And The Oscar Goes To...

Before we crawled out of bed yesterday morning, my DH showed me his laptop where a kid in NYC does movie reviews and is tagged by the morning shows to give his Oscar picks each year.  I'm not sure how old Jackson is now, but he started his movie review website when he was seven.  Basically, the morning shows are giving air time to a movie critic who is too young to see more than half of the nominated flicks.

Why?  Because it's cute.  He reviews these R rated movies that he can't see (even in the company of his parents) by reading other grown ups reviews and forming an opinion about them.  I'm not going to trust a critique by someone who hasn't seen the film, or is too young to understand the homage it represents to an earlier classic.

It reminded me of when the Austin Powers movie first came out.  My kids were in high school and went to see the movie.  They thought it was so funny--but they'd never seen a Bond film.  We rented a beach house for a week that summer and the TV/VCR combo came with a stack of all the Bond films on VHS.  We watched one each night we were there... then all of a sudden, they GOT the jokes embedded in the Austin Powers satire.

Because of our early morning discussion on a kid critic, I was reminded that the Oscars were last night and tuned into them.  My husband watched out of the corner of his eye, working on his laptop the whole time.  His comments mainly dealt with the crowd that the camera panned over... he kept saying that no one looked like they were having a good time.  I guess the parties come later, but he had a point.  Very little smiling or laughing.  It was kind of serious.  Maybe these people all consider this to be work?  I'm sure they write those dresses off on their taxes.

I was not surprised by many of the awards--perhaps when Sandra Bullock beat out both Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren for best actress--but the show itself was compelling.  This year, the guys who directed the show chose to do a little different thing for introducing the nominees for best actor and best actress.  They had a single person stand on the stage for each nominee.  Then the spotlight hit that actor or actress and they told a personal story about working with the man/woman nominated, then wished them luck.  So you had an ensemble of actors on stage at one point, each of whom had a personal relationship with the nominee.  It was really a nice touch, and different from just the two presenters reading off the list and a clip of the movie playing on the big screen.

Another little tweak in the programming was for the writing awards, best screenplay, and best adapted screenplay, they had the presenters actually read from the screenplays including the stage direction and asides.  It was an interesting way to differentiate the writers from the actors saying the words.  It made the performance somehow distinct from the actual words in the scripts.

Overall, my favorite part of the Oscars is always the dresses.  I will watch the Fashion Police show over and over again looking at the glorious gowns and fabulous jewels.  But this year I'll remember the show itself because it was just a little bit unique.

--Sandee Wagner