I watched the Oscars this year and I felt completely inadequate since I hadn’t the vast majority of the nominees. Pretty pathetic for a person who is as big a movie fan as I am, but life sometimes gets in the way of art or entertainment. With all of the obligations one tends to accumulate over the years, my free time for the multiplex has become reduced to a bare trickle. Not that it was a horrible loss, I didn’t have to suffer through Transformers! But it’s sort weird to judge these films by the YouTube trailers I happened upon.
The show itself was fun, Neil Patrick Harris was great. But I’d have to quibble about the strange Lady GaGa number. Not the actual performance which was as good as something like that could be, but the whole set up. They did this big lead up to the number discussing the silver anniversary of the Sound of Music, then Lady GaGa did her well performed number and finally Julie Andrews came out. I thought they were going to give her a lifetime achievement award or something. But no, all she did was say the number was good, relate some warm ancedotes about making sound of music and then she gave out the Oscar for best score. Turns out the whole long bit was really just the longest intro for the presentation of the Oscar for best score, not even song, but score. It would’ve made way more sense for song.
I didn’t quite get why they did it, that beyond the hope that the novelty of Lady GaGa actually singing would go viral. A big overblown marketing bit that really kinda fizzled. But, hey that’s showbiz.
I wonder how many people had seen the movies that were up for awards this year. I had an unusually low count, too.