The biggest losers at Sunday night's Academy Awards telecast? It's gotta be a tie between "Dreamgirls" and the makers of Sominex.
The Academy didn't have too much use for the former, and the worldwide television audience watching the snooze-inducing 4-hour telecast didn't have any need for the latter.
In what has to rank as one of the most boring awards shows in recent history, the 79th Annual Academy Awards took their own sweet time Sunday night to go absolutely nowhere. If I, an admitted Oscar addict, got this bored then I can just imagine what the average TV viewer must have been feeling. Host Ellen DeGeneres, while not bad, never went past mildly amusing.
What's worse, with no major awards presented until an hour into the epic snoozefest, viewers were instead left to contend with scientific and technical awards that went to films that 95 percent of the viewing audience hasn't seen. Combine that with useless "special moments" like clips of "America and the Movies" and on-stage model interpretations of the costume design nominees and you're left with a whole lot of hot air. They have time for acrobats to form the logo from "Snakes on a Plane" but not for Jennifer Hudson to finish her speech?
I went six-of-eight in the top categories, and had I gone with my alternates for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor, I'd have had all eight. Oh well, maybe next year.
I did only marginally well predicting the techincal races, chiefly thanks to the speed bumps encountered by "Dreamgirls." I had predicted the musical to win six Oscars, but it only went home with a pair. With the exception of Best Supporting Actress shoo-in Hudson and the film's sound mixers, the Academy seemed desperate to further add salt to "Dreamgirls'" wounds by frantically looking for other alternatives in its categories (dodging all three of its Best Song nominations, no less).
No one felt the "Dreamgirls" cold shoulder more than Eddie Murphy, who went into the night as the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor, only to lose to "Little Miss Sunshine"'s deserving Alan Arkin. Murphy's loss further cemented the "Saturday Night Live" curse - alums of "SNL" may get nominated but they do not win. (Just ask Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray.)
The expected wins by Best Director Martin Scorsese, Best Actress Helen Mirren, and Best Actor Forest Whitaker were all deserved but their obviousness did little to energize the lethargic telecast.
And while it's nice to see Scorsese finally clutching an Oscar, I don't think anyone thinks "The Departed" is Scorsese's finest hour. His earlier works like "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "GoodFellas" are clearly in another stratosphere of filmmaking, but that's Oscar for you - acknowledging a filmmaker's greatness 30 years after everyone else has.
It is appropriate that the winner of best song was "I Need to Wake Up," because that is what the audience had to do at the end of the show.
