Oscar Mailbag, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #117
March 1, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 0 Comments
My mailbox has been blowing up with Oscar letters. I’m going to try and get to a bunch of them. I omitted the names in order to clean up the formatting and because none of them were from important people.
Dear Art,
Did you watch the Oscars last night?
No I did not. I can already hear all of you asking “How on earth are you qualified to write an entire column on the Oscars?” and it’s a good question. Because 80% of my Twitter feed was dedicated to people talking about the Oscars. Soon I won’t need to watch live TV at all.
Dear Art,
How about James Franco and Anne Hathaway as hosts? They’ve been panned all over.
I’ve got a theory on this. Academy president Tom Sherak must have had members of his immediate family killed in a drunk driving accident in the last year. As near as I can tell this car was driven by Steve Martin and in the car with him were Jon Stewart, Chris Rock and Conan O’Brien. That’s the only reason I can think of how they decided not to hire a comedian who could host the ceremony this year. I hope he can get over it this year so he can stop inflicting terrible shows upon us. We’ve seen another example of why the venn diagram of comedians and mind-numbingly attractive people consists of two circles several miles apart.
Dear Art,
Big night for The King’s Speech, are you happy about that?
I guess? I didn’t see it. I only saw five of the Best Picture nominees this year and they were firmly in the underdog portion of the field. True Grit was my favorite and apparently everyone hates movies that are awesome. I’ve heard The King’s Speech was terribly moving but if that were what they were looking for I probably would have gone with Toy Story 3. I’ve long ago accepted that the Academy and I see eye-to-eye on nothing so I’ve long ago decided not to put too much faith in their awards. I am still psyched for The Social Network to end up on HBO so I can finally see that film. If I’m going to watch a movie where all people do is talk about the Internet I can do that on a small screen for free thanks.
Dear Art,
What did you think about Melissa Leo dropping an f-bomb during her acceptance speech?
Good for her. It looked like an actual genuine expression of emotion. I never buy it when actors cry because faking emotion like that is basically their job. Also I’ve been a fan of hers since Homicide: Life on the Street and it’s good to see someone from that show finally get some big time recognition. Everyone on that show acted their asses off all the time and no one ever watched it. I’m happy she finally got an award even if it was for yet another overdramatic Hollywood boxing movie. Boxing is by far the most popular movie sport which is particularly odd when you consider that no one actually watches boxing.
Dear Art,
A lot has been made on the web about Corey Haim being left out of the montage of dead celebrities. Is there any fear you have of people being left out for next year?
Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for the Oscars but the Emmy’s are full of crap if they don’t honor Dwayne McDuffie next year. He deserves it solely on the basis of his amazing accomplishments in television. The fact that he was an amazing man who was a credit to several different professions is merely a bonus. This goes double for every major comic book convention. Don’t fuck this one up people, Dwayne was a remarkable person and an outstanding creator and he deserves recognition about 100 times more than Corey Haim.