Techtite's TV Reviews!

"It is amazing how many performers, presenters, and award speeches were able to make lemons out of lemonade, following an admittedly so-so movie year."

---from the review

------------------

Sidebar ::

-------------

The Little Points...  

Any three hour telecast is bound to have those little details that don't make it into the review, though are worth mentioning. Here are the best (and worst!):

---John Williams wins for Best Original Score, for Memoirs of a Geisha. The guy should get Globes for every musical score he ever made. Seriously. 

---Driving home the message to all disheartened "Houswives" that it's an ensemble show: none of them win Best Actress, but the show wins as Best Comedy. Bravo, Globes!

---The Weird Al Yankovic style opening songs for the Golden Globes are getting old. Parodies of recent songs are one thing, but a parody of a song by Pussycat Dolls ...for the Globes?

 ---Sandra Oh's long walk from the "nosebleed section" of tables. I guess someone in charge of seating. didn't like Grey's Anatomy too much.

---Leonardo DiCaprio is announced as presenter and the camera pans to Natalie Portman in the audience, who looked peeved. Maybe it was just the moment, or maybe it was Leo. What was up with that look?

--The shtick Teri "Lois" Hatcher shared with the new "Clark"...er, Superman, just didn't work too well. "Oh, you forgot these [Clark Kent glasses] backstage." What. Ever.

---After Christians having to say, "Happy holiday" throughout Christmas last month, it's intriguing that Queen Latifah, Chris Rock, and all the rest could wish everyone a happy Martin Luther King day without anyone crying that they should simply say "Happy Holiday" or whatnot. I know what you're thinking, but come on: King was a reverend. He'd probably agree with me on that.

--Come on: Brokeback Mountain: Best Original Song? It was a good movie, sure, but...best song? I don't know; "Best Original Song" often requires someone to have actually heard and remembered the song.

---There really weren't any noteworthy commercials this year, apparently as every advertiser waits for Super Bowl Weekend.

---Though we didn't want to rant about every single winner in this article, we would like to congratulate Anthony Hopkins for his well deserved lifetime achievement award. His speech was humble and very well spoken.

The Golden Globe Awards Show, 2006

A Review by Techtite

I guess I should begin this TV report, with a confession: I really didn't like last year's Golden Globes show at all, if just because the drama series Lost, well...lost. This year not only gave that series the Globe it was robbed of a year ago, but overall, it was pretty much an "everyone who deserved to win actually won" sort of year. You can forgive the Foreign Press for a few "politically correct" choices tonight, when it was a close race anyway. In the end; Lost won. Finally!

Mind you; this isn't a fanboy rant. The honest truth is: Lost is the best drama on TV. In the past year, not one TV series moment was as cool as Lost's season finale, with Michael's raft attempting escape, music swelling in the background, as his son Walt cried "We did it, dad!" Lost deserved a Globe. Period.

As for the other "big" award of the evening: Best Movie Drama went to Brokeback Mountain. I think the word I'm looking for is "feh"...presuming that's even a word. I have to agree with Leonard Maltin when I say that I wasn't terribly impressed with a film that, at least to me, was little more than a rubber stamp romance story with two male actors in the lead roles. Switch Michelle Williams' role with Heath Ledger's and it would've been another story of two couples who weren't really in love because one member of each couple in really in love with someone else. Heard it before...? Of course you have. That story has been done many times before...yet guess what script won Best Screenplay? Take a wild guess.

Mind you; I'm not going to just recite one big "who won what" list, which is readily available everywhere. So let's cover what you missed if you didn't watch. The first acceptance speech of the evening turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, with Sandra Oh winning as Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series. She tried to be composed, then basically gushed how the whole experience made her feel like she had just been set on fire. Then she has what has to be one of the most humorously honest speech moments of all time; first confessing that she'd like to give thanks to all the people who supported her through the years, she then sighs, "Oh gosh; I don't remember any of your names!" I'm sure they all know who they are, Sandra, so don't worry. It was still a far more enjoyable speech than a simple rambling of names.

Speaking of rambling names, One of the funniest speeches of the evening was from Hugh Laurie, who won as best actor in a TV Drama (House). Apparently prepared for the awkwardness of a speech, Laurie claimed to have written all the names of people he'd like to thank on little strips of paper, which he's placed in his left pocket. In the interests of time constraints, he said he'd pull out only three names; everyone else would just have to deal with it. After getting to the punch line of pulling out a sheet with his agent's name on it --"Hey; this isn't my handwriting!"-- he went into the obligatory short-winded, "real" acceptance speech. The opening bit was funny though.

Another cool speech for the evening was The Office's Steve Carell, who when winning as Best Actor in a TV Comedy, said that his "wife" wrote his speech, only to have the speech thank his wife in a new way, every other line. It was a cute moment among all the people who (not naming names, because they just divorced!) forgot to thank their spouse.

The most amusing acceptance speech from a broader perspective was Mary Louise Parker's, who won as Best Actress in a TV Comedy. Let's set the stage for you: the presenter for this category was Chris Rock. It was bad enough he had to ruin the mood by sardonically jesting that Martin Luther King Jr. day was almost over, so "white people" didn't need to be nice to "black people" much longer. Oh, shut up Chris. Then Chris followed this bitter pill with a rant about how four actresses from Desperate Housewives were nominated...and Mary. He talked about how popular the series is. He talked about the long shot Mary was. He egged her over and over while the equally cruel camera crew kept fixated on poor Mary in the audience, who classy as she is, kept on smiling. People; that is what acting is about. So it was of little surprise to anyone but Chris that she won. Oh, and no, please, seriously; shut up Chris.

Presenter's rants were nothing to write home about, although they kept the ball rolling. Yes, it was rather droll for Denis Quaid to say that the subject matter of Brokeback Mountain "rhymed with 'chick flick,' " but perhaps we'd be laughing more if the P.C. police weren't knocking on our front door. On a less politically incorrect slant, Emma Thompson jested how she loves movies like Pride and Prejudice, but wasn't asked to star in it because they're looking for terribly "young" actors these days.

As for presenters who made a statement just being there (so to speak), there was Dakota Johnson, standing alongside mom Melanie Griffith, as her father Don Johnson sat proudly in the audience. I'd never heard that the Globes try to have a third-generation actor as their annual "Miss Golden Globe," but it's a cute idea, and it made for cute TV. Not as cute as it was funny was a presentation by William Peterson (CSI) and Pamela Anderson. The odd pairing was not unnoticed by Peterson, who opened their presentation by calling them, "Beauty and the Geek." Then there were presenters Harrison Ford and Virginia Madsen, the former of whom hands his half-finished drink over to the latter before opening the envelope. They said later that it was something they planned prior to coming on stage, however, so it isn't as funny as it was when seen live. All the above presenters would be all upstaged by Drew Barrymore, however, who to make a long story short, should own a few more bras. Not that it's entirely Drew's fault. That stage must be cold!

In an evening this entertaining, you can even give the Foreign Press a "mulligan," as it were, for another dated and tired "song parody" opening the awards. This has been the opening for a few years now, and these Weird-Al-Yankovic-wannabe songs just don't cut it. To the tune of The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't ya" song, the singer asks, "Don't ya want to watch the Globes tonight?" Well, let's put it this way; we're glad the song didn't scare us away! Next year, with a better opening of some kind; the Golden Globes could actually get it all right. For now, 80% right will just have to suffice.

                                                                    ---Techtite

Opinions? Speak your mind in Techtite's Letters Page!

Got a review you'd like to share? Techtite will post 2 of the best "guest" reviews received for any product, online, for all the world to see!