Hosts prove weak link for Oscar show

Channel Hopping
And the Oscar goes to… Well certainly not James Franco whose aloof charm was lost on the doe-eyed viewers of the 83rd Annual Academy Awards.

What can I say except when you switch on the Oscars you want certain things… nice dresses, smiling but slightly annoyed losers, plenty of glitz, high quality presentations and a host who can crack a joke or two. While there was plenty of glitz, glam, dresses, polite smiles and applause there was no host with the most.
Anne Hathaway, bless her, did her very best. She sang, she danced, she changed costumes so quickly that she certainly gave Superman a run for his money but what did James do? Well, he played homage to Alice in Wonderland with a wonderful Cheshire Cat grin from beginning to end. He also engaged in some cross-dressing but for a man as creative as Franco both on and off the screen – his art exhibitions, album recording and 30 Rock performances all bare testament to the fact that the man has a brain and a sense of humour, he disappointed painfully.
Perhaps he was purposefully playing straight man to Hathaway’s over the top Broadway performances but I doubt it. I just think Franco was a little too cool for the Oscar school and perhaps it’s best that his hosting was so unremarkable that it is likely to be forgotten altogether. Hathaway will be back though, of that I am certain.
The production, not counting the presenters, was pretty darn good. I particularly liked the obituary section and the full orchestra for the music prize. However, the real highlights of course were Melissa Leo forgetting herself and celebrating in a way most of us probably would if we won an Oscar and, of course, the two very best speeches – Colin Firth and Christian Bale.
It was wonderful to listen to Firth who really has shown the quality that can be achieved in acceptance speeches. It was quite simply wonderful and very well thought out – even if he did sometime later embrace the stirrings in his upper abdominals and let them turn into dance moves resulting in him leaving his Oscar in the restroom of the Vanity Fair party. He was most entertaining. Bale, too, was fantastic. We finally saw some excitement from a man who is usually focused singularly on his acting. He was obviously delighted and his plug for Dick Eckland’s (the real man he won his Oscar for playing) boxing business was a very nice touch. It humanised the story even more.
Now, as to whether you agreed with the choices for the winners or not well that’s a different story and as it’s not television, I am not going to get into it apart from saying… I felt that 127 Hours was edited better than the Social Network but that’s just me.
Other winners of the past week were in actual fact losers. The Biggest Loser UK was announced at the weekend and with a combined weight loss of over 51 stone between them they can definitely be proud of their loser titles.
Irishman Paddy may have missed out on the final but he did win a holiday and, even better, a healthy future. The man from Sligo had been a favourite throughout the competition as he had a winning personality and seemed to relish every aspect of the journey. He lost an outstanding 6 stone 8lbs.
However, the biggest loser of all was Will.
Will was a massive 24 stone 7lbs when he first weighed in but he left a fraction of that. The final weigh-in put Will at 16 stone meaning he had lost nearly 35% of his total body weight. To say he was unrecognisable was an understatement. However, while this achievement is remarkable, one has to wonder again about the support system that is in place after the show.
There have been reports from the United States of contestants piling back on the pounds after they leave the show and some even piling on more weight. For most of us, eating is an emotional thing. We eat when we’re sad, lonely, tired, upset, happy. We eat for all the occasions in our life and managing this is the difficulty. We get a kick from eating. Every time we put a morsel of food in our mouths we get a rush and the worse the food the more intense the kick.
While they are in the camp, everything is controlled. The bad food is out of sight, they are not in work and they have strict exercise regimes. What happens when you take those scaffolds away? Who is there to tell you not to buy that packet of biscuits or to take it away from you when you eat the whole thing while watching television. Discipline is gained over time and I just wonder if when the cameras go off and life gets back to the mundane routine does the discipline begin to slip. I hope I am wrong and that these people continue their weight-loss journey to healthier lives but these are the issues surrounding reality television and they must be addressed otherwise it cheapens our viewing pleasure completely.
Channel Four started the whole idea with their series One Born Every Minute and now we have jumped on the baby wagon with the series From Here To Maternity. It is not my cup of tea but the stories of these real people giving birth in real life does have its appeal and I can see why the viewership figures would be so high.
Set in the Cork University Maternity Hospital, the show deals with the realities of having a baby in an Irish hospital and the ups, downs, cries and screams are all there in glorious Technicolor. Over 9,000 babies were delivered in CUMH last year, that’s one every hour of every day. This six-part series is a glimpse into how the miracle of birth is handled in a modern hospital. Tune in on Tuesday nights at 8.30pm on RTÉ One.