Thank the great god Quetzalcoatl for sparing us his divine wrath last year when he decided to revise his previously prophesied apocalyptic timetable. Because the Mayan calendar didn’t actually usher in a new age, we all get to experience something even more amazing than divine intervention. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the Oscar train keeps on a-rolling with their latest show, “The 2013 Academy Awards: The Musical.”
I can only assume that was the subtitle of the show, because the entire program was packed with live musical performances, including Adele’s show-stopping “Skyfall” as well as host Seth MacFarlane’s song in which he listed whose breasts he’s gotten a glimpse on the silver-screen over the years. Adele went on to win the Oscar for best original song, and MacFarlane continued not be funny, and hate his life and what it has become, especially now, since he has phoned in “Family Guy” for two years.
Keeping up with the theme of music, the show also featured a number of other musical tributes and performances including: Barbara Streisand, the cast of “Les Miserables,” Norah Jones, and a music tribute to James Bond which included an appearance by Halle Berry in a General Zod costume, a performance of “Goldfinger” by Shirley Bassey, and a montage that showcased the only James Bond song that anyone knows. Yes, that one.
Of course the whole show couldn’t have been about music. It was also a celebration of anyone who won an award in acting, directing, or best picture. Everyone else had to keep their speeches short enough that the folks at home from getting bored.
In what could only be described as “classy,” the folks who won best special effects, best documentary, and best sound editing got shooed off stage with the theme from “Jaws” if their acceptance speeches seemed to drag on. I can only hope that the victims of this bullying bought a real shark and mailed it to the academy’s headquarters so they could be eaten alive for being so monumentally callous.
This wasn’t the only gaffe of the evening, unfortunately. Jennifer Lawrence seemed to stumble and fall over her dress as she went up on stage to accept her best actress award. She was so adorable, bubbly and nervous that no one seemed to care though. I could only assume that she was shuffled backstage in order to prevent her from fainting on live television.
The rest of the world also confirmed their status as troglodytes by thinking that Anne Hathaway’s nipples were protruding from her Prada dress and not realizing that was due to the seam pattern. Yet despite these setbacks, the people who we all thought would win got their just praise.
Daniel Day Lewis won his record third Academy Award for best actor; “Argo” won best picture and Ben Affleck didn’t flip off the camera because he wasn’t even nominated for Best Director; Hathaway won best supporting actress (and for some reason didn’t get the “Jaws” treatment for her lengthy acceptance speech); Christoph Waltz continued to be our favorite German; “Life of Pi” won a bunch of awards for being very pretty; and Quentin Tarantino might have been drunk or he might have been Quentin Tarentino.
So in this way, the 2013 Academy Awards were like every other Academy Awards: surprising, wholly predictable, and will be completely forgotten in about a week.