Penélope Cruz wins. Is there anything else that matters? Not really, but let’s talk about it anyway. First of all, Hugh Jackman.
Well, we really didn’t see much of the host this evening. But when he was on, he was charming, graceful and even-keeled. We didn’t get a whole lot of side-splitting jokes, but we did get plenty of singing and dancing numbers (which is to be expected from a previous Tony Awards Host). The dancing number that was performed single-handedly by Jackman (well, he had plenty of help from the props crew) was loads of fun, particularly The Reader portion of the dance. Whisking Anne Hathaway from her front row seat to help with the Frost/Nixon bit worked surprisingly well too (and Anne Hathaway can sing… well!). His second dance montage didn’t do much for me, but hey, you can’t hit it out of the park every time.
Which leads to an interesting trend that I noticed throughout tonight’s telecast: picking on the nominated films no one saw and taking loving jabs at the Academy voters a bit for not nominating more popular films such as comedies or comic book movies. I think The Dark Knight was mentioned more than once throughout the evening in a baffled sort of way. I’m a bit surprised at the awards for taking those rips in stride. But I think main-stream watchers can appreciate this and that’s who the Oscars Presentation wants/needs to attract.
So what better way to do that than with montages. You’re probably thinking, “yeah right, another montage of 150 black and white people, 90% of whom I’ve never even heard of.” No no no, the telecast this year had a little high octane for the guys, a little relationship/romance for the ladies and some stellar animation for the kiddies. I thought this was a nice touch and added a bit of fun for everyone to the evening. For the kids, several of the top animated films of the year had clips glued together to make for a superb fun and entertaining bit of action. And speaking of action, the editing together of several great action sequences of the year was really spectacular. It started with cars and racing and shifted gears quickly to guns and explosions, to fist fights and sword fights, top notch stunt work (i.e. falling) and ended on a high note of all the jumping cars from the year’s films (Speed Racer, Wanted, Bond, Death Race, TDK, etc. etc.). And all of this edited note for note and beat for beat with… some song that fit in well with the atmosphere.
For laughs, we had James Franco and Seth Rogen doing a bit in their Pineapple Express characterizations. If you’re a fan of those characters, you got it. If not, maybe not so much. But Franco’s Pineapple character getting a little misty-eyed over his 
Milk character and then getting a little too touchy/feely with Rogen was a highlight of the evening. Oh and @Ben Stiller: c’mon; that gag was already done at the Independent Spirit Awards the night before.
How about the new format this year? I for one really liked the way the presentations were made for the acting categories. Seeing five of the older actors who had won Oscars (Shirley Maclaine, Michael Douglas) give a personal “pep talk” to each of the nominees (Anne Hathaway, Sean Penn) was a really neat and original way to announce the nominees. Huge kudos to whoever came up with that idea.
Then there’s the music, or lack thereof. The Awards needed to snip some time off of their presentaion this year and one of the more obvious ways to do that would be by cutting the music down a bit. Well, they succeeded with doing that; but instead of cutting the music all together, they mixed it into a sort of 
montage and all played by the Oscar orchestra. While it was some pretty music, it was also kind of slow and bogged down the flow of the show. Either keep it or cut it would be my suggestion. The straddling the fence approach didn’t really work for me. But hey, that’s just one man’s opinion.
And of course there were all of the winners. The most surprising had to be neither The Class nor Waltz with Bashir going back to their home country with a statue. Nope; instead, a little film out of Japan (Okuribito) no one’s heard of takes the cake. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on it’s worthiness, but nevertheless it is surprising.
The least surprising of course was Ledger’s win for the Joker. Was that not the lock of the show… maybe ever? Hardly worth mentioning it was so obvious. As was Slumdog’s sweep of almost everything it was nominated for.
In the acting category, we all knew it would be Penn or Rourke. Both were equally deserving in my eyes, but I sure was rooting for Rourke. He’ll maybe never see that opportunity again, which is a real shame. This is a win that, no matter which way it went, could be and will be debated for years to come. Plus, we didn’t get to see a (potentially) clean version of his speech from the night before. If you didn’t see it, you need to find 
it on YouTube asap. It’s entertaining stuff.
And Kate Winslet finally gets her much deserved trophy. As much as I was rooting for Hathaway, I knew this was Winslet’s year and was prepared for that. And anyway, she has worked the hardest for it and she has been shut down year after year after year. She truly deserves this and I think everyone was happy for her – especially her dad sitting way in the back of the theater.
Did I mention Penélope Cruz took home and Oscar? Her speech was the cutest of the night and thanking Almodóvar was a nice touch. Congrats darling!
