Academy Awards Host | Through the Shattered Lens

If you’ve been reading this site for the past few years then you know that my favorite time of the year is Oscar season. I love the Oscars.

Unlike a lot of online film commentators, I don’t them all that seriously. Again, if you’ve been reading this site for a while, then you know exactly how I feel about a certain self-important (and self-described) awards diva who is fond of saying things like, “I know the game because I am the game.” You’ll never find me descending to that type of smugness. I’m a fan, not a wannabe insider.

The Oscars are a big, tacky spectacle and that’s why I like them. I let others worry about the political significance of why certain films win or lose. I let others deal in the dreary outrage over the fact that The King’s Speech beat The Social Network.

I just sit back and enjoy the silliness of it all.

So, as you can imagine, I’m excited because today saw that start of Oscar season! The Academy has announced who will host the ceremony in 2014 and the winner is…

Not Seth McFarlane!

Seriously, I get the feeling that’s it’s going to be a very long time before Seth is invited back to the Oscars.

I’m not a huge Seth McFarlane fan but I have to admit that I wasn’t as outraged by his Oscar hosting performance as some people were. Yes, the majority of his jokes were lame and borderline offensive. Yes, there was an undercurrent of misogyny to a lot of what he said and did.

But misogyny is pretty much the fuel that keeps Seth McFarlane’s career alive and that should have been obvious to anyone who has seen anything that McFarlane has ever been involved with. You have to wonder just what exactly the show’s producers were expecting when they picked McFarlane in the first place.

Regardless, after all the criticism that McFarlane generated, the show’s producers have decided to go in the exact opposite direction with next year’s host….

….Ellen Degeneres!

She’s an almost painfully predictable choice but, with the exception of that season she spent on American Idol, I like Ellen so I can’t complain about her getting to host the Oscars for the second time.

That said, I still think they should have given James Franco another shot…

So, here I was all excited and everything because I had an excuse to start another one of my never-ending polls and what happens? Less than 24 hours after I set up my poll asking you who you think should replace Eddie Murphy as the host of next year’s Oscar ceremony, Billy Crystal tweets that he’s got the job.

Seriously?

They couldn’t just leave us in suspense for an extra day or two?

Anyway, Billy Crystal isn’t really a surprising choice as people were mentioning his name from the minute Murphy stepped down. However, he is a rather boring choice and I guess that the show’s producer, Brian Grazer, has decided not to do the whole “edgy” thing. Which is probably a good thing since the Academy Awards version of edgy tends to be … well, it’s hard to say what it is but it’s distinguished by smoothed corners and a definite lack of sharp edges.

I guess what I’m saying is that the Oscars are a big round table and apparently, Billy Crystal is going to be King Arthur next year. Though, according to our poll, you would have much rather seen either myself or the Muppets holding court.