Oscars 2013 Recap!

Now, I wouldn’t say Seth MacFarlane outright bombed in his gig as Oscar host last night, but he sure came close with so many of his jokes being cringe-inducing duds and his song and dance routines being show-stoppers in the worst way.

That he didn’t lapse into his Family Guy character voices like he did in his Saturday Night Live monologue last year is one of the few things I can commend about his performance, but it says a lot that one of the only funny bits he was involved in was a sock puppet production of FLIGHT. 

Other attempts at comedy, like MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” (a mock tribute to actresses who’ve done nudity) with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir, and an ending number with Kristin Chenoweth dedicated to the losers of the evening, fell horribly flat.

I tweeted that Daniel Day-Lewis joking that he was up for the part of Maggie Thatcher in THE IRON LADY while his Oscar presenter Meryl Streep was up for LINCOLN in his acceptance speech for winning Best Actor was funnier than anything MacFarlane said all night, and I wasn’t kidding.

There were a few genuine highlights - Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” for the 50th anniversary tribute to James Bond being one - but it was a largely forgettable show. The rare tie in one category (ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing) will probably be as forgotten as the other five times it happened in the Academy’s history. 



A surprise appearance by Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch as part of the IN MEMORIUM segment brought some much needed gravitas to the proceedings. Points to MacFarlane for not making some rude comment later about it.


But now on to how I did with my predictions that I posted last Friday.

Although up until the broadcast I’ve been referring to the 2013 Oscars as the most unpredictable race in recent memory, I got more of the categories right than I have in over half a decade -18 out of 24. That’s better than the 15 I got right last year, and much better than the 13 I got the previous two years before that.

Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor for DJANGO UNCHAINED, and Ang Lee for Best Director of LIFE OF PI were the big surprises last night. I figured Waltz had won, also for a Tarantino picture, not that long ago so I counted him out.



Spielberg seemed like the safe bet for his direction of LINCOLN, but, despite having picked LIFE OF PI for Score, Cinematography, and Visual Effects I really didn’t think it would win Lee the big Best Director award, and from the other predictions I’ve seen, not many others did either.

Here’s what else I got wrong:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: I predicted LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson), but LINCOLN (Rick Carter, Jim Erickson) got the gold.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern) I’ll just chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t see any of the Documentary Shorts, was just guessing, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll have to seek out the winner - Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s INOCENTE – sometime soon.

MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane). I should’ve known THE HOBBIT wouldn’t win anything. It seems obvious in retrospect that Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell would get it for LES MISÉRABLES, but then a lot of things do.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner) I thought playwright Kushner was a shoo-in, but since I’m more of a fan of Chris Terrio’s screenplay for ARGO I wasn’t disappointed to get this one wrong.

I was happy to be right about ARGO winning Best Picture - Affleck got snubbed for a Best Director nomination, but now that's just a future trivia question.



AMOUR's Best Foreign Picture win and LIFE OF PI's mini sweep with four wins were also nice to see. With hope, those moments will linger longer in memory than MacFarlane's lame material.

More later…

New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD 2/19/13

Just in time for the Oscars comes the Blu ray/DVD release of one of the major contenders: Ben Affleck’s ARGO. The 2-disc Blu ray edition contains such Special Features as a commentary by director Affleck, Feature Length Picture in Picture: Eye Witness Account, and several featurettes including “Rescued from Tehran: We Were There,” “Argo: Absolute Authenticity,” “ARGO: The CIA & Hollywood Connection,” and “Escape From Iran: The Hollywood Option.”

Read my review of ARGO (it was #3 on my Top 10 of 2012 BTW), and check out the movie that should have gotten Affleck a nomination for Best Director (and that I hope will win Best Picture). The Blu ray/DVD combo also includes an UltraViolet digital copy. 

ANNA KARENINA, nominated for four Oscars, also drops today in a Blu ray release with the obligatory DVD, and digital copy add-ons. I was “Anna Karenina”-illiterate when I saw it last December, but appreciated the artsy approach to the material that Joe Wright took, which involved an old theater backdrop that evolved with the production (my review here). Perhaps the best of Wright and Keira Knightley’s literary trilogy, it looks like a shoo-in to win the Best Costume Design Academy Award on Sunday night. 

Special features: Deleted Scenes, commentary with Wright, and a batch of featurettes (“Anna Karenina: An Epic Story About Love,” “Adapting Tolstoy,” “Keira as Anna,” “On the Set with Director Joe Wright,” “Dressing Anna,” and “Anna Karenina: Time-Lapse Photography”).

Another big new release today is the second season of HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones on Blu ray and DVD. My wife and I are about halfway through this new 5 disc box (seems like they only put two or so episodes a disc to make it a more expensive set), and I’m enjoying the war of the Lannisters and Starks families a lot more than in season one. Some of the effects stand out unconvincingly, and I may get a few of the characters confused, but the lavish landscapes, spectacular battles, and wicked wit in the wordplay (especially coming from Peter Dinklage as "The Imp" Tyrion Lannister) more than suffice.

Haven’t explored the exclusive Blu ray features much since we haven’t finished the season, but they include an interactive guide “War of the Five Kings,” Hidden Dragon Eggs, featurettes such as “Histories and Lore,” “Creating the Battle of Blackwater Bay,” “The Religion if Westeros,” 12 audio commentaries, and a roundtable discussion of Game of Thrones’ Inner Circle. The thick book-like Blu ray box also includes DVD copies, and a Digital Copy of the complete season.

A lesser release, in my opinion that is, today is the Ethan Hawke horror movie SINISTER, directed by Scott Derrickson, on Blu ray and DVD. I wasn’t a fan of the film (my review), which has Hawke as a true crime writer who moves his wife and kids in into a house where a family of four was found hanged from a tree in the backyard, but some critics liked it (Ebert gave it 3 stars, Entertainment Weekly named it the best horror film of 2012) so decide for yourself. It’s your funeral. 

SINISTER’S Special Features include a commentary with director Derrickson, and a second one with Derrickson and C.Robery Cargill, a “True Crime Authors” featurette, “Living in a House of Death” featurette, Deleted Scenes (with optional audio commentary with Scott Derrickson), and the theatrical trailer.

More later...