Considering that Jon Stewart joked about the Academy's plan to rely on pre-produced montage packages to fill out a potential writer-less Oscars, wasn't it weird that the show still had what seemed like a larger-than-usual number of montages? (I know that being green is all the rage in Hollywood, but did they have to recycle all of the montages they had produced just in case the writers hadn't come back?)
It's certainly funny to produce "Great Binocular Moments in Movies" as a joke or to show a montage of people waking up from bad dreams, but only if those are the only two montages you actually wind up doing. (Aside from the requisite and somber tribute to those who died in the previous year, of course.) But when you go to the trouble of producing a montage of insects in Hollywood movies -- introduced by Jerry Seinfeld's computer-animated "Bee Movie" character, so you know it couldn't have been something the writers came up with in the last few days -- the show becomes the joke.
I thought Jon Stewart did a great job hosting; his opening monologue played to his strengths when it felt most like he was doing desk bits from "The Daily Show." But there seemed to be a great disconnect between what he was doing and what was happening all around him. The fact that the producers cut off "Once" star Marketa Irglova before she could speak and that Jon Stewart later brought her back out seemed indicative of this.
After years of hosts such as Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, and, yes, David Letterman, one gets the feeling that the Oscars are so big that they swallow even the greatest comic minds whole. In politics, talents like John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama only come around once every generation or so. It's the same in Hollywood. Where is the next Bob Hope or Billy Crystal?
Another random observation and suggestion: Jack Nicholson has been attending the Oscars for, what, over thirty years? When will someone install a microphone at his seat or fit him with a wireless so that when a host makes a joke about him from the stage and the camera cuts to see Jack's response, we can understand what he's saying? Unless you happen to be sitting within five seats of Jack or can read lips, you're left wondering what he shouts back every time. So, Academy Awards producers, listen up: 2009 will be the year of the Jack-cam.
Posted by Doug at February 25, 2008 11:40 AM