80 years without a highlight
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
As promised, my spoiler-free rundown of the Oscars ceremony. Tonight you will see a fairly smooth, if largely predictable, ceremony.
There were no embarrassing speeches, but no highlights either.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart brought his usual dry humour to the evening, with a few running gags about pregnant celebs, and a “what might have been” look at a strike affected Awards.
Some of the clips of previous ceremonies had some sentimental moments, but as an 80th celebration it was a little on the routine side.
The musical numbers (assuming they remain in the Nine package) were more Broadway than Hollywood, no doubt because three of them were from Enchanted.
The In Memoriam section as always was sad, finishing with one poignant loss in particular.
One acceptance speech winner, cut short by the music, was invited back after the break to have their moment. Another got lost for words and cued the music themselves!
One category is ‘presented’ via satellite from US soldiers in Baghdad. The most staggering part of this package was their youthful age. It reeked of America having sent its children to war -perhaps that was the intent?
Harrison Ford looked half-asleep giving his presentation. Jennifer Hudson was lousy. Best were Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen.
And boy were there a lot of television-stars-who-have-done-the-odd-movie as presenters.
Best frock: Helen Mirren.
The best pre-show fun was in watching Richard Wilkins fluff his lines on the red carpet during the live satellite feed, none of which will remain in the edited highlights tonight.
The 80th Annual Academy Awards can be seen at 8:30pm tonight on Nine
17 Responses
David, yes, I’ve noticed in previous years that the in-house announcer has been removed in favour of just using captions to say who is on stage (great for the blind, not! 🙂 but last night, you could still make out via audience mikes some of what was being announced – and more than once that included things like “up next on ABC”. So I’m guessing it was for a TV audience, just not OUR audience.
I’m sure someone must have downloaded the US version by now and can confirm 😉
And ah yes, the industry satellite feed booze-up, how I miss that from my film-reviewing days. By the time it got to the pointy end nobody really CARED who won, we were all too plastered 😀
It was good, one thing that annoyed me is each person who won had about 90 seconds to say thanks. And being cut off by some fanfare is really rude!
Id rather they cut down the musical numbers and the silly clip packages and let the people who actually win the awards talk for a few mins.
Get Bert behind it!!
The almost unheard voice overs (“Please welcome so and so”) is an ongoing Oscars problem, and seems to always be for the Kodak Theatre audience only and not the TV audience.
At the industry satellite feed I attended, it was the same problem, so that doesn’t appear to be Nine’s doing.
I agree with you about the technical side of things Neonkitten – the loss of sound for the voice-over announcer during the course of the broadcast (it was fine at the beginning) has happened in previous years too. It’s very annoying, as was Nine’s inclusion of the Daniel Day-Lewis shot in their news promo before the end of the awards!!!
And what a waste of time the pre-show was – trying to sit up until midnight to watch the end when it could have been half an hour earlier.
Anyhoo, the show itself wasn’t too bad (there’s been worse!!)
Win TV (our local Nine broadcaster) cut to a COMMERCIAL just as Heath Ledger’s face appeared in the “In Memoriam” segment.
Good work!
Richard Wilkins is a moron. What a waste of half an hour. Glad to see Nicole Kidman has the sense to keep moving when she saw him.
Jon Stewart was very funny and the awards were a tight entertaining affair. The “what would have happened had the strike continued” bits were hilarious. Also enjoyed the montage of all the “best picture” oscars seeing all the past winners and wondering how the hell did Titanic win best picture!!
I thought Stewart was in fine form, and there were some nice moments; I actually liked the low-fuss flavour of this year’s ceremony. Too often it gets bogged down in kitsch and forgets what it exists for in the first place.
And how heartening to see a little song by two indie filmmaker/musicians win over THREE of those dreadful show tunes that seem to dominate the Best Song category every year! I thought it extremely gracious of them to invite the female of the duo back on stage to make a speech after she was rudely silenced when accepting her award.
I don’t think we saw the award presented from Baghdad in Nine’s rather clumsily edited version.
And finally – technically from Nine’s end it was a disaster. This show is a high definition surround-sound showcase in the US. But while Ten can bring us a minor golf tournament in full HD at stupid o’clock in the morning, Nine can only manage blurry SD for the Oscars, with sound so dreadful it beggared belief (for the entire four hours, voices came from the right speaker, the orchestra from towards the left, and everything else was completely out of phase – a nightmare in headphones!)
Why on earth would Nine Sydney show a advertisement for National Nine News showing clips of the current days news…. that the final clip they showed was Daniel Day Lewis holding up his Oscar BEFORE they had even shown the Award being received in the telecast. I watch Nine a bit but that is just STUPID
The red-carpet to watch was E!’s coverage with Ryan Seacrest, if only for the truly bizarre ordeal he had with Gary Busey.
For those who didn’t see, Gary Busey attempted to communicate with Seacrest as he interviewed Laura Linney and Jennifer Garner. When Seacrest brushed him off, an unprovoked Busey then began harassing Linney and Garner and totally destroying the interview. Genuine terror was experienced by all involved, until Busey finally moved off.
The most insane part of it was: Why was Gary Busey at the Oscars???
Yeah Nine are going to show the awards live rather then get an average of 1.2m+ viewers over 3 hours in prime time *insert sarcastic smilie*. What a silly suggestion!
I’m old enough to remember Seven showing them live in the 60s, with a full replay in the evening!
Oscars have always been with Nine, never live on Pay TV. Foxtel has all the rest but not these.
It’s true they don’t gain a huge figure ratings wise, but we have to remember any 3hr+ show is going to have its average figure dwindle down over that time frame.
i think why would Nine want show it live in the afternoon when most viewers will be unable to see it? I’m guessing they’ll get more advertising $$$ with a delayed telecast in prime time than compared to doing it live in the daytime, and $$$ will always speak loudest when making these decisions
Totally agree, David. A rather lacklustre show. Jon Stewart gave a good, solid performance but the presenters were generally bland and the montage segments.. yawn.
A totally forgettable night, with few (if any) highlights. The show looked as tired as Harrison Ford.
David, in previous years one of Foxtel channels (Arena, I think) broadcast the ceremony live. Why did they not do so this year? Was it a case of Nine securing exclusive rights or was a decision made by Foxtel?
in this day of instant information I find it arrogant and insulting that Nine still delay the oscars till the evening, with the notable exception of this site I have visited about 4 other news sites this arvo and each has had the results plastered on the home page, I seriously dont think anyone at theage.com wants us to wait till tonight, they even have pictures of all the winners on the homepage..its about time Nine started showing this, the biggest awards show of the year live or let one of the foxtel channels that will have it! I notice that over the last few years ratings for the oscars on nine have dipped..I really hope that trend continues tonight and nine wake up to themselves!