What.The.Fuck

Every year I watch the Oscars with a sense of wonder and glee that is referred to as my SuperBowl by close friends. Before the Oscars were moved, when I had a bit more time, and before everyone started having families and more obligations I used to throw a large party with great amounts of food, drink and a lovely pool of money to the individual that could guess the greatest number of award winners across all categories. The past couple of years have been quieter affairs, but I've still enjoyed the evening. It's Hollywood's night of stars, it's a celebration of great films, it's a guaranteed evening of great and not-so-great speeches, the ceremony will always go on too long, the musical numbers will be ridiculous and yet, it will be everything that's great about the movies. I could always count on that.

Until tonight.

I want to know who tortured and strangled my Oscars, skull-fucked the corpse, smeared it in dog shit then lit it on fire after stringing it in a bajillion Swarovski Crystals and thought that I wouldn't notice? It's a toss up between Laurence Mark and Exec Producer Bill Condon - I don't give a crap which one of you don't come back as long as it's neither of you. Do not touch the Oscars again. You're bad men.

If it seems like I'm a wee bit angry, I am. I can blame plenty on Hugh Jackman, but I'm sure he'll suffer enough as the whole "no, I'm not gay!" game starts up in full force for the next rest of his professional life. I hope that everyone's super duper proud for helping out with giving the bottom feeders material like this forever.

Look, I only have so much time, space and effort, so I'm going to cut to the chase. Where were the fucking clips? I don't mean the endless montages of INSERT LAME GENRE HERE 2008 movie clips, nor do I mean the Sound Effects sorta-clip you did - I mean the FREAKING ACTING CLIPS? Who abandoned bringing back last year's winners to present this year's winners for Best Supporting and Best Actors to bring back "Past Winners with Open Schedules" to simply drone on and on about the nominees?

Who spit balled this and got it green-lit? Who was the asshole? Were the Assholes? I need names.

Who thought bringing back past actors to verbally suck off the nominees was an awesome idea? Didn't one intern point out that a million people were going to be making Cowbell jokes when Christopher Walken was one of the "presenters" by going with this plan? Yeah, that was a way better idea than showing the clips. Especially in a year where everyone on the planet knew you'd be giving away the first posthumous Oscar in over 30 years. Yeah, no one would EVER want to see a FREAKING clip of that. We'd much rather watch Cuba Gooding Jr. desperately cling to relevancy. I mean that was only slightly more pathetic than watching Whoopi make a reference to Back in the Habit.

I can't stress the fun of these clips enough. I was waiting to see which of the Robert Downey Jr. clips would be used for The Oscars this year. I would have paid pay-per-view money if they would have guaranteed me that it was going to be the scene where he discussed never going "full retard" AND a shot of Sean Penn was guaranteed right after I am Sam was mentioned. Respect and love for cowbell, but that would have been comedy gold.

Kate Winslet's best clips came during the Pineapple Express spoof. How freaking sad was that? That's right, two stoners pretending to laugh at her "comedy" in the "Comedies of 2008" clip give us the brief glimpse of Kate's Oscar-winning performance. Or we could listen to other actresses yammer on and on about it. I suppose not all was lost, for it came in the same bundle as The Love Guru and Don't Mess With the Zohan. What company! I shouldn't discount this too much since they got Sean Penn's clips in with the same Pineapple Express montage. When the stoner movie guys get the clip concept down, you should know that there's something "basic" about the concept.

But, no - you're HIGH concept and you use no acting clips! That surely won't suck up the show. Oh, wait, yes it will! Well, if that's the worst you can do...oh, wait! Apparently there's over-achieving to be had in the "Making the Oscars Suck" Category.


You had to screw with the musical numbers. Wasn't it enough when you drove away Peter Gabriel? Sure, harassing MIA because she didn't want to perform a week after giving birth on your show was super classy, but you didn't stop there! You took the beloved marking of time for all of us - the single Oscar song for each nominee throughout the show - letting us know we could get up and stretch or exclaim excitedly to one another, "can you believe they had her sing that song?!?" But not this year. Hell.No. You made a fucking live action montage out of the songs.

You suck.


Director not before Best Picture? Have you no sense of how this show works? Did you just put the nomination slips in a bowl and go, "I promise, whatever order I put these in, this is the order we're going to give them out in!" What is your problem? Really? How many cans computer duster cleaner were you guys ingesting a day when you were putting together the show? That crap destroys brain cells, it really does. Who there isn't aware of the whole Best Director = Best Picture thing. Or are we really pretending this is going to be one of those rare years it doesn't happen?


Finally - who is getting publicly flogged for the In Memoriam Montage? I want a traveling public square and an unlimited supply of rotten fruit and vegetables to throw while the person attempts to apologize for this travesty. The beauty of this was always the somber music, the close up on the screen, the simplicity of the names and credits and the smattering of applause as you realized who had died in the last year.

This year? Queen Latifia sings. Not that she's bad, but that was jarring. And the swooping camera movement over multiple screens that were sometimes OBSCURING the names of the dead? I'm sorry what awesome level of drooling fucktard came up with this "improvement?" For many of these men and women, their careers were behind the scenes and, sadly, this is their worldwide moment of acknowledgment. Thanks to someone's idea of making this "better," I have no idea who at least half of dozen of these individuals were or what their contributions were - but hey, you have swooping camera movements at your disposal during a live telecast!

Mother fuckers.

Oh - I see we decided to roll out the clips for Best Picture. At the end with pictures NOT nominated for Best Picture. Instead of throughout the show with their normal introductions. Too Stupid. Too Little. Too Late.

Honestly, get your act together. Fire the lot of idiots that did this. Apologize profusely. Have Hugh Jackman assure us that he will stick to being Wolverine. Bring back John Stewart, Steve Martin, Ellen DeGeneress or Dave Lettermen - heck I'll even try out a Steven Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel or a Bonnie Hunt. Otherwise, the Oscars are Dead to me.