I thought they did a great job on this show. Union Station is a great space (nice to have Harrison Ford reference Blade Runner there), and would be great to retain some sense of the grouped tables even when they return to the big auditorium, which is a call back to the Oscar origins.
Mostly though, I loved that they did not place such a hard limit on the speeches. They saved time with shorter walk ups to the podiums, and moving the songs to the pre-show, and not having any opening monologue or production number (besides that long walking shot), bit still went over about 17 min, but for me very worth it. A number of the speeches were heartfelt and interesting, and the very first one would have no doubt been interrupted by playoff music just as the guy started talking about his dead daughter. Even the cheesy “game show” had a pretty good pay off with Glen Close (I saw on the after show that they did set that up with her in advance, but did not expect her to actually do the dance). Nice to see our friend Jon Batiste get his Oscar moment, and he briefly shared the stage with QuestLove. I saw on Twitter a lot of complaining about a seemingly rushed In Memoriam, and especially the decision to move Best Picture ahead of Best Actress and Actor. It did kind of seem like they were anticipating closing on an emotional note of Chadwick Bozeman winning posthumously, instead ending with a bit of an anticlimax. Still, overall I thought it was a good show, with mostly great nominated films and performances, even if it will inevitably be the lowest rated Oscars in history. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2B6-iwP%2Bnp1RX-xZKD4a_MMP3yhejh492Renvi4q%3D6EVg%40mail.gmail.com.
