Academy Awards Anonymous

Well, that wasn't very good, was it?

I guess that's the redundancy to end all redundancies but I really can't add or subtract anything to last night's Oscarcast, now the Velveeta of all cheesefests. I am reminded of Madeline Kahn as Lily Van Schtup in Blazing Saddles: "A wed wose. How owdinawy." This show could not have been blander if Ryan Seacrest* hosted. Instead we got ol' reliable Billy Crystal, playing safe and unfortunately sorry. Nothing worked for him. The crowd wasn't with him at all and his material just didn't jell. He's had too much time off and it showed. His Oscar stand-by material, the filmed opening putting Billy in all the nominated movies and the Oscar! Oscar! number were just clumsy. How do you parody Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? "Hanks for the Memories." Yeesh. Playing it safe and inoffensive are not in the best spirits of comedy. But then again, Billy digging up Sammy Davis Jr. again brings out the PC crowd. "He went too far!" they whine while the other half of the dullards are saying "Sammy who?" The closest anyone got to edgy material at all was Chris Rock's line about black voice-over actors playing donkeys and zebras. "You think we get to play white people? Nah." I think the funniest parts of the telecast were Ellen Degeneres' JCP commercials.

No one embarrassed themselves too much, unless you count Emma Stone's lame bit with Ben Stiller who is looking more and more like his dad Jerry every year. They have the same kind of troglodyte body type. Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez seem to be having some kind of fun that nobody else was having. Nick Nolte, who was just sitting there minding his business, not bothering anybody, did resemble a blood-engorged tick ready to pop at any second.

As for my final tally: I got 18 out of 24. Not too shabby. I said Hugo and The Artist would carry the night and I was right. I missed Meryl Streep though. She's (deservedly) nominated all the damn time. Why did they keeping treating her like Susan Lucci?

The Oscars are the long rung in the award season ladder and everyone just seems worn-out. After the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, BAFTA, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, the Academy Awards should be the Super Bowl. Now they're just another awards show...and it shows.

Oscar Picks His Nose

The title pretty much sums it up.

My feelings toward this year's Academy Awards amounts to Much Ado About Nada. It is basically an uninteresting selection of nominees. Once the academy upped the number of Best Picture contenders, the scramble went on to fit ten slots. This year, it's down to nine since they got screwed by a weak entry from Pixar. (I should note that, as of this writing, I've only seen two of the nine nominees. That's a moot point since this is all based on my expert analysis. Ahem.)

Therefore, since I don't have a dog in any of the fights, I'm just going to sit back and try to enjoy the show, a tall order indeed. (Hey, is James Franco going to be a presenter?) If Billy Crystal pulls it off this time around, he will be the undisputed champion of Oscar hosts.

So for better, nah, for worse, here are my best guesses for the winner on Feb. 26, 2012:

The Artist wins: Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay and Score. (No screenplay award for Midnight in Paris. Woody is still seen as a New York filmmaker no matter where he makes his movies)

Hugo wins in most technical categories: Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Visual effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

The Help: Actress and Supporting Actress.

Beginners: Supporting Actor. (though it was worthy of a best picture nom in this weak group and the unsung Mary Page Keller for supporting actress)

The Descendants: Adapted screenplay (good movie. payne is incapable of making a bad film, just not up to his previous work)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Film editing (longshot I'll go with since David Finscher's films are some of the best edited out there)

A Separation: Foreign language film

Rango: Animated feature

Paradise Lost 3: Documentary

Man or Muppet: Song (Two nominees and neither one gets a performance. Granted, this is usually the weakest part of the show, but this is an insult)

Harry Potter and the Long-Ass Title Part Two: Makeup (throw it a bone, for muggle's sake!)

The Barber of Birmingham: Doc short

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore: Animated short

The Shore: Live action short

By the end of Sunday night, we'll see how well I fared this year. Then I'll just switch over to The Walking Dead. We'll see which show has more zombies.