So I guess all in all it was a pretty good show and a real success in terms of cutting back on the time factor and bringing a little something for everyone to the table. If only the nominees had been a bit more… accurate. Keep these changes in place for next year and tweak one or two things and bring back Jackman and I think you’ve got a real crowd pleaser on your hands. Just amke sure you nominate the right films this year Mr. Gainis!
Excellent recap Andrew. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I knew Anne Hathaway could sing, she did a Queen song in Ella Enchanted (you can find it on YouTube) and sang a little bit in Havoc, but that was more rap than singing lol. Will someone please cast Anne and Hugh in a movie musical together? Please?
I know most people here probably don’t care, but what was with all the white in the fashion choices this year? Almost nobody wore colour! Lots of nice dresses, but it looked like a lot of them were getting married, not attending the Oscars. Favourite dresses were Hathaway’s (yeah, I love her, I’m biased, so what), and Alicia Keys. Loved Amy Adams’ necklace.
Heath Ledger’s family was amazing. I cried over their speech, so sad, but so beautiful! What a classy family.
I didn’t know Ben Stiller’s joke had already been done. I thought it was funny. I also liked Tina Fey and Steve Martin’s banter over the screenplay awards. Didn’t like Bill Maher, but the Doc Short winner thanking the Lord in front of him was priceless.
And I loved Hugh Jackman. Please please please bring him back!
Ha! Forgot all about Felip whats-his-name from Man on Wire doing magic tricks and playing with his statue. That was awesome.
And I think I agree. Alicia Keys had a dress that was perfect for her. It was very nice. I liked the dress Hathaway wore for her musical number more than the one that she had on the rest of the night and at the red carpet. It looked like a mermaid – though she wore it well.
Tiny Fey and Steve Martin need to announce every award next year, Hugh Jackman can do a similar low-budget musical piece to open it up. I dug the actor to actor testimonials but they needed to be stronger and better people doing it sometimes.
in the end the show sucked only because the choices sucked, no fault of the look and feel of the show, but of the academy picks which were so obvious.
Hahaha, I noticed a the mermaid thing too, but it wasn’t just Anne, lots of dresses had ruffles and pleats that seemed to be going for that effect. I think they were following Marion Cotillard’s trend from last year. I was a big fan of mermaids in my childhood, so I have no problem with it!
Pretty much agree across the board. The show itself wasn’t bad but I felt very little excitement at the potential of the winners and hence as they were announced, it was rather unexciting. That said, I did like most of the format of the show and am totally with Ashley – Hathaway and Jackman should be in a musical together.
Overall, more entertaining than I expected but they need to trim a bit more. What was the deal with the “official” red carpet thing for the first 30 mins? Stupid especially when every other channel was covering the red carpet.
Heh. Several folks at my gathering commented on the ‘WHITE’ EVERYWHERE thing.
Kidman looked handsome, as per usual. As did Lurhman in a Tux. That is all I will say in terms of that.
So on the montage thing. Let me get this straight Andrew. Less ‘classic cinema moments’ that offer people some actual history and context to the movie, and more CGI and Action stunts to thudding soundtrack that is indicative of modern Hollywood Blockbusters?
I Disagree.
I liked the new way they did the montages, showing only clips from the past year, and including more box office hits. Have we not seen enough of the classics, same clips year after year? I think the new format was refreshing, and hopefully helped give the show the ratings boost it needs. Any word on the ratings yet?
They messed up the Death Montage by ‘filming it as it played on TVs in the auditoriom’ W-T-F? Not classy.
Yeah I definitely didn’t like the In Memoriam bit. Queen Latifah? Really?
Just deleted my comment, so making it short…
Yeah, liked the montages. Why have a Jack Lemmon/Shirley Maclaine montage from 50 years ago when they can show this year’s movies (e.g. Happy-Go-Lucky, RGM, etc)? And the action thing was awesome. I guess you could show Ronin/Fench Connection/Bullit if you wanted to, but I liked the way they did it this year with all of the relevant films of this year (TDK, Wanted and yes, even the Incredible Hulk). It was very visually catchy.
The animated one was a bit ragged as they just showed the same 5 movies over and over but it was still fun.
Oh yeah, and even Speed Racer got a little love. Would’ve been totally overlooked had they shown clips from 40 years ago. Just my opinion though.
More MTV, less history channel. Sounds like Andrew to me!
Speed Racer was awesome. I think it was good that the gay politics were in the show, have your say man. Names are boring.
The “gay” politics were to be expected. I thought it weird he didn’t thank the screenwriter (or his wife!) though.
“More MTV, less history channel.” – - as much as that pains me to admit, it’s sort of accurate. I like the bangs and the booms from all the stuff I saw over the past 12 months rather than the “what movie is that? Who are these people?” moments. I like to reflect on the past year, not the past 100 years.
i (dis)respectfully disagree, andrew.
