Running With the Oscars

Running diary of last night's 2009 Academy Awards:

8:33: Critics said Hugh Jackman would jump at the chance to sing during this broadcast – he won a Tony Award in 2004 for “The Boy from Oz,” a play on Broadway. He wastes no time here, opening the show with a solid performance.

8:36: Anne Hathaway – love her for some reason – is dragged out of the audience by Hugh. I think it is spur of the moment for about 0.27 seconds.

8:40: Hugh acknowledges Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Everyone on earth crosses their fingers for a shot of a psycho Jennifer Aniston. No dice.

8:45: OMG, such a boring little piece with a bunch of former Best Supporting Actress winners. Best part is the shot of Marisa Tomei. Wow, she is beautiful. Penelope Cruz wins here in the night’s most wide-open category. Seriously no one knew who was going to win this.

8:54: Nice appearance from Steve Martin and Sarah Pal..uh Tina Fey. Tina once again looking nice. Did any entertainer make a bigger leap than Tina Fey last year? Her 2008 was like Dustin Pedroia’s MVP season. We liked her as is, a bit player with a little niche who was easy to like. But she blew up and exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations. In comparison Steve Martin was Julio Lugo.

9:03: Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black out together. Aniston looks awful. What happened to her hair? Did she stick it out the limo window on the way over? The two lead us into an animation bit. I don’t know why, but I am very anti-animation. I would NEVER see an animated movie in the theatre. Whenever I watch one I’m always entertained too.

9:09: LOL. The animated short film award. You’ve got a better chance of me actually making one and accepting my own nomination then you do of me watching one of those.

9:16: Sarah Jessica Parker has huge boobs. They are real as well. I think Maxim was a little hard when it dubbed SJP the Unsexiest Women Alive in 2007.

9:23: Actually, the more I see her, SJP is pretty sucky…

9:30: The Oscars were revamped this year with two main goals:
1) To have more of a storytelling and historic feel, hence all the props and sets for each category and
2) To celebrate the entire year’s most popular pictures (not just the nominees). The first montage, on 2008 romance, is awesome.

9:32: YES! Natalie Portman! If it were up to me she’d be on that poll to the right. And Ben Stiller with a spot-on impression of a delusional Joaquin Phoenix. Just unreal.

9:43: James Franco and Seth Rogan just killed it with a Pineapple Express short of them watching a bunch of this year’s most popular films. I RLOL’d 3-4 times. Picture Judd Apatow. Guy’s a baller. He’d so big he can just write a short for the Academy Awards now. Meanwhile as I’m writing this, James Franco butchers the name of the foreign guy who wins Best Cinematographer and Rogan dies laughing. Not sure if that was part of the skit or not but don’t think so.

9:59: Damn, what a huge performance by Jackman and Beyonce. When you see performances like this it make sense why those two are famous. Just tons of talent.

10:04: Here we go. What most of us have been waiting for: Best Supporting Actor. Jared just IM’d me and is wondering the same things: how are they going to do this for Ledger? Who accepts?

10:07: Just got goosebumps has Kevin Klein described my favorite scene in Dark Knight: when Ledger sticks his head out of the cop car and licks his lips as the movie goes silent. They just announced Heath won, becoming the second posthumous actor to win an Oscar. His family is accepting it. Nice gesture, much better than to have someone who worked on the film up there. Standing ‘O’ of course. All in all: classy. There should be another crazy applause when they do the montage of all the people in the film industry who passed away.

10:16: Man on Wire wins for Best Documentary. Mark Cuban was a producer on this. The Oscar will be the only hardware he wins this season.

10:27: After a sweet action movie montage, Benjamin Button wins for Best Visual Effects. I’m not sure if people realize how advanced the technology is that they used here. It’s a system called Contour which can create digital reproductions of the human body that are as accurate as photographs. So in the scenes where Brad Pitt is an old man, it is his face on an old man’s body. It’s breakthrough stuff and something you are going to see a lot more of. I guess the video game market is all over this too.

10:44: Nice tribute to Jerry Lewis. I feel like I don’t appreciate his career as much as I should. Might be a Google/YouTube of him in my future. Eddie Murphy presented the award. He looks old.

10:59: Strange music performance by the music guy from Slumdog Millionaire and John Legend. Sorry for the vagueness, but I’m hating this right now. Bored outta my tree. Mostly just F’n around with my laptop. This reminds me that South Park the movie had a nomination for Best Song for “Blame Canada” and Robin Williams performed it at the Oscars.

