waterboarding

Last night's Academy Awards might have been the most boring television since the second season of Lost.  I can't even quite put my finger on it, but I was basically uninterested from start to finish.  I will admit that I have hardly seen any of the movies that were nominated.  In fact, there were only two movies that were nominated for anything that we have actually seen--Alice In Wonderland (costume design, art direction, visual effects) and Salt (sound mixing).  There have been years in the past where we have seen almost everything, including some of the foreign ones.  These days its hard to find time to sneak away to the movies.  The problem I had wasn't with the films or the actors.  I was glad to see Trent Reznor win, as well as crazy Christian Bale.  Someone should get that guy a razor.  The hosts were alright I guess.  The whole thing just seemed to drag on.  I would like to add a few suggestions to make the show a little better.  They seemed to make no effort to run people off the stage during their lengthy acceptance speeches.  I know they have a lot of people to thank, but maybe some of that could be done with a phone call later.  I don't need to hear you thank your childhood babysitter or your first pet.  I also hate to cut music from anything, but movie songs are for the most part just boring.  Randy Newman is way past his prime, but somehow he gets to perform every year.  Also, listening to Celine Dion sing is like being stabbed in the ear repeatedly.  Some people might argue that she has a great voice, but does she sing anything that anyone wants to hear?  In the great Farrelly comedy Dumb and Dumber, the question is asked, "Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?"  It turns out, that the sound in that movie is not the most annoying.  How Celine sells any albums at all will always baffle me.  Another way we could trim the fat on the Oscars would be to take a note from the Grammys and give the technical awards in a different ceremony.  I know those people deserve awards, but how many viewers can distinguish sound mixing from sound editing?  Finally, I wasn't a huge fan of the finale of awkward kids singing together with all of the winners.  I'm sure some people thought it was cute.  I would like to know why they used school kids from Staten Island.  Does California not have schools?  Perhaps none of these things would have been a problem if we had just recorded and watched it later.  Then we could have just skipped the boring parts.  I guess none of this even matters in the overall scheme of things.  It's Monday.  By Friday, I will probably have forgotten all about all of this.  Have a great week.