The Mung Hour welcomes the tired rehashing and bashing of our country's most overrated and apparently underwatched popularity contest. More Americans watched last month's premiere of man-boobed Simon Cowell defecate on the dreams of tone-deaf GED graduates than watched Sunday night's Oscar telecast. The show definitely needed more embarrassment and humiliation. Colin Farrell and John Travolta nearly falling gave me hope, but alas no such luck. And what the hell did they slip in anyway? Did Cate Blanchett's water break?The whole show was as safe as the Obama/Clinton Texas debate. You know the show is sucking when you actually WANT to see porcine Michael Moore up there on his soapbox. Regardless of the show's actual lackluster (despite a decent job by Captain Jon Stewart), why did so few viewers tune out? Could it be that we just don't care about the shiny gold statuette and the celebrities that suck its teet?
This is not to take anything away from the films nominated. Great films to some, but not films that oh, I don't know, PEOPLE HAD INTEREST IN SEEING. Hey, I love P.T. Anderson. But Boogie Nights had Mark Wahlberg getting blown by naked Heather Graham on rollerskates and Alfred Molina in a thong singing "Jesse's Girl." Sorry P.T., but three hours of unshowered pioneers digging for oil in the desert isn't going to pull in the crowds. Would it kill filmmakers to actually make the occasional good film that isn't a violent downer devoid of humor and hope? Toss in just a few crowd-pleasers, man! Remember when you saw good commercial films like Rain Man and Shakespeare in Love at the Oscars? Or at least ass-kickers like Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings?
Oh, and before we all cry, "Juno!" let's remember that Hollywood always anoints one -- ONE successful indie comedy the "Wes-Anderson-esque-hipper-than-thou" Oscar slot per season just to appease the artsy, tortoise-shell-glasses-wearing Vassar-educated kids of the studio heads. Last year it was Little Miss Sunshine.
And while we're scolding Hollywood, let's pause to smack the American actors square in the
kissers, shall we? All four acting awards went to the Eurotras-- I mean foreign folks. To quote John Cleese from A Fish Called Wanda, "Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD." Now until Miley Cyrus is up on that stage holding a statue and not simply appeasing ABC's appetite for the 7-14 demographic, and I eat shit, I just don't see the younger generation of American actors offering up much in the way of competition for the superior trained Europeans. They seem to mint great actors by the dozens while America churns out cute kids for the CW network, some hot teens for the torture porn flicks and a few funny nerds for raunchy comedies.But too much pontificating for one blog! Bring on the Oscars wrap-up!
- Regis Philben - It’s going to be a bumpy ride in the limo home tonight, wedged underneath George Clooney with your lips firmly stuck to his ass.
- Katherine Heigl - Nervous to be on a stage. Good thing you didn’t decide to be an actress—oh, wait. Amy Adams sings in front of millions of people. No problem.
- 80 years of Oscar - 80 different ways the show’s writers have had to describe what a 'costume designer' does. Onomatopoeia, folks.
- Jennifer Garner - The thinking man’s Cindy Crawford.
1 comment:
And you forgot Roy Scheider's Wall of Death omission. So the poor man didn't die by January 31st. Now we have to wait thirteen months from TOD to give him a round of applause?
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