2013 Post-Oscar Reactions & The Bond Tribute

Before I get into talking about that big James Bond 50th Anniversary Tribute that the Oscars put on – that’s what I was excited for – let’s get into some of my reactions of the show.

I did some Oscar predictions and did alright with them. In the major categories I almost got them all right. Christoph Waltz winning Best Supporting Actor I got wrong, but it was a nice surprise. The Screenplay awards I was completely off.

Most of the time when I do my Oscar guesses it’s either based on what I read or just flipping a coin. I would never have guessed Les Miserables would win a hair and makeup award. I mean, isn’t everyone in the movie covered in dirt with their heads shaved?

Argo won its Best Picture Oscar and Ben Affleck didn’t get his directing one – which he was not nominated for. And people just don’t want to let that go.

I’m wondering if the Academy is going to try to fix this. You know how everyone felt The Dark Knight got snubbed acouple of years ago, so the Academy expanded the Best Picture nominees to ten to allow more chances of mainstream films to eek in.

Perhaps now they’ll make it mandatory for all Best Picture nominees to have their directors nominated too. Maybe make it a package deal. If I were them I would keep it as it is and try to make this kind of thing happen more often. It’s the the one thing that everyone was talking about and is part of the fun of this goofy awards show.

The categories Skyfall was nominated in I did pretty good – four out of five right. The fact Skyfall was able to tie with Zero Dark Thirty to win the Sound Editing award I think surprised everyone. Along with Adele’s Best Song win for the title song, Skyfall walked away with two Oscars. So Bond did better than ever at the Academy Awards.

The big reason I was tuning in to watch the Oscars. The thing that really got me excited this year was their promise of having a Bond tribute during the show to honor the series’ 50th anniversary. As you probably know the rumor was the Academy Awards were going to bring all six Bond actors together on stage. That would have been a real thrill to see for any Bond fan. Alas, that didn’t happen. I’ve read that Connery and Brosnan were the ones who refused to take part in this idea. I have no idea if that’s true or not.

So the Oscars went with Plan B.

The Bond Tribute began and immediately my heart sank when Halle Berry strolled out on stage.

The Bond series has had a lot of missteps through its fifty year history. There are countless things that have irked fans. Flat rear screen projections. Unconvincing CGI waves. Studios going bankrupt. Charles K. Feldman. Awkward dubbing. Kevin McClory. Bond in space. Halle Berry.

I understand why they had Berry be there that night. First, the Oscars are an American program, so they need an American actress. They have viewers to please and these viewers like to see movie stars. Like it or not Halle Berry is a big American movie star. Come on folks, who didn’t love her in Gothika and New Years Eve! Plus, she’s an Oscar winner. So that right there makes an extremely convenient connection between the popular English spy series and this pompous American award show.

On top of that, you have Halle show up and all those entertainment magazines and gossip shows will be talking about what she was wearing and all that garbage.

But as a Bond fan I couldn’t help but shake my head when I saw her stroll up to the center of the stage. If you’ve seen my Bond reviews, particularly my Die Another Day review – well, maybe it was more like a tirade – you know I think Halle is the worst Bond girl ever.

So having her actually intro this tribute made it feel like a slap in the face to me. I would have preferred anyone else to have done this thing! Heck, why not get Judi Dench to do it! She’s an Oscar winner, she’s been involved in the Bond series since 1995 and now after Skyfall her Bond work is done! Crap I would have even taken Tanya Roberts to do this over Halle! At least she was in Beastmaster.

Seeing Halle be the only actor associated with the fifty years of Bond on this night also helped reignite my frustration with her association with 007. It pains me to have to accept she’s always going to be a part of the 007 franchise.

All the admiration and love Halle gets bestowed upon her adds more fuel to my irritated fire. I will never understand why she’s so adored. Yeah, she’s hot, but there are plenty of hot looking actresses around. I was more captivated checking out Stacey Keibler on the red carpet. I would be more psyched to watch her in some cheesy B-Movie than Halle in these big mainstream flicks she gets somehow.

By the way I loved the introduction that host Seth MacFarlane gave her when he said she was “his favorite Bond Girl ever”. Really? The guy lost major points with me with that statement.

This is something that has confused the hell out of me since Halle showed up in Die Another Day back in 2002. People immediately loved her casting as a Bond Girl. They loved her Ursula Andress homage. They loved that she might have gotten her own spinoff film.

WHY????

I’ll never understand where all this affection comes from for not only Halle, but especially her character of Jinx. Absolutely terrible, paper-thin, uninteresting character whose only noteworthy thing about her was the fact that Halle Berry was playing the role – and quite badly I might add.

