So the Oscars. Did I just miss their press release warning that they were going to inject off-off-Broadway wacky juice into the show? Because after being numbed into catatonia by years of Debbie Allen, Debbie Allen manques, and Gil Coates’ Hollywood-snake-eating-its-tail directing, a simple heads up that they were going all avant garde would’ve been nice.
Never mind that both Will Ferrell’s weird musical number and Tom Hanks’ speech made reference to alcoholism. Plus there was Ellen’s rolling papers joke at the end. That’s mainstream.
What threw me–after the very existence of the non-relevant Ferrell song, that is–was that choir of sound effects people. Cool, sure, but WTF? Their multi-channel video backdrop made me think they were doing a live cover version of Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet.
Obviously the biggest Marclay cover version was that iPhone commercial, though. I’d say I hope he got royalties, but then, I wonder how much he paid to license those clips. Exactly. The proper course of action would have been for Apple’s agency to hire Marclay to do the commercial. Or actually, to do other commercials.
And speaking of commercials, did anyone else think of that VW shadow hands commercial during the Pilobolus numbers? Also, Pilobolus???
update: [d’oh, I see kottke‘s already got people working on the Marclay iPhone thing.]
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the making of, by greg allen