Oscar Recap

I know that in my last post I promised I'd tackle part 2 of the outsourcing of jobs. However, I was away all weekend and we just had the Oscars. So I'm going to save that for my next post and give you my Oscar impressions.

I must start off with a pat on the back for myself. In all the Oscars given out last night, I correctly picked all but 5 of them. I even got things like best foreign film and best documentary short right. My biggest gaff was not picking RotK for Best Adapted Screenplay. I felt at the time, that they would give the nod to Mystic River since there had been much heralding about that book. But I did get Original Screenplay, all the acting, director and picture awards right. Now, some of that is due to the quickness of this year's Oscars. When you don't have as much turnaround time, its a lot harder to work up buzz for little indy pictures (think Adrian Brody or Halle Berry). But I was also right three years ago when FotR was first nominated. I said it wouldn't win then, but that RotK would. Now I'm right and can do the happy dance.

I also think that Will Ferril and Jack Black should be invited back to sing the "You're Boring" song every year. I was almost in tears I was laughing so hard at that. I thought they should be getting the Oscar for Best Song. I'm happy that Lennox won, though based on her performance, I was glad I didn't have any video to go with my copy of the song. Very intense eyes and I thought she was going to swallow the mike at a couple points. Second best performance went to "Kiss at the End of the Rainbow." Very funny and touching performance.

I can't really say anything about the speeches. I generally don't like them so I would flip to other channels during them and come back when they were done. I got pretty good. So I had a fun time also watching "Dirty Harry", "Patton", and "I Love the 80's Strikes Back: 1985." Given that I did catch a moment of Charlize Theron thanking her lawyer, I don't feel that I missed anything.

Billy Crystal was funny. I honestly think I enjoyed Steve Martin a little more last year but it was pretty good. His songs were funny, especially the "Old Man Eastwood" bit. I also liked the individual tributes to Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn, but I was a little disappointed in the Bob Hope one. He did do a little more that hosting the Oscars. I would have liked to have seen a least a clip or two from some of the movies he did. It seemed a bit shallow to only denote his hosting of the show during the Oscars. But that's just me.

One more thing on RotK. People like to talk about how RotK is now tied with the Boat Movie and Ben-Hur for most wins. I would like to remind everyone that there were fewer categories when Ben-Hur won and it had to flex muscle in the acting categories which is something that The Boat Movie and RotK did not do. I personally feel that RotK was snubbed in acting nominations while The Boat Movie didn't deserve the two it did get as the acting was a bit melodramatic for my tastes. So, although they are tied, I would still rate them as Ben-Hur #1, RotK #2, and Titanic #3 and I would shove The Boat Movie lower if I could.

I'm going to stop now, but in a later post, I'll address my feelings on using great tragedies as backdrops for romance movies and the countdown for a 9/11 movie.