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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Author
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Topic: 82nd Academy Award Nominations
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Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 03-08-2010 09:49 AM
A few things bugged me…
Neil Patrick Harris: He’s gay and he likes to dance... not that there's anything wrong with that. But does that mean he gets to steal time during the Oscar telecast?
The opening banter by the hosts, where they’re obviously going to talk about actors in the audience: So why did the technical crew insist on cutting to the audience shots without lighting the audience?
Totally clunky broadcast from a technical standpoint: The sound was just flat. After the Olympics coverage which really had nice, smooth, enveloping surround sound, we get this mess, where the audience sounded like it was in another room and the mixing was just, plain ham-fisted. Then, when presenters stood on the stage reading their teleprompter rubbish, you could hear some giant, mechanical thing that sounded like 100 construction workers moving scaffolding. I couldn’t figure out what that was but, eventually, I guessed it was the set pieces resetting in the background. Who’s the bone-head who designed that mess? This wasn’t going to be a silent movie! The soundtrack wasn’t going to be looped!
We interrupt this broadcast for the A&E Biography of John Hughes. The Academy had absolutely no respect for him while he was alive but now we’ll treat him like a genius.
As usual, spend half the broadcast time showing presenters walking across the stage and/or reading the stupid stuff on the prompter but then don’t allow an actual winner to speak for more than 35 seconds. And if you were silly enough to give an award to a team of artists, cut off the sound before the second guy has a chance to say one word! Also use your ham-fisted sound mixing to make the cut-off as obvious and awkward as possible.
Finally, for those of you who thought that having 10 Best Picture nominees would help “regular folks” to enjoy the show… Oops! If any “regular folks” fell for that boy-who-cried-wolf nonsense then you can expect next year’s ratings to be somewhere below the numbers for, say, an A&E Biography of John Hughes. Let's face it, the awards go to the "artistic" films and anyone who enjoys "popular" movies is an idiot.
One more thing: The dance number highlighting the best original score nominees. I’m sorry, guys, but that was horrible. This isn’t 1983! What’s with the “the robot” and all of the other break dancing?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-08-2010 02:35 PM
I agree the broadcast audio mix was crappy. One of the award winners (I think it was Michael Giacchino, Best Original Score, Up) had his speech infiltrated with some sort of bad humming noise, like a ground wire came loose somewhere. Just terrible.
There's little doubt more than a few eyes rolled when the tune to I Am Woman played as Kathryn Bigelow walked to the stage to accept the Best Director Oscar. Nauseatingly obvious. Why not just play the damned music from The Hurt Locker? Oh, I'm sorry. That would make too much sense.
I didn't mind the John Hughes tribute, but it could have been organized better. The "brat pack" 80's actors looked a bit lost after the montage was finished.
The annual memoriam thing was a bit odd. The show goofed up on the montage opening with Patrick Swayze with the shot of the stage only going full screen with the montage at the last second. I figured they would have saved Swayze's moment for last, with that final shot from Ghost with him walking toward the light on the horizon. Oh, I'm sorry. That would have been too obvious or made too much sense. They had to save the obvious "hit you over the head" nonsense with I Am Woman later. Farrah Fawcett was left out of the montage. Bea Arthur was another notable omission.
Ben Stiller's presentation for Best Makeup was one of the show's highlights. Pretty funny. But also oddly uncomfortable.
I thought the best joke from Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin the whole evening was Martin saying, "I wrote that speech," in response to Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher tripping over his words and drawing a blank while accepting his Oscar.
It really is getting to be extremely annoying how the Oscars telecast wastes such a huge amount of time with attempts at elaboration in awards presentations (such as 5 actors going on and on for just one award category) and then cutting off winners when they try to speak.
One award winner I thought was pretty cool: Logorama, the winner of the Best Animated Short Subject Award.
