The Oscars: Live-on-Tape Blogging
I always wanted to liveblog the Oscars (well, not always. I wasn't sitting around at the age of 7 saying "I have no idea what a blog is, but I know I want to do it while watching the Academy Awards!"), but LJ really isn't a good forum to do it. After all, I can imagine that my friend list wouldn't be too happy with me if I posted a new update every two minutes for 3 1/2 hours. So, I decided to do the next best thing--I live blogged in a word doc, and am about to transfer all that to here. So, it's the best of all worlds, unless you don't care. For those of you, it's under a jump cut.
All times are Central Time.
7:28-The red carpet show is wrapping up. Up next, the Oscars!
7:29-Nothing to do with Oscars, but I see Chevron has brought back the talking claymation cars. Oddly, they also have a dog who looks an awful lot like Grommet in the ad.
7:30-Here we go!
7:31-Hugh Jackman just comes out. No humorous video to introduce him. Let’s see if he tries to be funny in his monologue.
7:33-So is he doing his own variation of Billy Crystal’s Best Picture melody? Yes, he is.
7:34-Maybe not, since he referenced The Dark Knight.
7:36-Anne Hathaway isn’t a bad singer. But she’s not a good Nixon.
7:37-Appernelty, he couldn’t think of a good way to make fun of a movie about a Nazi who has sex with a teenager.
7:38-Hmmm…I liked it, but I can see the big number getting slammed tomorrow.
7:41-Technical difficulties for the opening montage. At least showing prior winners is a good one. They’re all Supporting Actress wonders, so I think we’re up to our first award.
7:42-Five prior winner of Supporting Actresses? Wow…so are they all going to be team handouts? At least Tilda Swinton gets to present with this new, odd format.
7:44-So, is each of these prior winners going to individually introduce one of the nominees? And apparently not show clips from their performances? Hmmm…this is…strange.
7:48-It’ll take some time getting used to it, but having Oscar winners praise the performances of each nominee is pretty nice. And, we now can call her Academy Award winner Penelope Cruz.
7:50-I wonder-within 5 years of the inevitable TomKat breakup, will we have Academy Award winner Katie Holmes?
7:53-Steve Martin! Tina Fey! If only Baby Mama was better…
7:55-Surprisingly, I kind of like the whole secret presenter thing.
7:57-Mmmm…I suspect Dustin Lance Black will be the hottest winner of the night.
7:59-And the most moving. Dear Lord, I really hope and pray that his last words come true, and soon.
8:00-I just realized-the two presenters are both actor/screenwriters. Clever.
8:01-And the Slumdog parade begins.
8:04-Someone’s bitter at Pixar. But hey, it’s Wall-E! And Space Chimps? And Clone Wars?
8:07-Wall-E!
8:09-Oh yeah, I forgot to cheer when Jennifer Aniston mentioned The Iron Giant a few minutes ago. Really, go rent The Iron Giant. Now.
8:11-So far, I like this year’s ceremony. I wish there weren’t going to be any montages, but if you are going to have some, having some relating to the movie year at least makes sense, as opposed to the plucked from a hat theme of previous year’s montages.
8:13-Bleck, I hate this McDonald’s commercial. I don’t like taunting kids, but I think winning a soccer championship is more important than getting to eat crap.
8:18-So Ben Button won’t get shut out. Good. Anyway, John pointed out that the show overall is telling the story about how a movie is made, starting with screenplay, and now onto sets. I should also point out that, pretty much out of necessity, presenters being intimately acquainted with the category they are presenting had to come to an end. Supporting Actress winners presented Supporting Actress, screenwriters presented writing, and voice over actors presented Animation. Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker, as far as I know, have never had anything to do with art and set. But they both know how to wear clothes very well, which explains why they also presented Costume.
8:23-Are Daniel and Sarah just going to present every remaining Oscar?
8:31-Amanda Seyfried just joked about having three fathers in Mamma Mia. She has three mothers in Big Love. Can she find a role that doesn’t require her to have multiple parents?
8:32-I wonder if the fact that most of these movies in this romance montage aren’t all that good means anything-at least they included the kiss between James Franco and Sean Penn.
8:34-A new short film by Judd Apatow? That could be funny.
8:35-Looks like Ben Stiller saw Joaquin Phoenix’s interview on Letterman. At least this is working better than the time he showed up in a green suit.
8:37-Slumdog’s second award.