Well, the world needs wrong people too.
**Crosses Room** – This will be settled on the cinecast. Or Pistols at Dawn.
still in utter shock at some of the wins…
And how about Jack Black taking pot shots at Dreamworks? Wow.
From msn:
“Major Disappointment of the Night
Oh, you know this one. Mickey Rourke should have nabbed his first golden boy for his brilliant, career-defining performance in “The Wrestler.” Instead Sean Penn upset with “Milk,” and in an apparent act of edginess, called the academy a bunch of “Commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” That’s all you got, Sean? Mickey would have blown you off the stage with F-bombs, single sexual entendres and heartfelt remembrances of his beloved pooch Loki. And the Oscars would have finally come alive. Sean should have taken a cue from Ving Rhames when Rhames won his Golden Globe in 1998 and just gave his award to Jack Lemmon. Give it to Mickey. Now that would have been some brotherly love.”
My thoughts:
Rourke should have won. Penn was brilliant but Rourke just deserved it no questions asked.
Benjamin Button should have won more, including Best Picture.
Penelope Cruz shouldn’t have won; Marisa Tomei, easily. I don’t get what the fuss is about Cruz’s performance in Vicky Christina Barcelona; I mean she was good but nothing amazingly Oscar worthy.
Steve Martin’s “Don’t fall in love with me.” was the line of the night.
Dustin Lance Black’s speech was amazing.
I liked the idea of five past actors/actresses coming out and making little speeches to each nominated person but it got to the point of being cringe-worthy the way they did it.
Seth Rogen and James Franco’s skit was frickin’ BRILLIANT.
Jackman did a solid job of hosting but was it just me or was there a surprising lack of him throughout?
I couldn’t believe Waltz With Bashir didn’t win. Now I have to see Departures.
Glad Ledger won – he deserved it. And, yes, he WOULD have won if he was still alive. However if Michael Shannon was in Revolutionary Road a bit longer I think he may have deserved it equally, if not more.
There’s tons more stuff of course but those were just the things that come straight to mind. All in all a good show – next year, two words…..George Clooney…
Hey Ross,
Alright, you started it. Tomeii was good in Wrestler, no question. Not great, but pretty good (she was much better last year in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead). Cruz was two-fold this year (agreed she was better in Elegy, but still) – with much more screen time. She was also robbed of her Volver Oscar from a couple of years ago. So yeah, she deserved it more.
“Benjamin Button should have won more, including Best Picture.”
I always knew you were retarded.
One of my fave parts of the show:
The Oscar for Heather was one of the best things in the show.I liked the way They give the top 5 Oscars, by using 5 actors each one. Slumdog Millionaire for the win. It completely deserve it.
Oh, Andrew, do you have to rub it in? Marisa Tomei lost to Penelope Cruz, which does not make me the least bit happy!
@ mercurie:
what what…
http://www.680news.com/news/entertainment/more.jsp?content=e022362A
Numbers are in, looks like the show was up this year, with 36.3 million viewers over last years 33 million.
Definitely hopeful news, now let’s nominate better movies Academy, if you want to continue the trend!
Am I the only person who finds Penelope Cruz extremely annoying? That whimpering speech really sent shivers down my spine. In a bad way.
Speaking a moment in (an attempt at) a non-biased way, I thought her speech was great – one of the better of the night actually. I liked how genuinely excited and in disbelief she was. I thought her thanks to people like Almodovar and others in the Latino film community was awesome and I dug the fact that she communicated to all the people in Spain with a few quick words in Spanish.
Every interview I see with her she is so genuine and friendly. Even a bit on the shy side. There’re reasons why I love her beyond just her physical stature.
back to biased: LOVE that accent.
I’m not baiting you Andrew. I know you love her.
Well, I have to disagree with Jay. While I still maintain the Oscar should have gone to Marisa Tomei or Amy Adams or Taraji P. Henson, I thought Penelope Cruz did very well with her acceptance speech. I have to agree with Andrew, it was one of the better ones all night.
Of course, I think Marisa would’ve given an even better one…hehehehehe
Unless I’m forgetting anything, I’ve only seen Cruz in Abre Los Ojos, Vanilla Sky (well, pretty much same movie, except… just a second) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
She really is damn good in VCB and don’t begrudge her win one bit, and she is great in the Spanish version of Vanilla Sky – Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) – the english one is obnoxious and for my money the nadir of Crowe’s work, and there are some pretty big stinkers to compete with there.
Anything Almodovar is great. Also Elegy (which we’ve mentioned around here alot) is a fantastic movie (in both Jonathan and my top ten). We talk about Penelope in the latest Cinecast 113 (surprise surprise).