Monday, February 28, 2011

My Take on the Oscars


Chris and I host and Oscars Party every year, and due to great company, this year was as fun as always.

But Hollywood's biggest night turned out to be an odd combination of the academy trying to fuse “young and hip” hosts with a large mix of older characters for balance. While I applaud the concept, as we all saw, it didn't work out so well. Half of it felt like an Oscars history lesson for those of us under the age of 50 who are expected not to know any of it paired with odd musical numbers and mashups supposedly appealing to a younger generation. Though despite the odd combinations, one of the funniest parts of the night for our group was Kirk Douglas' presentation of best supporting actress. “Colin Firth isn't laughing...He's British.” And Anne Hathaway tried to hold up her end of the “young and hip” bargain and gave a valiant effort with a few funny jokes thrown in the mix. But man, James Franco – total fail.

We all fill out ballots predicting the winners and we play Oscar's bingo where we mark off squares for things happening during the show. I particularly enjoyed the set of bingo cards that I found this year as it was tailored to this particular show and a good portion of the squares did happen – Music cutting someone off, A Facebook joke attempt, Christopher Nolan looking bitter, Someone looking bored (most notably the Cohen brothers). Though noticeably missing were Angelina Jolie looking pissed and Jack Nicholson wearing sunglasses. And it may not have been on the bingo cards – but I was thankful that we didn't have Ben Stiller doing something stupid – as he usually does.

Most of the winners were pretty predictable, and well spread out among the movies. However, I have seen a good portion of the big movies nominated, including The Fighter, True Grit, The King's Speech, Black Swan, The Kids are All Right, Inception, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and I have to say, it was unfortunate that out of 10 nominations True Grit got snubbed on all of them. It deserved more recognition. And as much as I love Colin Firth, if Jeff Bridges hadn't won for Crazy Heart last year, then he would've won for True Grit this year. Another surprise was on Best Score – Hans Zimmer's score for Inception should have definitely taken this category.

One thing that they did right this year – having each of the nominated songs actually performed on their own– Yay Randy Newman! I hated when they took that part away in previous years.

Overall – even with the oddities, still a fun night, friends old and new! Thanks to all who joined us. :-)

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