The Oscars (2013 TV Special) User Reviews

Hilarious, Creative and what I expected from Seth

[blown-57 · 8/10 · 25 February 2013]

OK lets get this straight. Seth McFarlane creator of "Family Guy" one of the best animations of this generation (referring to teens) "Family Guy" is one of the most offensive shows displayed on T.v the show is aimed towards young adults and teenagers. So what did people expect for Mr McFarlane. He created "family guy" and "ted" both are racist, sexist and very very offensive but they are the most funniest films/shows I have ever seen.

To be honest I expected Seth to be more offensive, he is one of the most talented artists in the world. He is a comedian, he sings and he can voice pretty much anything.

Now I am getting quite angry at the people who are going out of their way and wasting their time on trying to get everybody to hate seth for his offensive humor. It was not even that bad, that's todays comedy so get used to it. The "Oscars" producers needed more viewers so they grabbed Seth which is a big hit to the young community (pretty much the only reason why I watched it) The song "We saw your boobs" was even told before hand that it will be offensive but I did love the sock puppet part. So seriously just relax and enjoy his offensive humor because that is what todays comedy is about.

This years Oscars was brilliant I loved watching the whole thing. From Adele to Jennifer Lawrence falling it was all good. The only thing I didn't like was the variety of nominees in total there were about 10 movies that were nominated. The ceremony is about giving awards and listening to speeches, that does not attract viewers. Put one of the funniest guys in there as host and a few musicals and you have a hit. Thank you

A Wonderful Experience Except The Boob Song!

[nairtejas · 8/10 · 12 March 2013]

I was totally offended by that song with contrary to my sex, but I personally think it was an embarrassing thing to do at one of the most formal events in the world.

But cut that song out, Seth Macfarlane's humorous performance is appreciable. Only thing, he tried and tried very hard to make it a comic emcee rather a formal one, if we don;t look at his designer suit. Awards were given out beautifully of which I loved Meryl Streep's sharp result, Joaquin Phoenix's broody gesture about his nomination & Hugh Jackman's chivalrous gesticulation at Jennifer Lawrence's fall. Every other presenter did his/her job wonderfully not to mention the red carpet hosts - all looked bright and were amazing.

Music was good, and three times the warning melody rung which I hope is not a spoiler. Some award winners were, of course, not worthy but Academy is always like that. I really am sad because of Django's less nominations but happier at the same time for Life Of Pi's 4 wins. Bravo!

2012 had some of the greatest performances in art and I am glad, I watched the premier of its award give-away! Watch it if you enjoy Oscars, watch this if you like slapstick & Seth Macfarlane!

Language: No f bombs | Formal quotient: Low | Oscar fever: High

Show entertained; winners, not so much

[cricket30 · 7/10 · 25 February 2013]

Seth McFarland did better than Dave Letterman as Oscar host (no Uma-Oprah jokes), which appeared to be his main goal. Unlike Letterman, whose claim to cinematic fame is a forgettable appearance in the terrible movie CABIN BOY, McFarland was actually IN THE RUNNING for an Oscar this year (okay, it was in the best song category, and not nearly as funny as his first song for the Oscars Show, and like the song from the documentary CHASING ICE--seen by a total of eight people in America (everyone else is still driving or riding in glacier-killing vehicles)--Seth's song from TED lost). In fact, the cartoon BRAVE picked up the ONLY Oscar won by a flick with FEWER THAN FOUR NOMINATIONS among the non-documentary and\or shorts categories (and voters did not have any choice in animation, as each of the five nominated cartoons won only that single nod). What this proves to me is that a sizable percentage of Oscar voters are like my mom--too old to have the attention span to watch feature movies all the way through. Further, if you spend your career in a meat packing plant, you don't necessarily develop a love for hamburger, and their votes prove most of these guild members DON'T EVEN LIKE MOVIES, and cannot be bothered to watch more that a half dozen per year. Sure, they like to get dressed up once a year for a free night out at the Oscars, but that doesn't change the fact that by and large they are neither film buffs nor film fans. That's why the least little gimmick (a cute dog in THE ARTIST last year; a perceived snub for Ben Affleck as best director this year) changes THEIR reality from the rest of us (Ben's "snub" jumped ARGO ahead of AT LEAST 4 more deserving features: LINCOLN, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, LIFE OF PI, and LES MISERABLEs--not to mention the superior thriller ZERO DARK THIRTY, which got a slightly bigger demerit for misinformation than ARGO itself). I wrote out a list of 60 movies--2012 nationwide theatrical releases that each deserved consideration in one or more categories--that were totally ignored in the nominating process, which consists of the Academy's top five buzzword flicks for the "left wing" and top five pictures for "right-wingers" monopolizing all available nominations, since these 10 films ARE THE ONLY ONES to which about 60% of the sexa-, septa-, octo- and nonagenarians have been exposed. (Further, the specialty categories which require all voters to provide proof they have seen EACH category nominee probably are decided by fewer than 100 overall votes!) Maybe for next year's Oscars they could trim things down to just ONE award for best picture, with 55% of the vote tabulated by AMER!CAN IDOL or major league sports all-star game general public voting standards, then run an opening monologue and the dead people tribute and call it a night (so that the First Lady isn't kept up past her Eastern Standard Time nightie-night hour).

My Awards For The 85th Annual Academy Awards !

[elshikh4 · 25 February 2013]

_The Most Offensive: Seth MacFarlane's song. It crossed the line as shocking, embarrassing and unfunny!

_The Most Silly: Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy. Whatever they were saying, they said it in the most ridiculous way ever!

_The Most Rude: Of course, interrupting the speeches of some "poor" winners, like the winners of the best special effects, with the theme of Jaws, while giving all the time for Anne Hathaway to tell the names of half of the earth's population, and saying the names twice! Well, it made me imagine a slasher movie where the Academy members are attacked one by one with another shark, made - naturally - by the winners who didn't have any time to speak in the Oscars!

_The Most Surprising: Shirley Bassey performing "Goldfinger", after nearly 50 years of singing it for the first time. How powerful and glamorous. In the age of 76, she proved that she still HAS IT!

_The Most Expressive: The stage while Barbra Streisand was performing "The Way We Were" in the memory of the late Marvin Hamlisch. Its sight of endless sad candles moved me indeed.

_The Most Exhausted: Renée Zellweger. She looked like 1) having a really ugly flu. Or 2): a Renée Zellweger look-alike. Or 3) a Renée Zellweger look-alike who has a really ugly flu!

_The Worst Performance: "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" by Norah Jones. I don't know why, but there was something wrong about the music, the sound, Jones's voice, or all of the above!

_The Worst Look: Jack Nicholson's. Sorry, but he seemed like the circus clown!

_The Worst Hairdo: Michelle Obama's, no arguments!

_The Most Dead: Kristen Stewart while presenting one of the awards. Dear, please care a little. You're not in front of the camera of a movie to look as lifeless as this!

_The Most Smart: Meryl Streep while saying the winner of the Best Actor in a Leading Role right after reading the nominees. She's maybe the best one to know the slowness and the burden of moments like opening the envelope, then reading the name. Sure she experienced that a lot!

_The Most Truthful Speech: Ben Affleck's. Especially the part of "It doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life, because that's gonna happen, all what matters is that you're gonna get up."

_The Most Not Bad: Seth MacFarlane as the show's presenter. Between being offensive and mild; he must be only "not bad"!

All in all, with many songs along the way, it seemed like a concert in honor of the Oscars. Well, a nice musical night then.

3.5 Stars out of 5 Stars

[ajneeago96 · 7/10 · 1 May 2021]

Seth MacFarlene was definitely the best host the Academy Awards had in the years I've been watching. Everything about him is funny and entertaining. The nominations were also great, most notably Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook, and the masterpiece that is The Master.

A sang and dance musical, anyway Jack's back and Ben proves if you get knocked down get back up!

[blanbrn · 8/10 · 6 March 2013]

"The 85th Academy Awards" wasn't maybe the best one in recent memory, still the list of films up for awards made it one of the best years for movies. And host Seth MacFarlane gave his best try though many found him sexist with his boob joke still he was funny enough with his wit and humor to make the show a joy to watch. Seth even cracked fun at himself. Plus it was nice to see an appearance from his little friend Ted! The show though did have a little to much music in it for my taste anyway most awards went as expected. In a surprise the best supporting actor award going to Christoph Waltz proves that the academy must respect him a lot especially when he beats out legendary giants like Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And when the best director nod went to Ang Lee over the better known Steven it proves the academy likes visual work and graphics over historical storytelling. In no surprise Daniel Day Lewis's transformation of Abe brought him his third best actor win. The best actress field proved that the direct and sassy Jennifer Lawrence can win and still trip and recover she was just such a delight in "Silver Linings Playbook", Jen has a bright future. Rightfully so Ben Affleck's "Argo" won best picture a film that made Hollywood look good plus it was based on an actual revealed mission. And Ben said it right you get knocked down, but you get back up! Academy voters take that for the best director nomination snub! And so pleasing to see was my man the greatest actor of all time Jack Nicholson return to the Oscars to present the best picture(that was Jack's first Oscar appearance in four years!)Only sadly his thunder of words was stolen by Michelle Obama! Overall an okay Oscars with awards rightfully going to deserving people.

2 huge failures kept it from being a great awards show

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 8 August 2017]

Here we have the 2013 Academy Awards, the biggest night in film and this occasion here made it close to the 3-hour mark and will have its 5th anniversary next year. It was nominated for no less than 9 Emmys, but came short every time. The host is Seth MacFarlane from Family Guy and while I find him rather unlikable, I like his trademark show and his material that night wasn't bad either. Some funny moments here and there. Also thumbs-up for his pretty traditional music moments at the very beginning and end. He risked something and it was decent, even if not all worked out nicely. I think the best way to describe him is as a poor man's Ricky Gervais. Now about the show itself: Let me refer back to the title of my review. The first failure was Jennifer Lawrence's win, regardless of if she was lead or supporting. It may not be as undeserving as the nominations for her other David O. Russell works, but still pretty horrible. She was the front runner, but the late Riva and Jessica Chastain were considered possible upsets and would have been much more deserving. These two were also much more deserving. But it is okay. Almost five years later, people finally manage to see how little range Lawrence has. The second major failure was the random liberal feel-good inclusion of Michelle Obama announcing Best Picture. Truly cringeworthy stuff there.

