3/4/14

It turns out that I was able to watch the 86th Oscars/Academy Awards yesterday. I found a way to watch it and that is through online streaming. It was hard to find a working link at first but I eventually found a working link. It also helped that my siblings weren't at home so my internet connection was a bit more stable than it usually is.

I didn't get to catch the entire show but I was very much updated via online forums. Here are a few thoughts:

-Ellen did a good job of hosting. Her opening monologue which I just viewed over in Youtube, was funny right from the start. Though there seem to be some dead air moments later on in the program, she kept it cool and the audience and the entire world loved her.

-Among one of Ellen's spectacular moments is taking a selfie with various stars that includes Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, etc. to break a record of most retweeted photo on Twitter...and they did it! As of now, I heard there are at least 3 million retweets of the photo. Aside from breaking a record, it was nice to see these celebrities lighten up and have fun.

-One of Ellen's stunt was to give away pizza to the audience and pizza was actually delivered! It was very lucky for the delivery guy who thought he was just bringing pizzas for writers backstage and the next thing he knew, he was already at the stage. He revealed on Ellen's show the following day that Julia Roberts is one of his favorite actresses and it must have been a spectacular moment when he was handing out pizza to her.

-John Travolta was such a mess. He was only there to present a performance and everything was going well until he mentioned the name of the performer he was presenting who was Idina Menzel. He pronounced it as Adele Dazeem. I don't know where he got that and he apparently knew her name during the reherseals. It must be the nerves. Speaking of nerves, Idina wasn't so great either. Though no one could deny her vocal prowess, she was obviously nervous right from the start. But nonetheless, she performed the song Let It Go from the Disney movie which has won all the categories it was nominated for including Best Original song and Best Animated Feature. Congrats to one of its writers who is now an "EGOT" winner (Emmy,Grammy,Oscar and Tony).

-I'm not particularly satisfied with the winners but they weren't so bad either. The 4 winners of the big acting award were very much determined even early on as all of them were front-runners and have dominated previous award shows prior to this. There were some unexpected winners and losers though, American Hustle was completely hut out from winning any of its 10 nominations, despite winning 7 awards including Best Director, Gravity failed to capture the Best Picture which went to its closest rival, 12 Years A Slave. A bit overrated film if you ask me but it was the obvious choice. Spike Jonze won for Best Original Screenplay for Her and I've seen a lot of good reviews of that film but I have yet to watch it.

-But my major disappointment was the absence of Andrew Garfield. He was announced as a presenter as he was going to introduce a new hero to the public but he was a no show. Instead, Chris Evans took his place and introduced a montage of superheroes but showed no new superhero. The theme of the night was heroes in Hollywood so the audience was treated to various clips of heroes from movies, both in live action and animation.

It was a good show overall and I heard it was the most watched entertainment show since the Friends finale in 2004 with 43 million viewers. Good job!