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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God
Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 03-08-2010 03:11 PM
Our local ABC affiliate here in Honolulu was having image problems when I tuned in to watch the red carpet part of the show in HD. Although the audio was fine, the picture was badly pixilated and looked very bad. I was hoping the standard broadcast was ok and it was so I watched the first hour of the show that way, When KITV got their act together with their HD presentation, I watched the rest of the show in that format. I was rather pleased with the show and the results except the award for Best Picture, director and sound. If AVATAR had to be passed over, my choice would have been INGLORIOUS BASTARDS for best picture and director because I enjoyed that movie very much. I never like movies about the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and never bothered to watch the HURT LOCKER when it came out on Blu-Ray about two months ago. Even after winning an Oscar for best picture, director and sound, I still do not want to see it. I was very impressed with the sound when I saw AVATAR in digital IMAX 3-D and for it to lose to THE HURT LOCKER is something I just cannot understand. I agree about the memorial phase of the show, although I regret the loss of all of those talented film artists who had passed away in 2009, the presentation was not as touching as previous years. The best one was about two years ago when the Academy paid tribute to it's departed members with the theme from FORREST GUMP. I enjoyed Steve Martin and Alex Baldwin but I also agree the Best Actor and actress tribute by their colleagues was totally unnecessary. The only people who had probably enjoyed them was the nominees themselves.
-Claude
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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today
Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99
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posted 03-08-2010 03:36 PM
quote: Hillary Charles
Joe, I think you're just remembering all those blue cat people. Check me on this, but I'm sure I'm seeing green screen being used here.
The clip they showed during the telecast showed a blue screen. I have done no more research into the making of Avatar and that trumped up Youtube video you linked to is exactly what makes me hate DVD extras. Why are they using the soundtrack from the movie? It doesn't need music! Unfortunately all of the "making of" features these days are EXACTLY like that, music from the movie, the actors talking bout how this movie breaks new ground, everyone talking about how great the director is, the director saying how challenging everything is. BORING!
quote: David Stambaugh
There was definitely something going on with the audio.
Yes, I noticed that, too. But we are talking about broadcast television, an area where nobody knows what they are doing. They are almost as bad as modern day "projectionists".
quote: Greg Anderson
Simple conclusion: The war in Iraq is box office poison. That's not going to change.
We opened Hurt Locker when it was initially released. Nobody came to see it. We got it back 3 additional times, the most recent being about 3 weeks ago. We are doing stellar numbers for the movie despite that we are a full-price theater and the movie has been available on video for at least 2 months and can be rented for a dollar. Even buying the damn thing is cheaper than a couple of tickets. But we keep selling it out. Even on the weekday afternoons there are 70-90 people in the auditorium. Might happen again this weekend. After that it will probably die off. We are not showing the movie on Blu-ray, we are projecting real 35mm motion picture movie film.
quote: John Wilson
AVATAR should have won Best Picture purely for the achievement in advancing what the public can expect a movie can do...in so many ways.
What did this movie do? 3D? Nope, been there, done that. CG? Nope, been there, done that. The movie still looks very cartoonish and the effects still look VERY CGI-ish. The movie's graphics did not impress me in the least. The 3D was good, but that effect was enhanced because the camera was NEVER still, adding parallax to the 3D visuals. Again, nothing groundbreaking here. You may argue about all the work that went into it.... but I don't care! All I care about is what I see, and it wasn't that impressive, there was just a lot of it. Nothing anyone says can make me impressed with the fake-looking CGI in Avatar.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 03-08-2010 04:27 PM
I disagree. Avatar was NOT, by far, the best picture at all of the year.
By about the same logic, Transformers and Harry Potter should be up there.
They are ENTERTAINING pictures. Not (neccessarily) good pictures.
Many of the pictures in the best picture category deserved the prize more than Avatar.
I also don't agree with the best set design for Avatar. Even Sherlock Holmes deserved it more.
Even the cinematrography is doubtful in a movie that is mostly CGI, but I agree it was good, just not "real cinematography". I mean you want perfect lighting? Push a buttom. Sunset? Push another. No shadow in the face of object #3? Push a button and have it ignored by the ray tracer, something impossible in real life as you can't stop light mid-air. An aerial 360º shot? No problem, just type in the speed you want it at. They even boast how "the camera wasn't a real camera but a virtual one" and how "scenes were shot with 197 cameras", etc, etc. I mean, come on. That's not "cinematography".
And I also don't agree that Avatar (or Dark Knight/Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter, for that matter) changed ANYTHING in the movie-making world other than remind those in charge that people love ESPECTACULAR movies that are entertaining and well made (or even badly made, if we count Transformers in) and they'll go in massive numbers to theaters to watch them in large screens, but they won't do the same for modest films about love or drama no matter how good they are (unless in-cre-di-bly good and even then, American Pie 7 will make about the same BO numbers). Oh, it also reminded studios that investing $200m in marketing hype can pay off.
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