In Honor of the Dear Departed

Now that was a long Academy Awards Show. I felt like I had invaded Iwo Jima by the time it was over. I thought they were doing better at getting this thing down shorter, but I guess not.

Not that it was all bad, not at all. One thing that I thought worked well was that, like I said earlier about the Dreamgirls' credits, they really extended the presentation of each nominee, so that you saw some of what they were being nominated for instead of just having a list of names recited. I liked that a lot, but it makes the show longer and if you are going to do this, in my opinion, worthwhile endeavor, then you need to cut out of the show anything superfluous. There was a lot they should have cut.

As much as I liked the silhouette dancers, they could have been cut. As much as I enjoyed seeing the retrospective of the 50 films that have won Best Foreign Language Film. it could have been cut. The Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John C. Reilly song was cute, but we need to speed this thing up folks, so it should have been cut. All of the backstage nonsense should have been cut; it adds nothing and only serves to drag the show down and out.

The last thing I would cut out is the ham-handed banter between presenters. It rarely works and there was nothing memorable this time except the Al Gore presidential declaration bit.

The award for Ennio Morricone seemed to go on forever, not that much could have been done here given the need for interpreting Mr. Morricone's comments into English. I wouldn't have cut this, but it sure added to the "battle fatigue" vibe that permeated the whole evening.

As to my feeling on the actual awards, well, I thought Eddy Murphy was more deserving than Alan Arkin and that both Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi from Babel gave better performances than Jennifer Hudson did in Dreamgirls. And though I was thrilled that Martin Scorsese finally won his long deserved Best Director Oscar, and though I thought The Departed was a wonderful film, I think Babel was more of an achievement and a film that will stay with me for a very long time.

Be that as it may, I congratulate everyone associated with The Departed.