What was on TV? Sun, Feb 27, 2005

20 years ago, best picture frontrunners The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby both cleared $100 million dollars in the US and $200 million worldwide. Now let's go to the Oscars. And since I live on the west coast, I have time to watch some TV afterwards.

3:00 PST Oscars Red Carpet on E!

This was an interesting era for the red carpet coverage. Joan Rivers had left E! for the TV Guide Channel. So Star Jones and Kathy Griffin stepped to the front.

If I had a nickel for every Star Jones joke I've heard while working on this project, I could treat myself at Starbucks (in 2004, I'd have enough money for a Frapuccino and a bakery item). And watching her, I understand why people made jokes. Star Jones is embarrassing. She is so shameless, so sincere in her fawning over each and every celebrity, so inane in her banter. It's uncomfortable to watch, of course people responded with snark. But this was the mid-2000s so that meant fat jokes. If only we could have appreciated her, for she brings true camp to the world of red carpet interviews.

If Star Jones' delivers an unknowing parody of the red carpet interview, Kathy Griffin delivers a knowing parody of the red carpet. She understands how ridiculous this all is, and she is bold and quick enough to take the piss out of it. At the Golden Globes, she asked celebrities "Kabbalah or Scientology?" and "Got any weed?" She even asked them to wish Dakota Fanning well as she entered rehab. Of course, Dakota was not entering rehab. that caused quite a stir, and it felt like E! had a leash on her here. But she still gets some barbs in and manages to undercut the whole affair with her mere presence. If she brings high camp to go with Star Jones' low camp, and together, they are a winning combination.

5:30 PST 77th Annual Academy Awards on ABC

Available on Youtube: Part 1, Part 2, official playlist

I love the Oscars. Stuff that other people hate about the Oscars, I love. Case in point: montages. I love them, especially when they're good. And this year's Oscars opens with a great one. It's full of split screens and I'm pretty sure it was inspired by 24, but it works. It's adventurous and even experimental, like something you might see in the Academy museum, and the montage is very well-edited. It holds up today. Well, it ends with Shrek and the Little Tramp playing catch while "Lose Yourself" plays, and that feels very 2005. But I like that.

So I love the Oscars, and I love the movies. But I didn't love this ceremony. The awards were tragically predictable. (Charlie Kaufman's win in best original screenplay was the sole surprise of the night). Chris Rock's performance as host was well-regarded. But he places such a priority on being edgy and dangerous. Maybe he seemed edgy and dangerous in 2005, but in 2025, he feels tame. His critique of the Iraq war is mild, especially when it's followed by a "support the troops" to close out his monologue. The Jude Law joke offended Sean Penn, but Sean Penn is an overly sensitive weirdo. His other jokes are about famous actress' boobs and the Barbershop movies. That's the problem with edgy comedy: sometimes, when the edge goes away, you're left without any laughs. Oh well. At least it wasn't as offensive as Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes. And Chris Rock did have one perfectly biting and prophetic line: "Clint Eastwood is a star...Tony Maguire is just a boy in tights." Yes, indeed.

The most interesting thing about these awards to me (an Oscars freak) is that they tried cut cut out the time it takes non-famous people to walk to the stage. This meant that outside of the major categories, all the nominees stood on the stage or awards were presented in the aisles. This was awkward. Presenting awards in the aisles looks weird, and the audience is either craning their necks to look at the presentation or it looks like they just aren't paying attention. And imagine accepting your award in the middle of the aisle. Imagine if you were in the audience and you had to pee! Now imagine that you're production designer or a documentarian in an off-the-rack dress or rented tuxedo and you lose, in front of all your peers and a bunch of famous people. As Alan Alda toldd Entertainment Weekly, "they [tried this] 25 years ago at the Emmys, and it just doesn't work, because you leave the people standing there like salamis! That's not a very good thing to do with the people that you've honored by nominating." And that's the point. This turned hardworking craftspeople into second-class citizens. Best makeup winner Valli O'Reilly recalled how the cameraman was trying his best not to hit presenter Cate Blanchett's head during her speech, which really showed you who was important.

However, there are two instances when I actually did enjoy this ridiculous experiment. One was the presentation of live action short. That category is usually filled with maudlin dreck about dying kids. But this year, three directors with exciting futures ahead of them were nominated: Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes, Colossal), Taika Waititi, and Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey). It was fun to visit these future stars in their seats and see some of their personality (Taika of course pretended to be asleep).

