Techtite's TV Reviews!

"A popular host and Martin Scorsese winning his first Oscar could not save this nearly four hour train wreck from being the Worst Oscar Night of all time...or at least so far!"

---from the review

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The Good Points...

With nearly four hours to kill, they were bound to hit the target once or twice, right? Here's the moments that made us smile:

---Martin Scorsese won an Oscar. Finally. Bravo!!!

---If Al Gore showed as much humility yet conviction in 2000 as he did tonight, he'd be president today.

---The Animation Film Nominees are seen in the audience. It's been done before and yet it's still cool.

---When Anne Hathaway and ??? presented the best Costume Design award, they had this amusing joke where they both "forgot" Meryl Streep's cappuccino, a la their characters in The Devil Wears Prada. followed by an "angry glare" from Streep in the theater audience.

---Seeing the costume designs on models, live on stage, was a nice touch.

The Ugly Points...

Forget the good, bad, and the ugly this year. After just shy of four hours (no joke), let's just jump to the absolutely inexcusably Ugly:

---Pilobolus, the only thing we can thank you for is proving once and for all that The Lord of the Dance was NOT the most pointless non-movie-related guest ever invited to the Oscars. At the very least we LIKED Riverdance. What imbecile invited shadow mimes?!?

---The amount of time it took to learn that Martin Scorsese won an Oscar: 3 hrs. 39 min.

---"Kind of embarrassing": being the winner of Best Achievement in Make-up, and having your award presented by Will Ferrell and Jack Black's silly little song.

---"Really Humiliating": winning an award after having to wait for Will Ferrell and Jack Black to shut the @#$% up, only to have YOUR acceptance speech cut off for time concerns(!).

---Biggest "Huh?" introduction of the evening: announcer Joe Fontaine referring to Jennifer Lopez as an "excellent reason for high definition television."

The 79th Annual Academy Awards

Let's cut to the chase: We do not blame Ellen. Even the late great Lucille Ball could not magically turn crap into crystal. There's no gentle way to say this: remove Martin Scorsese winning an Oscar, and you'd be left with the most boring Oscars in 20 years. It was hardly Ellen's fault, though. The fault of a boring, nearly-four-hour Oscar Night, lies solely on uninspired montages, poorly chosen time fillers, and yes, Pilobolus.

Pilobolus...?!? My apologies. Maybe you liked that car commercial where yoga-mimes form the shape of a car. These dancers are known as Pilobolus. Apparently, they can form any shape they please. You'd think the idea here was to form shapes related to Best Picture nominees. Only problem is: Snakes on a Plane was not nominated for Best Picture. No; The Devil Wears Prada wasn't, either, though at least they were getting warmer. It would've at least been topical if they made one shape related to each Best Picture nominee. Nope. Not since Letterman had poor Tom Hanks help him with a "Stupid Pet Trick," have I seen a more bizarre time filler on Oscar Night.

Of course; what could we have expected, when the whole night began with a video of nominees acting silly in front of a drab, dull, white backdrop? Allow me to paraphrase. "Oh! I'm nominated?" [I suppose so.] "Do you know who I am?" [NO.] "Tee-hee!" [Ho, ho.] Oh my stars what an uninspired opening to Oscar night...this, coming from a critic old enough to remember when Oscar Night began with Telly Savalas, Dom Deluise and Pat Morita singing. At least that was funny. This was nonsense.

If only drab opening videos and yoga mimes were the only needless time fillers. We had Jack Black and Will Farrell return, for another musical number. The problem? Their musical number at the Oscars last year was funny. This one was not. In fact; it was downright idiotic. The concept: "Comedians never get nominated for an Oscar." Tell this to Eddie Murphy and Alan Arkin who were both in the audience tonight, as nominees. Tell that to Kevin Kline, who won for A Fish Called Wanda. Tell that to the cast of The Full Monty, who all got to go to the Oscars...for Best Picture. For that matter, who can forget when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan? The song proceeded to insult ---not poke fun at; insult--- the nominees. For. Crying. Out. Loud.

