As the dust settles on the 82nd Academy Awards, it’s time for a few thoughts about the show and glimpses into a night of firsts.
With the help of a last-minute change in my cinematography pick, I wound up correctly predicting 20 of the 24 categories, which was definitely a better showing than I was expecting.
It’s also the best showing I’ve seen among Oscar pundits (tying Guy Lodge from In Contention), though one of the readers at Awards Daily nailed 21 of 24.
Like just about everybody else, I wasn’t expecting Geoffrey Fletcher’s screenplay win for “Precious.” And while my vote in both sound categories would have gone to “The Hurt Locker,” I figured that the Academy would give one of them to “Avatar.”
And then there were those pesky shorts. I walked out of the initial screening thinking “Logorama” might win the animated category, but was persuaded that Wallace & Gromit had the upper hand. I should have figured out that if voters were nervy enough to go for the live-action winner “The New Tenants,” which I did call, they also would have honored the comparable entry in the animated category.
And I should have paid attention to a big rule in the doc shorts category: Among a batch of films about serious social issues, always pick the one that gives you a little uplift along with the heartbreak.
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As soon as the final rehearsal ended, activity picked up on the red carpet.
The consensus among those who’d watched the run-through, which had been cut by 12 minutes after the previous night’s dress rehearsal, was that the sensibility of the Academy Awards had undergone a significant shift.
“This is the year,” one veteran of more than a decade of Oscar shows told me, “that the Oscars were finally taken out of the hands of the old Jews and turned over to the 30- and 40-something gays.”
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Do you think Oscar co-producer Adam Shankman has heard some of the criticism of Sunday night’s Academy Awards show?
It certainly sounds like it from a comment he posted Monday night on Twitter, where Shankman is an avid participant.
“did the best i could last night with so many perameters [sic],” he wrote. “just so everyone knows the horror tribute was linked 2 roger cormans govs oscar.”
But when the horror montage is separated from the Corman tribute by half an hour, three awards, one Best Picture clip, two commercial blocks and the introduction of the show’s musical director and conductor, it’s a little far-fetched to think that audiences are going to make that link.
And when the film package is immediately preceded by a “Paranormal Activity” spoof, and introduced by the two stars of “Twilight” with nary a mention of Corman – well, that means that however it played in Shankman’s mind, to viewers the tribute came across as an attempt to capitalize on two hot, young-skewing movies, not as a nod to Hollywood tradition.