8:41-That was a short segment. Three minutes with Jessica Alba and back to commercial.
8:42-Here’s the long-awaited sequel to Pineapple Express.
8:44-So James Franco just watched himself kiss Sean Penn. So I guess we now have confirmation that he played two gay characters last year. If only he was in real life…
8:47-Short film about Nazis…will it win? Yes! But The Reader still isn’t going to win Best Picture.
8:50-I think Coke wants us to recycle.
8:52-Hugh Jackman is singing and dancing again…musical numbers away from the opening number or Best Song presentations are usually very bad ideas.
8:55-OK, so this salute to movie music seems to be made up primarily of songs that originated in Broadway musicals.
8:57-That was pleasant, but what in the world was the point?
8:58-A commercial for The Proposal? That movie doesn’t open until June.
9:01-Time for the Heath Ledger Memorial Oscar.
9:03-The Supporting Actor team is awfully random.
9:04-Why is Phillip Seymour Hoffman wearing a beret?
9:07-Yep, Heath Ledger is the last Supporting Actor nominee to be introduced.
9:08-And Heath Ledger is the second posthumous acting winner ever, joining Peter Finch, who died of a heart attack three months before he won Best Actor for Network in 1977. It’s really nice that his parents and sister are accepting the award for him. Here’s betting that they won’t be cutting them off.
9:13-Bill Maher? Even though Religulous kinda sucked? At least it’s not Ben Stein.
9:14-I’m guessing Man on Wire, but Trouble the Water (the Katrina doc) winning wouldn’t surprise me at all.
9:15-I heard Man on Wire is remarkably entertaining. I need to rent it.
9:17-It looks like the winner of Doc Short had to walk in from Arizona. Granted, she’s not famous, but surely they could have found a seat for her slightly closer.
9:22-Tom Cruise in a commercial for Jimmy Kimmel Live?!!?
9:24-I don’t know about you, but I’ve been eagerly awaiting Oscar’s tribute to Death Race.
9:26-Nice visual effect to bring on Will Smith to present the Visual Effect Oscar.
9:27-Button managed to beat out the two action movies. Surprising. It’s still going to lose to Slumdog, though.
9:31-After Sound Editing, there are only 8 Oscars and the Humanitarian Award to Jerry Lewis left. The show will probably go past 10:30,
but if everything keeps moving at a brisk pace, it probably won’t go too far over.
9:32-Slumdog won Sound Editing. I suspect it’s pretty much going to be in sweep mode for the rest of the evening.
9:34-As Will Smith (who apparently is moving in) just pointed out, Film Editing is the last post-production award. All that’s left after this are the two music awards, Foreign Language, and the Big Four (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress), and Jerry Lewis. Slumdog has four nominations left to go. Here’s betting it wins all four.
9:46-They didn’t spend a lot of time building up Jerry Lewis, and he didn’t spend a lot of time talking. We actually could get this thing done by 10:30. Oh, and Eddie Murphy introducing him was a nice touch.
9:51-I always wondered why they never played the nominated scores. I’m glad they’re doing it this year.
9:53-That was beautiful-only to have Zac Efron come out to present it. However, it’s a nice touch to have two musical actors present the music awards.
9:54-Slumdog for Score.
9:56-So, let’s us see how the Song melodies go, minus Peter Gabriel.
9:58-John Legend for Gabriel. I’d rather have the original. This is a rather mediocre rendition of the song that I wish would win (but won’t).
10:00-OK, “Down to Earth” and “Jai Ho” really shouldn’t be sung at the exact same time. I have to say, if they hadn’t had that mid-show tribute to musicals, they could have had time to perform the songs by themselves. Then again, if you’re going to have a song-and-dance man hosting, you might as well have him sing and dance.
10:01-“Jai Ho”-I think if any film besides Slumdog wins Picture at this point, it will be the biggest Oscar jaw dropper ever. Yes, even bigger than Marisa Tomei.
10:05-Two foreign actors to present Foreign Language Film. Of course, if they really wanted to be relevant, they would have had two non-native English speakers present.
10:07-The Japanese film won, over the heavily favored films from France and Israel. This will probably be the biggest upset of the night.
10:11-The obit part of the show. Paul Newman will get the final slot. This year, no one else who died comes close to the impact he made on the art of cinema.
10:12-Having Queen Latifah sing is certainly an interesting idea. And I wish they’d keep a close-up on the main screen with the names. Not all of us have 42-inch screens to watch this at home.
