With the conclusion of the Oscars, comes the end of the award season. Thank goodness.
For Hollywood, the Oscars are an excuse to honour excellence in film. For the rest of us, it’s an excuse to curl up on the couch in our pajamas, down a bottle of wine and judge everything from the dresses to the speeches to the skits.
This year, I was finished work just in time for the Oscar broadcast and figured I’d sit through this year’s show so that I wasn’t left out of the Oscar watercooler chat in the office.
On a scale from one to Worst Mistake of My Life, those four hours (and 35 minutes since everyone was counting) landed in at a solid 7.5.
When I do sit down to watch these award shows, I watch it with one of my dear friends who is as judgmental and sarcastic as I am when it comes to these things. It doesn’t matter that she lives nine hours away. That’s what texting’s for. I present the revised best, worst and the just OK of “Briana and Micaela Watch the Oscars 2013 Edition.”
*Note: texts have been condensed and censored because this is a family paper.
We start with Argo because I just finished watching it the night before. Highly recommended and Canada gets mentioned, so yay us!
The monologue had my curiosity when MacFarlane began singing (dude has a good voice!), but it took my attention when Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe began to tap dance.
Beast of the Southern Wild is next up on the Best Picture discussion. Neither of us have seen it or know what it’s about, but agree that it looks good.
Life of Pi wins for Best Visual Effects (obviously) and all of Saskatchewan cheers. The book’s novelist is from Saskatoon, Sask.
Ted and Mark Wahlberg come on screen. No joke. A bear in a tuxedo voiced by the host of the show is presenting an award. Kind of weird. Micaela and I both agree that it’s the fail of the night until Wahlberg announces there is a tie for Best Sound Editing. How can there be a tie in the Oscars?!? How big of a buzzkill is that? ‘Yeah, I won an Oscar, but I have to share it with this other guy.’
We both commiserate that this year’s show is sucking air and that MacFarlane’s comedy isn’t Oscar material. I decide that my column for the paper this week will be an Oscar kind-of rant.
More Best Picture nominees are shown. Silver Linings Playbook is excellent. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are good at playing crazy people and Lawrence looks like she would be a great friend to have a beer and a burger with.
Micaela calls it a night and leaves me to my own devices for the last half hour of the show. Because I’m too lazy to find a new show to watch, it stick it out and watch the three big awards being handed out.
Lawrence wins for Best Actress and I squeal with glee. She trips going up the stairs, but Bradley Cooper and Hugh Jackman rush to her aid, so I don’t feel bad for her. Her speech is charming and hilarious and all of a sudden she’s my new girl crush. Plus, her dress was amazing! Daniel Day-Lewis wins for Best Actor and his two-minute speech gets more and louder laughs than MacFarlane’s entire show - Awkward.
Ben Affleck reinforces the crush I developed on him when I first watched Pearl Harbour 12 years ago. Argo, which he directed, wins Best Picture. He was robbed by not being nominated for Best Director, but he got the last laugh and gets the last speech of the night. The speech made Affleck sound like he was on Red Bull and coffee with a side of uppers because he was afraid the show’s ‘get off the stage’ music/the Jaws theme (!) would cut him off.
The Life of Pi boat jokes were endless. Twitter nearly exploded when Affleck thanked Canada and then in a stark contrast to our polite nature, everyone insisted the Oscar belonged to us.
MacFarlane and the diminutive Kristen Chenoweth come out onstage to sing a tribute to the losers because that hasn’t been done before.
And that concluded my Oscar adventure. Off-screen highlights included the diet-friendly brownies I had for dessert and the fact that my fireplace was working.
I’d say tune in next year for my Oscars 2014 column, but that would require me tuning in.
