And the Oscar goes too...(yawn)

Last night was the 83rd Annual Academy Awards...and I was NOT impressed! Let's face it, YES, we Americans are a bit obsessed with celebrities and awards shows and I admit I watched the WHOLE THING! We love movies, I love movies but year after year we have to suffer through long-winded acceptance speeches "Thanks Mom!", tiresome celebrity coupling, bizarre fashions and lackluster nominations. Now, I don't mean to rant but...what am I saying this is my blog, of course I do! So, lets start with this year's hosts: you've got Anne Hathaway: kinda hot, somewhat hyperactive AND James Franco: dull, boring, and possibly high as a kite (he was in Pineapple Express after all, lol)! The beginning sequence featured a parody of Inception starring Alec Baldwin and Morgan Freeman of all people, it seemed like something the MTV Movie Awards would do, and not the Oscars!? Anne Hathaway defintiely stole the show with her quirky remarks and incredibly bad jokes such as: "It's been a great year for Lesbians!" (i.e. The Kids Are Alright) and “It used to be, you get naked, you get nominated...", referring to her last film Love and other Drugs, not to mention her literal "Flub!" while introducing Sandra Bullock. Also her incredibly odd solo number where she poked fun at Hugh Jackman. It was obvious the producers of this years Oscars were leaning to a more "younger" audience especially with this years The Social Network receiving so many nominations (and only 1 win in Film Editing?I wasn't really surprised). It became painfully obvious when James Franco came on stage in DRAG as Marylin Monroe and with Anne's comment: " you look very appealing to a younger demographic as well." (gag!)
Next comes the nominations, there were apparently 10 Nominations for Best Picture, that's right, TEN! Are you kidding me, everything else such as Actor, Actress, and Director gets like 5 nominations at least. Were there really that many great movies this year or were you just trying to make everyone feel better?
It always amazes me of the time taken up with the minor technical awards for Film Editing, Sound Editing and even Sound Mixing and yet there's the whole separate awards for the Science and Technical Awards (not televised). I guarantee those are much more interesting than the awards for Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Animated Short or even Live-Action Short. We don't care!
The most disappointing awards were the nominations for Animated Feature Film, there were only 3? Of course Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon were on it, but what about Tangled (it got a song nomination) or even Shrek Forever After? Possibly the greatest injustice came from one of my favorites this year being Tron: Legacy, with only 1 nomination for Sound Editing of all things, not even a nomination for Visual Effects, instead Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 gets a nomination! WTF?
I was pleased with the nominations for Inception which deserved every one even though none of it's actors (which were more of an ensemble cast anyway) didn't receive any nominations. And I believe Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech) should have won Best Supporting Actor instead of Christian Bale (The Fighter) who admittedly exclaimed: "...a room a full of talented and inspirational people and what the hell am I doing here?". Well said...I think?
It was pretty obvious when Tom Hooper took Best Director and Colin Firth won Best Actor for The King's Speech what was going to win Best Picture, and I was thoroughly impressed with the film itself. I especially liked the Best Picture montage which revolved around the radio speech scene from The King's Speech while Beethoven's 7th Symphony played. LINK All in all, it seemed like a fairly mediocre Oscar night and I trust neither Anne Hathaway or James Franco will return next year. Unfortunately the final number did little to bring it any prestige with a performance of "Over the Rainbow" by Staten Island's PS 22 Chorus which sounded very dubbed/lip synced? We've definitely had our fill of awards shows this year, with the recent Grammy awards in all it's eccentricitys (i.e. Lady Gaga arriving in a giant egg?!?!) plus the Emmy's, Tony's, Golden Globes and now the Oscars! (And don't forget the Indie Spirit Awards) Enough is Enough!!!