Oscars?

[shadowkat]

I watched the middle section, so missed the best supporting actor, the inappropriate song about topless female actresses (thank ghod, sounds horrid), and the animation awards (which I wanted to see, dang-it) and two of the best song nominees - although the song nominees this year were admittedly not that memorable. They haven't been for a while - Disney is falling down on the job.

* Was pleased Brave, Paperman, and Ang Lee all won. The first two for best animated film and best animated short, respectfully. (Granted haven't seen any of the other nominees). And was quite happy Ang Lee got it for Life of Pi over Spielberg, because I think Lee is better director overall, and he blew my socks off with what he did with Life of Pi. That's hard to do well.

Everything else was pretty much predictable. The musical presentation was done better than usual - although I wish they'd picked "Do You Hear the People Sing" from Les Miz. Bonheme-Carter and Sascha Baron aren't singers - their voices were lost behind the others.

And didn't mind the Bond tribute. Shirley Bassy and Adele do sound alike. Although I think I like Skyfall better than Goldfinger, even if I remember Goldfinger better. (There's a great rendition of James Bond themes on the Trainspotting soundtrack). And yes, Jennifer Hudson upstaged Adele. But she had the better song. Skyfall has nothing on the songs sung in the musical presentation.

I didn't stay up. I was bored and tired. So I went to bed. The last three awards pretty much went as predicted: Jennifer Lawrence (who appears to be the new Ann Hathaway), Ann Hathaway, Daniel Day Lewis, and Argo.

Comments

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Can't say I'm happy about Brave's win. Well, a little happy, because I guess it was the first time a woman got an Oscar for directing an animated film, and that's cool. But I feel like Pixar has enough Oscars and shouldn't win by default, and Wreck-it-Ralph and ParaNorman were both better movies.

The only other thing I'm bitter about is the Hobbit losing Hair & Makeup. I mean... those beards alone surely deserved the award.

Couldn't see the actual show because we don't have TV and the schedule was too late to go to a friend's house and watch. How is it that it's 2013 and we still don't get official online streams of these kind of events? If the networks want me to pay a few bucks to watch it online, I will pay, but it's not worth the expense to pay all that extra for cable to only watch a few live events per year.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Interesting...when I was playing around on the net Sunday - I found several sites that were streaming the Oscars live. Actually that's how I found out how BRAVE won. I was hunting the animation award.

You didn't miss much - the part I saw was dull. And from what I've heard and read from anyone else...the rest of the show was too.

As for Brave, again I didn't see the other films. Paranormal, I don't believe was even nominated (it was panned by a lot of critics). Only saw Brave because it was Xmas gift. Loved the film - quite beautiful and really shows what good animation can do. Not a fan of busy animated movies...like Paranormal or Wreck-it Like Ralph, which feel like video games brought to like (don't like video games either for that matter) - so didn't bother to see them. They may be better than the trailers. Again it's all rather subjective.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I'm an illustrator and a big fan of animation, so the Best Animated feature is the only part of the Oscars I really care about.

There were five nominees this year, Brave, Wreck-it-Ralph, ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, and Pirates! I didn't see the latter two-- I don't much like Tim Burton's style anymore, and I missed a chance to see Pirates! earlier in the year.

Wreck-it-Ralph is definitely not to everyone's tastes. As you said, if you don't like video games there's not much point to seeing it. But ParaNorman is worth a watch, I think. I don't know how faithful the trailer was, but not only was that movie much more technically innovative than Brave-- they practically reinvented stop-motion with the film, using a lot of new 3D printing technology and other new tricks-- but it had one of the best stories about bullying I've ever seen. I didn't expect it to get the Oscar-- the Academy doesn't seem to like stop-motion in general, and Laika is a small studio that doesn't get much press, but I had hoped that they would be a little less predictable than simply handing it to Pixar again. I mean, of the 12 years there has been a Best Animated Oscar, Pixar has won it all but 3 times. Kind of reminds me of the episode in Downton Abbey where they're talking about how the Dowager Countess always wins the best roses prize. There's a lot of amazing things happening in modern animated films, and it might get more attention if Pixar were forced to work for their accolades a little more.

Not that Brave was a bad film-- it was very enjoyable and very beautiful. But I thought the story and writing was a bit weak for Pixar.