Oscars 2008: The Day After

The 80th Annual Academy Awards began with a animated trip through historic Hollywood. This scene would be the first of the evening’s many video montages through the history of the award ceremony. Jon Stewart was the host of the 3-hour long event. In his opening monologue he equated the writers’ strike in Hollywood to a fight with a significant other with the Oscars being the ‘makeup sex’. There is never a dull moment with Stewart and he did a good job keeping the flow of show going.

For me, the most memorable moments of the show would have to be the team of soldiers who presented the award for Best Documentary-Short via satellite from Iraq and Stewart making time for Oscar winner, Marketa Irglova, to say her thanks after she had been cut off by show producers.

Among the Hollywood glitz and glamour, there were the best and worst dressed. In my opinion, Tilda Swinton takes the worst dressed award this year. Winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, Swinton accepted her award in what can only be described as a velvet drape (I’ve also seen it referred to as an otter). She wore little to no makeup and her hair looked like she hadn’t seen a comb in weeks.

On the other side of the spectrum, 2007 Oscar Winner for Best Actress, Dame Helen Mirren was dressed to kill. Mirren presented the Oscar for Best Actor to Daniel Day-Lewis in a stunning red gown adorned with intricate bead work on her shoulders and back. The gown designed by George Chakra was both classy and elegant as is the actress.

In addition to Swinton and Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem won the first of four awards for No Country for Old Men. His acceptance speech was easily my favorite of the evening.

“It’s a great honor for me to have this. I want to, I have to speak fast here, man. Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head…” He ended with a tribute to his mother and family, which he said entirely in Spanish.

“Falling Slowly” from Once won for Best Original Song. And, while I didn’t fall out of my seat, I was surprised that it beat the odds of winning that category. After hearing the performance of songwriters and filmmakers Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, I am intrigued by this film and would really like to see it.

While it wasn’t a ‘top’ award winner of the night, fan favorite, Juno, did take the Best Original Screenplay category. In this case, I think that’s where most of the movie magic took place. It is totally deserved and a first, for screenwriter Diablo Cody. I’m sure we’ll see more from her in the future.

I was incorrect of my original assumption about how Oscar winners are chosen. It is true that only members of specific branches can nominate films for their category (film editors can only nominate films for the Film Editing category) and all eligible member can nominate for the Best Picture Category. However, once the nominees are chosen, all members of the academy can vote for every category.

For a complete list of winners vs. predictions click here.

All in all it wasn’t a bad show. It’s hard to be too critical of a show that was basically thrown together in a week and a half. With there being so much uncertainty with the writers’ strike, the producers of the show had to proceed with show preparations not knowing if there would be an actual show. With that in mind, most of the show was what I like to refer to as “death by montage”. There were so many montages that there were even joke montages produced to lighten the mood. Being a video editor myself, I appreciate the amount of work that goes into show montages, but I hope that next year will have more show. One thing the Oscars do not need is a time filler.