ENG 417: 'Oscars' Thoughts

Photo: The Oscars/Blogs.IndieWire.com

As any other movie buff out there, I intently watched "The Oscars" Sunday night.

I was pleased overall but wished some of my favorites had won more. First, let me start off with the host, Seth Macfarlane.

As you may or may not know, Macfarlane is the creator of the hit show "Family Guy" and director of the film Ted among other things. This was the first time I'd actually seen him and, to be honest, I was not impressed.

Everything started out okay until Macfarlane did this musical number (I never knew he could sing) with the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles talking about seeing actresses' boobs on the big screen. It was a very weird way to start. 

Then there was this looooooonnnnnnggggg segment with William Shatner where Macfarlane was trying to include elements in the show to make him the "best host ever." The parts included musical and dance numbers with Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe, among others. The numbers were pretty cool to see.

Throughout the night, Macfarlane made some pretty eyebrow-raising jokes. One such joke was when he was talking about the film Lincoln and lead actor, Daniel Day-Lewis. Macfarlane talked about how Day-Lewis basically gets inside the head of the characters he portrays and "the only person who got inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes Booth." I thought that was the lowest joke of the night by Macfarlane. 

In my opinion, Seth Macfarlane was more on the crude side than the sophisticated side "The Oscars" show tends to display.

Now on to the awards.

People always say "The Oscars" are unpredictable. That wasn't really the case Sunday night as most of the general predictions came true. The only real "surprise" of the night to most writers was Ang Lee winning Best Director for Life of Pi, beating out Steven Spielberg (Lincoln) and others for the prize. I, for one, was not surprised (and I picked Lee to win) because he truly did a brilliant job with the movie. I was also really excited for Jennifer Lawrence winning Best Actress in Silver Linings Playbook. She was amazing in that film and deserved to win.

Other than that, there were really no surprises. I knew Argo would win Best Picture. I haven't seen that film but there was a lot of upheaval that Ben Affleck wasn't nominated for Best Director. I think, this helped the film win Best Picture.

Despite that, Life of Pi walked out with the most awards of the evening (four) followed by Argo with three. All in all, it was a good night. Hopefully next year's ceremony will be even better (maybe with a new host too).