It's been 1 month and 3 days since the 2009 Oscars showed. While it may be old news I still have somewhat an opinion on it. While the producers and writers of the show kept quite about what's going to happen and making it a mystery of who will present I must say I was at first not caring who or how they were going to present. But then I watched it and I was changing my mind rather quickly. The production of the 81st Oscars was probably the best they've ever done. I enjoyed the way that there was 5 actors/actresses presenting the Best Actor categories which was very creative. And then I thought, are they going to do this with every category, we'll watching this til 3 a.m. (eastern time), but alas they didn't which was a good thing. My favorite presentation though was Steve Martin with Tina Fey giving out the Best Screenplay awards and I don't think I would have wanted it any other way. As the host goes, Hugh Jackman was by far exceeding my expectations. I knew he could sing from previous stories on his background acting, but I didn't know he could SING! He gave this persona of courteousness and I felt like I've known him for a long time. I give the producers 4 thumbs up if I could for choosing Hugh Jackman. Now as a return host, not so sure because now the mystery is gone. Getting a comedian like most hosts are is a better bet each time because they know how to change an environment each time with their comedy. I wouldn't mind Hugh back, but wait at least 4-5 years to do so.
For a fun bit, I really loved James Franco & Seth Rogen in the short film by Judd Apatow and Jack Black pretty much stating the truth that Pixar wins just about every time and he was going to bet on them with his Dreamworks money...classic.
Now on to the winnings. I'm not going to rant about who should have been nominated because no matter what I can do the people/films nominated are the ones who are going to win out of their respective category. No surprises really this year and only 2 upsets. Slumdog Millionaire winning Sound Mixing over the Dark Knight, in which I was sure Dark Knight would sweep the sound categories because it should have. If you close your eyes and listen to the whole film of The Dark Knight compared with Slumdog, you will find that you will get a better emotional feel of the film The Dark Knight because of it's sound.
The other upset was Best Foreign Film, which was actually the biggest upset of the night. 'Departures' beating out the heavy favorites 'Waltz With Bashir' & 'The Class' was to me a little shocking considering Departures has not been hyped at all, as well as not getting hardly any screen time. Departures is slated for the U.S. in May.
So I missed 6 total categories this year which if memory serves me correctly this is the best I've ever done missing - Best Actor, Best Song, Best Sound Mixing, Best Short Documentary, Best Short Animated, and Best Foreign Film. I would have originally missed 5 if I hadn't changed my vote on Best Song from 'Jai Ho' to 'Down to Earth' at the last second. My previous best is missing 7 a couple of times. But it's always the Short Film categories that do me in because it's really hard to actually pick those winners when you have so little resources in watching them. There needs to be a Short Film channel on TV/Cable. And then of course there are always upsets in the Oscars so picking an almost 24 out of 24 is very rare. I'm sure some people have done it before, but I think this year, there probably wasn't a perfect score. However when I look at it I could have done even better if I had just listened to my gut feeling of Sean Penn winning & not changing Best Song. Besides, Sean Penn winning wasn't an upset since he and Mickey Rourke were at a dead heat for probability of winning. Oh well.
So that's it. My initial thoughts on the 81st Oscars. Overall, best Oscar show in a while. I hope they can 1 up it next year.
--LouEx
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