And now, for a commercial break

Today is the first of 3 days off in a row for me.  You could say I am pleasantly happy.
The Oscars are on tonight... (sorry, next week).  I'll watch.  I go to a lot of movies.  There is no host, which should make the ceremony interesting.  The Academy tried to shorten the show by announcing certain awards were to be given out during commercial breaks.  After a lot of loud complaining, that's not going to happen.  So, what makes the show run long?  Here are 3 suggestions they should consider if they want to shorten the run time:

#3.  Don't seat nominees at the back of the auditorium.  When 4 people win for Best Documentary, they wait in the aisle until everyone is out of the row.  Then together, they all walk down to the stage (nobody runs at the Oscars).

#2.  Eliminate the long acceptance speeches.  Winners feel the need to thank everybody.  Unfortunately for them, nobody cares who helped them on their long, struggling path to success.  Sometimes they ramble on.. and on... and on.  Remember McConaughey?  He won for a film whose title is pretty much forgotten by just about everybody.  His career was going nowhere before the win, and since has been approaching the death spiral zone.

#1.  Cut the commercials since they take up the most amount of time.  The Academy has decided they don't want to financially break even with the telecast, they want to make money.  This means there's an award followed by 3 minutes of commercials.  There are 24 awards and there are commercial breaks after 23 of them.  Someone introduces a film clip from a nominated film... and then there's a commercial break.  We hear a nominated song... and there's a commercial break.  When you have over 72 minutes of commercial breaks in a broadcast scheduled to run 3 hours, you have a problem.  The fact that they even considered giving awards out during commercial breaks is one of the definitions of failure.  People watch to see the awards, not 25 minutes celebrating the wonderment of Samsung.  What do I do during those aggravating mini-intermissions?  Usually taking a leak, or getting another glass of wine, or both.

Finally, I'm going to touch briefly on the Jussie Smollet problem, and it is a problem.  If you read this blog, you know I sat silent while everybody was jumping aboard the Jussie train.  I'm the cynic, remember?  Personally, I thought the whole thing sounded sketchy right from the beginning: a black celebrity, walking alone on a secluded street in the early morning hours gets attacked by white racists.  These things do happen, and they are ugly, and people get killed.  If the police are correct and this thing was staged, Jussie Smollet is a terrible man who took advantage of the sympathy of millions of human beings.

Ego at the Oscars - McConaughey fails

I like watching the Academy Awards.  For years I would host small parties where friends and I would gather around the TV rooting for our favorites and booing at those winners we didn't like.  Times have changed and I now I usually sit watching the awards nodding my head with approval when some deserving film wins awards.  Most of the time I enjoy listening to the winner's speeches since they actually do tell you a little bit about the person behind the performance.  This year, however, I was a little stunned by Matthew McConaughey's speech.

As I listened to the words fall out of his mouth, I couldn't help but wonder "is this guy for real?"  So I was not surprised the next day when others, writing about the awards, called it bizarre.  One said it was "pure McConaughey."

  I also started to see a lot of angst flying around the Internet because he had failed to mention AIDS, which soon turned to irritation and anger.  The LGBT community had supported this film from day one and he didn't even give them a nod.  First of all, those complainers need to understand he didn't accept the part in "Dallas Buyer's Club" because he was a great humanitarian who felt he needed to shine a bright light on the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  He took that role because he wanted to win an Oscar.  Why do you think he lost so much weight?  To bring realism to the part?  Hell no, he wanted to win an Oscar.  Unfortunately the LGBT community made the sad assumption he took on this role because his heart was in the right place.  They failed to understand this was all about ego and nothing else.  That was made perfectly clear in his "pure McConaughey" acceptance speech.

In fact, I suspect he has some serious ego issues and working with him is going to become very difficult.  It wouldn't surprise me if from now on, if it's not done his way, it doesn't get done... at all.

Aren't I just too precious?

Too often people take characteristics of their favorite actor's screen persona's and apply them to real life.  Quite a few, no doubt, have made the assumption Matthew McConaughey is an easy going guy in real life.  Me?  I think he's pretty self-centered.  If you're not with him, you're against him.  From what I've read, he's still good friends with Lance Armstrong, whose character is reprehensible at best.  You know what they say about birds of a feather?  They stick together.  Still, you would have thought he would have had enough sense to keep from rambling on about his 'old man' and 'light beer.'  He sounded too much like an actor who really doesn't give a shit about anything but himself.