“Could this be my family?” I asked. Me, hubby, and daughter slogged through the entire broadcast from pre-award glam to the last painful acceptance speech. All together for the whole night without one solid disagreement. Wow.
All snuggled with blankets, popcorn, and drinks in front of the brand-new high-definition, Samsung Smart TV that the hubby surprised us with last week, we sat back and watched the spectacle that was this year’s Oscar production.
Let’s get down to it.
Overall I give it a “B plus” — Ellen was a decent host. She gave a new twist with Twitter and selfies. The pizza was a nice touch, but she should have paid for it — after all it was her gig. Ellen even made a great Good Witch.
Were there any surprises? Not really. Other than all three of us in the same room at the same time, watching the same program, nothing rocked the boat.
But can we say, “What the heck happened to Kim Novak?” The once beautiful, sexy, aging starlet had a bad run in with Botox for sure. She looked like the Joker in Batman — not a pretty sight. And her smokey sexy voice of the past now sounded like Deep Throat ratting out Nixon to Woodward and Bernstein in a Washington men’s room.
Next on the weird meter was Liza Minelli. She got up grabbed Lupita Nyong’o like she was a life preserver and hung on for dear life. It’s nice to offer congratulations, but it looked like the surprised winner couldn’t get out of Liza’s grasp fast enough.
It is also time for aging rock stars to accept the fact that age hits us all. Bono needs to change those glasses. The orangy, pinky tint is tre passé, plus, the time has come for looser pants. It was okay 25 years ago, but now it’s just three-links of sausage in a two-link bag — know what I mean?
A smattering of presenters who left out names, looked confused, or just missed the funny mark, along with the memoriam rounded out the show.
I do think that the show would benefit by cutting two hours off. Start with the glam parade walking into the theater, continue to best actor and actress in supporting role, best actor and actress in lead role, best director, best movie, best sound track and call it a day. Three-plus hours is just too long.
I also think shorter acceptance speeches should be required. One blanket “Thank you to the universe” and get the heck off the stage.
Most were so long I wanted to mute them. Jared Leto’s was so pretentious and long-winded, I forgot why he was saying thanks. Do they really enjoy the sound of their own pompousness that they need to present a soliloquy as a thank you?
Not for Nuthin™, but the best part of this Oscar night was being together with the hubby and daughter and eating really good popcorn.
Postscript: I offer my condolences to the family of Ed Eisenberg. The community activist, past King Neptune of the Mermaid Parade, and all-around good guy passed away this week. His regular phone calls will be sorely missed.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
