless the movie hasn’t really grabbed me. And in this case, once we got past the very long first half of the show, the second half connected and was, really fine.
The opening monologue was meh, but not distractingly bad or anything. The set design was often great, though the plastic gummy Oscars were ugly enough to be outside at LACMA. (Keep them out of the space ship… uh, museum, please.)
The two extra musical numbers stuck out as completely unnecessary. Pink singing “Over The Rainbow” was not special. Pink is terrific. The song is terrific. But the combination was not an event in any sense of the word. And the In Memoriam section was bland and left out at least 3 or 4 people who really should have been included… then made the mistake of having Bette Midler sing a song that has been In-Memoriamed to death, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” doubling the time, still without honoring more people who deserved it. I get the feeling there were more faces behind Bette at the end than in the slideshow, but it just didn’t work.
There were other directorial problems with the show. The moon behind Karen O was inspired, but not shot in a way that made it magical. It was a film moment shot like TV and it should have knocked the TV audience out. Didn’t.
And you can time the pizza gag, another clever idea that took too long. But it basically worked.
This was a year in which the talent winning awards, many of them for the 4th or 5th time in public, saved the show. And so, although perhaps unintended, the show became about the talent accepting awards, which is really the point. And that is good, however it happened.
Would I welcome the same show, basically, next year? Sure. It could be better. Clean up the rough edges. It’s hard to hate that show. It lacked power. But that’s better than watching it try for power and fail.
To say they could have had everyone in pajamas could be taken as a slap or as a compliment. It was fine. It was safe. And there wasn’t a single moment of sexy in the whole thing. Okay.
See you in 5 months!
Compared to the utter nadir of last year (really it was impressive that McFarlane was worse than the stoner and the happy girl) this was an improvement, but a lot of it was agonizingly paced or inane. The pizza gag and most of ellen’s other schtick was about as long, boring, and excruciatingly drawn out as your run of the mill not-very-funny gags that pad episodes of Family Guy. Which, in a way, is a bit funny that these oscars were a bit more like an episode of Family Guy than not, I guess they kept around some of the writers from last year?
The awards and speeches themselves were great. It was really nice not to start playing music to scare off the person giving a speech three seconds into someone’s speech. Most people that were not actors spoke for about forty five seconds, it was much better than the rushed garbled -oh-my-god-twenty-seconds-oh-my-god we usually get and made the awards part of the evening oh so pleasant.
A lot of time has also been saved in recent years by having all the nominees from the non-acting categories gathered in a waiting box beside the stage, thus sparing us the long walks up from the back of the auditorium.
I thought it was the best show since Hugh Jackman in 2009. Ellen was funny. The selfie thing worked, the pizza gag, not so much. At least she didn’t vacuum–the worst joke last time she hosted. I did think the “Over the Rainbow Number” worked. The staging with the video projection was quite well done. I got misty eyed. Performing that song before “Let it Go,” on the other hand made the latter, the winner of the best song award, seem like warmed over mush.
If you want a host to come off like a real host and not just a gratefully elevated guest, you gotta keep one on the show for a few years. I think Ellen is probably good enough to really shine in this gig if the producers would just stick with her and let her get seasoned. Maybe then she could develop the vibe that this is her stage and her show and be a real master of ceremonies.
Was Tina Fey the biggest Oscars loser last night? Those commercials were more pedestrian than a boy scout walking his grandma across eight streets.
The problem with “Wind” isn’t that it’s been over-used for this sort of thing. It’s not even that it makes no sense as a memorial song, since the lyrics are about crediting a romantic partner who has been overshadowed. The problem is that it might have the single worst lyric of any Billboard #1 hit of all time. The verses pull off the rare combo of being clunky while unrhymed, and the chorus combines two ideas that have nothing to do with one another at all. Seriously, if you approached a greeting card company with this as a writing sample, you’d be laughed at privately rather than hired.
So the question is, who thought this belonged at a show honoring artistic excellence? It was as appropriate as a montage of highlights from Albert and the Chipmunks and Transformers movies.
I hate to say it, but these producers are doing nothing to stem the tide of gay cliches when they bring Bette Midler on to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” just 20 minutes after a (much more justifiable) “Over the Rainbow.”
On the other hand, I love the clothes Ellen wore, like a down-to-earth Marline Dietrich from the 30s–very lesbian chic!
