Oscars response thread - I'm counting on you
 

I am very presumptuously placing this thread here in hopes that you all will update it with whatever is going on at the Academy Awards tonight. I don't have a television, and I'll be at my desk working, so, keep me posted!

Hmm, I guess it's still a few hours before things really get going out there on the West Coast.

Only minutes away Flippy. Right now lame red carpet stuff on ABC.

Helen Mirren looked fabulous, IMO

Bring back Hugh Jackman.

Yay Up!!!!

Christopher Waltz for Supporting Actor - certainly an indelible performance. I wonder what else Inglorious will go home with tonight? (My guess, not much.)

What the F?

They just did best song?

What's up with that? No performances? That was always my favorite part of the Oscars.

The odd love letter to John Hughes. I agree his early death was a loss, but I do not recall this kind of tribute with the family there.

No, Sigourny. Just... no.

I'm not loving SJP's dress either.

I didn't see one dress that I wanted to steal and make mine. Very unusual!

I think it's time you got Twitter

*sigh* I suppose.

Me either, but I suppose that's not at all unusual for me.

I was waiting for Kathryn Bigelow's arms to fall off from the weight of those statues.

Did anyone understand wtf Sean Penn was talking about?

Does anyone ever?

Before the Oscars, Reelz was showing the awards ceremony from a visual effects society. Between Up and Avatar, no one else stood a chance. It actually seemed like they were inventing categories that those 2 films weren't eligible for (Best Visual Effects in a Film that Was Animated But Didn't Have Balloons Or Blue People) just so someone else could win something.

As if to prove how geeky a gathering it was, the award for best single effects sequence was given to Avatar for the 5 second shot where Neytiri drank some water out of a leaf.

Oh, and I'll say it...hooray, Avatar didn't win Best Picture!!

Mind you, I really liked Avatar, I'd even go so far as to call it outstanding. However, while it was an outstanding visual experience, the actual story and characters were just not best picture quality. They were good enough for what that movie needed, a story marginally interesting enough to keep you looking at the pretty for 2.5 hours, but bland and unobtrusive enough to not get in the way of the real star of the show, the effects.

But if Avatar had won Best Picture simply because it's the top grossing film, well, it'd be time to start calling Thomas Kinkade the best painter of all time. I mean, look how much money his paintings bring in!

That's just not a definition of "best" I'm ready to accept.

I guessed 15 winners, and got 9 wrong. I got all the main was right, and all the shorts wrong. Of course had I seen the shorts, I might have done better than just guessing....

I felt that Steve and Alec seemed like they were trying too hard.

I didn't watch last year's Oscars (I was in Micronesia) and I didn't watch this year's Oscars (I was onstage for "Hair"). I don't feel like I missed out on a whole lot, tho. I guess it just doesn't have the draw for me as it used to. I could have had someone Tivo it for me, but I was like... meh!

What was the "politics" Mo'Nique (is that how she spells it?) referred to in her acceptance speech? "This movie was made without politics" or something like that.

How about the hotties who were passing out the statues! yum!! :evil: (Not the celebs, but the silent gentlemen in tuxes who carried them on stage.) I don't often watch the Oscars*, but wasn't that job traditionally done solely by woman? Nice to see them mix it up.

WTF was George Clooney's problem? Did he have a giant stick up his ass or what? He never laughed and at one point he was gesturing to someone on stage to "move along" or something. Sheesh George, lighten up!


*Yeah, I'm gay, but I'm just not that interested in the Oscars. I only watched this year to see Steve and Alec host. Now the Tony Awards, that's a different story! Those I watch religiously, often multiple times.

Speaking of George...

Was there some movie tie-in to the bit where Alex & Steve repeatedly gave him the cold shoulder/evil stare during the opening?

Mystery solved. Sean Penn forgot to thank his wife in his acceptance speech last year and, in his opinion, the Academy "forgot" to nominate her for her role in an indie film this year.

Monique was referring to the politics of campaigning. There's a great deal of it and it very much affects how people vote, typically. In the past, those who didn't go out and "beg" for their Oscar consideration simply didn't win. She made a point of not campaigning, personally, and saying that she appreciated the nomination but she wanted the performance to speak for itself, not to speak for it beyond what she did in the film. A lot of the prognostication groupies believed that this would mean the Academy would snub her.

As for George, I think his humor is deadpan. I laughed at him several different times they cut to him.

And as for the glares at George, I took that to be a joke about how Baldwin was slated to be the dashing leading man, The idea of a "rivalry" between them would be humorous because Badwin's career took a turn away from the Clooney somewhere along the line and there is no such competition. (I personally love the turn his career took - he's terrific on 30 Rock.)

My favorite jokes were about sex with Meryl Streep. Alec and Steve, Sandra... mousepod, what were you saying last week about Meryl not being the sexy type?

I respect that more than what the screenwriter for Hurt Locker said. He talked about not having done any screenings for test audiences so that their film was "uncompromising" and "the film we wanted to make" and how happy he was that the Academy recognized such an "uncompromising" film.

You know, you made the film you wanted to make. Awesome. The members of the Academy happened to like it. Awesome. But implication there would be that the Academy would have been doing something wrong had they not recognized your film. If you're going to make a film with the attitude of, "We're not going to bother to consult with anyone to see if other people are going to like it. We're going to make it our way and public opinion be damned!" Then you'd better be prepared for people not to like it and be happy with that. Which is cool.

If he had worded it more like, "It's gratifying to know that the vision we had was something that connected with other people, because we were just making the movie we wanted to make, without focus groups or screenings," that would have been great. But it came off to me more like, "Damn right you'd better like our film!" Seemed arrogant.