But there were also many good moments. I would have preferred Les Mis or Amour to win Best Picture, but these got other wins at least to make up for it and Argo is a really impressive work. That one and Zero Dark Thirty are very fine too. And it's also fine in the dubious omission of Ben Affleck in the Best Director category as he was stomping his category at basically all other awards shows that year. This basically started the new tendency of 4 Best Picture / Director splits in the last 5 years. Oh yeah and Argo's triumph was predictable, even if the film was not the one with most nominations or wins eventually. Can't be mad at Ang Lee winning though, such a likable guy and same applies to Daniel Day-Lewis, even if we learned from his speech that comedy just isn't his thing. We finally get another film with him this year, another PTA collab that makes me curious. PTA by the way directed Joaquin Phoenix' turn that year that many said was the only one on par with DDL. In my opinion, Trintignant should have won, but his omission is as much of a bad joke as Affleck's. But the latter's win was as safe as Hathaway's. Supporting Actor was wide open though. Arkin was the only one without hope at winning and all 5 were previous Oscar winners. Actually, this category would have been the only one where I could have accepted a win for SLP. TLJ was probably the slight front runner, but Waltz went 2 for 2 for his works with Tarantino. I personally like his first win better. Also not really that big on Tarantino's win, but his speech was great and really the only memorable/entertaining speech (besides Heslov's probably) from that Oscar night.

The Oscars celebrated music(als) in 2013, but neither Streisand, nor Chicago nor Dreamgirls nor Bassey really made an impact on me and the latter really disappoints me as I totally adore Bond. Tom Jones at the BAFTAs was way superior. But the one musical moment I really loved was the Les Mis gathering, probably because I enjoy the film that much. Back to Bond, I remember liking the Adele song a lot more back then than I do today. This may also have to do with how she got her huge moment on stage, but 2 other nominees did not at all. I mean come on, even Ted did and as a huge Norah Jones fan (maybe because of MacFarlane?) I must still say nothing made this one any better than the song from Life of Pi or "Chasing Ice", by far the most inspired song nominee and it would have been a joy to see J.Ralph and ScarJo together on stage. Truly a missed opportunity. But I like Skyfall (the film) a lot, so I'll take it, just like the tie in the Sound category that added another to Skyfall and made sure ZDT did not go home empty-handed. That Swedish guy really has a good record now. Finally great winner on Best Animated Short, not so good for live action short. Yet to see the winners for Best Animated Feature and both documentaries, so no comment on these. Overall a good award show with deserved winners, but also with 2-3 really bad moments though that keep me from stating it to be among the best recent Oscar shows, even if it's a close battle between this one and The Artist for my favorite Best Picture winner of the 2010s. A cautious thumbs-up.

Why has it gotten to the point where I rarely see any nominees?

[lee_eisenberg · 25 February 2013]

OK, of all nominees, I had only seen "The Master", "Frankenweenie", "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained". I'm glad that the latter two won what they did, while I thought that the former two got robbed.

That said, I liked Seth MacFarlane's performance. Yes, his song about actresses' boobs was strange, but it was still kinda funny (although he forgot to mention Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine" and Susan Sarandon in "Joe"). As for his comment that Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart collectively play everything that the Christian right says is wrong with Hollywood, I think that it would have been more accurate if one of them had played a LGBT character (and does anyone know why Kristen Stewart was limping?). Probably the highlight of the ceremony was Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger" (although I think that Ursula Andress should have introduced her).

Last year, the wins by the French-made "Artist" and the France-themed "Hugo" must have really angered the right wing; this year, the cast of "Les Miserables" (which seems to represent all of France) singing one of the songs must have done so equally.

As for the In Memoriam sequence, I guess that Andy Griffith and Larry Hagman didn't appear since they're more known for their TV work.

Anyway, good show.

85th Oscars- Do without first half-hour ***

[edwagreen · 25 February 2013]

I am surprised that all the ladies aren't protesting the first half-hour of the telecast. When Seth MacFarlane, the host, sang about seeing the boobs of women, this was way out of line and quite offensive to say the least.

That being said, the show did get better as the night went on, but nevertheless, it was too long.

The in memoriam sequence showed the late Celeste Holm in a scene from "All About Eve," (1950). While Miss Holm was nominated in the supporting category and lost, she did win 3 years earlier in the 1947 winner-"Gentleman's Agreement."

No one picture dominated and the evening had to be a terrible disappointment for "Lincoln." The latter only garnered 2 awards, including the expected one for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.

It was great seeing the tribute to movie musicals. Sadly missing was Singin' in the Rain which many view as one of the best musical films ever made. Nice hearing all those musical scores.

The evening was a rousing success for "Life of Pi," with Ang Li beating out Steven Spielberg ("Lincoln") for best director.