The 77th Annual Academy Awards

and giving people Oscars in the audience WAS disrespectful. Did Beyonce have to sing every song but one? Has Hollywood no more singers these days? What about Catherine Zeta-Jones, who used to sing with the Welsh National Opera and won an Oscar (in part) for singing? It turned the Oscars into a Beyonce concert....As to the winners, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman were really no-brainers, but I was depressed to see the women win who did. Hilary Swank won an Oscar five years ago for playing a butch woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and here she plays the same kind of role and wins again. In between the two awards, her career has really come to nothing, because she is a terribly limited talent. Can she play an l8th Century French aristocrat? No -- but Michelle Pfeiffer can, brilliantly. Can Swank play a turn of the 20th-century suffragette? Nope -- Julia Ormond took every scene away from her in IRONJAWED ANGELS. Swank is a very contemporary American woman, masculine, and not really very attractive. She doesn't seem to have much depth or sophistication. If she can find other roles like these two, she can continue. Meryl Streep she ain't. Annette Bening really deserved to win, whether people liked BEING JULIA or not (I doubt many actually saw it, but it was a tour de force). And while I do admire the multi-talented Cate Blanchett, basically she was doing an imitation of Kate Hepburn; I don't think impersonations deserve Oscars. Virginia Madsen really deserved to win in that category. As to Best Director and Picture, AVIATOR was much more artistic, and Scorsese is to my mind a greater talent. But Eastwood has grown tremendously since his spaghetti western days, and he is popular in Hollywood. Doesn't justify a simplistic boxing movie winning, though.....Thanks for a chance to express my opinions.

Seriously the only good thing about this year ceremony were the winners.

Although the ceremony itself was pretty short it still was somewhat boring. I think it's seriously time to look for a new director and producers for the show, who can come up with something REALLY new. It's pretty obvious that they tried to make the show more 'hip' and appealing for a younger audience this year by letting Beyonce perform and letting P. Diddy and Prince present a category. Also letting Chris Rock be the presenter was an attempt to re-new the ceremony and make it more appealing. None of it really worked out.

Sure, Chris Rock is a funny guy but he wasn't really a good presenter. I really merely saw him as a guy who just talked every now and then in between of the different categories. His presence wasn't really as 'big' as for instance Billy Crystal's.

Also the handing out of the awards was pretty dumb at times. Not letting everybody come to the stage but also handing out some of the awards in the middle of the theater was plain weird.

Still, I can't remember being any more satisfied with the award winners. None of the movies really swept away the awards as the last couple of years always had been the case. So does that mean it had been a good year for movies with lots of competitive contestants? I don't think so. I think most of the movies will be largely forgotten in 20 years from now, with the exception of "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Passion of the Christ" maybe. Sure I don't agree with every single award that was handed out this year, for instance Caleb Deschanel should had won for best cinematography, not that I don't like Robert Richardson's work, he really did some amazing work for most of Oliver Stone's work but I really feel that Deschanel deserved the award way more. Also I would had liked seeing Jim Miller and Paul Rubell win for best editing and John Debney for best music. But oh well, there is no way the Academy Awards can please everybody of course, I understand that. There will always be people complaining about the winners.

It also was funny to see that most of the award presenters were way more nervous than the nominees and winners. Did Prince said any of the nominees names right at once? And were is Sean Penn's sense of humor? Al Pacino and Jeremy "I hope they missed" Irons were the best presenters of the night.

Overall a very forgettable show but with nice winners.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I'm not usually given to hyperbole, but after seeing over two decades worth of Academy Awards, I can honestly say that this year's awards show was the most disgraceful example of poor direction, total cruelty, and sheer stupidity that I've ever had the misfortune to witness. I'm not talking about the awards themselves- as usual, there is plenty to argue about when you tally up who won, who lost, and who never even got nominated, but the process is as it's always been and is as fair as it's liable to be. What is terribly UNfair is the treatment both the "stars" and "non-stars" received at the hands of Cates and Horvitz, in the name of "reducing boredom."

It is bad enough that for the last several years anyone who isn't Al Pacino has been "played off" at 45 seconds without any regard for what he was saying, how he was saying it, and what the emotion was behind the statement. It demonstrates nothing more than a total lack of respect, however, to herd nominees on the stage like cattle without paying them the honor of showing their faces while their names are read, to make them slink away quietly when they lose, to deny them the thrill of a walk to the podium, and to force them to read their statements with their backs to the audience. All of those things were done to the "non-stars" -never mind that the movies wouldn't exist at all without those artists and that most of them only ever get one chance to face their peers and their audience.

