Brandon's Pop Culture Site

Sunday night I was sitting at home watching the 78th Annual Academy Awards. Apparently, judging by the ratings, I was in the minority. Also, unbeknowist to me there was a second Oscar broadcast going on at the same time. I am not exactly sure what this second broadcast showed, but it couldn't have been good.

In this second broadcast, the show's host Jon Stewart, was unfunny, not getting any laughs. Also, he was overly political and used this forum to attack the Republican party and the current administration. Which is a blatant misuse of power in a night where we are suppose to be talking about movies. I am glad I didn't see this Stewart, it would have hurt me. I am a big fan of his and the Stewart that I had the pleasure of watching was the same Jon Stewart I have come to know and love from The Daily Show. He made a few political jokes, but like always his barrels were aimed squarely at both parties taking shots at Dick Cheney's shooting and then joking how voting for the Oscars was the only time liberals get to vote for a winner. The Stewart I didn't see offended many people and the audience was ready to attack him and banish him from the show. The Stewart I saw got lots of laughs and seemed to brighten up a rather dull show. Even causing the often hard to please Jack Nicholson to remark about the fantastic job Jon Stewart did. I can only imagine on the broadcast I didn't see that Jack Nicholson rushed after Jon Stewart wielding a golf club or axe right after the broadcast was over.

Another thing I must have missed was that different movies with similar themes were apparently up for Oscars at this second broadcast. Because during the second broadcast a subpar, unworthy film about racism in Los Angelos won the Oscar for best picture. Strangely enough this movie was called Crash. During the Oscar ceremony I saw a movie named Crash about racism in Los Angelos won the Best Picture Oscar. But this movie was a moving and powerful picture as worthy of an Oscar as any I have seen in recent years. I can't say I saw any of the other nominees, but I am sure that most if not all of them are fine pictures equally as worthy of an Oscar. Sometimes it is hard to chose between a Forest Gump, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, or a Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan, and the sad fact is someone has to lose. I must say I am a little touched though, I didn't realize the world cared so much for gay cowboys. But, in the Oscar broadcast I saw we applaud the winner and we applauded the losers, we knew that the vote could have gone the other way, and if it had we still would have applauded.

I am very glad that I didn't see this other show, it sounds like it was very disappointing. I think I will set my DVR next time though, so I can atleast see what I am missing. All I saw Sunday was a talented host doing what he does, doing what makes people love him, and alot of very good actors and movies win and lose awards, gracefully both ways.

Brief Oscar Thoughts:

• I was happy to see Philip Seymour Hoffman win, but disappointed that Joaquin Phoenix couldn't have won. Even though I haven't seen either one of their nominated movies, I am long time fans of both.But both can't win, but Acamedy you are on notice Joaquin deserves an award, of course you have been on notice ever since he didn't win for Gladiator.
• Apparently Reese Witherspoon has grown as an actress in ways I haven't seen. Granted I don't watch alot of her movies. But I thought if you made a movie like Legally Blonde you gave up all future rights to an Oscar. I guess I wasn't too surprised by her win though, critics had been predicting it for weeks. I just don't know how she seemed to have a deadlock on the award, but I will reserve judgement for when I have actually seen Walk the Line. I was rooting for Felicity Huffman, I love my Desperate Housewives.
• "It's Hard out here for a Pimp" won best song. Seriously, WTF? This is the first rap song to ever be noimated for an Oscar. I am guessing that is why it won, so Oscar could catch up a little to mainstream America. But personally I thought the song and the performance of it at the oscars stunk, but to tell you the truth I wasn't really impressed with the others either.
• Award Count: Brokeback Mountain-4, Crash-3, Memoirs of a Geisha-3, King Kong-3. That strikes me as odd, Brokeback and Crash were the titans going into the Oscars, but Memoirs of a Geisha and King Kong weren't even nominated for any of the big Oscar's, but walked away with plenty of small ones.
• How did Cinderella Man get so overlooked as to only get two nominations and no wins. And when in the hell will they let Paul Giamanti win something, Sideways was a well recieved and loved movie last year largely overlooked and this year his performance in Cinderella Man earned him Supporting Actors nods everywhere, but no wins that I saw.
• Am I the only one who was not impressed by Lily Tomlin and Meryl Strepp. They are actors and they acted, big deal. It wasn't really that impressive. On the same note was Lauren Bacall nervous, she sure stumbled over her words alot.
• Am I the only one who doesn't like one single Robert Altman movie?
• Do you realize they could cut the Oscar's down to two hours and make people more interested if they stopped the clip montages and took out the awards that no one understands or likes, Film Editing, Foreign Language Film, Animated Short, Art Direction, Cinematography, Documentary Short, Sound Mixing. Here's a tip most people don't know what a Cienematographer actually does and people think Sound Mixing only occurs in movies like Jurassic Park. The only reason why people pay any attention to these awards are to see if their movie wins, so just hand out these awards early and tell us who one, or have a second Oscar broadcast on the Science Channel or Discovery Tech, called the Technical Oscars. The other awards give them out earlier we don't give a shit, we don't these people or movies are we aren't going to watch them. That might sound cruel, and I am sure they are talented and worked very hard, but so are some garbage men, but we don't give them awards on television and let them speak for two minutes. No one would care.
• Reese Witherspoon's acceptance speech seemed heartfelt and sincere and I am not complaining about that. But it was almost three and a half minutes long. When Crash won the Big One they spoke for ninety seconds and then was drowned out by music. That hardly seems fair. I know they were running long, but if you give Reese Witherspoon three minutes the biggest award of the night should have at least just as long.
• I hope, I hope, I hope Jon Stewart is back next year. I doubt he helped boost ratings in any demographic for the Oscars, in fact he probably hurts the older demographic. But hey we had to put up with Billy Crystal on the Oscar's for years because old people love him, well I think he is boring and I utterly hate his musical numbers. Now is the time for a smart comedian who can do current cutting edge humor with out the muscial numbers.