Top Five Pet Peeves of the 2014-15 Oscar Season

The Oscar season is always draining – emotionally and physically, given the length of the broadcast – but there's still one last drop of blogging to be drained from my fingertips before officially calling it a year: My annual rundown of personal highs and lows from the season that was. I find it the perfect way to purge any lingering feelings before psyching myself up for the coming cinematic calendar, which is sure to have its own slate of travesties and triumphs.

I'll be posting my top ten in the form of two top fives. We'll get the ball rolling with the five things that bugged me most during the 2014-15 film awards circuit:

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 4: Telecast Highlights

I always record the Oscars so I can go back and rewatch it later the same week.

It's practically a necessity since I'm often so distracted with my prediction lists and my agony and ecstasy over the winners and losers and whatnot, that I miss some of the little moments that make this whole meat parade worthwhile!

There are still glimmers of fun left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as awards season. So allow me to parse through the 3+hour telecast and highlight the diamonds in the rough. And believe me, it was rough.

Things didn't start off so bad, though. Rather than force host Neil Patrick Harris to struggle through an opening monologue, they fed him one solid joke and then he was off to the races with his song-and-dance routine, "Moving Pictures".

This show got 99 problems, but graphic design ain't one!

Lovely sets and animated title cards.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 2: The Host, the Ratings, and the Real Problems

Every time the host is announced for the upcoming Oscars several months in advance, I traditionally write an opinion of the selection and what I hope it means for the show. But this past year, when word came that three-peat producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron had chosen ubiquitous awards show MC Neil Patrick Harris, I just couldn't be bothered. I've seen NPH absolutely crush it on the Tonys multiple times, 'cause the dude's got mad talent, but nothing about this decision excited me.

For years it had been thinly veiled, at best, how desperately Harris wanted to break away from the Emmy/Tony gigs and take on Hollywood's holy night.
He even got to do a random musical intro at the beginning of Adam Shankman's disastrous Oscar telecast in 2010. It stuck out like the sorest of many sore thumbs from that show, making it clear that despite his song-and-dance aptitude, he just isn't enough of a movie personality to fit in with this particular West coast crowd.

NPH at the Oscars in 2010: A bad omen of things to come.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 3: The show

Properly reviewing an Oscar ceremony can be tedious business, so I'm not gonna do it. Not properly, at least. The whole never quite amounts to the sum of its parts (although the Condon/Mark production from 2009 comes awfully close), so it's easiest just to look back and assess those parts at face value. Let's take a look at some moments that stood out (for me anyway) at the 86th Academy Awards

After last year's show hosted by Seth McFarlane came under such harsh critical fire, the pressure was on returning producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to atone. They made all the safest possible choices, and it started with the selection of Ellen Degeneres to return as host after her first kick at the can seven years ago.

Ellen assures viewers around the world, "We're fine. Thank you for your prayers" in regards to the rain.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 2: Seth MacFarlane

Reactions from entertainment writers in the wake of last Sunday's sweet and sour Academy Awards telecast have been mostly sour. Has nobody anything sweet to say about the show or its controversial host Seth MacFarlane? I'm just searching for some sugar, man.

Not that MacFarlane needs me or anyone else to defend him. He's no martyr. The style of frat-boy humour that so annoyed people at the Oscars is that upon which he's built for himself a small TV animation empire. Having gotten away with – and actually thrived on – far grosser comedy in Family Guy and American Dad for so many years makes the 39-year-old millionaire somewhat untouchable.

So why do I feel compelled to debate the vocal masses who have been quick to deem him public enemy #1? Again, it's not because I feel he needs to be defended. Nor is it because I think he did a particularly great job; his own self-deprecating meta review of himself, “Seth MacFarlane Proves to be Mediocre Oscar Host”, is pretty accurate in my opinion. So no, this editorial is not a defence of the man, and it is not a contrarian stand for the minority opinion. Rather, it is a plea for cooler heads and less conclusion-jumping, which are becoming increasingly rare in this digital age of hasty headlines and instant reactions.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 1: Overview

Well, the 85th Annual Academy Awards came and went, putting a cap on what has been one of the most unusual awards seasons in recent memory. To no one's surprise, Ben Affleck's Argo was crowned the Best Picture of 2012, also taking expected prizes for Chris Terrio's screenplay and William Goldenberg's editing.

Seth Macfarlane set to host Oscars

So I got in from work this afternoon to discover that the Oscar-web was abuzz with some news. The creator of hit animated television series Family Guy and American Dad, Seth MacFarlane, has been confirmed as the host of next year's Academy Awards. Word abounds on Twitter and the like that he will be very involved in the writing process, and that, befitting a man of his musical gifts, there will of course be a musical number.

Normally, I look skeptically upon "TV" personalities hosting the biggest movie event of the year. The hosting gigs by Ellen Degeneres and John Stewart never impressed me, but then again, movie-star hosts can fall flat too. I say it's got potential. MacFarlane's talents as a comedian and singer are considerable, but it all depends on how producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (of the musical series Smash) intend to tap those talents. If they aim for a level of showbiz cheese that's somewhere between Billy Crystal's one-man shtick and Hugh Jackman's all-out razzle dazzle (with only subtle hints of MacFarlan'es new-age smarm), I daresay they may have a winner on their hands. If they try to replicate the sort of raunch and cynicism that's made MacFarlane such a huge success on the small screen (and so help me, one single Family Guy reference is an automatic deal-breaker), then I smell possible disaster. Call me conditionally hopeful.