A WORD on last Tuesday's televised Oscars presentation.
Rubbish.
You'd think, after seventy-odd years, that the producers would be able to put on a decent show but no. The two upfront men, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, were embarrassingly unfunny as could be seen from a squirming audience - only the front two rows laughing and that's because it's in the conditions of invitation printed on the back of their tickets. I could almost hear the line producer pleading with the cameraman not to pan around the audience.
Then there were the seriously sycophantic stage line-ups of celebrities telling us - and the nominees in the front row - what wonderful people they, the nominees, were. Yekkkkk. Pass me a bucket. Only in Hollywood.
The 'In Memorium' segment is receiving some flak as well, as reported son our very own entertainment pages. Why was the late Farah Fawcett omitted from the clips?
Ah, said an Oscar's rep, because Farah was more a TV star rather than on the big screen and that won't wash because Wacko Jacko was up there and I don't remember him contributing to any memorable movies.
I do remember Farah though in a pot-boiler sci-fi movie playing opposite an ageing Kirk Douglas and a monster thrashing about under the spaceship's deckplates. The bunkbed scenes in this movie - no proper beds aboard a starship - were bizarre. An elderly, sagging all over the place Kirk snuggling up to a Farah with long legs, big hair, big, erm, well, big everything else and a cracker she was. What she saw in Kirk is beyond me unless it was the fact that he was the only spare male within 200 million light years.
But I digress. Also missing from the line-up of the late was Lionel Jeffries, a Brit actor well known for light comedy parts. He played alongside Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, a hit movie if ever there was.
And where was the late Pernell Roberts who rode the range of TV's Bonanza for many years? The Oscar's In Memoriam clips even featured a journalist or two so let's have none of the "not a movie star" stuff.
Now I'm going to take a fling at ABS-CBN (aka Channel 23) who presumably edited down Tuesday's show from the full-length Oscars ceremony.
Apart from the scissoring with a heavy hand and no continuity at all, what happened to the sound balance? Frequently we couldn't hear the announcer, drowned out by the orchestra. Actor after actor trotted on (No actresses in our bizarre PC world) to say his or her piece and I had no idea who it was, my excuse being that all actors done up in a dark suit and bow tie standing under unbelievably dim lighting look the same (Except Jack Nicholson who always looks like Jack Nicholson).
And where were the famous directors - Scorcese, de Niro, Clint? Didn't they get an invite or were they edited out?
What a shambles.