I thought it was about The Politics of Dancing. The politics of ooo feeling good

Damn... Kevy beat me to it!

Hey, It's a valid use of the quote system. You said it.

No way, I KNEW that didn't seem right. Did y'all catch the weirdness during the acceptance speech for best short doc, Music by Prudence? The director jumped up immediately and practically sprinted from the cheap seats to the mic. We assumed it was because your speech timer starts once your name is read, so the faster you make it to the stage, the longer you have to speechify. But then some lady jumped on stage and just started talking. The director seemed a little weirded out by it, but not abundantly so, but clearly something was amiss.

Well, turns out she was a producer that bailed on the project a year ago but still wanted to take credit. Salon interviewed both of them.

I heard that Farrah Fawcett was left out of the memorial reel-

I was wondering if it might have been because she was strictly teevee, but apparently she was in a couple of talkies as well, including Logan's Run (which I did not previously know)

They also left out Bea Arthur.

But she was in Mame!

As for Farrah, I can think of at least three others: The Apostle, Extremities, and Saturn 3, which featured a then much talked about "nip slip."

George Clooney just gets hotter and hotter. I wasn't a big fan 10 years ago, and now he seems irresistible. His (non) reaction to the jokes made about him was hilarious.

We KNEW something was not right about that episode. It was all just very odd. It was almost as odd as the Streaker Incident (but not as funny).

They're calling her "Lady Kanye".

I don't know why I'm constantly defending the writer/producer of The Hurt Locker lately, but seein' as I might know a bit more (oooh, because I'm privy to the DVD commentary), I think he just meant that it was a totally independent, non-studio film. They weren't beholden to anyone, and it's great that they got to make an Oscar-calibur movie outside the studio system. That doesn't happen much. I'm not sure if he came off too cocky during his speech.

Heheh, his film surely did not restrain from campaigning. In fact, the overzealous campaigning by a producer who was subsequently dis-invited from attending the Oscars may have gone too far astray from even Oscar-campaigning ethics. But, as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. And the envelope-pushing stunt apparently did not harm their chances.

There's been a lot of complaints from the military about the film, ranging from such stupidities as they were wearing the wrong uniforms to claims no one ever acted as wild cowboy as Renner's character did in the film. On the other hand, one such soldier is actually suing the production with claims the character was based entirely on him. Pfft, can't be both ways.

In any event, the writer was there - embedded with the military, and based events on things he witnessed. The character is an amalgam of different soldiers in the confusing first days of confronting an unexpectedly overwhelming number of IEDs in Iraq, and then - yes, fictionalized on top of that to have gone a bit beyond what military-types might find plausible.


I don't think The Hurt Locker is the best movie ever made, or even the best of the year. But it was better than Avatar, so if that was the choice - I think the better film won (though, imo, two of the other 8 noms were clearly head and shoulders better than either one of those front runners. So, if you haven't yet - see both Inglorious Basterds and A Serious Man.)

Maybe I just read him wrong. I tend to roll my eyes at people who insist on defining themselves as "outside the mainstream" and then get pissed off when they subsequently lose out on the benefits of the mainstream. Perhaps I projected that attitude onto him.

We've seen Inglorious, have Hurt Locker at home ready to watch, and added A Serious Man to the queue before the awards were over. If we manage to find time between feedings to watch those 2, we'll have seen over half* of the nominees, quite the coup for us.


* We can only claim over half because we saw the first 30 minutes of District 9 before I had to bail due to nausea

Finally getting around to watching the Oscars...

We enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris's opening number

Half the films we watched last year won oscars

I was bummed that 'Inglorious Basterds' didn't win more- as much as I liked the other nominees, I think 'Inglorious' was an incredible movie. We watched the movie within a movie that was made just for IB last night, and it was pretty funny. Campy propaganda at it's best.

The dresses were mostly from 'meh' to dreadful. What the hell?

Yeah, bad fashion year. In that there weren't enough horrible dreadfuls, and not enough wow gorgeousness. Just a handful in each category and the rest -- - worse than anything - totally nondescript and unworthy of any attention. Shame on you, ladies of Hollywood.


It's tougher for the guys to pull off, but Robert Downey, Jr. had the best Male Look of the evening.

Logan's Run was a fine flick to be sure, but when it comes to Farrah and major motion pictures the top of your list should be Saturn-3


She has a nude scene... NSFW

When Kirk Douglas dies, I trust you'll be posting links to his bare-assed scene from that movie.

Who? I don't remember anyone but her, oh and the robot from that movie.

Oh sure. Everyone remembers the pretty blonde. No one remembers the bare assed Jewish guy.

Her bippies look a bit low for a 33-year-old who hadn't given birth to any kids

Pictures please!

Trust me. You don't want to see Kirk Douglas's 62 year old butt.

I trust you. Request rescinded.

Kirk Douglas is 93 (and was 64 when Saturn-3 was released in 1980). Michael Douglas is 65. Kirk Cameron is 39.

62. 64. Either way, not a pretty sight. (I was referring to his age when he bared his butt, not his current age.)

What do Michael and Kirk have to do with anything?

Kirk Cameron has everything to do with everything!

What about Capt. Kirk?

or Cameron Diaz?

I don't want to see any of those people's bare butts either. (well... maybe Kirk Cameron's. But only if his mouth is taped shut.)

Official word is that Fawcett was left off because she was known more as a TV actress than a film actress.

Which is a B.S. bit of reasoning, imo, since they included Michael Jackson. He was no more of a film star than she was.