**awards season can be a painful, drawn-out, exhausting experience. So to start off, a picture of a yawning cat**
And with that, another painfully
long and dreadfully predictable awards season comes to a close. This year the Oscars were actually well over
a week earlier than they were last year, and yet, they always seem to drag on
even longer one year after another, don’t they?
It never bodes well when an Oscar ceremony starts with an ad by the host
ending with the line, “anything can happen.”
Sure, Niel Patrick Harris. You
can go on saying that. No one on Earth
who follows these things will ever believe you.
I gave up hope for adequate sleep
when I glanced at my watch a half-hour into things and realized that, up to
that point, we had gotten through a mere 2 awards. Out of 24.
And the pace never picked up from there.
The sad reality is that, even when the Oscars are well-written and
expertly produced (something that gets rarer each year, and this year refused
to buck that trend), they have become little more than a marathon endurance
test for the body and soul, determinedly finding every single possible way that
things can be drawn out an extra few minutes.
Not that Harris was bad this year.
I found the ceremony to have rather more life than last year, although a
great deal of wasted time was devoted to Harris pausing to collect himself
after every. Single. Joke.
Seriously, did someone threaten to
kill Harris if he made too many white jokes?
Every so often he seemed to want to really push the envelope and give
the room a good roasting- his off-hand “Oh, NOW you like him!” when people applauded David Oyelowo’s name
was a good moment- but after every you could very nearly see the terror in his
eyes someone wouldn’t laugh, and he would pull back.
That said, the show itself did have
its moments. More than the past few
years, at least. The opening number got
everything off to a good start, Lady Gaga’s straight-up classical rendition of
a Sound of Music montage was one of the best performances of hers I’ve yet
seen, and no other performance of the nominated songs from recent years has
come close to either the frenetic joy of “Everything Is Awesome” or the
emotional swing of John Legend and Common going all out with “Glory.” When balanced out, it was a decent show. Not a great one. Not an evenly enjoyable one. But decent.
Perhaps my favorite part of the
shows was how political and, in many cases, personal the speeches got. We had a lot more “For The Cause” moments
than we usually get, all of them much needed, as well as a few strikingly
emotional ones touching on lost loved ones and mental illness. Maybe the veil of silence really is being
lifted for those struggling with issues unseen.
Maybe.
Oh, and before it slips my mind-
poor John Travolta. That poor, poor man. He made an earnest attempt to right a silly
wrong from last year, and almost immediately blew it right out his ass again,
because, apparently, he literally can’t help but be impossibly awkward every
day, all the time. I am so sorry
John. We appreciate the effort. Well….at least some of us do.
I actually didn’t realize it during
the ceremony itself, but one of the commentaries I read later remarked that
this year marks the first time since the expanded Best Picture category that
every single nominee got at least one statue.
The Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman tied for the most with 4, Whiplash pleasantly surprised with 3,
and the remaining 5 all took home one apiece.
Granted, that included one for American
Sniper, but hey, the world survived Silver
Linings Playbook winning one, so it’s no real harm done. Of course, I had hoped for more love for Boyhood, but in all fairness, even
though Birdman continues the trend of
Academy naval-gazing of the past few years, it is at least an actual, great
movie, far superior to Argo and The Artist, each of which won out over
vastly superior competition. Boyhood’s staying power will be
remembered regardless.
As with all years, only a few of my
hopes were realized as far as who won what.
Citizenfour rightfully took
home Best Documentary Feature, Interstellar
got a statue, and Wes Anderson might finally become more of a household name
after a film of his finally won a few.
There were some disappointments too.
I wish Birdman and Boyhood had at least split Best
Picture/Director. The worst one for me
was, of course, Big Hero 6, as
unoriginal a film as any that came out this year, beating out the fiercely
creative, beautiful, and emotional Princess
Kaguya for Best Animated Feature, which was also prefaced by The Rock’s now
infamous statement that animation is a genre unto itself.
I would have gotten angrier about
this in past years, but the collective ignorance regarding animation inherent
in both the Academy (many voters admitted to voting for Big Hero 6 simply because their kids liked it) and society at large
has become so thoroughly well-documented that it isn’t even worth it
anymore. It just makes me sad. Like with Best Picture, it is this year’s
losers that will be remembered far more than the winning film. Which is a comfort in and of itself.
So all in all, a fairly standard
awards season. Some good moments, some
bad. Some well-earned statues given, many
less-so. Some anger, but mostly just resignation
that gaggles of old, white men will be old, white men regardless of whether or
not the world has passed them by. Now we
can go back to living in the real world.
Until the next awards season in a year’s time, at which point we get to
do the entire dance again.
-Noah
Franc
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