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What about those Oscars, eh?

 


There wasn't a lot remarkable about the Oscars ceremony this year. Maybe it is just that I am more detached this year than I was not too long ago from the cycle of movies year-to-year. I had seen almost none of the nominees for the big categories, with the exception of Tár.

I enjoyed Tár, a Cate Blanchette vehicle in which she plays a world-famous orchestra conductor, a protege of Leonard Bernstein no less. Blanchette's character becomes enmeshed in a career-threatening scandal.

Anyway: it didn't win anything and, aside from my mild level of disappointment about that: there is nothing to report -- except, a very clever set of ads about a fellow named Otto Desc.

The first ad shows us the image of a German-looking fellow whose full name is apparently Otto Descinski, known as Desc to his friends, and who has been a major influence in the world of cinematography for decades. Only today he will finally be recognized. That ad ran before the Oscars program proper got underway.

A little way into the program there was another ad continuing the theme. This showed various Hollywood bigwigs praising Otto and saying what a fine mentor he had been to them (sort of like Bernstein was to Lydia Tár, one imagines!). 

Further into the program there is the pay-off ad. This one showed a large stage and a not-especially attentive viewer might have thought the commercial break was over, the show had resumed. A voiceover says, "and now, ladies and gentlemen, Otto Desc." But nobody who could plausibly bear that name is on stage. One woman enters from stage right, another (holding a big gold statuette) enters from stage left. The first woman reaches the microphone and says apologetically, "I'm sorry but there has been some confusion." At the point the statuette-bearing woman turns around and departs. The speaker continues, and explains that there is no "Otto Desc," there is a software program, for film editing, named Autodesk, and IT has been a major influence in film editing for decades.

Then we see some emvbarrassed faces of "Otto's" supposed proteges. And someone mutters "a software program. THAT makes sense." 

A wonderful con. I loved it. 


 

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