Audience: “The Index”
Last year, Hugh Jackman hosted the 81st Annual Academy Awards with ease; laugh out loud humor and unbelievable talent. Apparently in an attempt to meet Jackman’s amped up version of the Oscars, the producers felt they needed two hosts this year. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, two usually uproariously comedic men, completely flopped.
Unfortunately, not even the most beautiful ball gowns, cutesy clips of animated characters, or intricate dance performances could save what was supposed to be the biggest night in the film industry. Martin and Baldwin’s attempts at humor were pathetic and fell flat on the audience. They appeared onstage a couple times, and also completely failed at every attempt of a transition. Sorry guys, but “Oh my god! There’s Matt Damon!” does not serve as an effective subject changer and it’s just plain awkward.
Equally as awkward were the “Avatar” allusions: Martin and Baldwin asked, “is that the director of “Avatar,” James Cameron?” and donned 3D glasses, Neil Patrick Harris sang, “Take James Cameron from his CGI,” and Ben Stiller was painted blue like an avatar because the show was “Hitler heavy.” These allusions seemed particularly out of place since “Avatar” only ended the evening with three awards: best art direction, outstanding achievement in cinematography, and outstanding visual effects. Three awards that would have caused a huge upset had “Avatar” not won considering this film introduced an entire new type of visual effect.
The worst part of the awkwardness created by Martin and Baldwin was that this should have been a huge night for the Academy Awards. For the first time since 1943 ten films were nominated for best picture. Also for the first time a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, won best director.
In fact Bigelow stole the show from Martin and Baldwin. Her film, “The Hurt Locker,” took home six of the nine awards it was nominated for. These awards included best picture, best original screenplay, best sound editing and mixing, and best film editing. Bigelow likely took a little extra joy in her films dominance over Cameron’s “Avatar,” considering they are ex spouses.
Although “The Hurt Locker” was well deserving of all the awards it received, it was hard not to think of “Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” and feel sorrow for their lack of recognition. Although stand up comedian Mo’Nique surprisingly took best supporting actress, and Geoffrey Fletcher emotionally accepted the award for best adapted screenplay, it is safe to say Sandra Bullock stole the best actress in a leading role from Gabourey Sidibe. However, Bullock gracefully acknowledged all the other nominees in the category highlighting their talents in an extremely classy manner.
Jeff Bridges, who more than deserved his best actor in a leading role award, was unfortunately not as classy as Bullock. Bridges came off as an uneducated hippy-surfer with his abundance of “man’s” and “woah’s.”
Bridges’ acceptance speech was, unfortunately, not the worst part of the night. Martin and Baldwin set the tone for an overall graceless evening. An evening that should have been unforgettable was made easily forgotten by uncouth hosts.
Nice job with the vocabulary. I felt like words such as "uncouth" and "graceless" were very adequate summations of the Oscar ceermony and your descriptions of the winner's accepting their trophies was very well done. I agree with you fully on all the awkward "Avatar" allusions.
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