Friday, March 19, 2010
By Rose Graner
Entertainment Editor
and Abby Watkins
Staff Writer
The Academy Awards has always tended toward the sensationalist, theatrical side of things. Each year, however, the Oscars seem to have a harder time reconciling the Academy’s actual purpose (recognizing cinematic achievement) with what appeals to mainstream viewers. The 82nd Academy Awards hit a new low, however, as they failed to succeed in either category.
2009 was an undeniably excellent year for movies. Films such as “Avatar” pushed the boundaries of cinematic technology, while others including, “Precious,” managed to simultaneously display extreme cruelty and incredible humanity. Even the Pixar mill churned out the particularly touching “Up.”
However, the quality of these films in no way warranted the decision made by the Academy to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10. Where five Best Picture nominees sometimes left out excellent films, having 10 allowed mediocre films like “The Blind Side” to be put on the same level as masterful films like “The Hurt Locker.”
The winners of the various awards seem to reflect the inner turmoil of the Academy. On one hand, the choice of Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) for Best Actress was clearly nothing more than blatant pandering to the mainstream voice of America.
On the other hand, the fact that “The Hurt Locker” won for Best Picture over nominees like the awe-inspiring but poorly-scripted “Avatar” implies that the Academy maintains some slight reservations in regards to making popular, mainstream choices.
At the 81st Academy Awards, accomplished actors from previous generations introduced the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees. The 82nd Academy Awards attempted the same thing, but evidently ran out of accomplished actors from previous generations.Instead, the nominees were introduced by costars. None of the introductions were insincere, but some were much less heartfelt than others and made the audience downright uncomfortable.
The opening act of this year’s Academy Awards, a song-and-dance routine performed by Neil Patrick Harris, was rather lackluster and almost totally forgettable. Harris himself performed adequately, but the uninteresting musical number was just going through the motions. Even last year’s opening act (the painful-but-memorable Hugh Jackman musical number) topped it.
While the hosts are supposed to be an infallible assurance of spiff and humor, seasoned funny men Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin felt lacklustre. Their styles of humor melded into something self-deprecating and unoriginal, which could most accurately be described as “awkward, middle-aged dad humor.” This, combined with their sparse and sporadically placed appearances throughout the show, caused the Awards to have little sense of flow.
Even the “In Memoriam” portion of the 2010 Academy Awards was erratic and poorly thought-out. Actresses Farrah Fawcett (who died June 2009) and Bea Arthur (who died April 2009) were entirely left out, despite a mention of the undeniably less iconic Brittany Murphy, who died Dec. 20, 2009. In addition, the Academy felt the need to shoehorn Michael Jackson into the segment, continuing the trend this awards season of using the same clip from “The Wiz” every time Jackson’s name is mentioned.
This year’s cinematic masterpieces, such as ‘The Hurt Locker” and “Precious,” deserve a better source of recognition than the unsatisfying Academy Awards. The 82nd Academy Awards is yet another step in the Oscars’ transformation into the People’s Choice Awards, in an effort to appeal to pedestrian audiences.
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