Sir Griffin Looks Back at the Oscars

I’d like to start this out by apologizing to you, my loyal readers. Sir Griffin has been ill and thus has been in no mood to write his annual Oscar review. Despite my illness I did manage to watch all of the red carpet arrivals and the entire show from beginning to end. I do this not only for myself, but for all of you as well and I do hope you appreciate and enjoy it.

First I want to tell you that I watched the Red Carpet arrivals on TV Guide Network. It took me about 10-15 minutes to find that channel, but I found it just before they came on the air. I cannot and will not watch the coverage on E! as long as they continue to put that sorry sack of crap Ryan Seacrest on the air. I absolutely refuse to watch anything with him in it. Thus I was subjected to some guy I had never heard of, Chris Harrison. He was okay, but he seemed like he was confused with his questions and comments at times. I just figured he was some yahoo they found on the street until Jennifer Lawrence showed up and told him that she loved him on The Bachelor. I’ve never seen The Bachelor.

But let’s get to the main event. Overall I enjoyed the show despite the fact that it went on way too long. I thought Seth MacFarlane did a very good job. He was certainly better than the debacle of Anne Hathaway & James Franco and I would say that he was much fresher than the stale Billy Crystal. That said I was very disappointed that we were stuck with a toned down Seth. Seth is well known for his edgy humor, but like Chris Rock, he had the Academy’s thumb on him never allowing him to do what genuinely makes him funny. This show could have been so much better if they just let Seth be Seth. I loved parts his opening bit, but parts of it fell flat. I’ll explain.

• While I liked Captain Kirk coming back from the future to help, I thought that William Shatner looked horrid. He kind of looked like a Klingon and not a good one at that.
• The “We saw your Boobs” song was hilarious. Loved it. The young prince loved it too.
• I could have done without the dance number with Charlize Theron and some guy with short hair.
• Loved, loved, loved the sock puppet interpretation of Flight. If only all boring movies could be remade with sock puppets.
• While Seth has a wonderful singing voice (and is an accomplished pianist) seeing him dance with Harry Potter and the guy from Inception was painful.

Overall I thought the rest of his night went as well as could be expected. I loved his Rihanna/Chris Brown joke and his self-deprecating humor, but like I said before, he could have been substantially funnier if he’d been allowed to cut loose. Seth said it himself that hosting the Oscars was kind of like trying to pass the Kobayashi Maru. It’s a no-win situation.

Some other thoughts on the night:

I hated the way they introduced the Best Picture nominees in groups of three. If it was up to me (and it should be) each film would have its own time to shine. Sharing the spotlight is not the way to go when you will get only one winner.

If you are going to offer John Travolta some stage time you really need to teach him how to properly pronounce Les Miserables. He sounded like a moron. And one more thing with him; from what I understand he has made a lot of money in his career. Any chance he could get a better hairpiece?

As a general rule I like Anne Hathaway, however, I hated her on Sunday night. First off she had one of the most hideous gowns of the night. She looked like she was wearing an apron with nipples. And while I knew she would win, her reaction seemed too staged to me. Her comment of “it came true” was an eye rolling moment. Her heavy breathing was annoying, but as annoying as she was she did not even compare to….

Kristen Stewart. My gosh was she even awake? Her eyes were half closed all night. She seemed completely bored and disinterested and when she was reading off the nominees she sounded like she was reading a list of people headed to the gallows. I’m pretty sure she thinks she is really a vampire now. Her gown was ugly too.

Paul Rudd & Melissa McCarthy…what the hell was that supposed to be? Here we had two of the funniest comedians working today and the Academy has them doing some unfunny bit that made no sense. It bombed.

Ted and Mark Wahlberg – Loved it! Now that is some edgy humor! Ted, you are definitely my thunder buddy. If only they would have Ted host the show.

I also enjoyed seeing that not one, not two, but three different guys with long white stringy hair won awards. It looked like all the villains from Die Hard were taking the stage. All we needed was Hans Gruber and that guy that looked like Huey Lewis. (On a side note; Die Hard is still the greatest Christmas movie of all time)

I was really looking forward to the James Bond salute, but it fell flat. Once I got past the shock of realizing that Shirley Bassey was still alive, I really enjoyed listening to her sing Goldfinger. However, the montage of scenes was too choppy and went by too fast. I was also hoping to see all the men to have played Bond on stage at one time. How awesome would that have been. It was a foregone conclusion that Skyfall would win for Best Original Song and Adele did a superb job. I thought she looked great too.

Who knew that Daniel Day-Lewis was as stand-up comic? My goodness that guy was hilarious in his acceptance speech. I always figured he was a very dry and boring person. A pleasant surprise.

As much as I loved seeing Jennifer Lawrence fall down I loved seeing her get back up and laugh it off. Yes, it was embarrassing but she handled it very well. I am madly in love with her.

I always enjoy the In Memorium segment and having Barbra Streisand end it by singing “The Way we Were” was wonderful. I know the woman is 70 and may or may not have had work done, but she looked great. Her voice was not quite what it used to be, but she’s still Barbra.

I felt bad for someone I had never heard of before Sunday; Bill Westenhofer. The poor guy had just won the visual effects award for Life of Pi and was not able to finish his speech as he was played off by the theme from Jaws. That is just tacky. I want to hear the speeches and while I understand the need to give them a time limit I still don’t think they offer them enough time. I’d much rather hear what the winners have to say as opposed to overblown musical numbers.

And speaking of overblown musical numbers we had the salute to musicals with the Chicago reunion, Jennifer Hudson singing her showstopper from Dreamgirls and pretty much everyone that was in Les Miserables. As beautiful and talented as Jennifer is I had no desire to hear her perform. Nor did I need to watch Catherine Zeta-Jones brutally lip synch “All that Jazz”. The Les Miz number was impressive. That’s all we needed and even that was a little too long.

I have never really figured out why, but I really do not care for Meryl Streep. However, I thought she was elegant and did a great job in presenting the Best Actor award.

I have also never really cared for Jack Nicholson and I thought he looked like someone’s crazy old uncle up on stage. Pairing him with Michelle Obama was ridiculous. I love her, but I did not like the stunt.

Argo really was the best film of 2012 and deserved its victory. I enjoyed Ben Affleck’s speech. I knew George Clooney was a producer, but was shocked to see that the other one was the guy from True Lies. I have no idea who that guy is except the guy from True Lies.

After the night was seemingly over we had one more completely unnecessary and uncomfortable musical number. Kristen Chenowith and Seth did a little song and dance about the losers. It was awful.

So that’s about it for this year’s Oscars. Seth has already said he will not host again and with the vicious attacks he has suffered in the press I can’t blame him. Although he was not perfect I thought he did a fine job. It’s just too bad that they kept him from truly being himself.