Now that all the awards have been given out, I suppose it is time for me to review this year’s awards.
First off, as I mentioned when the nominations came out, I had seen very few of the nominees (four, plus two more after the nominations.) Last year I had only seen one. On the ballots that we filled out at my party last year, I managed to guess ten of the winners correctly. This year I fared only slightly better – twelve of the twenty-four categories.This year I did not host a party. The fact that I can only host about six people – while intimate – isn’t as fun (also the place is a mess, and I’m not in the mood to clean…)
So I became a plus one to an Oscar party that a friend had been invited to. This was great fun. There were around twenty or so attendees, and we not only had the customary Oscar ballots but we also had “Oscar Acceptance Speech Bingo” which is a bingo card full of words that have been used in acceptance speeches from between 2000 and 2005. I had one square that would not make it into anyone’s speeches – Miramax – but luckily once we crossed the three-hour mark we were given a free square.
About the program itself, well it’s an Oscar telecast. Generally it is the same as it has been in the past. They had great fun with the fact that Jon Stewart would not be most people’s first choice of host (a humorous into film with the hosts from the past decade or so started off the ceremony…) and he was great. I hope that he is allowed to continue in future years. There were quite a few montages (so many that Jon joked that there will be a salute to montages, as they had run out of footage…) and even a humorous one of the manly men of westerns past – which in the context of Brokeback Mountain was quite a fun selection double entendres…
And the winner is… As I mention above, I managed to score half of the categories this year. No one at the party correctly guessed the Best Picture award. Everyone thought that it was going to be Brokeback Mountain, especially after Ang Lee got the best director award! I was glad to see that Nick Park’s Oscar streak is still going on – and even more happy that he not only wore his customary silly bow-tie, but he also brought ties for the statuettes! Similarly, I was extremely amused at the March of the Penguins people who all brought penguins (plush ones, naturally…) with them to the stage for their acceptance speech.
Speaking of speeches, the acceptance speech clock really needs to be worked on. When you have multiple recipients, you need to allocate more time. There were plenty of speeches that after person “A” finished their speech, person “B” got to the microphone and started to speak to a dead mic. Boo, hiss! At least let them get a couple of thank you’s out, and then give them the music cue.All in all, a fun filled three-and-a-half hours of Oscar fun, plus the awards ceremony wasn’t too bad ;op