Oscar Notes to You:
Worst show in recent memory and I never admit that. What was missing out of this show was a sense of cinema. They seemed to have forgotten the one key element: the movies. Lauren Bacall who's been in the business since Moses was a Cecil B. DeMille extra and Roger Corman who basically hired everyone in that damn auditorium got the bum's rush in favor of a wretched interpretive dance number and a disposable horror film montage. What a spit in the face for both of them. John Hughes tribute worked though. Steve and Alec? Eh. Some good laughs, but an overall unnecessary teaming. Neil Patrick Harris hitting the wall factor in effect starting...NOW. Speaking of throwaways, how about this year's parade of New Hollywood Dim Bulbs...Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, Kristin Stewart, Sam Worthington and Miley Cyrus...please stay home next year. You obviously didn't want to be there in the first place. And spit out your goddamn gum! And what worked last year...the best actor tributes...slammed the brakes on at full force five this time around. Forest Whitaker's salute to Sandy Bullock regarding another of her forgettable flicks...yawn to the nth degree. I'm not seething because my picks were only about 50%. I'm not that invested in my sparkling predictions, though they have lost their glimmer. Pretty much like this year's Oscarcast. That all said, congratulations to THE HURT LOCKER and Kathryn Bigelow for the big win. You certainly deserved it against AVATAR. I should have taken into account that Hollywood hates James Cameron as much as it does George Lucas so there was no way AVATAR was going to win anything other than technical awards.
And as a side note that I haven't mentioned here before: Best Actor nominee for LOCKER Jeremy Renner is a former Palace Showboat Player, having performed at Pollardville in the last production of THE DRUNKARD as directed by Ray Rustigian.
I am a big fan of Spike Jonzes' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, one of the best-and definitely most tolerable-non-animated kid's films in the last decade. Interestingly enough, my wife and I enjoyed it more than our grandson. Could this be more of a kid's movie for adults? And just to go along with the critical consensus, Max Records' lead performance was the finest, most unaffected I've seen, definitely guaranteeing him a spot in The Hollywood Max Museum. The fact that he has no interest to act again makes this a classic case of the one hit wonder.
TV-wise, the red-headed stepchild known as NIP/TUCK ended its sensational run on FX rather quietly, but still managed to eke out some good cheap thrills along the way. May it rest in peace. BIG LOVE has an oddly truncated season, only 9 episodes long, but managed to cram a lot into very few. I don't like the brevity of the episode count so I hope it's not setting some sort of precedent for shorter seasons. Still, the final shot of the finale was well worth the wait and continues to whet the appetite for more to come. Oh, them wacky polygamists!
