closing thoughts: The show moved briskly, but that's what happens when you axe the incredibly necessary "let me tell you what each nominated film was about" segments and have only one honorary award. A good Oscar show features clips of nominated films -- not clips of other Oscar shows -- and that really frustrated me, especially for a year like this in which only one nominated film was widely seen. As I wrote three years ago:
They need to bring back the 1-2 minute clips of each nominated movie so that viewers have some sense of why each was nominated -- you need Sylvester Stallone up there saying, as Ebert put it, "Million Dollar Baby tells the story of an aging fight trainer and a hillbilly girl who thinks she can be a boxer. It is narrated by a former boxer who is the trainer's best friend. But it's not a boxing movie, for reasons that become clear later on. In the scene you're about to see, Maggie tries to convince Frankie to manage her," etc. Otherwise, there's no context for the awards at all, and especially in a year where the nominated films were not mass blockbusters, it's necessary.
My time-saving suggestions remain the same: cut out the production numbers of songs no one knows, and I'd seriously consider moving the two "short film" awards and some technical awards, replacing them with Best Debut Performance and Best First Film, a director's award. Let's keep talking -- also about the winners, of course.
[One more thing: is this the first time all four acting awards went to non-Americans?]
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