10:15-And Newman wins the Applause-o-Meter, to no one’s surprise. But damn, I forgot about Heston, Stan Winston, and Paul Scofield…also, I thought they had a cutoff date. But James Whitmore only died two weeks ago.
10:18-No speech from the president of the Academy. Thank God.
10:19-Considering the theme of the night, it’s rather odd that they didn’t have an actor/director present. Was Clint Eastwood busy tonight? And Mel Gibson is in town, doing Kimmel. Couldn’t he have done this? Or is he still in exile?
10:20-Danny Boyle. The Slumdog poster he signed for me just went way up in value.
10:25-Best Actress time.
10:26-Three of the Best Actress presenters are going to be in Nine at the end of the year. Throw in Penelope Cruz and (assuming he’s there) Daniel Day-Lewis and this is just a big long trailer. If only they could have gotten Judi Dench in there as well.
10:30-I was unsure at first, but I now really like the whole tribute to all the nominees’ thing. I’m willing to bet this is a one-time only thing, but it was a good way to shake up the show.
10:32-And Kate Winslet has finally won an Oscar. I only wish it had been for a better film.
10:37-So I guess Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t make it either (unless he’s presenting Best Picture). But damn, what a lineup! I still think it’s going to be Sean Penn, but I will say that Mickey Rourke has had the momentum lately, so I won’t be surprised if he wins.
10:40-Part of me really wants to see Richard Jenkins win. He won’t, of course, but The Visitor is such a great movie, and he is such a great actor. It is a well-deserved nomination.
10:43-Sean Penn. He knows how to do a good speech. John was convinced Rourke would win. Oh well, he has a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, and I’m willing to bet he’ll win within the next three or four years.
10:46-Damn…that’s a pretty harsh statement about Prop. 8 supporters from Penn. I completely agree with him, of course, but still…damn.
10:47-A nice shout-out to Mickey Rourke
10:48-Speilberg to present Best Slumdog, er, Picture.
10:51-I hope they put all the Best Picture nominees in this montage on the web.
10:52-And the Oscar goes to…Slumdog Millionaire. I’d rather it be Milk, but I’m not going to be bitter.
10:55-25 minutes over. I don’t know why they don’t just schedule this to be 3 ½ hours.
10:56-A preview of 2009 movies. An interesting idea, though I doubt that The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is going to be at the ceremony next year. But who knows. Oh, I really don’t the Fame remake will make it.
All times are Central Time.
7:28-The red carpet show is wrapping up. Up next, the Oscars!
7:29-Nothing to do with Oscars, but I see Chevron has brought back the talking claymation cars. Oddly, they also have a dog who looks an awful lot like Grommet in the ad.
7:30-Here we go!
7:31-Hugh Jackman just comes out. No humorous video to introduce him. Let’s see if he tries to be funny in his monologue.
7:33-So is he doing his own variation of Billy Crystal’s Best Picture melody? Yes, he is.
7:34-Maybe not, since he referenced The Dark Knight.
7:36-Anne Hathaway isn’t a bad singer. But she’s not a good Nixon.
7:37-Appernelty, he couldn’t think of a good way to make fun of a movie about a Nazi who has sex with a teenager.
7:38-Hmmm…I liked it, but I can see the big number getting slammed tomorrow.
7:41-Technical difficulties for the opening montage. At least showing prior winners is a good one. They’re all Supporting Actress wonders, so I think we’re up to our first award.
7:42-Five prior winner of Supporting Actresses? Wow…so are they all going to be team handouts? At least Tilda Swinton gets to present with this new, odd format.
7:44-So, is each of these prior winners going to individually introduce one of the nominees? And apparently not show clips from their performances? Hmmm…this is…strange.
7:48-It’ll take some time getting used to it, but having Oscar winners praise the performances of each nominee is pretty nice. And, we now can call her Academy Award winner Penelope Cruz.
7:50-I wonder-within 5 years of the inevitable TomKat breakup, will we have Academy Award winner Katie Holmes?
7:53-Steve Martin! Tina Fey! If only Baby Mama was better…
7:55-Surprisingly, I kind of like the whole secret presenter thing.
7:57-Mmmm…I suspect Dustin Lance Black will be the hottest winner of the night.
7:59-And the most moving. Dear Lord, I really hope and pray that his last words come true, and soon.
