I caught about three minutes of The Oscars in online clips. The "In Memoriam" reel was probably quite good if you'd graduated from the Evelyn Wood Academy of Speed-Reading.
Actually, I caught the whole thing on my TiVo but didn't watch any of it there…but I may. A lady friend asked that I record it in case she wants to watch it in Frequent Fast-Forwarding mode one of these days. I doubt we will. I not only hadn't seen any of the nominated movies, I hadn't even heard of most of them. If we do watch, we'll get through the thing in about the time they allotted for the "In Memoriam" reel.
Scanning the web this morn, I see a few folks who loved the ceremony but most seem to have thought it was abysmal…and most of them seem to have forgotten that that's the normal morning-after-the-Oscars consensus. It's always a few people loving it but a lot of people saying it was the worst Academy Awards show ever, which is what they said about last year's and the one before and the one before and the one before…
We live in a world where this year's Oscarcast is always the worst ever and we long for the good ol' days of previous Oscarcasts which we once called the worst ever.
Any minute now, the ratings — which have been widely-projected as the lowest ever — will be out. Assuming they live down to those projections, many reasons will be cited, most of them Pandemic-related. While those will all be valid, I hope someone remembers another possibility: That audiences are just getting sick of seeing people they consider grossly-overpaid and over-honored celebrating each other for the greatest achievement that any human being can possibly achieve — being involved with a memorable movie.