Not one to miss out on milking this shit for all it’s worth, I of course had to also recap the big kahuna of all awards shows, the Oscars. The Oscars are notorious for being long and boring as shit. There’s not a lot of alcohol, there’s 1 million categories, many of which contain movies in different languages and they’re really serious. Last year Ellen hosted and managed to make it upbeat and snappy and not excruciating. This year I had high hopes that Neil Patrick Harris would pick up where she left off. Unfortunately, he did not. Here are the highs and lows of the Oscars including a little breakdown of NPH’s opener.
NPH’s monologue was a little bit of talking and a WHOLE lot of singing. I’m not into musicals so that didn’t really do it for me. Save it for the Tony’s. He kicks it off with a great joke about Selma getting snubbed: “Tonight we honor the best and whitest–sorry brightest.” and it all goes downhill after that. The musical number is about how great movies are and there’s a lot of green screen graphics, then Anna Kendrick joins in for shits and hey why not Jack Black too? Jack hates on movies though so they kick him offstage and AK throws her shoe at him. At this point I wanted to throw my shoes at my TV, but I held out hope it would pick up.
Anna Kendrick sang about NPH getting his throat slit in Gone Girl and they shouted it out to the Kanye interruption which I never need to hear a joke about again for the rest of my life. We all need to cut the shit with giving Kanye the attention he so dearly wants.I think the best part of this opening song was when they panned to the crowd and everyone had a blank stare, I’m also pretty sure Jason Bateman was asleep. Look, alive Oscars…there’s more shitty jokes to come! Here are the best and worst moments, neither of which contain a star-studded selfie that broke Twitter (Miss you Ellen).
Highs:
-NPH’s several tux changes were on point.
-JK Simmons wins and tells everyone to call their parents and listen to them for as long as they want to talk and tell them you love them. This went into effect for me immediately when my mom started texting me from her email on her brand new iPhone 6 that she has no idea how to use. Luh yuh Mom, but technology isn’t for you.
-Adam Levine performs “Lost Stars” from Begin Again (when he dabbled in acting) and every woman in America needed a change of undies after he got down on his knees to serenade them.
-Polish filmmaker won for foreign film “Ida” gave the longest no F’s given speech ever. He rambled on and called out his drunk Polish friends and as the music started to play him off he just shouted over it until the music was like K, you win. Nailed it. This set a precedent for everyone to give absolutely no regards to the orchestra for the rest of the night. If they really wanted someone to get offstage they were going to have to go up there and drag them off. Well played.
-Neil Patrick Harris hit the crowd and was chatting with all of the seat fillers and pretended that Steve Carrell was also one. It was awkward and unfunny but Steve actually rescued this bit as he’s known to do. He was the best at improv club after all.
-Patricia Arquette wins for best supporting actress and is suuuuper out of breath but she manages to get out some Feminist, Girl Power equal pay shoutouts and Queen Meryl pulls her pom poms out from under her seat and almost rushes the stage in excitement. JLo also shakes it for feminism.
-Common and John Legend perform Glory and bring the house down. John Legend can serenade me with his angel voice until forever. Apparently Hollywood agrees because they get a standing O and lots of tears.
-The Ultimate CREEP of the night award goes to none other than John Travolta. He started things off hot on the red carpet by getting all up in ScarJo’s biz:
Then Idina Menzel presented with him, introduced him as Glom Gizingo (Ha-Ha…Get it cause last year he called her Adele Dazeem and we heard about it for the next 7 months?) and he delivered a quick face rape that I had to cover my eyes for. Here’s a friendly tip, Glom, if you want to seem hip and in on the joke, maybe don’t also give everyone the heebie jeebies while you’re at it. Easily the most entertaining moment of the night though watching Idina try to escape his petting with a smile on her face like this was all planned.
-Glory wins for best song and we find out that Common’s real name is Lonnie Lynn.
-Lady GaGa does a Sound of Music tribute and for once in her life wears a gorgeous dress, doesn’t do anything zany with her hair or makeup and let’s her great singing voice do the talking. I can dig it. Julie Andrews can too because she geeks out over it and they hug it out.
-Guy with glasses in the hairtastic Birdman crew thanks Larry, his dog, among his children. Seriously why don’t dogs get more shout outs at awards show? They’re more important than your children.
-“Gone Girl was originally titled ‘Bitches Be Trippin, Yo’”-NPH
-Eddie Redmayne wins best actor which was announced in the most casj fashion ever from Cate Blanchett, “Okie dokey, Smokey, the winner is…” (I’m guessing that wasn’t on the teleprompter.) Anyway, Eddie loses his shit onstage and it’s kinda adorable and kinda frightening at the same time. He pulls it togets long enough to shout it on out to ALS. No ice buckets though.
Lows:
-Tegan & Sara/Lonely Island perform “Everything is Awesome” from the Lego Movie. Apparently children’s movies are now best enjoyed on acid because this performance had strobe lights and bright colored cowboys and stuffed dogs. It was too much.
Also since when are three goobers who sing about jizzing in their pants and F-ing mermaids allowed to soundtrack a kids movie? I was really holding out for a remix with one of the old classics. It didn’t happen so feel free to listen to them anyway to forget that stupid song about being awesome.
-There’s a whole lotta suicide action at the show and it’s a real downer. Two women win for (something I’ve never seen and therefore quickly forgot) and as the music is aggressively playing them off, one woman says that she lost her son to suicide and we should all talk about it. The music immediately cuts and maybe we should talk about this later? Then Graham Moore from The Imitation Game accepts an Oscar and is all thanks Oprah for my Oscar tralala when I was fifteen I tried to kill myself. He makes it inspiring but things took a sharp turn real quick. The moral of the story is keep being weird and different and alive and you too will one day get to meet Oprah.
-NPH takes to the crowd again to do a bit with David Oyelowo about how nothing is offensive with a British accent (which usually is true, Brits get away with everything cause they sound classy AF) but this time it’s a really lame bit that’s unfunny. C’mon Neil. Actually while we’re on shitty bits, let’s also discuss when he comes out in his tighty whities. We get it, you have abs for days, but was this necessary?
-This year’s “pizza” joke was the locked box that NPH kept his predictions in that he made before the show even started and then brought it up 100 times throughout the night to assure everyone that they were secure and have not been tampered with. At the end of the night the payoff is a bunch of one liners of specific things that happened throughout the night. It was stupid and drawn out. The only prediction I laughed at was “Travolta will be back again next year to apologize to Idina for all the face touching.”
-Meryl opens up for the In Memoriam segment saying that actors will always be remembered because we have their body of work that will always live on. Basically if you haven’t performed in something everyone will forget you after you die. The In Memoriam segment itself is just a bunch of drawings of dead people set to sad music. WOOooOooF. Then Jennifer Hudson uses her powerhouse voice to honor them. She has slicked back hair that my mom described via text, “must feel yucky to touch.”
-Terence Howard almost cries onstage about Selma and then gets grabby with the mic which obviously causes some feedback. First time on stage bro?
-Sean Penn presents Best Picture to Birdman and announces it gracefully with “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?” A little racism to end the night on…the director responds with, “Two Mexicans in a row, that’s suspicious I guess.” Yiikes.
And that completes the 3 1/2 hour portion of my life dedicated to awards shows every Sunday. I hope that you enjoyed my endless recaps and fashion blogs this awards season. We’ll pick up right where we left off when the 500 Country Music Awards start again in a just a few months time. I for one, cannot wait.