But I guess that’s enough for most moviegoers. Kind of funny how Halle helped ruin Bond’s 40th anniversary and returned to ruin his 50th. I still suspect the people who say Halle Berry is their favorite Bond Girl never actually watched Die Another Day.

Whoope she’s a Bond girl who won an Oscar. Like that’s supposed to give her some credibility. Let’s be honest – she can’t act worth a crap. Have you seen her work since she won that Oscar? She’s really made some brave and challenging choices huh? It’s only February 2013 and already she has appeared in what I’ve heard is almost guaranteed to be the worst film of the year Movie 43. Let her focus on her important acting work and leave my James Bond alone!

And why are they letting Jennifer Aniston in the building???

I’m always left wondering what kind of standards the Academy Awards actually has? They feature people who do abysmal work. It’s crap that isn’t furthering the art of film by a long shot. Or do they have a different opinion on the Bounty Hunter than everyone else?

Everyone does some stinkers now and then, but I’m talking about their entire careers consist of just going from one horrible movie after another. It’s really goofy seeing people at the Oscars whose names get more attention at the Razzie’s! They’re lucky if their flicks are forgotten a week later. That’s actually gauged as more of a success than its stink lingering until the end of the year.

Maybe I’m being hyper-critical, but if I was in charge of these awards I would crack down on who would be attending my show that is meant to honor the best the film industry has to offer. I understand the Oscars want to have popular stars there to attract attention and viewers, but give these people something else to do that is a bit more honest with their roles in the Hollywood Machine. Let them stay outside and parade on the red carpet in their dresses and wave to the fans for the entire show. Maybe have Aniston escort people to their seats, don’t have her be a presenter.

In fact, I would try to recapture what the importance of receiving an Oscar truly means by holding Oscar winners to a higher standard for the rest of their careers! They got the bald, gold guy – well, now there are expectations attached to having him. They start to doing easy, terrible paycheck movies and they have their Oscar revoked. I would have forced Halle to turn hers in on the opening day of Catwoman.

Wow. I could go on with this line of ranting, but let’s get on with the Bond montage.

It sucked.

So Jinx says that in keeping with tonight’s theme, they would be saluting the music of the Bond series.

This was news to me. This wasn’t what the producers had said when they were hyping this Bond Tribute. The music? They said this was going to be a “unique and exciting” tribute.

This also struck me as pretty odd when I started to think about it. The whole theme of the evening was meant to honor musicals and music in films. However, they didn’t even have an orchestra in the building. They were acouple of blocks away in the Tower Records building. Did that strike anyone else as a little odd?

Well, I will say it is unique to honor a film series and disregard the films themselves. I gotta hand it to them that approach is certainly ‘unique’. So the actual movies were not at the forefront of this honorary tribute and the music of Bond was the focus. This is one of the reasons I don’t watch the Oscars anymore – everything about them really aggravates me.

This salute to the music apparently only covered the James Bond theme and Live and Let Die – not counting Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger. So three songs were all that warranted inclusion out of the fifty years of films. What I found particularly odd was they didn’t even squeeze in some of the Bond songs that were nominated for Oscars in the past. No For Your Eyes Only. No Nobody Does It Better. Although that song I believe was played later during the night over someone’s intro or when they were going to a commercial or something.

I thought the montage was pretty lousy. We got plenty of shots of Connery and Craig. Roger Moore was barely in it for some reason. Although they were sure to include plenty of shots of Halle throughout it. Damn, they even used that awful shot of her diving off the cliff. That’s the clip I use for joke purposes!

The montage was very disappointing. It was like an advert for a Bond DVD collection or something. As some of my fellow Bond-fans had remarked after watching it, you could see much better Bond montages on Youtube.

The Oscars did hold true to their word and paid tribute to the Bond series in music. Bassey and Adele’s performances overshadowed any of the Bond actors or films. I think Bassey was very good. Adele seemed stiff to me and the song sounded off to my ear for some reason.

So the big Oscar Bond Tribute was a complete bust. The consolation of the night was Skyfall being the most successful Bond film at the Oscars ever. Getting five nominations – more than any other Bond film and winning in two categories. Goldfinger had won for the Best Sound Effects Editing and Thunderball won for Best Visual Effects. Since then no Oscar wins for 007. Until last night.

This “unique and exciting’ Bond Oscar tribute was pretty disappointing. It really seemed like the Oscar producers just slapped that tribute together after they couldn’t get all the Bond actors together on stage. At least the Bond series won two Oscars though. Although personally I don’t place too much importance on that bald gold guy as everyone else apparently does.

Sheena Easton’s 1982 performance at the Oscars when For Your Eyes Only was nominated for Best Song. Check out how cheesy this number gets!