Are You Going to Watch The Oscars?
Would you consider watching with us?
If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter you’re probably thinking, “Hey, don’t they publish reviews on Thursday?” And, yes, we do. Most of the time. But because of a late screening, we won’t be posting them until Friday. So look for that, but while we’ve got your attention, we wanted to let you know that we’ll be hosting a live chat of the 94th Academy Awards. I’ll start a thread at 6:30 ET, when the red carpet ceremonies start, though I suspect it won’t be that active until a bit later. If you’re like me, you might need some help understanding where to find it. It’s simple (as I recently discovered): Just go to substack.com/chat and look for the logo of The Reveal. I’ll be there and Scott will be around when he can, as he’s doing real journalism for a widely read outlet that night.* We’re keeping this chat open to all subscribers, paid and unpaid, because we’d like to give free subscribers a chance to check out our commenting community. We hope to see you then (and we’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled reviews).
And, as always:
* It’s the New York Times.
As much as me have strong opinions about how Oscar telecast should be presented, me really not have patience to watch whole thing. Me just check internet couple of times that evening to see who won.
That being said, here are strong opinions about what they should do (many of which are things they have done, which worked, so naturally they stopped doing them.)
— First, and most obvious, get Kermit to host. How has that never happened? Frog has been at top of show business heap for 50 years, and is natural fit.
— Failing frog, get Conan. He know how to keep things breezy and currently has free time.
— Open show with catchiest nominated song. That year the opened with Justin Timberlake singing "Dance, Dance, Dance" was terrific.
— Do opening monologue and then keep banter to minimum. Just keep things moving.
— Stop treating "technical" awards like no one cares and stop making jokes about how no one watched arthouse films. This should be about celebrating movies, not being defensive about people caring about this stuff.
— Show the damn movies. Not long montage celebrating Old Racist Hollywood, or movies with chairs in them or whatever. Not wedding toast from presenters about why nominee was deserving. Just show clip from each movie that show us why that movie got nominated.
— One thing from recent years me enjoyed was having someone sing song over In Memoriam that related to someone who passed that year. Me not big Streisand fan, but having her sing "People" after Marvin Hamlish died was absolutely perfect. See, me not can just complain. Occasionally they get it right.
Oh we will be watching at our house. This is one of my favorite events of the year! We will have a ton of friends over, a great cocktail bar and a giant potluck where people have to bring a dish paired with one of the Best Picture nominees that we drew out of a hat (we did NOT include a few of the nominees, one in particular.) The Oscars are fun, inane, inspiring, and maddening, often in equal measure. But it's also the best opportunity all year to convince someone to watch a movie like PAST LIVES or ZONE OF INTEREST or MAY DECEMBER and that's a good thing.