Glitz! Glamour! Tedious Montages! My Recap of the 2007 Oscars

I could not be bothered to blog live while watching the Oscars. I had three good reasons. One; no one reads my blog. Two; my computer is in a different room from the TV. Three; I had moderately priced champagne to drink and therefore could not reliably make my sarcastic remarks to the TV and type them out at the same time. So here we are, two days after the Oscars, and this is what I remember from the show.

-- People wear nice clothes and walk the red carpet. The editor from Vogue (Andre something) stays at least three feet away from all the pretty ladies and hilariously reaches across the chasm, robot-like, with his microphone. Perhaps he learned his lesson from Isaac Mizrahi and the unfortunate Scarlett Johansson boob-grab of 2005.
-- I’m watching the Oscars. My cat's name is Oscar. Discuss.
-- First item of the night - a short introducing all the nominees. Made by Errol Morris! I like Errol Morris. I’ve watched his films. I’ve heard him discuss his work but this particular Errol Morris production is not very good. It’s too disjointed and choppy to understand. It bogarts the Mac ads to spectacularly bland and confusing effect.
-- If you’re Ellen Degeneres and you are naturally a funny person, please do not use a full gospel choir to underscore your punch lines. It’s not funny. It’s not even tasteful when you think about it.

Ellen's red velour suit is by Maison Pee-Wee

-- For some reason all the boring awards are at the beginning of the show. Seriously, I am an editor. I know technical stuff and even I don’t care.
-- Children of Men, the best movie of 2006, doesn’t win for cinematography. I emphatically give the TV the finger while shouting “NO YOU DIDN’T! You did not just do that!”. Anson ignores me and eats more popcorn.
-- What do you get if you cross Mr. Clean and a pudgy grandmotherly lady? Strangely, you get Jack Nicholson.
-- The announcer calls Internal Affairs a Japanese film. Anson freaks out and calls the Oscars racist... It's a Chinese film by the way. Do not make this mistake around Anson.
-- Hey! They make movies in other countries! It’s true, and to prove it, here’s a montage. Very little dialogue is spoken in this montage - even after a clear warning not to be alarmed when the footage is “not in chronological order” and “in other languages”.

Canada's Lone Oscar Win (Sorry Deepa): Torill Kove wins Best Animated Short for the film The Danish Poet

-- Best Costume is presented with live models in little groups on the stage. The Dreamgirls ensemble features a man performing, what I believe kids call, the “robot dance”. We laugh and laugh and laugh. Three seconds of a guy in gold lame doing the robot makes up for an hour of relative boredom.
-- Interpretative shadow dancers make shadow pictures from such hits as Snakes on a Plane. That was a very good use of three minutes. God knows the Oscars need more padding so by all means, use shadow pictures. Next year, why not introduce some clowns cart wheeling down the aisles or little dogs trained to jump through hoops of fire?
-- Yadda, yadda, yadda, Jennifer Hudson wins. Forest Whitaker wins. I’m happy for him but by this time I am out of the room on a much needed pee break. Helen Mirren wins (happy for that) but for some reason concludes her speech by holding aloft her Oscar and saying “I give you The Queen!”. I’m a little too tipsy to fully understand what she means. Now, fully sober, I still don’t understand.

Helen Mirren confuses all

-- Another montage! Oh good. I was still on the edge of my seat from that last one. This time the montage is all about the good old USA. I’d like to think the Academy didn’t include this just as a counterbalance to the montage about those “other countries”. I’d like to think they’re not so insecure they needed to give us more clips of flags waving in the air to remind us that America is number one. I’d like to think many nice things.
-- Some other stuff happens, I don’t know. The cat is asleep on my leg and Anson’s eyes are glazing over. We’re not used to being up past 10:30 and we’re feeling the negative effects of so much Al Gore appreciation.
-- Dead people on parade! Please go ahead and clap for the people you recognise and ignore the rest. I’m disappointed by the short nod they give to Robert Altman. I’ll miss him and I could have used a few more clips of his amazing films instead of, I don’t know, another episode of shadow puppet theatre.

Leonardo DiCaprio gives Al Gore his 467th appreciative look of the night, accompanied (as always) with earnest, earnest applause.

