Watched a good portion of the Oscar's last night and found it faintly amusing. Jimmy Kimmel brought a nice energy to the emcee role. Of course, the Oscar's have a powerful team of comedy writers, and the evening is scripted to the millisecond; but great comedians are capable of delivering unscripted lines in the moment. Kimmel offered some strong impromptu lines during the course of the show. And it all comes down to having a sense of humor. Kimmel is a keeper.
Kimmel handled the most innovative "bit" with great panache. The idea was to bring a busload of Hollywood tourists off of their bus and surprise them with a visit to the main stage. This bit of agitprop in the midst of Hollywood's creme de la creme could easily have become painful to watch. In fact, the surprised tourists included some pretty humble people, and Jimmy mainly worked with a middle-aged African-American man. Turns out the man was part of a couple. His fiancé was there too. Jimmy handled this well. He commented that the African-American couple seemed more interested in Denzel Washington and other representatives of black Hollywood than the many white movie stars. Kimmel encouraged Denzel to perform a mock marriage ceremony for the them right on the spot. The audience of Hollywood actors played along, trying to reassure and to connect to the tourist visitors-- a few real people, not dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns.
The evening seemed a bit "low energy" to me. La La Land, a movie with the name Los Angeles repeated in the title at least two times, does not rank with the great cinematic efforts of movie history. Damien Chazelle, the film's 32 year old director, admitted that he fell in love for the first time during the making of the film. Youth does not provide a great resource of life experience, though Orson Welles made Citizen Kane (1941), at about the same age.
Ironically, the night ended in disarray. The best laid plans sometimes go straight to hell.
Warren Beatty, the notorious Hollywood Don Juan, brought in to add a little of the real macho Hollywood oomph to the final award, ended up center stage to a bunch of chaos. He received the wrong envelope from a PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant! He and co-presenter Faye Dunaway struggled and then announced La La Land for Best Picture. The film's entire cast stepped to the stage. Beatty knew something was wrong. Moonlight, a film made by an African-American producer, was declared the winner just a few moments later. The damage had been done in the poor hand-off of envelopes.
The evening struggle a little to throw off some of the heavy fear hanging in the air of like in these Trump United States. The low energy reflected a level of exhaustion with Donald Trump era and our era of partisanship. Political statements were minimal. Nobody seemed overly eager to bring on the wrath of Donald. No more Meryl Streep riffs from American actors, nobody wanting to kick that hornet's nest.
Diversity was a major theme of the night. Moonlight getting the award for Best Picture was a step in that direction. The step turned out to be more like a stumble, however, and may have reflected the Academy's reticence to honor a minority film. That kind of stumble occurs when you try to hard. You want to do something new and different, like learning a new dance. So...you're a little awkward, you trip up, you hand over the wrong envelope. But it's a first step-- in the right direction.
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