Eric: While I agree the song sucks, and I have no idea what the original impetus behind the lyric was, the most famous iteration (Midler’s in BEACHES) has nothing to do with a “romantic partner,” unless I missed the scene where Midler and Barbara Hershey became lovers. It’s about the best friend who’s always there for you in the background while you’re chasing your dreams or something. I believe in the film you hear it when (SPOILER!) Midler is at Hershey’s grave. I’m sure that’s why the Oscar powers-that-be thought it would be an appropriate memorial song.
I love Bette and thought she sounded great. My issue is that “Wind Beneath My Wings” is not even an Oscar-nominated song. We have 80+ years of winning songs and at least 4 times that in nominees. If we can’t find any song that is appropriate from those 320 or so songs, then that speaks volumes about the category in general. And I did not understand why she sang by herself after the montage was completed. Sure, anytime Bette sings, I’m fine with her being the sole person in the spotlight, but the song (which is so overdone) just seemed to make the telecast drag… and that is the one thing that the producers should be avoiding.
The speeches were definitely the highlight of the night, which is appropriate and long-awaited. Hope next year’s winners and beyond take their cue from this group. These speeches told us something about the winner. That’s the insight we want as the audience… to see through the shiny curtain at the person underneath.
Ellen was fine. Won’t complain too much. I agree that some of the bits seemed to drag on, but when everyone is ad libbing, that’s just what happens.
As much as movie buffs love all the extras on DVDs, you’d think the producers could see the wisdom in continuing to find inventive and exciting ways to show us what goes on behind the camera. Learning about how movies are made is exciting (to me, at least) and I think the educational value of that is very high (especially in getting young people interested in the movie business). For instance, showing the costume design drawing is great, but then let’s watch that drawing morph into the actual character wearing it in the movie, so we can see the impact fully realized.
I did NOT like Pink’s version of “Over the Rainbow”. Someone needs to tell Pink that it’s improper to brea–eathe in the mi-hiddle of every other wor—rd. Take a breath and sing through the phrase for heaven’s sake. I appreciate the idea that we’re inviting a current popular artist to sing… let’s just make sure they know HOW to sing the song we’re assigning them. I was cringing through the whole thing. I’m sure Harold Arlen looking on from the great beyond was not very thrilled, either… The song is supposed to be about the SONG, particularly the LYRICS… that should be paramount… it’s a show recognizing ACTING, after all, it’s really not an award show about “performing” in the concert or recital milieu. The song was written to be sung while acting. I’d rather have heard the original version from the movie, or maybe start with the clip and move on to show Judy singing it throughout the years. That would have been more of a tribute to the song and it’s power (and the person that made it eternally famous) than what I thought was a very American Idol-ish rendition.
I also thought that the U2 song was far superior to the song from Frozen (which was bland, pat, uninventive), though I love Idina and thought she sang as spectacularly as ever (even after having her name completely mangled).
Having said all of that, the show overall was pretty good, even though there were no surprises. Most of my friends who participated in our little prediction contest got at least 21 of 24 categories and most of the misses were Live Action Short or Animated Short.
In an article I read yesterday, someone suggested that the Academy move their awards up again to the week between the NFL Playoffs and the SuperBowl. EXCELLENT IDEA! I vote for THAT!!!
Like Ellen, although I did not expect to. A nice gentle hosting performance.
I agree with Bally’s critique of Pink’s singing. Gad, that’s irritating . . . sing a phrase, for God’s sake. Same thing with the current way everyone sings the national anthem. There’s no damn pause after “Oh say . . . breath breath . . . can you see.” Musical intelligence has fallen off the cliff these days.
Give me Tina Fey and Amy Poehler any day over this. The Globes know how to put on a show.
Bette was great, but…last year The Way We Were was approproiate because its Oscar winning Marvin Hamlisch had was in part of the in-memorium segment. That should be the standard – not to make a diva singing a weepy song a tradition. Allowanaces can be made for the performer.
Speaking of divas, has Doris Day been given an honorary Oscar yet? I’d say she’s next in line after Lauren Bacall and Angela Lansbury!
You’d think Day would be a no-brainer for the honorary Oscar. I wonder if they ever put out feelers about these things to see if the potential recipients are down with it? Day has been out of the public eye for ages, and who knows, maybe she has no interest in showing up for it.
It still galls me that Richard Widmark and Glenn Ford, two prolific, major, big-box-office stars in their day, went to their graves without this honor. Ford never even got a competitive nomination, and Widmark had only one (in 1947 for Kiss of Death, his very first film!).
Day is indeed extremely reclusive. She didn’t even show up for her Lifetime Achievement Award from the L.A. Film Critics, which was not televised and had an attendance of maybe 300, so I can’t imagine she’d want to show her 91-year-old self to hundreds of millions of people.