-- Yay! Marty Scorsese wins for director! After all those years, and all those disappointments, he finally brings home an Oscar. He’s happy and he says a bunch of stuff in a short period of time. Everyone cheers. Huzzah!
-- Best picture - CHILDREN OF MEN. Oh wait, that’s in my head. The Departed wins best picture and the Oscars end approximately fourteen and a half hours after they began. I get to go to bed.

The Oscars AV Club Presents an Award
Alternate caption: Bow Ties for Everyone!

Thank you Oscars, for not sucking as much as you could. This year was bland but thankfully more relaxed than in years past. Ellen Degeneres was a decent host. Cut down some of the montages and artsy shadow people and you’ll have a better show. I still don’t forgive you for giving best picture to Crash last year (or as I call it, the "racism is BAD movie”), but for all my griping I’ll probably be watching again in 2008.

*** First bit of Oscars gossip just came on the morning news. After Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor, fellow nominee Eddie Murphy stormed out of his seat and left the building. He didn’t even stay to see Jennifer Hudson win. Tsk tsk. They dragged Peter O’Toole to the event, and he’s a hundred years old! He didn’t win his category - hell, Peter O’Toole has never won an Oscar but he still took the loss better than Eddie “I played a cartoon donkey” Murphy. ***

Screaming at Briefcases - The Exciting Conclusion

Although I have a few things to do before I GO TO PARIS (jealous yet? Sure you are. Let it out), I did make time to watch the first instalment of Deal or No Deal Canada. Let me just say, the show did not disappoint. It had the music, the lights, the hysterical contestants, the OCD host - everything. It had all the excitement of American Deal or No Deal yet is was better. It was Canadian.

You might ask how did DOND Canada differ from the American version. Well, let me put it into easy-to-write point form because I’m tired and I want to go to bed soon.

- Those Americans get boring “one dollar” and “two dollar” amounts on their board. What did we get? “Loonies” and “toonies” baby. Ah ha ha. We have such a good sense of humour. Let’s give all our currency wacky nicknames!
- When the banker phones, he doesn’t use any old line, he uses a Rogers phone line. Product placement has never been this obvious or this boring.
- The Canuck banker eschews sitting like his American counterpart in favour of pacing around his fenced off banker zone. He frequently puts his hand on top of the divide in a show of force, or perhaps a desire to escape his glowing red prison.
- How can we make that floor more Canadian? Big ass maple leaf!
- Canadian audiences are way rowdier than American audiences. Not necessarily more happy, or more excited, but the Canadians act like they got drunk and wandered into a free circus featuring the most excellent and entertaining of clowns.

Finally, the best part of DONDC is the contestants. Opening night had a fire fighter who went home with over $100,000, and a crazy Filipino Mountie lady (hereto known as CFML) who literally went bat shit insane within two seconds of taking the stage. CFML was this little screaming, kicking, punching whirlwind of excitement. She could not stop yelling and when the banker called you could hear her literally hyperventilating off camera. She was awesome. Unfortunately, I won’t be here on Thursday to see if she goes home with $500,000, but I hope she gets big money. She deserves it. Hell, I’d watch her for an hour just screaming and kicking at the camera.

So there you go. I went on YouTube to try to find a clip of the crazy Mountie lady but strangely no one has posted it yet. For now I did find a photo (above) that shows one tenth of the insanity this woman displayed. Research has also opened my eyes to other versions of the show from around the world. I encourage you to check them out for yourself. Did you know Quebec DOND has six male models? British DOND looks like it’s taped in someone’s rec room with home made props, and India’s DOND has the hottest host ever.

Deal or No Deal - something we can all agree on. If I were a Politics phD student I think I would have just found my thesis topic.

Well, I’m off to Paris! I am really looking forward to seeing Stephanie, and of course my husband Anson who’s working hard to pay for my trip. Ta ta mes amies! A bientot!

For those of you who cannot be in Paris right now, I offer this image of a cat, on a rooftop, in the City of Lights. Le sigh. I can practically smell the diesel fumes and taste the baguette already.

Screaming at Briefcases - the Canadian Edition!

