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An “UP” Night at the Oscars

Congrats to the well deserving crew up in Emeryville that worked on Pixar’s “UP”. It brought home two Academy Awards last night. One for best animated picture and one for best original score. I thought it was a nice touch that the people from Pixar in attendance wore the ‘Bottle Cap’ button that was so iconic from the movie.

“UP” did lose for best screenplay. Frankly if they’re going to give animated films a separate best picture category, they should do the same for Screenplays since they’re written so differently from the average script. “Up” failed to collect in the best “Sound Editing” category as well.

On the other hand, Disney’s The Princess and The Frog was shut-out from the awards last night. It lost to “UP” for best animated picture, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Disney has a way to go to return to Beauty and the Beast level of animated story telling.

The Princess and the Frog was also nominated for some of its music Unfortunately it was composed by Randy Newman, which the Academy just barely tolerates. And since they already gave him an award for Monster’s Inc’s “If I didn’t have you” in 2002. That’s it for any film that uses Newman for its songs.

In a footnote to the ceremony, ABC/Disney and Cablevision settled their differences just past midnight and viewers in the NYC area were able to turn into WABC about 10 minutes after the show started.

I think the big loser last night was the show’s producers. The supposed new vision for this years production was no where to be seen. Despite their best efforts the show ran long, and worse, it dragged. Long moments were interminably slow and the lack of humor or Hollywood pizazz had me wanting an escape hatch about 40 minutes in.

What did you think? Will you watch next year?

4 thoughts on “An “UP” Night at the Oscars”

  1. I want them to bring back the best song performance. If they have time to do a semi-street dance to the best score music then they can do performances for best songs.

    The show was okay. I actually enjoyed steve martin and alec baldwin as hosts. But I’m pretty easy to entertain.

    Overall it wasn’t the greatest show on earth, felt uneven and definitely hanged in many areas. I think the oscars are meant to be a show of class and dignity in luxury hollywood. Trying to change that to be more “hip” and “young” just demeans the awards themselves.

  2. Oscars were a mess to watch. Painful.

    I disagree regarding spinning off the screenplay into a separate animated category. Further perpetuates the “animation ghetto” that seemingly separates animation from “real movies”.

    And if Newman doesn’t win another Oscar, that’s fine with me. Pretty much every song he did for PatF sounded the same… like most of his other stuff.

  3. Amazingly, you hit exactly on several point which highlight why I do not watch, nor do I have any respect any longer for “The Academy.”

    Beauty and the Beast SHOULD have won Best Picture, everybody (including the Academy) knew it, but they “couldn’t bring themselves” to have an animated picture win, and in order to find themselves from being in such a “predicament” again, they came up with the “best Animated Feature Film” BS.

    Then there is Randy Newman… who the Academy “barely tolerates.” Nevermind if he has the best work, they don’t like him, so he got his token win, so “that is it.”

    It is a self-congratulatory Circle Jerk of pompous snoots that “know better” than anybody else (which is why Huge films like Avatar lose out, and films that nobody wanted to see like the Hurt Locker walk away with huge numbers of awards.

    The Academy Awards should just make the host Billy Crystal from now until he drops dead, he has been the best host for this debacle.

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