The 86th Academy Awards or: BRB, going to rent Dallas Buyer's Club

It almost felt like I wouldn’t get to watch the Oscars this year.  For some reason, I was never able to get the cable box in my apartment connected properly to the TV, so the obvious means of watching the awards was right out.  I could have gone to someone else’s place and was, in fact, invited to someone’s Oscar party.  I didn’t because: a) I’m a lazy sod, b) I was wearing my pajamas and didn’t want to change, and c) it’s cold outside.  So I tried to stream it over the internet.  Because the major media companies that own the broadcast stations resoundingly refuse to join the 21^st goddamn century, I was forced to do this by some more questionable means.  This naturally, also meant that the video quality was poor and the lag threatened to end my night early.  I persevered, and fortunately, the stream got better and my neighbors only had to hear me curse my way through the red carpet footage and the first 20 minutes of the awards.

I’m a film enthusiast, and the films are why I watch the awards.  The Academy Awards red carpet, on the other hand, is the most insipid piece of television I voluntarily sit through on a yearly basis.  It is literally a group of grown men and women applauding a different group of grown men and women for being able to dress themselves appropriately for the situation.  Yes, the dresses are gorgeous in most cases, but these are Hollywood celebrities, most of them could show up in a potato sack and still be beautiful. There is only so many times I can listen to these people say “who made your dress?” and “are you excited?” and “Oh, I loved ‘Gravity’!”  So did everyone else on the goddamn planet!  I really only turned it on early so that I could make sure the stream was working.

Enough of my bitching, on to the main event.  I didn’t bother making a ballot this year, because I hadn’t seen most of the movies that were front runners for awards this year.  And as it turned out, of the four movies that won multiple awards yesterday, the only one I had seen was “Gravity”. As it was, I should have done one anyway, because the speculation for which movies would win proved to be remarkably accurate and there were nearly no upsets.  Gravity dominated the early part of the show, sweeping the technical awards (Visual effects, sound editing and mixing), alongside best editing, original score, and cinematography.  Alfonso Cuarón was also awarded Best Director, a title he should have gotten back in 2006 for the un-nominated “Children of Men”.  If you haven’t seen that film, go and watch it.  It’s an excellent sci-fi film and the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and honestly better than that in “Gravity” because it wasn’t as reliant on green screens.

“12 Years a Slave” was awarded Best Picture, which meant I continued my four-years running streak of not having seen the film that won best picture before the awards.  Hopefully the DVD is coming soon.  Lupita Nyong’o was awarded Best Supporting actress for her role and left one hell of an impression.   It also was awarded Best Adapted Screenplay, which it probably deserved.  

I don’t recall hearing anything about “Dallas Buyer’s Club” when it was first released, but I am absolutely chomping at the bit to see it now.  Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey both won awards for their acting, and gave fairly memorable speeches as well.

I have a huge crush on Cate Blanchett, who won Best Actress for “Blue Jasmine”, but I’m probably not going to see it because I don’t really want to spend money on Woody Allen.  I do, however, think it’s unfair to criticize her for thanking Woody Allen in her speech, because, pervert or not, she wouldn’t have won that award (this year) if he hadn’t made the movie.   But what do I know?

“Her” was the only other movie I saw this year that won anything.  Spike Jonze very much deserved to win the award for Best Original Screenplay.  “Her” was my favorite among the films that I saw during award season.

I have every year since 2009 gone to see the animated and live action short films that are nominated for academy awards, and I’m almost always wrong about which ones will win.  I thought for sure that the Disney-made nostalgia trip that was “Get a Horse!” would win Best Animated Short Film, but instead it went to the French steampunk movie “Mr. Hublot”.  My favorite of the live action short films was “The Voorman Problem”, which was a clever and short comedy.  My least favorite was “Helium”, a movie about a creepy janitor who breaks into a children’s ward at the hospital and is sentimental (Not necessarily an objective plot summary).  That movie, naturally, won Best Live Action Short Film.

Meanwhile, “The Great Gatsby” has two academy awards while “American Hustle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” both have none.  There is something wrong with the world.

I haven’t seen any of the other niche category films (foreign films, documentaries) this year, so I have nothing to comment on them.

I thought that Ellen DeGeneres was a competent host, and was reasonably funny when she needed to be, although some of the gags went on too long.  This seemed like a year where they really played it safe with the host, the production, and the theme (Heroes of Hollywood). 

One of the main reasons I keep watching this show is the annual In Memoriam segment, which this year seemed to be particularly rough.  Among the people honored this year were James Gandolfini (“The Sopranos”), Jim Kelly (“Enter the Dragon”), Peter O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Shirley Temple (“Bright Eyes”), Harold Ramis (“Ghostbusters”) stop-motion effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, Elmore Leonard (one of my favorite authors), writer Richard Matheson and the one and only Roger Ebert.  It ended with the still painful image of Philip Seymour Hoffman. RIP.

That’s about all I have to say on that. We’ll see what lies ahead next year.

PS:  I’ve spent far too long agonizing about what I should do with this blog and trying to work up the desire to actually write something.  I’m going to try to just write about whatever comes to mind in an effort to get something out.  See you soon.