Meanwhile, a highlight of every single Oscar ceremony is seeing the winning costume designer's outfit. I have fond memories of past looks from Sandy Powell, Jenny Beavan, and Ruth E. Carter. But this year, the costume designers are all on stage, and I get to see four awesome outfits (Bob Ringwood was nominated for Troy but stayed home). Sandy Powell (who won for The Aviator) and Alexandra Byrne (nominated for Finding Neverland) both wore simple gowns elevated by exquisite tailoring gowns. Coleen Atwood (representing A Series of Unfortunate Events) opted for a chic black pansuit. Sharon Davis (nominated for Ray) wore an Elizabethan-style black gown with gold brocade lining. They all put the movie stars to shame.

9:00 Carnivale on HBO

2x08 "Outskirts, Damascus, NE"

I recently paged through Tinderbox, the almost-500 page oral history of HBO. You know how many times Carnivale is mentioned in that book? Two. I was shocked, because Carnivale feels like a quietly influential show in HBO's catalog. The mythology, the crazy fan theories, the elaborate production design, and the rich cast of weirdoes, sense that this is all one giant story and not a series of episodes. Carnivale reminds me powerfully of latter-day HBO hits like Game of Thrones and Westworld, especially in its second season, which is much more plot-driven than the first. Carnivale especially reminds me of Game of Thrones. It has incest, an obsession with sex work, and its most interesting character is under five feet. Come on!

10:00 The L Word on Showtime

2x02 "Lap Dance"

In her review of The L Word for Entertainment Weekly, Gillian Flynn (yes, the author of Gone Girl) mentioned the show's bizarre score and sound design, bemoaning the "new trend of littering scenes with whispery spoken-word sounds...these aural gewgaws must go. They’re chintzy accessories for a series that’s otherwise impeccably styled." Now it's all I can see (or hear). What is going on in the scene where Mira Kirshner masturbates? Flynn nailed it with the phrase "aura gaw-gaws." The L Word is supposed to be silly in a good way, in a "money doesn't matter until it does" and "art galleries can change the world" way. This is silly in a bad way.

What Else Was On

• If you watch that E! broadcast, you'll see promotion for daily reenactments of the Michael Jackson trial. This was a real thing: the judge banned cameras from the courtroom, so E! found a...creative solution.
• The annual pre-Oscars Barbara Walters special featured Jamie Foxx, Will Ferrell, and Teri Hatcher. Walters was on Conan this week, and she outlined her interview strategy: if you preface nasty question with the phrase "many people say," you can get away with a lot. You can see this strategy in action during her interview with Teri Hatcher, where she asks "people say you haven't had sex in four years. Is that true?"
• People predicted that the Oscar ratings would be horrible. The Golden Globes and other award shows had seen steep declines in ratings. And while last year's big winner was the final installment in the Lord of the Rings franchise, this year was stacked with indie fare and adult dramas. But while the ratings declined this year, it was only slightly. More to the point, the ratings among young people and young men increased, which many credited to Chris Rock. Indeed, you know that ABC and the Academy were courting the young men that advertisers love so much, since they put a bunch of ads featuring Chris Rock on Adult Swim, the best place to reach young men.

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince, a Frontline documentary, the TV movies Sucker Free City, Lackawanna Blues, School of Life, and Ladies Night, tw0 episodes of Miracle's Boys, and one episode each of King of the Hill, Monk, and Without a Trace. 17.5 hours total.

Music, 20 years ago

This was not a great year for song performances at the Oscars. Which is surprising. You'd hope that when Beyonce sings three (3!) songs, one of them would be good. But seeing Beyonce sing three songs is kind of a bummer when they're all bad songs. At least she gave us fabulous looks, complete with new gowns, jewelry, and hair, for each song.

The best performance of the night actually came during Jorge Drexler's acceptance speech for best song. He walked on stage, sang an exquisite acapella rendition of his winning song from The Motorcycle Diaries, "Al Otro Lado Del Rio," and wrapped it up with a simple "gracias, ciao," Joe Pesci style. It was the best speech of the night.

It was also a protest. The Oscar producers had elected to have Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana perform it instead. This caused a real stir in Latin American communities across the world. Gael Garcia Bernal and Walter Salles, star and director of The Motorcycle Diaries, both boycotted the ceremony in protest. Drexler is a Uruguayan folk singer, of course a Spanish movie star and a Mexican-American pop star would have little fluency in his music (and indeed, the performance was kind of a mess). The Academy's choice betrayed their desire for star power at all costs and their ignorance and incuriousity about Latin American culture. So Drexler really proved something when he got up on that stage and sang, outselling Antonio Banderas, Carlos Santana, Counting Crows, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Josh Groban, and even Beyonce.