8:00-I just realized-the two presenters are both actor/screenwriters. Clever.
8:01-And the Slumdog parade begins.
8:04-Someone’s bitter at Pixar. But hey, it’s Wall-E! And Space Chimps? And Clone Wars?
8:07-Wall-E!
8:09-Oh yeah, I forgot to cheer when Jennifer Aniston mentioned The Iron Giant a few minutes ago. Really, go rent The Iron Giant. Now.
8:11-So far, I like this year’s ceremony. I wish there weren’t going to be any montages, but if you are going to have some, having some relating to the movie year at least makes sense, as opposed to the plucked from a hat theme of previous year’s montages.
8:13-Bleck, I hate this McDonald’s commercial. I don’t like taunting kids, but I think winning a soccer championship is more important than getting to eat crap.
8:18-So Ben Button won’t get shut out. Good. Anyway, John pointed out that the show overall is telling the story about how a movie is made, starting with screenplay, and now onto sets. I should also point out that, pretty much out of necessity, presenters being intimately acquainted with the category they are presenting had to come to an end. Supporting Actress winners presented Supporting Actress, screenwriters presented writing, and voice over actors presented Animation. Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker, as far as I know, have never had anything to do with art and set. But they both know how to wear clothes very well, which explains why they also presented Costume.
8:23-Are Daniel and Sarah just going to present every remaining Oscar?
8:31-Amanda Seyfried just joked about having three fathers in Mamma Mia. She has three mothers in Big Love. Can she find a role that doesn’t require her to have multiple parents?
8:32-I wonder if the fact that most of these movies in this romance montage aren’t all that good means anything-at least they included the kiss between James Franco and Sean Penn.
8:34-A new short film by Judd Apatow? That could be funny.
8:35-Looks like Ben Stiller saw Joaquin Phoenix’s interview on Letterman. At least this is working better than the time he showed up in a green suit.
8:37-Slumdog’s second award.
8:41-That was a short segment. Three minutes with Jessica Alba and back to commercial.
8:42-Here’s the long-awaited sequel to Pineapple Express.
8:44-So James Franco just watched himself kiss Sean Penn. So I guess we now have confirmation that he played two gay characters last year. If only he was in real life…
8:47-Short film about Nazis…will it win? Yes! But The Reader still isn’t going to win Best Picture.
8:50-I think Coke wants us to recycle.
8:52-Hugh Jackman is singing and dancing again…musical numbers away from the opening number or Best Song presentations are usually very bad ideas.
8:55-OK, so this salute to movie music seems to be made up primarily of songs that originated in Broadway musicals.
8:57-That was pleasant, but what in the world was the point?
8:58-A commercial for The Proposal? That movie doesn’t open until June.
9:01-Time for the Heath Ledger Memorial Oscar.
9:03-The Supporting Actor team is awfully random.
9:04-Why is Phillip Seymour Hoffman wearing a beret?
9:07-Yep, Heath Ledger is the last Supporting Actor nominee to be introduced.
9:08-And Heath Ledger is the second posthumous acting winner ever, joining Peter Finch, who died of a heart attack three months before he won Best Actor for Network in 1977. It’s really nice that his parents and sister are accepting the award for him. Here’s betting that they won’t be cutting them off.
9:13-Bill Maher? Even though Religulous kinda sucked? At least it’s not Ben Stein.
9:14-I’m guessing Man on Wire, but Trouble the Water (the Katrina doc) winning wouldn’t surprise me at all.
9:15-I heard Man on Wire is remarkably entertaining. I need to rent it.
9:17-It looks like the winner of Doc Short had to walk in from Arizona. Granted, she’s not famous, but surely they could have found a seat for her slightly closer.
9:22-Tom Cruise in a commercial for Jimmy Kimmel Live?!!?
9:24-I don’t know about you, but I’ve been eagerly awaiting Oscar’s tribute to Death Race.
9:26-Nice visual effect to bring on Will Smith to present the Visual Effect Oscar.
9:27-Button managed to beat out the two action movies. Surprising. It’s still going to lose to Slumdog, though.
9:31-After Sound Editing, there are only 8 Oscars and the Humanitarian Award to Jerry Lewis left. The show will probably go past 10:30,
but if everything keeps moving at a brisk pace, it probably won’t go too far over.
9:32-Slumdog won Sound Editing. I suspect it’s pretty much going to be in sweep mode for the rest of the evening.
