Oscars 2015

I watched the Oscars. I made notes on the Oscars. I'm going to talk about the Oscars.

This is the first year where I think I've watched all of the most important movies of the nominees, and as such I have a pretty good idea of what's going on. This year's ceremony was hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, who started off strong with a pretty solid opening song-including Jack Black hopping onstage-before immediately taking a nosedive into purely unfunny territory. I like Neil Patrick Harris, but oh man was he awful tonight. Did he lose a bet or something?

Aside from NPH, there were a few music performances, starting with Maroon 5, who seemed slightly more like a band than usual. Don't get me wrong, they still weren't very good, but this song was at least tolerable compared to some of their other stuff. Later on there was a performance of "Everything is Awesome", which while very enjoyable didn't make up for "The LEGO Movie's" snub. Then there was Tim McGraw, who was alright I guess, followed by Rita Ora, a perfectly fine singer without an ounce of personality. The singing was technically good, but also made me feel absolutely nothing. Jennifer Hudson had a much better solo performance, where she displayed her tremendous chops.

Easily the best performance of the night, however, was John Legend and Common performing "Glory", which included a crowd of people just standing and walking on the stage, which was designed like the bridge seen in "Selma". It was a really powerful performance that was punctuated by the speech that Legend and Common had against the institutional racism that is still prevalent in society. They weren't the only ones with something to say about oppression, though, as Patricia Arquette called for equal pay for women. This made it a pretty potent night for activism, and rightfully so. "Selma" was an especially timely film considering the disadvantages faced by African-Americans and other people of colour today, and that the gender wage gap still exists in 2015 is disgraceful.

There was one more performance from Lady Gaga, who sung something from The Sound of Music. She was the most normal I'd ever seen her, apparently having ditched the weirdness a while ago. I'm not entirely sure what she has in mind now, but time will tell if she can get another pop hit.

All of the awards recipients were pretty well deserving, with the highest award, Best Picture, going to "Birdman", which was easily one of my favourite films of the year. "American Sniper", the least popular of the films at the awards, only recieved an admittedly deserved award in sound editing. The Best Actor in a Leading Role award had just as harsh competition as Best Picture, which would have been even closer if David Oyelowo hadn't been snubbed. One might see that as just an unfortunate exclusion, but this ceremony has been surrounded by a little bit of controversy regarding the apparent racism of some voters. This was punctuated by a tasteless joke made towards Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu by Sean Penn, making a problematic quip in regards to "green cards".

This makes the snub a little harder to swallow, though Eddie Redmayne's victory was well deserved. Admittedly, I was completely clueless about a couple of the feature film categories, especially Documentary Feature, Foreign Language Film, and Animated Feature. I hadn't had the opportunity to watch that many feature films of this sort last year, which was unfortunate, because I do enjoy watching such films when I get the chance. However, foreign language films only come around so often, and documentaries even less so. Animated films are less common, but most of the nominees had brief limited runs if any run at all. It's a shame, because I was looking forward to many of them.

Idina Menzel was announced to the sound of "Let it Go" performed on horns, which just shows that she'll always be known for "Frozen". To be fair, you could be known for worse things, but I bet everyone's sick of "Let it Go" by now. Similarly, Chris Pratt was announced with "Hooked on a Feeling", another lame reference to what he's known for. Halfway through the show, Neil Patrick Harris made a botched attempt to reference the closing scene from "Birdman", which, like the rest of his jokes this ceremony, fell flat. At the start he put some of his Oscar predictions in a briefcase which he locked up in a glass case, and while there were disappointingly few Pulp Fiction references, the running joke was still incredibly lame. When he actually read off his predictions, they were only marginally better than the rest of his jokes.

Fairly decent Oscars, but the ceremony was hit-or-miss. Hopefully next year turns out better, I suppose.