11:11: I was wondering why Queen Latifa had a front-row seat out of all the possible stars and celebs. Turns out she’s singing to accompany the “passed away” montage. I forgot about Bernie Mac. Still weird to me that he died. He was fantastic. Sydney Pollack and Paul Newman too. Wow Hollywood lost some legends.

11:20: Danny Boyle brings home the hardware for Best Director, keeping this night a Slumdog affair. Best Picture is a mere formality at this point.

11:26: Time for Best Actress. Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry are stunning. I’m thinking Kate Winslet (The Reader) here. After being denied five other times this should be a career reward for her. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway is crying for like 5th time tonight. She should do spots for Kleenex. And the winner is…Winslet. I’m a genius. Now that I’m on her Wiki page, how did she not win for Titanic? What a good speech too. It’s nice to see multi-millionaire superstars humbled and grateful.

11:40: You can tell the awards are going over time (big surprise) when there’s no commercial between Best Actress and Best Actor. Adrien Brody, Michael Douglas, Robert Dinero, Ben Kingsley, and Anthony Hopkins are here to introduce this one. I can’t decide between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke here. I haven’t seen Milk, so that’s probably why I’m rooting for Rourke.

11:43: Damn it, Sean Penn wins. After Kingsley’s unreal intro for Rourke (the last nominee introduced) it was almost a letdown when Penn won. “Thank you, you Commy, homo-loving sons of guns.” That was sweet.

11:52: Finalllllyyy it’s time for Best Picture. Zero surprise here. Slumdog caps off its historic night with the evening’s top honor. Just think, this movie almost went straight to DVD. It was bought by Warner for $5 million before they sold half of it to FOX Searchlight. Yea, it only grossed $150 million and won Best Picture. Would love to be the exec who pitched that idea.

Finally I can put the comp down. Great, past-paced start to the night that eventually got too long and boring. Overall I give the night a B. I liked the new set up, but maybe a few more clips of the movies next time?

--Nick

The 2009 Oscars

The nominees for the 81st annual Academy Awards were announced Thursday morning. I’ll give the list of the nominees for the best/coolest categories as well as little note and a prediction on who takes home the Oscar.

Best Picture: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire."

No real surprises here. Benjamin Button fell one nomination short of the record 14 earned by Titanic. It probably wins here.

Best Actor: Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor"; Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"; Sean Penn, "Milk"; Brad Pitt, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler."

The one glaring snub of the awards: No Clint Eastwood for Gran Torino. But then again, I don’t know who you’d take out. Maybe Frank Lengella or possibly Richard Jenkins. Rourke, Pitt and Penn are the favorites here. I say Pitt takes it in a Benjamin Button sweep, although outside of his voice he didn’t do too much acting, in terms of walking and moving in the film (see below).

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"; Angelina Jolie, "Changeling"; Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"; Meryl Streep, "Doubt"; Kate Winslet, "The Reader."

Weird that Kate Winslet won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Reader, but her is nominated for the real deal. She also won a Globe for best Actress in Revolutionary Road. I say the sixth time is a charm for Kate, who has never one in five previous nominations.

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, "Milk"; Robert Downey Jr., "Tropic Thunder"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"; Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"; Michael Shannon, "Revolutionary Road."

Love every single nominee here, except for Michael Shannon who I don’t even know. Also love Robert Downey Jr. being nominated for a role in a comedy. That’s what you get when you play black. This has to go to posthumously to Ledger though – and you should be outraged if it doesn’t.

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "Doubt"; Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"; Viola Davis, "Doubt"; Taraji P. Henson, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler."

Again, this is going to Taraji Henson probably. Not to be boring, but this really is shaping up to be a Benjamin Button sweep. On a side note, Marisa Tomei is still very hot. And she’s very naked throughout The Wrestler.

Best Director: David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"; Gus Van Sant, "Milk"; Stephen Daldry, "The Reader"; Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire."

It would seem that if Button wins Best Picture than David Fincher wins Best Director. Still don’t sleep on Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) sneaking in for his work in Milk. It does have that gay angle. Although that turned out to hurt Brokeback Mountain.

Best Makeup: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Hellboy II: The Golden Army."

Lil award for the boys. Dark Knight should win this one. C’mon you saw the Joker. But I watched a whole special on what they did to Brad Pitt in Button. They filmed him with a whole new face just making movements with his mouth, then put the face on an old man stand-in’s body and dubbed in his voice. He basically shot the movie from a chair. Don’t know if that’s remarkable or with be detrimental in this category.

Best Visual Effects: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man."

The Dark Knight, hands down. Did any other movie explode off the big screen like this one? The stunts were so huge and real. They really flipped the mack truck, the BatPod was a real bike invention, and they literally blew up everything in Gotham. Unreal.

---Nick