And so another year passes and another Oscars dawdles out of the box and eventually over the finishing line.
Same old same old, you could say - except that this year was meant to be different.
This was meant to be the "younger, hipper" Oscars; the more approachable Academy Awards. James Franco and Anne Hathaway! Backstage 'Thank You Cam' streams!
Pre-show advertising used the tagline "You're Invited", riffing on the idea that the Oscars are really just a big party.
If yesterday's ceremony could generously have been considered a party of any description, it was a wake.
Given the vague attempt at "internet humour" that this year's ceremony, well, attempted, let's kick things off with a few GIFs that tell the story of the 83rd Academy Awards:
And, let's hear it for the GIF of the night:
Where did it all go wrong? Franco was either bored or stoned (or both) and Hathaway was grating; with every hair flick and "Oh my gosh!" I just wanted to grab her and yell "ANNE! IT'S THE OSCARS, OF
COURSE IT'S EXCITING! NOW CHILL THE FUCK OUT AND BE PROFESSIONAL".
Various presenters showed up the hosts, too - Kevin Spacey and Sandra Bullock in particular were funny, charming and entertaining, even if they only had moments to show it.
There was
octogenarian nonagenarian (!) Kirk Douglas cracking onto Hathaway. There was Justin Timberlake making the same "I'm Banksy" gag, twice. There was Melissa "Fucken" Leo in her Kumfs.
There were two utterly perplexing musical interludes: AutoTune The News-style clips of fairly irrelevant films (including - YOUTH ALERT -
The Deathly Hallows and
Twilight), and Hathaway belting out
On My Own because... Hugh Jackman couldn't perform with her? Or something?
It could have been worse, though. We could have had to hear
Franco sing:
Of all the international awards ceremonies, the Oscars is the one with the most prestige, and also, confusingly, the one with the biggest and most enduring identity crisis.
Over the past half-decade we've had spins on Oscar that included tense (Chris Rock, 2005), political (Jon Stewart, 2006 and 2008), daytime television-esque (Ellen De Generes, 2007), musical theatre (Hugh Jackman, 2009), olde timey comedy (Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, 2010) and this year's "youth" flavour.
Year after year, it's difficult not to wonder why the Oscars don't just revert to the old days, when they pleased themselves and, thus, the whole world.
The great thing about the glory years - i.e. the decade from 1990 to 2000, hosted by either Billy Crystal or Whoopi Goldberg (with one memorable effort from David Letterman in 1995) - was the sense of
class.
Everybody dressed up and celebrated each other; the jokes were hilarious, the montages were priceless and the speeches heartfelt and memorable.
Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences president Tom Sherak was sanguine about the show. Speaking to the
New York Times,
he said:
“You get criticized for trying something; you get criticized for not
trying something. The only absolute is that not trying makes you old and stodgy.”
He's right, at least on his first point. But why do we have to "freshen up" the Oscars? Why do they have to pander to "the youth"?
Given that the Academy Awards fete films that are the very antithesis of youth culture (case in point: the excellent but decidedly grownup
The King's Speech), what's the point of trying to hook in an audience who, upon tuning in, won't find any of their favourites being celebrated anyway?
The kids have the MTV Movie Awards and the VMAs and the AMAs and the ARIAs and the Brits and the Kids' Choice.
Can't we just leave
something for the adults?