The Morning After: Oscar's Old Song and Dance
A picture is worth a Slumdog Million words. / ABC
We've made it through another Academy Awards, and if you missed last night's liveblog, this morning you can relive them backwards in time, Benjamin Button-style, by starting at the top and reading to the bottom. (And you can read Richard Corliss' take on the awards themselves, as well as Kate Betts' write-up of Oscar fashions.)
The Oscars decided to change things up a bit this year, and the change they went for was... interesting. In a nutshell: if the economy's going back to the 1930s, then let's take Hollywood with it! Well, I exaggerate, a little. But the Academy went musical-style, hiring the creative honchos of Chicago and a Broadway-friendly Hugh Jackman and opening with a big band playing on a vaguely Art Deco set. Jackman proferred a couple quick jokes at the outset, but quickly showed that he was there to sing! sing! sing!
One big-picture thought I had during the liveblog is that the Oscars, like any old institution facing shrinkage in its audience—the newspaper business, the evening news, the current Republican party, etc.—is at an inflection point and faces a choice. It can try to draw in a whole new group of followers. Or it can decide to cater to the people who already like it, accept that its audience is what it is, and try to ride that as long as it can.
The Oscars largely made the latter choice, with aesthetics that were mainly retro and a presentation that was mostly inward-directed—toward the actors and creatives in the room—rather than outward toward the audience.
That's not to say it was all bad. I liked much of Jackman's opening musical number. (As opposed to his atrocious later medley with Beyonce, Zac Efron et al., which made the case that "The musical is back!" with almost exclusively old tunes, and managed neither to convincingly update the old standards nor give them a good old-fashioned revival.) I liked the cheeky references to the fact that most of the home audience had probably never seen acclaimed nominees like The Reader. And some comic bits, like the Pineapple Express takeoff, were inspired.
But the broadcast overall had problems of pacing. The experiment of having five former winners introduce the major acting nominees made sense in theory, but the practice—five times the prompter-read tongue-baths, delivered from a dark stage by a council-of-the-gods-like assemblage—slowed things to a crawl.
And the retro approach itself? During the liveblog, Richard Corliss made the excellent point that retro is the foundation of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, two of TV's biggest hits (the latter of which ABC flogged relentlessly during the commercial breaks). I can't argue with that. But while, say, Idol gets cross-generational appeal by letting middle-aged and retired folks watch energetic young people forced to pay tribute to the music of yesteryear, it is ultimately about creating new pop stars, singing new pop music. It may have a Motown night, but it's not trying to pretend that "Motown is back!"
But the real answer may be that American Idol just better understands its nature as a TV show. It has a narrative (the weekly competition). It has unpredictability (Paula), a villain (Simon) and—whatever you say about Ryan Seacrest—a host to whom live TV is like breathing air.
Doing a reasonably entertaining Oscars isn't rocket science. It's not even paper airplane science. But it requires getting movie people to accept that they are putting on a TV show. Which means: get a TV person to host it, like Steve Martin—a movie guy, yes, but one who knows his way around a live-TV set, who has hosted the Oscars successfully before and who made me wish he and Tina Fey were co-hosting last night.
Hugh Jackman wasn't bad. He's charming and game and I bet he absolutely killed in the room. But he didn't really project beyond the room, nor did he much seem to be trying to. The show wasn't bad, exactly; it was boring, though, which is probably worse.
Every year, critics like me do post-mortems of the Oscars, and every year there are all sorts of wild notions of how to totally remake the broadcast. But look: it's the Oscars. It's an awards show, it's self-congratulatory by nature and it has to appeal to a wide audience. I don't expect it to be some hip, edgy performance piece. Nor do I want the Academy to change its voting to generate more ratings-friendly nominees. Just give it a TV host, let some funny people be funny, and make plenty of room for the non-TV people—i.e., the winners—to create the unscripted moments. Just put on a TV show, Oscar, and I'll be satisfied.
Anyhow, I hear the orchestra playing me off. Your thoughts on the show—or Jimmy Kimmel after, or Barbara Walters and Tim Gunn before—are welcome. Don't forget to thank your agent.
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1
I didn't watch it and now hearing that it was a musical I'm really happy I skipped it.
I think the fundamental problem is that it's 5 minutes of interesting tv stretched over hours of boring acceptance speeches and video retrospectives. Maybe I'm just not the target market.
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2
I didn't watch the whole thing, but my list of perennial issues is probably the same as everyone else:
Technical awards need to go. I'm sorry, Sound Editors of the world, but the TV audience just does not care, and the show is too long as is.
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Enough with the god-forsaken montages. They add nothing to the show. And I am flabbergasted at whomever decided that thematic montages, as opposed to clips, was a better way of introducing the nominees. Way to demonstrate to the entire audience how most films nominated just fit into a perennial thematic slot - "Oh, I see, Milk is just this year's usual civil rights pic, The Reader is the usual 'The Holocaust was bad' pic."
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Enough with the musical sections. Cutting the life-sucking Best Song performances for time doesn't improve anything if you simply replace that time with musical bits. If the only show whose ratings are dropping worse is the Tonys, why would the Oscars try to turn into them (even if Jackman's musical talents are undeniable - but did he fly back to Australia after his Beyonce bit? Seriously, was he in the second half of the show?)
