I didn't really watch the Oscars last night as much as I had it on while I was doing other things, but with increasing frequency I had to push the mute button on the remote control. The Oscars are always a big self-congratulatory party for Hollywood, and I've never taken it seriously as anything other than a fun fashion show where people get to show off plumage both beautiful and bizarre, but this year's Oscars were ... I don't even know what to say.
A few highlights and low points of this hot mess:
- Host Chris Rock's intro monologue was a little ... er ... rocky (I wished he would stop laughing at his own jokes), but when he landed his punches, he landed them hard, and he targeted just about everybody. On this year's Oscars race relations controversy he didn't spare anybody from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith ("It's not fair that Will wasn't nominated for Concussion. But it it also wasn't fair that he got $20 million for Wild Wild West" and "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties. I wasn't invited!") to the Hollywood elite's "sorority racism" ("We like you, Rhonda, but you're just not a Kappa," to which he added flat out the term "white liberals!" Wow).
- Louis CK was funnier and more real in his two minutes than the entire battalion of other Oscar presenters.
- On a related note, C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 were warmer and more spontaneous than nearly all their stilted, unfunny human counterparts. Shoot, the Minions, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody were better. How about next year we dispense with the humans entirely?
- Rock getting Girl Scouts to sell cookies to the audience was actually pretty funny.
- The evening's attempt to address issues (both internal and external) turned out to be an exercise in surreal, heavy-handed virtual-signalling and tonally weird calls for action. What was freaking Joe Biden doing on the Oscar stage? Why were actors giving Crazy Uncle Joe a standing ovation? Was that really the president of the Academy out there trying to tell people the Oscars were going to fix themselves? Did the Oscars actually do a musical number about sexual assault? WHAT?
- DiCaprio finally won his Oscar, so maybe people can now quit yapping about his quest for that statuette. Then he proceeded to turn his acceptance speech into a bully pulpit about global warming, and I pushed the mute button. The most entertaining thing about The Revenant at the Oscars was the guy in the bear suit applauding in the seats.
- Mad Max did very well in the technical categories! Still, Ex Machina won the special effects Oscars. SERIOUSLY?
- Whoever wrote the "jokes" and "banter" for the Oscar presenters should be booted. The stuff was not only unfunny or boring, but cringe-inducing for most of the show. Ugh! How about we stop trying to script banter from here on out? Watching Russell Crowe attempt to engage in unfunny repartee with Ryan Gosling was agonizing. Just get out there, announce the nominees, anoint the winner, and go away!
- The In Memoriam segment, surprisingly, wasn't terrible. Iconic video clips from departed icons Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, and David Bowie were very good, and the Oscars achieved its only moment of emotional resonance for me by ending the montage with Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek 2 with that line.
- Sam Smith somehow won the musical Oscar with his miserable tune from Spectre. Horrible.
Enough of this mess. Let's get to what really matters: the outfits on the red carpet. The fashion was as much a hot mess as the rest of the show. Oh, I miss Joan Rivers' acid-tongued commentary. A few people managed not to look awful, but ...
- Kate Winslet wore a shiny black trash bag.
- Olivia Munn in her orange dress looked like a traffic cone.
- Charlize Theron and Olivia Wilde clearly thought they were competing for the Oscar for Most Exposed Sternum.
- Cate Blanchett kept her dress in the pantry too long, and it had started to sprout by the time the Oscars rolled around.
- Rooney Mara dug out a dress from a previous century but failed to notice that moths had eaten a huge chunk out of the middle.
- Refreshingly, Chris Rock pointed out that people always ask the girls what they're wearing because all the guys are wearing the same thing (black tuxedos): "If George Clooney wore a lime green suit with a swan coming out of his [butt]," Rock proclaimed, "you can bet we'd all be asking what he was wearing - !"
Enjoy this bit of brutal honesty as one anonymous Oscar voter takes on this year's various nominees. Here's a taste of it:
"I am voting for Mad Max solely because I want to stop The Revenant."
I didn't even bother going to spend my hard-earned pennies on Leonardo "always the Oscar bridesmaid, never the bride" DiCaprio and The Revenant, but I did very much like Mad Max: Fury Road (and The Martian).
Speaking of brutal honesty ...
I actually watched the Oscars last night, and it was a doozy. If you want a taste of it, see Nikki Finke's refreshingly candid live-blogging of it, and I think she's basically on target, especially with the bit about Michelle Obama's cameo. (NO, it's not the same as when Reagan did something. He was legitimately an actor before he entered politics and was once president of the Screen Actors Guild and did much in that capacity. The Obamas' endless attention-seeking in entertainment venues is getting tiresome fast. It makes serious politics into some stupid endless celebrity reality show, and I hit the mute button. Besides, must we politicize everything? Geez. Still, here's a zinger from the Insta-Prof.)
I was delighted, though, that Argo won Best Picture. Apparently today Iranian state TV is slamming it. Whatever. Other outlets are complaining about it for various reasons, not the least of which is about - ah - creative liberties taken with historical details. I'm actually OK with such liberties because this is a movie, not a documentary, and I'm interested in whether it works as a movie, as a gripping narrative. AND IT DOES. Kudos to Affleck too and his personal tale of failures eventually turning to success.
Still, I was really just watching for the fashions and faux pas, and there were plenty of both. Jennifer Lawrence is goofily hilarious and ever more so despite (and quite possibly because of) falling on stage in a ridiculously puffy dress (oh, bonus: chivalry lives as Hugh Jackman and Bradley Cooper rushed to help her up), but I also couldn't help noticing:
- George Clooney's gray-streaked beard has got to go. It looked as if it were a flesh-eating fungus determined to gulp down his neck. And it made him look old. Ben Affleck, take note.
