Comments on: The Oscars: Reflecting on the Good, the Bad, and the Craven

By: ferretrick

ferretrick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:37:27 +0000

I didn’t mind cutting the nominated songs since, historically, most of the performances are terrible. It did not seem to save one bit of time, though, the ceremony was still an agonizing length.

The John Hughes tribute was my personal favorite moment.

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:22:15 +0000

I was really irritated that they cut the performances of Original Song and then had a million years of interpretive-rolling-around dancing for Original Score. I mean…I get it, Shankman, you’re a dancer, but…there’s a reason Idol is one of the biggest shows on television – people like to hear the songs!

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:50:16 +0000

I liked the moment when the chipper young-voiced female announcer (who seemed to have more to do last night than usual) promised us that after the commercial we’d catch the award for Best Pitcher.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:40:25 +0000

I thought it was an interesting underdog year: by and large, the awards didn’t go to the queen of nominations nor the classical-cred Brits NOR the king of the box office. Many interesting and unexpected wins.

Was anybody else struck by how many great writers we lost this year?

By: katy

katy — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:10:26 +0000

As you might have seen on Facebook, I was majorly distracted by the weird horror movie montage, so I’m going to rant about that a moment. First of all, as you note, yes, you can’t say the genre has been ignored by Oscar since The Exorcist and then show clips from Silence of the Lambs. (And Misery and The Sixth Sense and probably others.) Do they honestly think no one pays attention to stuff like that? Who do they think likes to watch the Oscars anyway? If the people writing this stuff can’t be bothered to keep track, they can hire me at a cut rate to write intros next year.

Second, the writers seemed to be under the impression that Twilight and New Moon are horror films, hence the presence of scrumptious jailbait Mr. Lautner and the lovely but charmless K.Stew. I know the films have vampires and werewolves — and that the people behind the Academy Awards traditionally tend to struggle with blurred genres. But calling Twilight a horror film seems really implausible to me. It’s like calling Avatar a romantic comedy because there’s a meet-cute romance in there.

And since we’re on the subject, what exactly IS a horror film anyway? During the intro, when they made the claim about Oscar ignoring horror films since The Exorcist, I immediately thought about Silence of the Lambs and conceded that that might be better considered a thriller. But the montage that followed included all SORTS of random films. Causing me to wonder … what’s the difference between a horror film and a thriller? Is Little Shop of Horrors really a horror film? What about Rosemary’s Baby or The Sixth Sense, which mostly rely on atmosphere and tension and don’t have much blood? Are all films about serial killers, like Silence of the Lambs, “horror films?” I wondered if horror films have to involve the evil supernatural — but if so, that excludes a lot — Psycho, for instance, or even Scream. But if any film that involves fear of sudden death and/or evil is a horror film, then why not “The Hurt Locker?”

Anywho, sorry for the rant. Been thinking about this all morning.