The 72nd Annual Academy Award Broadcast
Once the Oscar telecast finally started, things got much better. After the traditional clips of stars and others arriving, Academy President Robert Rehme did his typical introduction, followed by a hilarious and extremely innovative opening film of Billy Crystal being inserted into classic films from the past, seamlessly becoming a part of the action films like The Godfather, The Exorcist, The Graduate, Casablanca, and others, most hilariously in the scene from Psycho but instead Kevin Spacey entered the shower as his Lester Burnham character.
Crystal was then carried on stage by an LAPD officer, the first in a series of ongoing jokes about the missing Oscars and missing ballots that plagued the Oscar season. Crystal was right back in form as Oscar's premier master of ceremonies.
The telecast ran extremely smoothly, which ended up making for a polished and classy show, but unfortunately, did not provide as many memorable moments as some Oscar telecasts, but there were a few.
First of all, two parts of the show that they could have dropped to save time were two film clip packages ... one, introduced by Haley Joel Osment, was a clip of kids in the movies, but the other one was just strange ... a film clip showing the entire history of the world as documented in the movies. Interesting idea, but to save time that could have been dropped. These were the most memorable parts of Sunday night's Oscars ...
* The aforementioned introduction clip of Billy Crystal in classic movies from the past
* Michael Caine's acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor was one of the best speeches in recent times, as he was extremely gracious and genuinely moved by his second Oscar ... he took time to point out each of the other Supporting Acting nominees, and even joked with Tom Cruise that his price would have gone down immediately had he won the award, saying "Do you have any idea what supporting actors get paid?"
* The musical number revisiting some of the best Oscar nominated and Oscar winning movie music from the past ... although it did take up a good deal of time, there were a lot of memorable songs performed
* Billy Crystal's segment on "What are they thinking?" providing some of the best laughs of the evening providing his own commentary on what the stars are thinking as their picture flashed up on the
Latest Articles