- Jennifer Garner's strapless purple dress might have looked fine as an elegant column dress on its own, but it had BUM RUFFLES. Not only were they bum ruffles, they were a cascading waterfall of chiffon monstrosities that peeked out all around her. Lady, sit down and squash them before they destroy the earth!
- That woman who won a technical award and showed up in fuchsia pink leggings. No. Just ... no! The 80s are long gone, and not even Cyndi Lauper dresses like that anymore!
- Bradley Cooper's hair looks like an overturned wok, and it also looks twice as shiny and three times as solid.
- Heidi Klum and Catherine Zeta-Jones both attempted to look like Oscar figurines in their respective shiny gold dresses, and they both failed horribly.
- Jessica Chastain looked lovely in her bronze beaded dress - one shade lighter and it would have washed out her pale complexion entirely - and thank goodness she went for bright red lipstick. Still, why do stylists like to put redheads in beige tones? It's dreadful. Put her in plum or hunter green or the right kind of black dress!
- Helena Bonham Carter looked like a corpsy Gothic disaster, but since she looks like that at every awards show, this now just makes her boring.
- Sorry, but I wasn't a fan of Anne Hathaway's pale pink outfit. I thought it was too full of ribbons and gaps when it wasn't looking weird about her neck. Yeah, I know it's going for the trend in "side-boob," but I don't like it.
- Quentin Tarantino gets points for originality with his black leather necktie.
- Melissa McCarthy is one funny lady, but her dress wasn't amusing at all. It was a huge shapeless gray bog swamping her!
- Amy Adams was wearing a massive blue feather duster.
- Kristen Stewart continues to look like a dead-eyed, slack-jawed hot mess in ill-fitting outfits and ratty hair. Seriously, does she care at all?
- I still can't decide if I like Naomi Watts' sparkly silver dress with the unusual cut-out neckline, but she should at least get props for having one of the evening's most eye-catching gowns.
- Amanda Seyfried: Just (yawn) no.
- Reese Witherspoon. Great wavy hair, cleverly color-blocked dress that makes her waist look smaller than it is.
- Salma Hayek's dress, in a fit of jealous rage that she was getting all the attention, made a deliberate attempt to strangle her.
- I hate - and I mean hate - Norah Jones's hair.
- Brandi Glanville: NO! Absolutely not!
The Golden Globe movie awards just took place amid the usual media frenzy about the actresses' glamorous designer outfits. The Onion takes deadly aim. Do take a look.
Here's a whole list of snarky and "more accurate" titles. I loved Argo (and where the heck is the Best Director nomination for Ben Affleck, Academy? At least Alan Arkin got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor), but this made me laugh. Oh, Daredevil was pretty darn horrible.
You all know about Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese human rights activist who managed to escape and is now in the States. You may not know, though, that while he was still under house arrest in China, Christian Bale attempted to visit him. The two finally met when Chen was honored with a human rights award earlier this week. Here's a charming photo of the actor and his hero. (Oh, and there's video in which Bale mentions Chen detailing the Chinese government's gross human rights abuses, especially against women.)
I didn't bother watching the Emmys because award shows are boooooooooooooring. Still, the fashion statements on the red carpet are often diverting and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious. Now I'd seen Zooey Deschanel's cutesypoo baby blue ballgown with all the tulle layers and Lucy Liu's insane sci-fi-ish dress with mega-sequins that looked like she was wearing a mirrorball, but I had seen the official photos. I'm much more taken with this shot of what happened when Zooey's floaty netting met Lucy's metallic disks. Oh, and I apologize for the image of Ryan Seacrest, but it couldn't be helped!
You'd think he'd be a national hero, being Pakistan's only Nobel Prize winner and the scientist whose work contributed to the Higgs boson research. But nope! The physicist has been purged from the textbooks and his gravestone ordered defaced by a magistrate(!) because ... This is too depressing. Just read the news story. UPDATE: More here.
Now that's a nice headline as the first black members of the Marines receive official recognition for their service in a time when segregation was very much a reality. You'll recall that Truman desegregated the armed services in 1948. Here's video from June 27:
Who cares about the actual winners? I'm more interested in red carpet shenanigans. This year's outfits were kind of tame with a side of mediocrity. Most of the dresses weren't even worth mocking (though Jennifer Lopez looked totally tacky). Someone please give Angelina "emaciation chic" Jolie a sandwich. A few people even looked lovely (Gwyneth Paltrow was cool and stately, Natalie Portman was adorable in her subtly red and black polka-dotted number, Octavia Spencer was cute, and I give two thumbs way up to Jessica Chastain's bold black-and-gold choice).
But nope, the highlight of the entire red carpet experience was comedic gadfly Sacha Baron Cohen crashing the entire thing in a glorious publicity stunt (despite being specifically banned from the event) and ambushing the hapless Ryan Seacrest. Come on, before getting bundled off by security, Cohen zestfully mocked not only Hollywood pretentiousness and Middle Eastern dictators, but Kim Jong-Il as well. I loved it and laughed out loud.
I love movies. In fact, I adore movies. You know this (the writing of movie reviews during breaks from research should have been a clue!). But I hate the Oscars. Let's take a look at some massive snubs (then and now) and some seriously overrated Best Picture winners and still more of that (I'm glad I'm not the only person who hates "Forrest Gump" and "Crash"). Then take a look at this hilariously snarky pair of cartoons:
