The 2021 Oscars Telecast Was Great! They're Always Great!

The Oscars just can't win. Two upsets in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories followed by the shock of presenting Best Picture earlier and pundits still claim that the 2021 Oscars telecast was long and boring. I'm not sure how that makes this year any different since "long and boring" is the perennial Oscars complaint. It might be my training in art/avant-garde cinema speaking here but I think the Oscars are always too short. They should run five hours minimum. And I'm being 100% serious. My favorite film of 2020, Cristi Puiu's magisterial Malmkrog, runs six minutes longer than last night's telecast (and that's with commercials!). As a veteran of Empire and Out 1 and La Flor and Oliveira's Amor de Perdição and Visconti's Ludwig (the latter two without potty breaks), etc., I can easily swallow 3.25 hours. 

So I'm not sympathetic to gripes about the lack of film clips (go watch them on YouTube!) or that everyone talked too long. Malmkrog is nothing but people jibber-jabbering for three-and-a-half hours. How often do we get an extended chunk of network time devoted to cinema? Pay attention! (Another bit of training that might help me in this endeavor - learning how to pay attention at cinema conferences like my beloved SCMS.) Or better yet, throw a party (which we can hopefully do in 2022) so that you can talk throughout and throw popcorn at the screen and make fun of the presenters, etc. Would that so much disdain could be heaped upon the Super Bowl which drones on almost as long and can make thirty seconds last an hour.

As for the complaint that the end of the ceremony deflated because Anthony Hopkins won and wasn't present to accept the award, that's just more art cinema for ya - a moment straight out of The American Friend or, if you will, "like the ending from a New Hollywood film from 1973" in Ashley Clark's contention screenshot below. In short, I loved it all - the train station (I hope some of the celebrities took advantage of Wetzel's Pretzels being open after the ceremony), the trivia contest, the longer times at the mic, Questlove's DJing, Riz Ahmed, always Riz Ahmed, etc. I just wish it were longer!