So the Academy Awards are over, thank goodness. A lot happened, jokes were said, awards were won, but now it’s time to look at the stuff that worked and didn’t.
The Good
1. Big Hero 6 and Alexandre Desplat upsetting in their respective categories. By the time we got to these awards, my predictions were already in shambles so I was hoping for something fun to happen. I am overjoy Desplat finally has an Oscar (although I’ll pretend he got this for Godzilla lol) and Big Hero 6 was my favorite animated film of the year so hooray for Disney.
2. Good speeches. From Graham Moore to John Legend and Common to A.G. Inarritu’s director comments, there were some pretty good speeches. My faves were the director of Ida beating the wrap it up music and Eddie Redmayne’s effervescent joy having won an Oscar.
3. Performances: Jennifer Hudson sang the house down (to a song from SMASH!), the staging of John Legend and Common’s Glory was magnificent and Lady Gaga singing The Sound of Music was exquisite.
4. John Legend, Common and Julianne Moore all have Oscars.
5. Birdman winning Best Picture ONLY and I mean ONLY because it shows that the Academy has really broken out of their typical Best Picture winning films nature. By all accounts, this is the type of movie we’ve been begging Hollywood to make and reward as it’s inventive with form, auteurist to a T, and has a lot of energy. So for that I begrudgingly clap.
6. This moment
The Bad
1. Birdman winning Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. There were at least 3 other nominees in each of these categories that were way more deserving of these particular awards. Regardless of the positives for it, in my opinion, Boyhood should have won Picture, Foxcatcher won Director and The Grand Budapest Hotel screenplay.
2. Neil Patrick Harris. Listen, I love me some NPH and he wore one of my favorite suits of the night, but aside from that Birdman bit, the “now you like him” comment and the Idina Menzel introduction, he was flat. He couldn’t sell the easy jokes or the obnoxious ones and it made for a rough night.
3. Whiplash winning Editing. This might have made me the angriest. You can chalk this win up to the Academy reverting to their likes of Most editing rather than Best. You can’t tell me that the editing job Sandra Adair did on Boyhood isn’t the most impressive of the year. 12 years worth of footage in which you can’t pull extra footage cause the characters are older…
4. Sean Penn’s green card “joke.” Not the time or the place for this.
The Ugly
1. My Oscar predictions. I decided around Golden Globes time that I could care less about this awards season. So when it came time to predict the Oscars, I decided to go with a mix of logical choices and hopes. Clearly didn’t pan out.
2. Patricia Arquette’s backstage comments. I have thoughts but this article pretty much sums them up.
3. Greg Berlanti. Keep him away from the Oscars’ writing room forever.