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And a new issue for this year: Alright Academy, you didn't vote a single American an acting award last year. The correct path is to just suck it up, keep with tradition, and have 'them furriners' read off the nominees as usual. Turning this simple process into a Galactic Senate/Elders of Zion/'Insert your fictional shadowy organization here' initiation rite, especially when some of the presenters simply did not care about their nominee, was an unmitigated disaster.
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So, all in all: New Worst Oscars Ever. So just another year for them. -
3
I loved it, but I love musicals... I hope they don't change it to appeal to viewers of American Idol. I despise everything about that show and shows like it so much. I know it would bring in more of an audience, but so would letting viewers at home vote. Just because something is popular doesn't make it better... it's usually just the opposite.
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4
There is nothing wrong with "entertainment" being part of the Oscars -- indeed, a good song and dance routine is a welcome respite from the relentless march of the awards themselves.
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But the numbers have to be entertaining -- and except for the opening, (and the ending of the best song segment; I actually thought the melding of the song from Wall-E and Slumdog was quite good), the numbers were duds.
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The absolute worst was the "score" segment, which reduced five distinct approaches to film scoring to an indistinguishable medley of elevator music (it was so bad they made even danny elfman dull).
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But the "musical is back" segment was almost as bad. First off, it was technically incompetent -- the cues -- especially the lighting-- were way off. The orchestra appeared unable to accomplish appropriate tempo shifts -- although I suspect that the tempo problem was related to an effort to match the music to the film clips that were barely visible on the TV screen -- a horrendous decision.
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But the biggest problem with the "musical" number was in the choice of performers. Other than Jackman, who demonstrated that he is a genuine "song and dance" man in the opening segment, the performers were incapable of meeting the demands of live musical choreography. Beyonce may be able to shake it like nobody's business, but she doesn't appear to have the skills needed for musical theatre, and the "kids" from High School Musical and Mamma Mia were board stiff. Better to use Broadway veterans with some film exposure than subject the audience to performers who lack professional experience in musical theatre.
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Finally, this was the worst directed awards show ever -- while the multimedia approach probably worked in the theatre itself, the multimedia elements as presented last night were anywhere from merely annoying and distracting (the framing device of the "yearbook" segment--both in terms of the overall frame, and the moving from one "cell" to another) to utterly disasterous (the "in memorium" segment). (and speaking of that segment, while Latifah demonstrated that she can sing, it was far from the flawless performance that this segment required.)
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One "highlight" that has gone unmentioned is Shirley MacLaine's tribute to Anne Hathaway -- its obvious that she went off the cue cards almost immediately, and instead just told Hathaway how she felt about her in a way that was genuine and disarming. -
5
I was actually home last night in time to watch most of the Oscar's, but I found it much more entertaining to scan the liveblog while I watched BSG episodes. James, I wish you could liveblog entirely from the perspective of the Tuned In Jrs. (well, at least until they have to go to bed). Not to take away from any grown-up observations, but I'm sure we can all agree that their observations are much more entertaining in general. "Tuned In Jr. spotted Hannah Montana (a show he doesn't watch--wrong chromosome) and says I should mention how much her dress weighs." Priceless.
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6
Two things:
1. Did they save money by skipping a rehearsal or two? There was a curtain flub, many of the presenters (*cough* Daniel Craig) looked like they had never seen a teleprompter before, and the camera work was sometimes bizarre.
2. While I appreciate the effort of trying different things in the telecast, what the changes meant, in the end, were fewer clips of the nominated roles/movies. In a show celebrating movies, there was very little of the actual movie material.
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7
@Dave: My dream is to have the Tuned In Jrs. write this blog for me in its entirety within two years. Just need to skirt those nasty child-labor laws. Maybe I should start having them do a Clone Wars Watch.
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8
ITD.
I think the five-person to pay tribute to the nominees was awesome. It respects the nomination itself, recognizes that achivement, and then gives us the winner. I hope they keep this next year.
I think Jackman did a great job. I think the medley sucked but that was mostly Luhrman's fault IMO. Beyonce and Hugh have great chemistry; so do Hugh and Hathaway really; lol. Then again, he's very sexy.
I also loved the In Memoriom.
The whole show was crisper IMO and in focusing on the awards and celebrating the industry it just felt like it moved quickly and meant a lot. I enjoyed this a lot.
The stage was AWESOME.
The only thing I'd enjoy more would have been more old Hollywood clips; then again I'm a TCM person.
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9
@James - child-labor laws only matter if they complain. Surely the opportunity to show their friends at school the blog they write for TIME will be worth far more than all the Skittles and Pixie Sticks in the world (I'm not sure if Skittles and Pixie Sticks are slang for any kinds of drugs... but I mean them in the sense of good, old-fashioned, sugar-high candy).
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10
I think they should get Tracy Jordan and Jenna Maroney to host next year. Both have starred in movies, they're experienced with comedy, and they know how to do live television.
Maybe that Liz Lemmon can produce and her staff can write it.
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11
[...] Earlier this year, while doing my traditional crabby TV-critic's postmortem of the show after it made a Hugh Jackman of itself, I wrote: Doing a reasonably entertaining Oscars isn't rocket science. It's not even paper airplane [...]
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 4 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 5 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 6 hours ago
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