How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
The Academy Awards were a bit strange this year. Things went downhill fast after Neil Patrick Harris made a random cameo during the show's opening. Perhaps we should have been concerned that they needed a ringer to draw the audience in.
Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, the evening's co-hosts, descended to the stage and awkwardly joked about many of the famous actors in the audience. We do, however, agree that Meryl Streep has been nominated a ridiculous number of times.
In an apparent homage to American Idol, the nominees for actor and actress in a leading role were introduced onstage and stood there uncomfortably before being escorted to their seats. When the time came to finally hand out these awards, various friends and costars recited rather lengthy vignettes about the nominees in an attempt to spice up the evening.
Either way, the show was pretty long. With many students slammed with midterms this week, we're pretty sure everyone did not need an almost four-hour study break.
Although there were few surprises, the night did have a historical moment when "The Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director. Despite the fact that she is a Columbia University alumna, her achievement should give hope to the countless female directors trying to play on a field historically dominated by men.
However, the evening was also a great night for NYU alumni.
Many former Tischies were nominated, one was hosting and some even went home with Oscars. In a school that's so big and diverse, it's easy to lose track of how many amazingly talented people have graduated from every part of our university.
Among last night's winners was Tisch alumnus Juan Campanella, writer, director and producer of "El secreto de sus ojos," which won Best Foreign Film. Geoffrey Fletcher, who received his MFA in film from Tisch, won for writing the adapted screenplay for the movie "Precious."
The Oscars are a bit more exciting than the ceremony for the Abel Prize in mathematics, but it's important to recognize how truly talented so many of our faculty and alumni are. Of course, after seeing last night's Oscars, the Abel Prize ceremony should be relatively riveting this year.
