{"id":1459,"date":"2014-03-08T16:26:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2020-01-19T18:42:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T18:42:48","slug":"oscars-2014-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/08\/oscars-2014-wrap-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2014 wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that was\u2026 er, underwhelming for the most part.<\/span><\/p>\n

To take the hosting first, Ellen Degeneres could hardly fail to be generous, amusing and gregarious, but she seemed determined to play it safe. I\u2019m sure I remember Jonathan Ross ordering pizza for the whole studio audience about twenty years ago, but he at least ordered enough for everyone. It was better than Seth McFarlane\u2019s smug misogyny but a far cry from the glory days of Billy Crystal and David Letterman. Where\u2019s the spark? When Amy Poehler and Tina Fey can so accurately and yet so benevolently skewer all of their targets, why is the Oscars host so determined to pussyfoot around? More than that, where\u2019s the ambition? When Neil Patrick Harris celebrates Broadway<\/a> with a routine which would put many Broadway shows to shame, why does Hollywood celebrate its achievements with a show which would make Broadway die of embarrassment at its paucity of imagination?<\/p>\n

Worse than the genial but low-key hosting was the presenters\u2019 lack of wit and preparation. It says a lot for the ceremony as a whole when the arguable highpoint of the whole show was one presenter mangling the name of a singer (I\u2019m looking at you, Jewel Oltaveen) but a lot of people stumbled and fluffed and many looked awkward. One or two were briefly amusing, but no-one could clamber up to the level of actually funny, not even Jim Carrey (who at least tried). Two acceptance speeches stand out in my mind and for opposite reasons. Picking up the award for Best Supporting Actress, radiant Lupita Nyong\u2019o was graceful, self-effacing and sincere. Following her searing performance in 12 Years A Slave<\/i>, \u00a0<\/i>I can only hope she nimbly escapes the guilt-porn cul-de-sac and starts showing her range in a variety of other roles, for she is clearly a magnificent talent. On the other hand, Matthew McConnaghey failed even to mention the name of the dead man on whose grave he scampered to Oscar glory, preferring to name himself as his own personal hero. This takes nothing away from his excellent performance in Dallas Buyers Club<\/i> but does make me wish \u2013 again! \u2013 that he had been up against Tom Hanks, as justice and reason dictated.<\/p>\n

So, as you all know, my 12-1 long shot of Gravity<\/i> for Best Picture failed to make me any money, but I did end up not only winning our personal sweepstake, and with a completely clean sheet too (I hedged my bets by going for Slave<\/em> for Best Picture). However, even if I\u2019d placed an accumulator bet across all eight major categories, all of my choices had such poor odds, I\u2019d have been lucky to double my money.<\/p>\n

It might be worthwhile describing how I run my sweepstake, in case anyone reading this wants to run their own next year. Oscar sweepstakes have a couple of typical approaches, which have opposite vices and virtues. You can go for the top eight only, but then you tend to get a lot of general agreement \u2013 many are two-horse races such as Best Director this year, and many are one horse races \u2013 who would have bet against Cate Blanchett?<\/p>\n

The other obvious option is to have everybody predict the winner in all 24-odd categories, but for many people, choosing who will win Best Sound Effects Editing or Best Documentary Short is going to be little short of guesswork. So, you may get a greater spread of entries, but people may well get bored of filling in quite\u00a0 so many boxes and start choosing at random which makes a win much less satisfying.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found a way of splitting the difference. Everybody makes their choice of the Big Eight (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay) and all the other categories are put into a hat. Each player pulls just one \u201cwildcard\u201d category from the hat and makes their choices of that and only that category for a total of nine picks per player. This has a number of advantages. It adds a little bit of luck \u2013 if you got Best Song this time round, it was pretty easy to pick \u201cLet It Go\u201d \u2013 but does allow you to do your homework to find out, for example, what the documentary aficionados were raving about this year, without the project taking hours on end. It also makes the ceremony more fun. \u201cBest Score is up next \u2013 Sam, that\u2019s your wildcard\u201d.<\/p>\n

As to whether justice was done or not, I\u2019m not convinced that 12 Years a Slave<\/i> will necessarily be a film for the ages. Gravity<\/i> I think will either turn out to be a groundbreaker which is quickly overtaken, or more likely a Terminator 2<\/i> where the effects are both groundbreaking and rarely equalled. The advantage of the streamlined storytelling is that it contains less material which is likely to date it. The drawback of course is that it may be too thin to really resonate through the ensuing years. What the Best Director win will have done for Alfonso Cuaron is to buy him carte blanche<\/i> to direct absolutely whatever he likes next. That promises to be interesting.<\/p>\n

On the screenplay front, the win for Spike Jonze is certainly worthy. The win for John Ridley maybe less so, but I don\u2019t know which contender deserved it a lot more \u2013 Wolf of Wall Street<\/i> maybe? As I predicted, American Hustle<\/i> was overlooked entirely, which I also think is just. It\u2019s a lot of fun, but it feels a little hollow compared to a lot of its more substantial neighbours. It was a shame that Nebraska<\/i> didn\u2019t win anything, but going category-by-category I can\u2019t see an obvious oversight.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it then for another year. Join me in 2015 and we\u2019ll do it all again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, that was\u2026 er, underwhelming for the most part. To take the hosting first, Ellen Degeneres could hardly fail to be generous, amusing and gregarious, but she seemed determined to play it safe. I\u2019m sure I remember Jonathan Ross ordering pizza for the whole studio audience about twenty years ago, but he at least ordered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[364],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","tag-oscars-2014"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-nx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}