Pages tagged “oscars”

Hey all you Paste readers out there.  Before things start, and to help me get a hang of how the blogging system we use actually works, I thought I’d give a few general thoughts on the event in anticipation. 

-Awards: I expect No Country for Old Men to win the big prize, Day-Lewis to win best actor, and the Coens to nab the directing prize.  It seems I’m not the only one who feels this way and these aren’t particularly revolutionary ideas.  Because of this, it’s going to be the smaller stuff that’s actually interesting this year.  Assuming that there’s no insane upset where the film nobody but critics saw (Atonement) or the fan favorite (Juno) wins, for once I’ll be watching to see who wins Best Cinematography and Editing instead.  The downside is that four hours is a lot of your life to lose finding out if Norbit did in fact feature better makeup than Pirates of Caribbean.

-Jon Stewart: He’s got to touch on the writer’s strike but hopefully won’t spend half of the evening on the topic.  I’m also going to assume he makes observations about how “quirky” Juno is and throw out at least a few political comments along the way.  As weird as it is to have him as the host considering he’s only peripherally involved in, you know, movies, at least it seems may have finally moved beyond Billy Crystal’s reign of terror.  When I was younger I thought that Billy Crystal’s job was just to host the show every year--it was only years later that I found out he used to act.

-Anyone want to keep a tally on how many times the camera shows George Clooney v. Jack Nicholson?  Nicholson’s the classic choice, but in recent years Clooney seems to be gaining on him.  Could this finally be the year where he overtakes?  This may in fact be the most interesting part of the ceremony.

-As a last note, I’d like to mention that nobody seems to have any clue about the Foreign Language Film nominees.  I should be harping more on this later, but the category’s pretty much a mess, especially considering how many great foreign films were made this past year.  I’m a film critic, at least in some capacity, and this is the first time I’d heard of two of these features. 

And that’s all for now.  More to come in a few hours. 

8:05: The red carpet just began and I’m reminded of how little I know/care about clothing.  Luckily, from the few interviews that have addressed that it seems that I’m not the only one.  It’s going to be a long next twenty minutes. 

Also: The girl who plays Hannah Montana just gave a brief interview, looking about 5 years older than she is and sounding about 45 years and 1000 cartons of cigarettes beyond that.  I’ve never watched Hannah Montana, but given this interview I’m surprised that it’s a musical. 

8:23: Ellen Page just gave an interview (Bateman was shown earlier--he’s finally there!) and it’s amazing how different she is from the characters she’s played.  While her performances in Juno and Hard Candy make it seem like she must just be playing herself, that’s clearly not the case.  While what we saw was really quick, I’m actually way more impressed by those films than I was before.

8:27: Regis just called Javier Bardem “Ex-Xavier.” Seriously.  At the beginning of the red carpet Regis joked about why they rarely let him do this at the Oscars.  Apparently it wasn’t so much a joke.

8:30: and the ceremony has begun.  Kind of.  By the ceremony I mean a cgi-fest of a thousand film references.  Everyone in the room is seeing how many they can get and screaming them at the screen.  As far as I can tell that was pretty much the point of things. 

8:33: Already the deluge of talk about the WGA strike has begun.  One of my friends has been tasked with tallying those. as well as the Clooney/Nicholson face-off.  We’ll see how that turns out at the end of the night. 

8:41: Stewart finished his monologue and it was pretty good.  Political but not too political, slightly edgey but not dangerously so, and quite entertaining.  A-.

8:44: They just showed a clip with Barbara Streisand that seems to have clearly been made in case the WGA strike didn’t end.  I’m hoping that there aren’t too many more of these.

8:51: The completely unnecessary clip show just ended.  I don’t really have anything to say about this except that I will never get those minutes of my life back.  Oh, and why did they have to play “My Heart Will Go On” during that? 

8:54: Ratatouille just won for animated feature in the first of a series of awards that aren’t at all surprising. 

9:00: One of my friends said earlier that “Amy Adams isn’t fair,” since she’s both a great actress and a great singer.  And hot (I added that last one).  After hearing her right now I’m inclined to agree--that was just incredible.

9:08: Ok, Transformers didn’t win for Best Visual Effects, which I think is a bit of an upset.  Perhaps not a huge one but still interesting.  I’m also a bit surprised by the nod to Sweeney Todd, but it certainly deserved the recognition.

9:20: Javier Bardem winning supporting actor isn’t a shock or anything either, but is clearly well-deserved.  Nothing snarky to say here, and his mother was incredibly endearing. 

9:32: Seinfeld as a Bee needs to go away.  Permanently.  Not only did that invade a perfectly good episode of 30 Rock, but now he’s in the Oscars irritating me even more.  Haha, bee montage--oh wait, Jon Stewart already made that joke 10 minutes ago. 