The stars didn't fare much better. It's becoming more sad than funny when winners of the caliber of Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood have to beg for a few extra seconds for their speeches. Chris Rock, as host, was neither as inflammatory and controversial as the Academy had hoped, nor nearly as funny as he could be. His opening remarks were almost (but not quite) as offensive as Sean Penn made them out to be, and his comments during the show were more innocuous than interesting. Of course, he could hardly be blamed when it was clear that was being kept on as short a leash as any host has. In the end, Chris Rock was something he's almost never been before: a non-entity.

Even the musical numbers were handled poorly. Beyonce sang well, but there was simply no reason why she should have been featured in three out of the five songs. Another example of utter disrespect for an artist was giving Jorge Drexler's nominated song to Antonio Banderas- even though Drexler was present and clearly wouldn't have minded singing his own song, based on his winning "speech."

The efforts of Cates and Horvitz to make the show shorter and faster may have worked to a degree, but what resulted was a show devoid of life. We've all whined about the overlong speeches given by people we don't know, about the overblown production, about the self-congratulatory quality. But this is THEIR night- not ours. What is meant to be a celebration has become an insult to the people being celebrated. Cates and Horvitz should, frankly, be ashamed.

A day or two after "The 77th Annual Academy Awards", I read an article in The Wall Street Journal about how Uruguay's new populist president Tabare Vazquez had just been sworn in. But it said that the thing on the minds of most Uruguayans was not their new president, but what happened at the Oscars: Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler didn't get to perform his nominated song "Al otro lado del rio", so he sang a few lines when he won.

Aside from that, I wonder just what Martin Scorsese has to do to win an Oscar. I mean, "Million Dollar Baby" was good, but Clint Eastwood had already won an Oscar. As for the whole thing about cutting people off before they have a chance to finish their speeches, what are you gonna do? And I do think that Chris Rock was a pretty good host (but I liked Jon Stewart even better the next year).

All in all, passable.

I firmly believe that the best Oscar ceremony in recent years was in 2003 for two reasons:

1 ) Host Steve Martin was at his most wittiest: " I saw the teamsters help Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo " and " I'll better not mention the gay mafia in case I wake up with a poodle's head in my bed "

2 ) Surprise winners: No one had Adrien Brody down for best actor ( Genuine applause ) or Roman Polanski for best director ( Genuine jeers and boos ) but they won

Last year's award ceremony wasn't too bad but there was little in the way of surprises and I was happy to see RETURN OF THE KING sweep the awards even if it wasn't the best in the trilogy ( FELLOWSHIP was much better )but what let the BBC coverage down was Jonathan Ross getting a few of his sycophantic mates round and pretending they were hilarious when they were anything but . So when I heard Sky were doing the coverage for British TV I was expecting Barry Norman and Mark Kermode to be doing the links , but instead we ended up with Jamie Theakston and Sharon Osbourne ! Oh gawd if British TV are desperate for film critics ( Obviously they are ) I'm sure both Bob The Moo and Theo Robertson will happily fly over to LA to give their honest opinions on the winners and losers

Chris Rock wasn't too bad , but he's no Steve Martin while the location seemed to resemble a sports hall with seats put in ! Not much of a glitzy arena in my opinion . The main problem I had with the ceremony was the format with the " minor " Oscars handed out to the winners who were sitting in their seats ! There's no such thing as a " minor " Oscar and just because the award is for Best Animated Short or Best Costume Design they're as well deserved as Best Picture or Best Director . All the winners should be allowed to march up to the podium . What a bunch of arrogant snobs the Academy are becoming and I quite agree with the comments that this format is disgraceful and if it wasn't for the surprises this could possibly have been the worst ceremony in history . As for the awards themselves

Best Supporting Actress - Cate Blanchett . No great surprise for a competitive category

Best Supporting Actor - Morgan Freeman . No real complaints since Freeman is one of America's greatest living character actors

Best Actor - Jamie Foxx . Most predictable award of the night . Yawn

Best Actress - Hilary Swank . Major surprise since everyone thought Annette Benning was going to win simply down to academy politics but Swank did deserve it and gave the best speech of the night

Best Director - Clint Eastwood . Major surprise since everyone thought Scorsese was going to get the award simply because he'd never won one . Actually I'm glad about this because if he didn't deserve it for TAXI DRIVER , RAGING BULL or GOODFELLAS he didn't deserve it for THE AVIATOR

Best Film - MILLION DOLLAR BABY . Again another major surprise since everyone thought the academy would split the awards for best director and best picture while I thought the Hollywood friendly plot of THE AVIATOR would have made it a dead cert for Best Picture while MDB's controversial subject matter would have turned a lot of voters off

What these awards perhaps illustrate is that this year the voters have decided to ignore Oscar politics and genuinely give out awards to people who deserve it something they haven't done in the past , I mean A BEAUTIFUL MIND beating THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING for gawd's sake ! And long may the academy vote with their heads instead of their hearts