2024 Oscars worst moments: Wes Anderson no-show, distracting In Memoriam …
Even an Academy Awards telecast as satisfying as the 96th Oscars has some disappointing moments. From missed speeches to missed opportunities to capitalize on its presenters and a misguided attempt to honor those we’ve lost, here are four of the misfires from the Sunday, Mar. 10 telecast.
Wes Anderson misses his first Oscar win
Yes, many folks were displeased about someone of Wes Anderson’s stature crashing the Best Live Action Short category, but the majority of Oscar voters deemed “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” the best of this year’s nominees. The acclaimed director has seven prior nominations for features “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Isle of Dogs” but had surprisingly never taken home a trophy, so it would have been joyous to see him ascend the Oscar stage, statuette in hand, and deliver a trademark idiosyncratic acceptance speech.
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A horribly distracting “In Memoriam”
Despite an absolutely beautiful rendition of “Time To Say Goodbye” performed by father-son duo Andrea Bocelli and Mateo Bocelli, the In Memoriam segment of the ceremony failed at its one and only task of honoring those we’ve recently lost. From distracting choreography that drew focus away from the screen, to awkward camera angles that made names very difficult to read, and the rapid-fire pace of some of the honorees names and images splayed across five different panels, it was near impossible to digest the information being presented, let alone acknowledge each individual’s passing. This segment, which is almost always a tear-jerker, was baffling and did a disservice to those who the Academy had sought to honor.
Bad banter from even the most capable presenters
Oscar producers made a shrewd decision to have most of the pairs of presenters hand out the trophies in multiple categories, cutting down on the amount of time needed for introductions and transitions. But even the most skilled of performers, even Oscar-winning ones, can’t always escape the bad banter that they’re often saddled with. Take Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy’s back-and-forth leading up to the trophies for Adapted and Original Screenplay, during which the confusion over Chip ’N Dale and Chippendales totally sputtered out. Even though the point of the joke was to stick to the script and acknowledge the indispensable role of writers before presenting the two screenwriting awards, it made for both wasted time and opportunity given the talent of the two actors on stage.
Lackluster Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor presentations
While the presentations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress were two of the best of the night, the ones for their male counterparts fell a bit flat in comparison. No disrespect to the 10 men who assembled to pay tribute to this year’s nominees — Mahershala Ali, Ke Huy Quan, Tim Robbins, Sam Rockwell and Christoph Waltz for Supporting Actor and Nicolas Cage, Brendan Fraser, Ben Kingsley, Matthew McConaughey and Forest Whitaker for Actor — but both presentations lacked the appropriate amount of gravitas. The first batch skewed too contemporary, leaving the essential element of Oscar history absent, while the second batch needed another commanding figure such as the two-time winning Tom Hanks, the retired Daniel Day-Lewis — who just recently made an appearance at the National Board of Review — or Denzel Washington. Although those three faces are very familiar to us awards watchers, they are indelible parts of Oscar history and they would had lent these segments the dramatic heft they required.
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