There are a number things that really sum up the evening, some that require a bit of explanation and others we can list out. Oh, and I am not going to a full award-winner run-down … you can get that here. Let’s do the bullet points first:
- They could have subtitled the show ‘We give out more awards in the first half-hour than the Grammys do all night!’. And it would be accurate. The Grammys are about showing you why you should buy the crap the labels are pushing … the Oscars are about rewarding accomplishments.
- The awards were pretty well distributed with ‘Hugo’ and ‘The Artist’ dominating, but ‘The Help’, ‘Iron Lady’ and ‘Midnight In Paris’ pulling in a few others.
- Billy Crystal was exactly what was needed – he is funny, a great performer, an ultimate master of ceremonies, yet not ego-centric so you never felt it was about him. The contrast with the dreary LL Cool J at the Grammys is stunning.
- The little montages with stars talking about films were cute at first, acceptable the second time, but by the last one were a bit annoying and self-promoting.
- Has it really been a year since the Anne Hathaway / James Franco abomination? Even Crystal acknowledged it a bit by having Justin Beiber in the opening montage in the ‘Midnight in Paris’ car ‘to pull in the 18-24 demographic’.
- Having Esperanza Spalding singing ‘What a Wonderful World’ was a reminder of what an understated performance sounds like. The Grammys are all about over-singing, the Christina Aguilera-style ego-trip. This was all about honoring the memory of lost stars.
- Speaking of which, while I appreciate that both Steve Jobs and Whitney Houston have Oscars and therefore deserve recognition in the ‘in memoriam’ section … can’t we just focus more on the rest of the list for once?
But this morning, aside from the usual debates about who won what and whether ir was deserved, there are three major topics that seem to be getting all the attention: JLo’s nip, Angie’s leg, and who IS this Billy Crystal guy anyway?
As for the last one … on the one hand it isn’t surprising that kids don’t know Billy Crystal, whose main claim to fame in the last decade or so IS hosting the Oscars. But since we also got ‘who is Whitney Houston’, ‘Who is LL Cool J’ and ‘Who is Paul McCartney’ after the Grammys … I think ‘Who is Billy Crystal’ is more about ‘how clueless are our kids’?
The topic of whether or not we saw a bit of Jennifer Lopez’s areola when she and Cameron Diaz were presenting has a couple of layers. Basically she was wearing a ‘cut down to there’ dress that was very revealing and whose material was sheer and stretched to the limit covering her up. First off there is the speculation, which has spawned the expected PR denial and a much more interesting fake Twitter feed.
But for me what was more interesting was that they were announcing Costume Design and saying that a costume designer for a woman should dress her tight enough to know she was a woman but loose enough to show she is a lady. The irony between those words, the amount of plastic surgery on Diaz and the trashy outfit Lopez was wearing … was stunning.
photo courtesy of dailymail.co.uk
The other thing is Angelina Jolie’s right leg. It is very common to see actresses with long gowns with thigh-high slits, and on the red carpet to see them posing to show off their legs since that gets loads of attention. But when she was presenting an award, Jolie made a very strange move. As she walked across the stage she showed plenty of leg just because of the slit. But then when she stopped in front of the microphone she awkwardly positioned herself in a red carpet pose to thrust her leg out in a bizarre, un-natural and unintentionally hilarious way. How bad was it? To the point where BuzzFeed has TWO posts on it – ’10 Best Pictures of ‘ and ‘Legbombing’ – and there is a Twitter feed called AngiesRightLeg. A picture of her is below, but even funnier is that it was so blatant that the guys who won the award she was presenting mocked her pose (seen in the picture at top) … which was classic.
What were YOUR best moments of the night?