MOVIE REVIEWS |
INTERVIEWS |
YOUTUBE |
NEWS
|
EDITORIALS | EVENTS |
AUDIO |
ESSAYS |
ARCHIVES |
CONTACT
|
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
AWARDS SEASON 2014
The 86th Annual
Academy Awards
Excellent
Ellen Crashes Twitter But Not Oscars
Show
Ellen
DeGeneres brought The Oscars into the 21st century on Sunday night at the Dolby
Theatre in L.A.
A.M.P.A.S.
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Tuesday,
March 4,
2014
Diversity, pizza, selfies and history. The world (and the Academy) was
starving for at least two of those on Sunday night, and Oscars host Ellen
DeGeneres delivered, keeping a long show barely off life support with timely
humor and spontaneously orchestrated moments amongst the crowd at the Dolby
Theatre in Los Angeles. The 86th Annual Academy Awards was an unqualified
success, with a host who did her utmost to connect with a global audience
despite a largely conventional show that lagged after an hour and a half.
From the start, diversity, at least on Sunday, was the name of The Academy's
game, a countervailing shift from its homogeneous norms. An
African-American female Academy president, a gay host, a multiracial Team Oscar group
that pointed to the future, the
darkest-complexioned supporting actress winner since
Hattie McDaniel, a documentary feature winner about black women, a
Mexican Best Director winner and a best picture winner directed by a black
director. Almost all of these were firsts.
Yet the show's production was very familiar. Themes about heroes, some
real, others mostly Hollywood-based, grew tired very fast. The Academy
stood stubbornly by its old pillars while slightly and gently opening its door
to change, cosmetically or otherwise, yet the heroes theme itself didn't alter
the show's running time, making it one thing about the Oscars that was so
fashionably reliable.
Ms. DeGeneres was marvelous, and her caustic joke about
"12 Years A Slave"
and its best picture possibilities and The Academy and any racism within it
butted up against an irrefutable truth about the complexion of its winners over
its previous 85 years. The joke would be a precursor for the night's
events.
There were uneasy fits between change and tradition. John Travolta's
screw-up of Idina Menzel's name -- he sounded as if he had a boiled egg he
swallowed at the double quick -- was either stage fright, or, to some, symbolic
of an older white guy out of step with the shifting times. Maybe that's
too harsh, but not nearly as harsh as the host's dig at Liza Minnelli, Ms.
Degeneres's lone mistake of the night.
Throughout Sunday's broadcast more women were on stage than any time I can ever
remember at The Oscars, including a diverse range of black women. (To the
best of my memory, no Asians were seen or heard.) When Oscar winner Cate
Blanchett pointed in her acceptance speech to the need to get more women into
the big picture of film roles and filmmaking decisions, it was met with some of
the night's biggest cheers. The 77% male Academy heard the 23% roar.
It was a refreshing moment, one I hope translates to something tangible.
Next year, and for years to come, a woman -- name your director here -- should
also direct and produce the telecast, which is needed again after an absence.
Twitter was a staple of The Oscars on Sunday, and the selfie sent round the
world had a sponsor.
Ms. DeGeneres, who played social media and smartphones like a Stradivarius, kept
many younger viewers connected, as did the two films that were the main
contenders for best picture. These elements, not the show's production
values (those inflatable Oscars condoms) helped deliver
43 million sets of
eyeballs within the U.S. And it wasn't for the horror movie
that was
last year's Oscars host.
Ellen DeGeneres was multitasker-in-chief, tweeting the Oscars, watching the
Oscars, hosting the Oscars and doing her own popular talk show, sometimes all at
once. She was a vivacious cheerleader of the 21st century, a pitch-perfect
pitch queen with the energy of Peter Pan, Puck and Peter Parker's alter ego.
Ms. DeGeneres ditched the pseudo-1950s vacuum cleaning act from seven years ago,
and came updated with renewed interactive fervor, trying to liberate a tense
Dolby Theatre audience from potential Depends moments.
The selfie
itself, however impromptu, was somewhat diverse, and a celebration, a subtle and
blatant shorthand way for the Academy to celebrate itself. On a night
where Jared Leto earnestly reached out to Venezuela and Ukraine, the pizza
feeding of millionaires was the unorthodox but contradictory image that made
much of the world hungry.
Related:
A likely split on Oscar night
COPYRIGHT 2014. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
FOLLOW
MOVIE REVIEWS |
INTERVIEWS |
YOUTUBE |
NEWS
|
EDITORIALS | EVENTS |
AUDIO |
ESSAYS |
ARCHIVES |
CONTACT
| PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME