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What did you think of the 2013 Oscars? (1 Viewer)

Ronald Epstein

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Every year I hope for a more streamlined, entertaining Oscars Event. I had high hopes for Seth, but in the end, despite dragging William Shatner in as Captain Kirk, the show just felt bloated. Those of us who were part of the HTF live chat were wondering when the opening segment would end and that they would simply start handing out awards.

Unfortunately, if I were a publisher, my headline would be "Seth is a mediocre host." Thought some of his jokes (John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln/Rihanna and Chris Brown) went straight for the jugular. Of course, maybe I should not have expected anything less from the man that brings us Family Guy every week.

I miss Billy Crystal. For me, he is the quintessential Oscar host.

As for the awards, those of us in the chat last evening seemed mostly pleased. No complaints about Christoph Waltz picking up yet another Oscar for his "smooth" performance in Django. Anne Hathaway was a lock for Les Miserables and all of us were rooting for Jennifer Lawrence last evening. While I would have liked to have seen Joaquin Phoenix take home a Best Actor Oscar, there is no denying that Daniel Day-Lewis deserved the win.

Perhaps the two biggest surprises of the evening was Argo winning Best Picture and Ang Lee winning Best Director for Life of Pi.

The showstopper of the evening? Why, Shirley Bassey belting out Goldfinger. As wonderful a moment it was to savor, one wished the rumor that all the Bonds would be brought together had actually come true.

...of course, Shirley didn’t' quite overshadow Adele, Hudson, Streisand and the cast of Les Miserables who all provided equally memorable musical moments.

Special thanks to those of you who took part in our live chat last evening. It's always fun to hang out with you while watching the Oscars. Had a fun group in the room.

Look forward to reading what all of you felt about the show and the awards.
 

Brett_M

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Loved Adele & Shirley Bassey "We Saw Your Boobs" and Channing Tatum/Charlize Theron were great Daniel Day Lewis's acceptance speech was cool Very happy that Waltz and Tarantino won for Django Unchained Yea for Argo Surprised by Ang Lee winning but happy for him and the film (I really liked Life of Pi) Cool use of famous music between speeches (loved Jaws theme used to get winners to wrap it up) The 50 Years of Bond segment was weak Overall, I was unimpressed with the show. There was something off about the whole night. The two things that stand out in my mind are how many commercials there were and how much time was spent on the lesser categories.
 

Colin Jacobson

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Seth was okay. I'm not a fan of his shows or movie, but I think he has talent - he just indulges in too much cheap humor. In "Ted", he occasionally showed cleverness, but then he'd just throw out more easy jokes. He generally seemed like a tamed-down version of himself last night. Can't say he made me laugh much, but he could've been worse...
 

Scott-S

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I usually do not watch the Oscars. Mostly because I hardly ever have seen most of the movies mentioned. This year I watched because of Seth MacFarlane. I thought he did a good job. He kept it tame (by his standards), and he seemed calm and collected. I have been seeing the reviews coming in and it is pretty much half and half. Critics either loved him or hated him. I think it is all based on whether or not you like his type of humor or not.
 

WillG

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(loved Jaws theme used to get winners to wrap it up)
I see the humor in it, but it seemed pretty disrespectful to me. I get that they have to keep the show on pace, but using the Jaws music seems like "We're trying to be jokey about getting you off the stage" I would also say it's somewhat disrespectful that the technical people get way less time to speak than the "Stars". Thought Seth was fine, he seemed more irreverent than many of the more recent hosts, which I always this is a good thing. Some may think the Star Trek thing went on a bit long (I was really hoping that when the faux headlines of him being the worst Oscar host ever were shown he would have said something like "How could I be worse than Anne Hathaway and James Franco?" But I guess that would have gotten him in trouble since Hathaway was the favorite for B.S.A.), but frankly, I'd rather be watching that than the acceptance speech of the Best Short Subject winner and the like. Michelle Obama reading the B.P. was a W.T.F. moment for me. Why? She's not part of the industry. So it comes off as an unnecessary and unwelcome (IMO anyway because why do we need a shot of partisan politics?) "Hollywood loves you, Michelle!" type of thing. It seemed inappropriate to me.
 

Citizen87645

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The opening went on way too long. It ran 17 minutes by my count, which doesn't seem like much, but is when there aren't many laughs. And it seemed way too focused on McFarlane's performance as host, which made him seem self-indulgent. The middle section dragged, in part because there were few awards given out amongst the various musical performances and tributes. Consequently the end felt rushed, with the six remaining awards getting handed out back-to-back. McFarlane was OK as host. Some of his jokes were groan worthy, but he recovered from them fine I think, better than say Ricky Gervais or Chris Rock would have. If McFarlane came back I guess it would be OK, but I don't expect him to be able to change anything. Longstanding problems with the Oscar telecast are far too entrenched for a host to be able to change in any meaningful way. Every year it just seems like they move around the deck chairs, regardless of promises that things will be different. It's funny to me that the Golden Globes used to be the red headed step child of awards shows, but now I think it does just about everything right. Part of it this year was having Fey and Poehler co-host and set an irreverent but still respectful tone. But I think for the Oscars to have a similar vibe means changing its inherent, self-aggrandizing nature, which I'm not sure is possible. Ultimately it's people in the industry recognizing themselves for their own work, which is itself is not a bad thing, but there's a significantly different tone when an outside group or agency does the awarding.
 

mattCR

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Felt horrible when the VFX workers for Pi won and they all stood outside protesting over lost pay and jobs. While inside they can't even get a mention before the jaws music started. disliked the boobs song. Can you imagine doing this with 'we saw your penis?'. And including a gay slap plus a fat joke all in blah. we then bring out the great Christopher Plummer who has said he hates Sound of Music with a Nazi joke that immediately followed tired Jews run Hollywood jokes And how many times could they mention Chicago? Is it because the show producers also produced it? The last ten years has been terrible for musicals. You didn't see anyone mention Phantom bombing or The Producers dying or... Just a long attempt to give us the Tonys I wish Johny Carson could be resurrected.
 

BobO'Link

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Overall my feeling is that it was just another semi-lame awards show. I tend to watch mainly to participate in the chat which is *always* fun. Were it not for the chat I'd not bother and just read about the winners in the paper the next day. Yeah, I'm the guy the programmers hate... :D Frankly, they'd do better with *fewer* production numbers and self-serving promos for past projects *cough**Chicago**cough* and might actually have time to allow winners a bit of screen/thank you time plus get the show off the air on time. Shirley Bassey was the high point of the broadcast with Streisand a close second. Someone was actually thinking for a change when the "who we lost last year" segment was being put together.
WillG said:
(loved Jaws theme used to get winners to wrap it up)
I see the humor in it, but it seemed pretty disrespectful to me. I get that they have to keep the show on pace, but using the Jaws music seems like "We're trying to be jokey about getting you off the stage" I would also say it's somewhat disrespectful that the technical people get way less time to speak than the "Stars".
It was funny the first couple of times, especially when it grew louder the longer the recipient lingered at the mic. But *everyone* needs to get the same amount of time. Towards the end when none of the "stars" got the theme even after several minutes of rambling I grew somewhat disgusted with the earlier slap-in-the-face towards "lesser" winners.
WillG said:
Michelle Obama reading the B.P. was a W.T.F. moment for me. Why? She's not part of the industry. So it comes off as an unnecessary and unwelcome (IMO anyway because why do we need a shot of partisan politics?) "Hollywood loves you, Michelle!" type of thing. It seemed inappropriate to me.
Absolutely. I felt it cheapened both the Oscars *and* the White House.
 

Malcolm R

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Hopefully the on-going pity party for poor Ben Affleck is now close to an end. I did enjoy Seth as host, for the most part. I think my favorite might have been his intro to Meryl Streep: Seth: "Our next presenter needs no introduction." *quick exit* I still get frustrated with the inability to cut the excess from this show every year. Each year the producer seems to indicate they're going to "fix" the show, and each year it's still bloated, pretentious, and too long.
 

Robert Crawford

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Originally Posted by Malcolm R
Hopefully the on-going pity party for poor Ben Affleck is now close to an end.
Ya think...... They acted like he was Scorsese and all the years he was screwed by the Academy.
 

Reed Grele

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I'd pay for a CD recording of the complete versions of all the movie music clips that were played brilliantly by the orchestra over at the Capitol Records building.
 

Bryan^H

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I thought Seth did a great job, and laughed at many of his jokes. Being a die hard Trekkie, I was overjoyed to see Shatner in uniform again and found that bit to be just perfect. Liked the Bond tribute montage, but thought it could have been much, much better. Jennifer Lawrence is beautiful, and felt bad for her mishap. Tarantino barely said anything when accepting his award when the music prompted him to move on. He handled it well. Why Michelle Obama video for best picture? I like her but the segment seemed strange, and out of place to me. Overall I enjoyed it, but I guess I'm not really one to judge these things as I'm still scratching my head as to why the Hathaway/Franco hosts was deemed a failure. I thoroughly enjoyed that one as well.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Quote:
I'm still scratching my head as to why the Hathaway/Franco hosts was deemed a failure.

Wow. Seemed obvious to me why that pairing was so horrific. Worst Oscar show I ever watched.
 

Bryan^H

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Ronald Epstein said:
Wow. Seemed obvious to me why that pairing was so horrific. Worst Oscar show I ever watched.
Sure that one was filled with many awkward unfunny moments, but in my opinion all Academy Awards shows have plenty of those:) I agree that Billy Crystal is the perfect host. Funny, and non-offensive. Steve Martin is a close second.
 

Chris Will

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I'm a huge Trek fan as well but the only thing that segment provide to me was that Shatner should never play Kirk again. It was nice to see him in the uniform again but, he didn't even sound like Kirk. It felt like he was playing his Boston Legal character playing Kirk. IDK, it just seemed odd. POLITICAL COMMENTS REMOVED BY THE OWNERSHIP Overall I enjoyed the show more this year then normal. Maybe because I like Seth and liked most of his jokes (yes, even the gay ones.. oh no!). Loved the boob song, it was funny especially the Kate Winslet part. I had no problem with the Jaws music running people off. They cut the lesser awards speeches short every year with music, at least they made it entertaining for the viewing audience with that music selection. Why do people act surprised that they cut people off, they do it every year? I think it is fun to guess who they are going to cut off the quickest. I think this year that honor goes to Tarantino because nobody likes to hear him talk! :D I have no real problems with the winners this year although I would have picked Skayfall for cinematography instead of Life of Pi. I was surprised that Argo won for best picture, I was thinking Lincoln or Life of Pi.
 

mattCR

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Shatner should have come on as Denny Crane. I know, not a movie role but far more him. Your right terrible as Kirk
 

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