Then we had video montages. Ask yourself: when even last year's host Jon Stewart had to sardonically muse that the only Oscar montage left undone was a "montage about montages," what could they possibly make a new montage about? Answer: they made a montage about all the writers through the years, who wrote a movie about a writer who had nothing to write about. No, I'm not kidding. Look, guys; you insist on limiting acceptance speeches, correct? I'm telling you now: limit the montages. Any montage should last maybe 90 seconds. In just two minutes, this nearly five minute montage left me saying, "Enough, already." Either teach the montage director about film editing, or force him to spend Oscar Night at home with Debbie Allen next year.

Perhaps it would've been more exciting if most winners weren't so obvious this year. Helen Mirren as Best Actress. Forrest Whitaker as Best Actor. Yes, Jennifer Hudson won, as Best Supporting Actress, and no, still not surprised. Any of the Supporting Actress nominees deserved to win, but with Hudson, voters could tell Simon Cowell to fly a kite, and that was an added bonus no voter could ignore. Not that we don't like you, Jennifer, but we liked the other nominees too. If that little something extra that helped you win was everyone's dislike for that twit on American Idol who thought you'd never go anywhere; what delicious irony.

It's the unexpected Oscar winners that viewers really treasure. Alan Arkin would defeat odds-on-favorite Eddie Murphy for Best Supporting Actor. This is good on two fronts: one, because we love you Alan, and two, Eddie, you just know that as soon as you got a big head again you'd want to do something stupid like The Golden Child 2. As for Best Original Song: not one, not two, but three Best Original Song nominees from Dreamgirls lost to a song Melissa Ethridge sung...for a documentary. Now that, my friends, was a surprise! As for Happy Feet winning as Best Animated Movie: we can see it winning over Cars and Monster House, though we still loved Over the Hedge more than all three.

Then there was Martin Scorsese as Best Director. Man; what a treat this was...though forcing him to sit and wait for it was not. East Coast viewers Stateside had to wait until 12:09 AM just to see it. While it's fair to admit that for Martin on the West Coast it was only 9:09, that was still a three hour and 39 minute wait for the poor guy. At the very least they didn't turn on the music cues for limited speech time, like they did last year, when Crash won Best Picture. Scorsese was able to give his full speech...and deservedly so.

Presenters were six of one, half a dozen of another. When young talents Abigail Breslin and Jaden Smith presented the Best Short Film awards, only to see Jaden Smith humbly speak the wrong line from the teleprompter; that was cute. As for most of the older presenters...? Not so much. As much as we hate to name names: Jerry Seinfeld, we love ya, but kindly leave your overtime, "documentaries are so boring" shtick at home, and don't drag on the documentary presentation any longer than it has to be. Take a cue from Robert Downey Jr., who in one line gave the best laugh of any presenter tonight, as he humbly jested: "Visual Effects! They enable us to see aliens, experience other universes, move in slow motion, or watch spiders climb high above the city landscape...for me, just a typical weeknight in the mid 90's." Rock on, dude.

If I were less tired at nearly 1AM, EST, I might wish to compliment Oscars '07, for doing right what went so wrong in earlier years. No smaller categories who were handed their awards in their seats. No arrogant documentary recipients who feel that theirs is the non-fiction category, and therefore more "intellectual" (oh...brother!). Most importantly; no "for crying out loud it was just a movie" speeches this year. So yes; Oscar is learning. If only he'd learn faster.

Yet the real problem was not a four hour Oscar telecast, as much as why. Whenever an Oscar telecast dares to be overtime, you'd better entertain along the way. Yes this was the year Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar, but I cannot "award" Oscar for this, when it had snubbed him far too long already. To make matters worse: they forced him to sit and wait nearly four hours to get his due. He should not have been forced to be so darned patient. None of us should have.

                                                                    ---Techtite

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