Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Post-Oscar --- Day 3/53

Walk: Corte Madera, Calvary Church (for Save the 3 Jackson Bus meeting)
Distance: 1 mile


People are asking, "What did Ciwt think of the Oscars?"

Answer: Ciwt thought they were..fine.  The Oscars are what they are, and the enjoyment factor is cumulative - in Ciwt's case over 40 years.  Everything on the screen is compared with other Oscars, other winners, other faux pas, other antics.  Tuning into the Oscars for the first maybe five times and expecting to enjoy them is nearly impossible: it's a bloated, slow moving spectacle with unfunny jokes, repetitive thank you speeches, unnecessary songs and egregious self-adulation by the film industry itself.  And there's the fun!

I guess it is like going to a non-scoring baseball game the first few years. The old timers are sitting around the stands citing statistics, comparing a hit or a run to one the player made games or even years ago.  Every nuance of everything is fraught with meaning to them, and you are usually b-o-r-e-d.

All that said, Ciwt thought Ellen DeGeneres did very, very well as a hostess.  I laughed out loud many times.  And Ciwt was interested to see the things she thought were b-o-r-i-n-g (like the selfie and ordering pizza) were considered by far the best parts by newspaper comment writers.  To Ciwt, that goes to Ellen's sense of showmanship; she knows what her audiences like and she's smart enough to put in something for everyone.  There was much concern that younger people aren't attracted to the Oscars, and I'll bet those very people Loved the Twitter selfie and the pizza silliness.

Sizing up the Oscars correctly is nearly impossible.  As you may remember, Ciwt was nervous about either Gravity or 12 Years a Slave being runaways/winning all the 'important' (to Ciwt) categories. Well, Gravity did get a lot of awards but these were in the technical 'unimportant' (to Ciwt) categories.  That said, each film won one 'important(...) Oscar, which seemed judicious and fine.  Both films were excellent in their ways and certainly weren't completely outrageous/utterly wrong choices like Forrest Gump and Crash.  But. as I say, sizing up the Oscars is nearly impossible, and those two 'wrong' movies were probably at the top of millions of lists.

Ellen was excellent and many of Ciwt's main choices won!: Great Beauty, Frozen, Leto, Blanchette, Mcconaughy..  So that's all good.  Too many technical awards for Ciwt's interest which also raises her concerns that more and more movies will be judged on technical merits -with fine scripts and excellent acting becoming things of the past.  Too few gaffes beyond John Travolta under rug mispronouncing the only name he had to say, no outrageously terrible outfits, but, you know, next year....

(Still very sad not to see Philip Seymour Hoffman.  That is going to take a while).


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