MY TWO CENTS, TOON BEAT

Everyone Lost At The Oscars

Well, the Maggie Simpson short lost in its bid for an Academy Award, and the world was robbed of the opportunity to see director David Silverman’s majestic beard. Here’s a photopic of Silverman, Matt Groening, and writer Michael Price looking dapper on the red carpet (apparently Silverman and Groening didn’t get the memo to wear this Maggie button):


While I didn’t see them in the audience, I’ve no doubt they were better behaved than the people who did win, one of whom got kicked out for throwing paper airplanes. How rude! Everyone knows the Oscars aren’t supposed to be fun.

Likewise, Simpsons veteran Rich Moore’s film, Wreck-It Ralph (co-written with fellow Simpsons veteran Jim Reardon), lost out in the Animated Feature category to corporate sibling Brave. In this reporter’s humble opinion, it probably would have been Brave-er (see what I did there?) to pick something not made by Disney, like ParaNorman or The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, but whatever. It was nice to see Brenda Chapman, Pixar’s “token female” who got kicked off her own film, accepting her Oscar, though.

Finally, the jury is still out on Simpsons creator Seth MacFarlane’s performance as host, but it’s not looking kind: influential Tinseltown scoopqueen Nikki Finke hath proclaimed him The Worst Oscar Host Ever. I’m not sure if I’d go that far (there’s about 80 or so Oscar ceremonies I haven’t seen), but yeah, he was pretty terrible. There was that incredibly self-indulgent opening, the sophomoric sexism peppered throughout, not to mention that embarrassing Ted thing. I’ll grant, however, it was kinda cool that the Oscars host was an animator, and it was a pleasure to see social media make fun of him in real time (here’s my favorite Twitter jokes about him). The way I see it, there’s two Seth MacFarlanes: there’s the gosh darn gee whiz good-natured musical lover who wants to sing like Sinatra and yearns for the Hollywood of old, and then there’s the frat bro who makes Jew jokes in the guise of a horny teddy bear. Watching him try to straddle both sides last night made for a weird psychodrama. At least he has his millions of dollars to console him.

This concludes IN THE NEWS’s first and probably last wall-to-wall coverage of the Academy Awards.