The Show Must Go On and On and On and On and...

The official tally for last night's Oscar telecast was 3 hours, 52 minutes. Marathons take less time. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of just hitting record on the DVR, forgetting that it would only tape the show until it's scheduled end (11:30pm). Since the show went on for close to another hour after that, I had to look up the remaining winners (including most of the major categories) online. (To digress for a moment, I found it kind of annoying that they don't have video of the acceptance speeches on the Oscar.com website.)

So even though I missed the biggest awards of the evening, I still feel confident in rating the overall presentation. It was OK. It wasn't the greatest I've seen, nor was it the worst. It was entertaining and harmless for the most part. My biggest complaint, as with others I've read today, was the pacing. It just felt like it was taking forever to get to anything. If the directors/producers of last night's show even get nominated for an Emmy in the outstanding variety category, I'll be dumbstruck. There was no way that the schedule of that show, even on paper, was going to fit in the 3 hour time slot.

Main problem: production numbers. Didn't need the interpretive dance, didn't need the Jack Black/Will Ferrel routine (didn't they do something similar at another recent awards show?), and while I love a good montage, there were a few too many last night (though I did miss the Michael Mann one that ran during the last hour). And I definitely didn't need Al Gore telling me how "green" the Academy is. Are you kidding? The amount of waste involved in even the smallest Hollywood production dwarfs what contribution to global warming most of us will make in our lifetime.

As for the hosting duties. I've never found Ellen DeGeneres that funny. I remember her from her stand-up days; before her coming out, her sitcom, her talk show, etc. I don't have anything against her, I just never thought she was that funny. That being said she did a decent job last night, though not nearly as edgy as the last couple years. That's probably why they chose her though, and probably why I've never laughed at one of her jokes, once, ever.

In spite of all this, there were some treats buried within last night's sea of self congratulation. I really liked how the nominees for screenwriting were presented, the presenters reading excerpts from the script. I also thought the Errol Morris montage of nominees at the beginning was pretty cool, though it did slightly make me think it was going to end with and ad for Apple. Coolest of all though, was the sound effects chorus. That was spectacular. It was like watching two dozen of the guy from the Police Academy movies. Seriously though, that was pretty awesome.

In spite of the lengthiness of the broadcast ratings were up this year over last, probably cause many categories seemed wide open. I would be interested in seeing a breakdown of ratings throughout the telecast, i.e. how much viewership dropped as the show went on and on and on and ...

p.s.

This is a funny quote:

ABC says about 74.8 million people watched at least six minutes of the broadcast. Cut that down to one minute, and the number rises to 87 million.

If they round up to a minute like the phone companies do, then I would guess those 13 million viewers just happened to stop while channel surfing.