Associated Press
Michael Sonnenschein, ETP Staff |
Posted Monday February 26, 2007 at 03:51 PM
Despite media reviews ranging from bored-sounding to slamming, preliminary Nielsen figures put Oscar viewership up about two percent from last year.
You're probably Oscar-ed out, as are we. But we do have a few meta-media notes on the coverage.
- Weird that nobody is talking about the on-camera kiss between Melissa Etheridge and her wife Tammy Lynn Michaels as she got up to accept her Best Song award. (Well, almost nobody.) And also, calling her "my wife."
- Funniest and most of-the-moment bit: Ellen Degeneres asking Steven Spielberg to take a digital snapshot of her and Martin Scorsese for her MySpace page. Also, Gwyneth Paltrow mentioned YouTube. In case you needed any convincing that such sites are no longer fringey or subcultural.
- Two of the four Acting honors went to African-Americans — and it's no big whoop. When Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won in 2002 it was a huge deal - pretty far to have come in five years. Of course, had Eddie Murphy won it would have been seen as more significant. But still.
- The Dreamgirls best song shut-out. No disrespect to Etheridge, but "Listen" was the clear favorite and Dreamgirls was the really, really clear favorite. Even Melissa Etheridge seemed surprised. Nikki Finke chalked it up to some serious anti-Geffen sentiment in the Academy. We blame Hillary.
- Un-Spoiler Alert! Speaking of Finke, she says that some of the Oscar ceremony spoilers she revealed on her blog didn't happen because the producers made tweaks after she revealed them. To bad they didn't tweak 50 minutes off the running time while they were at it.