Is anyone else intrigued about the hype, the sheer squeal-like-a-girly-girl excitement that is accompanying the “Deal or No Deal”’ Canadian special? As far as I can tell it will air after the Superbowl (how Canadian!) and have real Canadian contestants and real Canadian briefcase models (real Canadian breasts? We‘ll see). The big joke, at least according to the ads, is that it will also feature a Canadian host - Howie Mandel. Ah haha ha ha… ha? I must admit I watch the show sometimes because I like seeing people win money and freak out. I also love how everyone tries so hard to continue the lie that the banker is a real person, and not an actor hired to be a silhouette dishing out mathematical equations. The clever rouse is so complete the banker even has his own blog. Here you can read his most entertaining and pointless thoughts. Did you know the banker considers himself “a very very very sexy man”? He is also “definitely not Steve Guttenberg“. This is riveting stuff people.

Where was I going with this? I started reading the banker’s blog and got off track. My point was that we, as a Canadian audience, are very excited by the prospect of Canadians winning lots of money on a big, popular game show. I’m wondering if it’s possible for Canadians to come up with their own game show. Instead of the meagre one or two episode “specials”, how about a real weekly Canadian game show where Canadians could participate and win big money? Okay, granted, if it were on the CBC or some other cash starved network the money might not be “big”, but it could be enough to make us care. Hell, throw in some gift certificates to Canadian Tire and we’d be happy. Does anyone else want to see this? Am I the only one who would be totally psyched to see a farmer from Tillsonburg win five thousand bucks in prime time? I think it would be nice to root for the home team, as it were. And no, Canadian Idol doesn’t count. Canadian Idol doesn’t really count as anything.

Little Mosque on the Prairie - Yet Another Blog Review

On Tuesday night after Rick Mercer, the CBC debuted a new half hour sitcom called “Little Mosque on the Prairie”. The hype about the show has been hard to miss, with various journalists wondering if the comedy about Muslims living in rural Saskatchewan would attract audiences or offend everyone in this delicate and apparently humour free “post 9-11 world”. Nothing sells better than controversy, but the assumption that Muslims would not be able to laugh at themselves and all white Christians are big balls of religiously intolerant rage was getting a little old. After watching the first episode I think it’s safe to say that no one - Muslim, Christian, or otherwise - will be pulling an Elvis and shooting their TVs in disgust.

Although the show did not cause amused shouts of “oh no you didn’t”, it did manage to get a few laughs from me and Anson. Little Mosque is quite a feat for the old Canadian Broadcasting Company for two good reasons. One, it’s a show people actually want to watch ( as long as it’s not on opposite Heroes) and two, it’s really not bad. Historically Canadians absolutely suck when it comes to sitcoms. We like our comedy either political (Rick Mercer), sketch (Kids in the Hall) or hilariously drunken and vulgar (Trailer Park Boys). Little Mosque exists in that rarely seen land of stock characters, snappy banter, and corny jokes more at home in American prime time than on the CBC.

So does the show succeed? Sure, I guess. I will watch it again. This is definitely a show that could improve with time and familiarity. The writing tries a bit too hard to make fun of every viewpoint, the pacing is stiff and many of the jokes just fall flat. In terms of characters, the attractive guy playing the Imam has comic potential but is still too exaggerated in a “look at how outraged I am! You called me a terrorist so I will throw up my hands and make a funny face to the camera!” kind of way. The hicks in town can be amusing, like the bumbling neighbour who stumbles into the mosque during prayer, or they can be completely one dimensional like the intolerant DJ who just comes off like a less interesting (if that’s possible) and less intelligent (almost impossible) Rush Limbaugh. Some of the characters have definite room for improvement, but that’s what you expect from a premiere episode anyway.

Little Mosque on the Prairie shows promise, but it’s not halalarious just yet (I stole that from another review. Another good line? "This show is Allah in the family"). I’m just proud to live in a country that takes a chance on corny jokes even if the person telling them has brown skin and the women wear head scarves. Hopefully the CBC will stick to their schedule and keep Little Mosque after Rick Mercer so that it can build up a fan base. With time, luck, and the growth of talent already evident, this little show may become Canada's next Corner Gas.

One final note. During the show they aired ads for a website that advocates fair employment for immigrants. I thought the ads were pretty good and the message was effective. Just in case you’re interested, the website is www.hireimmigrants.ca.