9:39: Tilda Swinton is a great actress.  No denying that.  Tonight, though, she looks remarkably like David Bowie, both in her dress and her hair.  Maybe even her speech, which was nicely out there as well, though definitely the most entertaining one so far. 

9:51: Montage/clip show number 234324 of the night.  Or something like that, who’s counting (this isn’t something important like Nicholson’s appearances)?  While the awards are notoriously bad at wasting our time with this sort of nonsense, 2008 seems particularly bleak in this department. 

10:06: Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill are quite funny, though clearly reading off of a teleprompter.  It’s a very Oscar-esque skit, very clever but not as entertaining as it should be.  Or maybe it’s just that at this point in the evening I’ve been unable to curb all of my cynicism.  Must mean that Seth’s done with Zak and Miri Make a Porno as well if he’s here.

10:10: The look on Cate Blanchett’s face after showing her clip was worth watching the whole show.  An odd cross between surprise, disgust and feeling flattered.  Marion Cotillard’s speech was super cute an endearing, too.  Sure it was slightly insane, but also wonderfully honest. 

10:20 A brief moment of fear while Once started off with an orchestra.  But then the camera panned up and made everything better.  Even though their actual instrumentation is barely in the mix, it’s still gorgeous and shows off well what made the film/song so great.  Then it ends with the orchestra again and completely misses the point, but whatever.

10:30: “Film Editing: Someone just took the lead on an Oscar pool based on a guess.” Jon Stewart speaks the truth, as that in fact happened to my friend Charlie about 30 seconds ago who lost our pool. 

10:35: Not that I mean to be disrespectful to the honorary Oscar winner, but the question must be asked: why do old people wear white scarfs over their tuxedos?  Many people have put forward theories here but I haven’t heard anything convincing yet.  I also almost decided not to post this, but then it was asked, “What else would you post about his speech, just that the guy was super old?” Kind of mean, but still a decent point.  So instead you get this commentary about the scarf, and I’d be happy to hear any other ideas to explain his wardrobe.

10:44: So the award for Best Foreign Language Film was just announced, and as promised I get to give a small rant here about how disappointing the business behind the award was.  2007 was a remarkable year for film in many ways, the best I can recall, and part of this was the extraordinary foreign films.  From 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days to Syndromes and a Century, there were worthy films that could be nominated.  Instead they chose...The Counterfitters.  It’s time that the Academy took a long, hard look at their nomination process and did something about its problems. 

10:51: And they just played Markéta Irglová off the stage without letting her say anything.  This also needs to be looked into--what the hell?

Addendum: MAD props to Jon Stewart for bringing her back.  Sure, she gave a feaux-inspiring speech that didn’t really say anything at all, but you can’t just disrespect winners like that.  In general Stewart’s done a way better job presenting this year than last time he was here. 

11:05: They missed Brad Renfro in the tribute, which is a disappointment as he deserved mention.  The 100-foot elephant in the room, though, was missing out on Robert Goulet.  By far the biggest disappointment of the night, Goulet deserves respect.  What?!  GOULET! 

11:25: D. Cody just won for adapted screenplay.  While she’s clearly pissed that she cried, the room over here was summarily filled with “awww"s.  At this point we’re just waiting to see if there are any upsets, but frankly it seems unlikely, and Cody winning this one seemed like a given. 

11:31: ...and the Academy Award for best Freudian slip goes to: Helen Mirren.

11:34: Every girl in the room just about swooned when Daniel Day-Lewis kissed George Clooney and then knelt to receive his award. 

Random note of the evening: The big theme that even I’ve picked up tonight as far as wardrobe was male earrings.  Cool, I guess? 

11:44: If anyone can find a copy of Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go please contact us here at Paste.  I’m sure we can work out a deal for that somehow. 

On that note, it’s been a fun night but I’m about blogged out at this point.  It was a fulfilling night, though almost completely unsurprising.  Congrats to the Coens and all the other winners. Now I need to return to normal life and clear the food and beers from the table.  Adios everyone. 

[Edit from five minutes later, despite that my room has become an increasingly distracting arena for Guitar Hero.  I forgot to mention the final tallies for Clooney v. Nicholson appearances, as well as mentions of the WGA awards. Nicholson retained his crown, though the exact numbers are suspicious as the guy tallying them lost count around 11:00 (thanks Charlie).  WGA mentions was I think 7, but it was harder to keep track of than I thought it would be.  Pretty much every time I tried to write something I missed something on-screen--in the future my plan is to get a more reliable/less drunk person to keep tallies for me.]