The Four Best Moments Of This Year's Oscars

I was really looking forward to seeing this year's Academy Awards telecast.  I am a big fan of both James Franco and Anne Hathaway, and I was curious to see how they would handle themselves as Oscar hosts.  Sadly, I wasn't impressed.  It doesn't appear that many were.  I don't think it's right to fault Franco and Hathaway necessarily.  They had writers.  It wasn't all ad lib.  Heck, they had a hologram of Bob Hope introduce Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.

In my opinion, this year's ceremony did have a couple of high points.  First of all, Christian Bale is a nice guy.  Who knew?  And get this....he's British!  I don't think anyone has caught him on camera using his actual speaking voice since 1987's 'Empire of the Sun'.  I don't know why it came as such a shock, like I was expecting him to give his Best Supporting Actor acceptance speech in his Batman voice, or with a Boston accent, but it was unusual to see Christian Bale as, well, Christian Bale.  And it sounds like he's a caring dad too:

Best speech of the night.  I got goosebumps again watching it as I was posting it on the page.  Well done, Christian.

Second highlight of the evening, and one that I have personally been waiting for for more than twenty years:  Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails wins an Academy Award.  The best part is that the award was not for Best Original Song.  So his Oscar legacy is not going to be with the likes of a bunch of singing mermaids and lions in Disney films, or that god awful 'Titanic' song.  Reznor won the Oscar Best Original Score for 'The Social Network'.  He beat out nine time Academy Award nominee, and this year's favorite, Hans Zimmer, and his work for the film 'Inception'.  If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend hearing, downloading, or purchasing the scores to both 'The Social Network' and 'Inception'.  They are both very unique pieces of work for film scores, and not your standard "over the top symphony" types of works.  Inception's score is, at times, unusually complex, and The Social Network's is dramatic and very subtle at times, while holding on to Reznor's industrial roots.  In 1989, when I first heard 'Pretty Hate Machine', I knew that Reznor would have a long, celebrated future in the music industry.  I never would have guessed that he would have been winning Oscars for film scores.  And, let me just say, the man looks pretty damn good in a tuxedo.  Am I right?

Yeah, that's his wife with him.  Her name is Mariqueen Maandig.  Some guys have all the luck.

The best parts of the evening, though, didn't happen during the telecast.  If you were watching the Oscars on ABC, you probably saw the first one a dozen times.  Unless you were actually sitting at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday night, you probably didn't even know the second event even take place.  ABC ran a commercial for their Wednesday night comedy 'Modern Family'.  I personally don't watch the show, though I know the premise. 

 The really attractive Latin woman is the dad's new wife.  She has a son that is about 9 or 10 years old, from a previous relationship.  Then you have the siblings in the family, which consist of this woman whose husband thinks he's cool, but is seriously out of touch, and her brother, who is gay, and has an adorable chubby husband.  They've recently adopted a little girl from China I think.  Based upon the commercial, the brother and his husband take Oscar night charades a little too seriously.  They're dressed up in tuxedos.  Between the Academy Awards and watching it on Youtube, I have probably seen this promo 20 times.  I still crack up every time I see it:

The best moment of the Oscars, that you probably have not seen, happened after the cameras were turned off Sunday night.  It was a musical performance from the choir of Staten Island, New York's, PS22.  They have been the darlings of Youtube for years.  Choir director Gregg Breinberg, started having the school's fifth grade students sing popular songs during choir practice since 2000.  Over the last 11 years, the students have garnered the attention of countless celebrities and musicians, as well as having nearly 30 million views on their Youtube page.  Sunday night, Oprah Winfrey invited them to sing Katy Perry's 'Firework', as well as a couple of other songs, for those in attendance after the telecast.  Unbeknownst to the children, a special guest was waiting backstage.  Take a look:

Right before the first chorus, Katy's voice comes in over the speakers, and you can start to see the confusion amongst the kids' faces.  Then the crowd starts to cheer, and everyone stops singing for a few seconds.  They're all turned around and in shock.  It takes them a moment to regain their composure, but as you saw, they kicked it up by the power of 10.  What a wonderful video.  Oprah is even teary eyed at the end of it.  Hell, I'm crying at the end of it.

All in all, it was one hell of a night.