9:34-As Will Smith (who apparently is moving in) just pointed out, Film Editing is the last post-production award. All that’s left after this are the two music awards, Foreign Language, and the Big Four (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress), and Jerry Lewis. Slumdog has four nominations left to go. Here’s betting it wins all four.
9:46-They didn’t spend a lot of time building up Jerry Lewis, and he didn’t spend a lot of time talking. We actually could get this thing done by 10:30. Oh, and Eddie Murphy introducing him was a nice touch.
9:51-I always wondered why they never played the nominated scores. I’m glad they’re doing it this year.
9:53-That was beautiful-only to have Zac Efron come out to present it. However, it’s a nice touch to have two musical actors present the music awards.
9:54-Slumdog for Score.
9:56-So, let’s us see how the Song melodies go, minus Peter Gabriel.
9:58-John Legend for Gabriel. I’d rather have the original. This is a rather mediocre rendition of the song that I wish would win (but won’t).
10:00-OK, “Down to Earth” and “Jai Ho” really shouldn’t be sung at the exact same time. I have to say, if they hadn’t had that mid-show tribute to musicals, they could have had time to perform the songs by themselves. Then again, if you’re going to have a song-and-dance man hosting, you might as well have him sing and dance.
10:01-“Jai Ho”-I think if any film besides Slumdog wins Picture at this point, it will be the biggest Oscar jaw dropper ever. Yes, even bigger than Marisa Tomei.
10:05-Two foreign actors to present Foreign Language Film. Of course, if they really wanted to be relevant, they would have had two non-native English speakers present.
10:07-The Japanese film won, over the heavily favored films from France and Israel. This will probably be the biggest upset of the night.
10:11-The obit part of the show. Paul Newman will get the final slot. This year, no one else who died comes close to the impact he made on the art of cinema.
10:12-Having Queen Latifah sing is certainly an interesting idea. And I wish they’d keep a close-up on the main screen with the names. Not all of us have 42-inch screens to watch this at home.
10:15-And Newman wins the Applause-o-Meter, to no one’s surprise. But damn, I forgot about Heston, Stan Winston, and Paul Scofield…also, I thought they had a cutoff date. But James Whitmore only died two weeks ago.
10:18-No speech from the president of the Academy. Thank God.
10:19-Considering the theme of the night, it’s rather odd that they didn’t have an actor/director present. Was Clint Eastwood busy tonight? And Mel Gibson is in town, doing Kimmel. Couldn’t he have done this? Or is he still in exile?
10:20-Danny Boyle. The Slumdog poster he signed for me just went way up in value.
10:25-Best Actress time.
10:26-Three of the Best Actress presenters are going to be in Nine at the end of the year. Throw in Penelope Cruz and (assuming he’s there) Daniel Day-Lewis and this is just a big long trailer. If only they could have gotten Judi Dench in there as well.
10:30-I was unsure at first, but I now really like the whole tribute to all the nominees’ thing. I’m willing to bet this is a one-time only thing, but it was a good way to shake up the show.
10:32-And Kate Winslet has finally won an Oscar. I only wish it had been for a better film.
10:37-So I guess Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t make it either (unless he’s presenting Best Picture). But damn, what a lineup! I still think it’s going to be Sean Penn, but I will say that Mickey Rourke has had the momentum lately, so I won’t be surprised if he wins.
10:40-Part of me really wants to see Richard Jenkins win. He won’t, of course, but The Visitor is such a great movie, and he is such a great actor. It is a well-deserved nomination.
10:43-Sean Penn. He knows how to do a good speech. John was convinced Rourke would win. Oh well, he has a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, and I’m willing to bet he’ll win within the next three or four years.
10:46-Damn…that’s a pretty harsh statement about Prop. 8 supporters from Penn. I completely agree with him, of course, but still…damn.
10:47-A nice shout-out to Mickey Rourke
10:48-Speilberg to present Best Slumdog, er, Picture.
10:51-I hope they put all the Best Picture nominees in this montage on the web.
10:52-And the Oscar goes to…Slumdog Millionaire. I’d rather it be Milk, but I’m not going to be bitter.
10:55-25 minutes over. I don’t know why they don’t just schedule this to be 3 ½ hours.
10:56-A preview of 2009 movies. An interesting idea, though I doubt that The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is going to be at the ceremony next year. But who knows. Oh, I really don’t the Fame remake will make it.