Talkie Tuesday: 88th Academy Awards

"And the Oscar goes to ..."

Hello everyone!

This week, I'm postponing my regular movie review post in favour of the 88th Academy Awards. I was surprised that we actually had, not a live broadcast, but we had a rerun the next day here on one of our stations! 

I do recall that at some point in the past we actually had live broadcasts too, but that started at like, 2 or 3 am and I doubt too many people actually got up in the middle of the night to watch.

As it happened, this rerun started at like 11 pm itself so I honestly didn't bother watching on television - especially since we have this nasty tendency to put in a million commercial, so without those the broadcast is roughly three hours long, but WITH them? Yeah, good luck getting under three and a half hour. With my luck, it would have been four.

I watched it online, which was a whole lot more elegant, all things considered.

I'm not going to make a really long and elaborate post about it, because I'm pretty sure that others have already done so, and in greater depth. I'm just going to mention my personal highlights, and what I skipped over.

First of, I loved Chris Rock as the host.

He was hilarious, but what was even BETTER was how he cracked jokes and made allusions to certain situations that had everyone wondering in that place between a smile and a grimace, thinking 'is it okay if I laugh at this? It's live!'

You could pretty much HEAR the indecision. They had no clue how to react at times!

Chris was having a blast though, and the Girl Scout cookie thing was sort of like what Ellen did when she hosted, and ordered pizza. Actors get hungry, too!

Out of the presenters, the ones that stick to memory are Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe, who bickered like an old, married couple; Cate Blanchett, because she was gorgeous announcing the award for best costumes; Henry Cavill, because he made poor Kerry Washington look extra skinny! The man is on his Man of Steel regimen and he's a human tank at the moment; Kevin Hart, because jokes kept getting cracked at his expense, and he laughed over them so much; and the vice president, who got a standing ovation.

Honorary mention #1: Andy Serkis. Because Gollum!

Out of the winners, I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention this year, aside from the obvious Revenant story with Leonardo DiCaprio. But didn't everyone? The fact that he alone out of the winners got a standing ovation and cheering the second his name was announced for best actor brought a huge smile to my face. You could really tell everyone wanted him to win!

I did get tears in my eyes during the In Memoriam segment, though.

Honorary mention #2: R2-D2, BB-8 and C-3PO!

I'll certainly be watching some of the nominated movies when I get the time, most notable among those being The Martian and The Bridge of Spies, but other than that, this year's Academy Awards passed more in the sense of 'why did the nominees get nominated and why not others?' sense.

Chris Rock said it pretty much the way it should be said: because there's nothing better for the before-mentioned to protest about right now.

Amen to that.

xx

*images not mine