It Was The Oscars!

In case no-one knows, two weeks ago were the 86th Academy Awards, marking the end of Awards Season (my favorite holiday), making this the last post i will be writing about the Oscars, even i realize that it has gotten out of hand, and i must quit, some addictions need to be tackled cold turkey. The 86th Academy Awards were held at the Dolby Theater on Sunday night, hosted by Ellen Degeneres for the second time. This was only the second time that the awards have been publicly referred to as The Oscars, and not as The Academy Awards, as part of the Academy's continued attempt to market themselves to younger viewers. The gamble paid off to an extent, with the telecast being the highest rated in many years, and being the highest rated American entertainment broadcast since the 2004 Friends finale. The Academy have claimed for many years that a billion people watch the telecast, and this year it was almost accurate.

The broadcast was hosted by Ellen Degeneres, who previously hosted in 2007. She brought her typically breezy, likeable persona to the ceremony, and was generally relaxed and friendly. The ceremony took a sharp detour from last years formula of carefully orchestrated gags and sketches, to a more relaxed format, with Ellen liberally wandering the aisles of the Dolby Theater chatting with members of the audience. The success of Ellen's hosting gig relies on her ability  to make fun of members of the audience without offending them à la Seth McFarlane. One of the fantastic things about Ellen Degeneres is that she is just inherently likeable, and that was apparent on Sunday, i am a huge fan of Ellen, particularly of her standup work, and the ceremony used her skills as a standup comedian well.

The telecast felt slick and well orchestrated, and went off with very few hitches. Yes, it was incredibly long, clocking in at over three hours, and yes there were a couple of dead moments, particularly during the presentation of the technical and short categories, but the producers made sure to stagger the more important categories to retain viewers interest all throughout the ceremony. As far as recipients go, there were almost no unexpected wins, and most of the frontrunners won their categories, perhaps the only surprising omission was Get A Horse!, a short film by The Walt Disney Studios. The live musical performances were generally appropriate and interesting, and it was nice to see all of the nominees for Best Original Song performed. Standout performances came from Idina Menzel (AKA Adele Dazeem), P!nk, who performed Over The Rainbow in a tribute to The Wizard of Oz, and Bette Midler, who performed Wind Beneath My Wings as part of the In Memorium segment.

Unlike at the Golden Globes, no-one was cut off by the awkward playing off music, and although the speeches were often long, noone cried and no-one thanked god, so that was a relief, in fact all four of the acting winners gave suitably rousing speeches. Last year, the music from Jaws was used to play people off, and the Academy even managed to incur the sympathy of Nicole Kidman. As with last year, the Oscars had a theme, celebrating Heroes in Hollywood. The Academy celebrated heroes using multiple video montages featuring animated heroes, everyday heroes and superheroes. The montages generally felt well placed. The only negative blemish on the whole ceremony was that in some cases, the scripted speeches before each category felt rather stilted and a little unrehearsed, these need to either be rewritten or better rehearsed. This years Oscar ceremony was the best for many years, and this was possibly the only year in which the Oscars were actually a little cooler than the Globes, boosted by a well produced, slick ceremony, and a great host in Ellen Degeneres.