Academy Awards discussion thread

[Daneel]

I felt Jackman did a fine job as host... when he was actually there. Was it just me, or did he seem to appear very sporadically after the opening? There were moments I forgot he was hosting.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It's awful to hear one guy get barely any applause because he was just a cameraman or something, and then Paul Newman comes up and the crowd goes crazy.

I was thinking that last night myself.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Also, what was the decision behind moving the camera around and showing Queen Latifah to make it hard to read some of the names?

For those who were annoyed by the presentation of the In Memoriam reel, here's the whole thing straight up. I went to bed shortly after Ledger won (I had PT at 5 in the morning the next day) so I had to dig this up on my own.

Some terrible dresses on Jessica Biel and Reese Witherspoon.

Not worse than Tilda Swinton. What was that all about??

I'd be disappointed otherwise, I've loved Tilda for years because she's always in really oddball films so I was glad she had an oddball dress.

Same here. I love Tilda Swinton and I was a bit annoyed by some of the heckling by those who I was watching the Oscars with. Oh, well.

Based on this thread, it looks like I didn't miss much after I went to bed. I can't say I'm surprised Slumdog Millionaire won even though I haven't even seen it. It was this year's huge super hyped film. Alas, I was hoping for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to win. At least Kate Winslett finally won, so I'm happy.

I didn't like how they screwed around with the format a bit. The presentation of the best screenplays was dorky at best, and while it was cool to see five previous winners for the previous actor/actress awards, I missed seeing clips from the nominees.

Oh, and thankfully there was no rioting because Ledger won.

 

[JRS]

I think Jackman did a great job as host. I loved the his opening song..especially the end with the Wolverine thing...LOL.
I didint watch the show on TV but saw the stuff from youtube and so on. I think there was not many suprises this year. I think it often sucks when the winners are so easily to guess beforehand. Takes lots of eximent away.
I liked the way the presented the best actor and actress awards with the previous winners, good stuff.
I have to say that part of me wanted Frank Langella to win the Oscar. I havent seen the Frost/Nixon yez but the guy has done some great work in his career and he looked generally happy to be there and seemed generally moved when Michael Douglas was talking about his performance as Nixon.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Thought that Hugh Jackman was great as the host. How they presented the actor/actress awards was nice to see previous winners.

Need to see Slumdog Millionaire sometime over the next week.

 

[suarezguy]

Jackman was mediocre but I didn't have high expectations.
Liked the way they presented the Screenplays, and the showing what the Best Picture noms were inspierd by was interesting, although some were kind of grasping and some just recalled better movies. Liked Steve Martin, rascally Jack Black, and Bill Maher (surprised he was there).
Disliked the blatantly promotional aspects-the past winners specifically congratulating the acting nominees (aside from Goldberg and De Niro, who were cool), the clips of animation (The Clone Wars at the Oscars ), comedy (not too cool to mock the nominees), romance and action.
Hoffman should have won over Ledger. Didn't like the Milk screenplay that much. Good that Slumdog Millionaire won picture and director, the other ones I'm not sure about (it had good writing and cinematography but so did Doubt and TCCoBB, which also had good music).