Oscars 2010, the Hubris Version

I watch the Oscars every year. Every year, I gather up my snacks, snuggle under a blanket, and turn on the TV in time to watch the Barbara Walters Special or at least the red carpet-commercial fest. This year, I popped some corn and baked it in a maple syrup-canola oil mix, my very own candy corn, and nuked a mugful of chocolatey hot chocolate, for my snack. With them close by, I settled in for some mega TV watching, and boy was it not worth it.

The red carpet was OK, lots of excessive ball gowns, and the bustier look is definitely in. The sameness of the bust look drove me to some doodling. At last the interminable interviews and regulation announcement of the gown designers stopped, and the Oscars began. Yay! Uh no, I thought as the curtain rose on a line of beautiful men and women. All the bests in the acting categories were being paraded and shown off like a bunch of statuettes to the audience, like just in case we don't know who they are.  I immediately rolled my eyes -- hubris is the theme of the
evening. Finally, they were escorted off to their seats. Phew. The music began, and Neil Patrick Harris came singing and dancing on the stage. Immediately, he erased memories of that awkward beginning. I smiled. I enjoyed his performance not only because it was good (chorus girls notwithstanding, what was up with those?) but also because only the day before a friend had introduced me to Dr. Horrible, and I learnt what a good singer NPH is. Loved the coincidence.

Unfortunately, he left and the two main guys showed up: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. They immediately resurrected the hubris theme and did some weird and confusing number, which was really just an excuse for the camera to get closeups of the best and best supporting actor and actress nominees, like the beginning show-off was not long enough, like their clips and live closeups later wouldn't be long enough to soak up their beauty and drink in their greatness. I was ready to switch off right then. Instead I doodled until they finally, finally stopped and they introduced the first award category.

With the exception of a few interesting moments on stage -- like why did that woman silence the doc short winner -- learnt today they were co-producers and he didn't wait for her and so she ran roughshod over him when she caught up -- too funny -- and that text-dolphins sign too quickly cut off by AMPAS -- what was that text number again? -- the 2010 Oscars was by far the most boring ever. So boring that I punched the off button on my remote control at 11 pm when the Academy Awards came back from break and I realised the teaser about seeing the Director award next was so much hoo-hah. I read today in The Toronto Star that came an hour later. Glad I didn't stay up. Sleep was so much more interesting and fun than one more minute of the Academy Awards, never mind an hour.

Comments