Furry Movie Award Watch: February 2013

Well, I must say, I am enraged at the Oscars.

Host Seth MacFarlane promised at one point that the cast of Prometheus, my pick for worst movie of last year, would be up to explain “what the hell was going on there”. I watched the entire telecast, and was disappointed to find out that MacFarlane may have in fact have been joking. I was hoping they would just break down after attempting to explain it and start apologizing. No such luck.

I guess some other stuff happened too. Should probably write about that.

crossie’s best current guesses

Well, there goes the streak

And what a way to go; my hands-down favorite nominee loses in an upset to my hands-down least-favorite nominee. I guess I should say I got a gut feeling things were going south for my predictions of Wreck-It Ralph winning over Brave in the last minute. However, I had the most emotional baggage with these two titles, so I had no idea if I had a “gut feeling,” was just being needlessly pessimistic, or had a bad case of acid indigestion.

Well, let’s look at the silver linings. At least the furriest option won. Oh, and Brenda Chapman set two important firsts with her win; she became the first woman to win an Oscar in the category, and she became the first Oscar winner to win for a film she was in-everything-but-name fired from the set of, a first in any category! Way to go Brenda! Chapman and her co-director Mark Andrews were notably not seated anywhere near each other; and while Andrews thanked John Lasseter, Chapman … well, didn’t. It really wasn’t as awkward as I’m making it sound (if Chapman bears a grudge, it isn’t with Andrews), but if you know the sordid backstory for the making of the movie, it was noticeable.

I’m not going to say it was a snub of Wreck-It Ralph or Disney, though Disney’s home studio’s lack of wins in the category is becoming something of a running gag. “Snub” implies ill will towards Rich Moore’s movie, so “upset” is probably a better word. Of course, now that the cat is out of the bag, it seems ridiculously obvious why Brave took the award; in fact, I kind of did know it all along, didn’t I? Pro-Pixar bias probably wasn’t even the culprit (or the only culprit, anyway). It’s actually a lot like The King’s Speech over The Social Network; Brave was always going to win because it’s the type of movie the Academy likes. The Academy prefers kings and princesses to Facebook and video games. Duh.

So, how’d Seth MacFarlane do as host?

Normally, a review of the Oscars host would be ridiculously stupid in a furry movie column, but this year, the host is best known for his cartoon series featuring a talking dog and his recent movie featuring a talking teddy bear. He’s about as close to a furry host as we’re likely ever to get.

I thought he was a lot of fun, myself. A lot of his jokes got the kind of “gasp, giggle, golf clap” reaction from the audience that said maybe the audience wasn’t always digging his jabs at them. One of his first jokes, about how the CIA operation in eventual Best Picture winner Argo (unfortunately not based on the Ursa Major-nominated short story) was so secret, the Director’s branch still doesn’t know who directed the movie, got the above reaction. I laughed. He even partially got away with a Lincoln assassination joke; the audience didn’t really dig the “actor who best got into the mind of Lincoln” punchline, but the following “150 years and it’s still too soon” apology brought them back to his side.

Ted himself was a presenter, along with his costar Mark Wahlberg. They presented the pair of Sound awards, because that makes sense. Luckily, Ted took Mixing, which went first, and Wahlberg took Editing, which ended, in the surprise of the night, in an honest to God tie! Wahlberg had to assure the audience it was “no BS.” I still don’t know how they got Ted to appear; I’m assuming the Academy audience watched on a screen while Mark was actually off by himself, but they edited it together so that, for the home audience, it was pretty smooth. Especially given the completely unscripted surprise tie.

So what’s up with the Annies?

You know what? I don’t know. The voters appear to be the only group in America who hate Pixar more than this guy.

Final thoughts

Well, I got it wrong; thankfully, the Best Animated Feature race was an early award, so I got that out of the way early and could then just enjoy the show – which I did, thoroughly. Loved the Bond tribute. It was a fun year, both in my limited neck of the woods, and in the Best Picture race. Overall, I went 15.5 to 9.5, counting the tie. Not too bad, if you forget that one of the 9.5 is the only one I was supposed to get right.

I think I’ll end with a quote from Ben Affleck’s really quite excellent Best Picture acceptance speech:

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life. All that matters is that you gotta get back up.

Amen to that. See you next month! [Or later this month; the editor was slacking.]