Can you get me a date with Ellen Page?
NIC, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you really tall? That visual would be great; I think Ellen would come up to your waist. But then maybe that's all you'd need. :tongue:
Was it as boring as it appeared to be. I've attended a few Oscar's and grammy's and Golden Globe. YUCK I hate those things..
Yes. This was a much shorter ceremony than usual, but didn't feel like it. If they simply cut out all the montages they could slice another hour off easily... but then the Oscar telecast is second to the Super Bowl for advertising rates so unfortunately commerce requires a longer show.
I liked Jon stewart, didn't love him; but I realize thats because the writers strike really f'd things up. There really was no time to prepare properly. :frown1:
The strike certainly had an impact but not as much as you'd think; the writing for award shows is pretty corny usually. I know they didn't have time to book/tape anything fancy like Billy Crystal used to do, but I know they also had a lot of writers working on the show literally minutes after the strike ended. I thought Stewart did pretty well all said, certainly better than his last effort.
IMO, on the whole the show sucked. It was boring, drab, etc. Other than Helen Mirren, Heidi Klum, Katherine Heigl; and one or 2 others no women wowed me with their gown choices. What's with half the winners inability to complete an acceptance speech in English?
Helen Mirren could wear a burlap sack and look amazing. In re English, probably because a lot of foreigners won. :smile: I actually found that a refreshing reminder that the sun doesn't rise and set on Hollywood. In fact this was the time in almost 50 years that all four acting winners weren't American.
What was in the goody bags this year? Anything good?
Not sure about the Kodak; Elton's party included perfume, a watch, lots of cosmetic type stuff. Nothing that really wowed me.
I usually miss the Oscars, but wanted to catch the Supporting Actor (duh), to see my boy nail it. Then figured I'd see in the AM who won... and watch/do something else the rest of the evening.
Good to see No Country win best picture, directing, and screenplay as well.
Agreed all around. Javier fucking rocked. As did his speech.
did any of the upsets (MC for Best Actress, TS for Best Supporting Actress) in the big categories have a big impact? i know even Tilda Swinton had an "oh shit? i won?" look on her face.
I don't know that Marion (and to a lesser extent Tilda) were that much of an "upset." Pleasant surprises, but not really upsets. When Marion won the BAFTA over Julie Christie, a lot of people (myself included) saw that as a sign that she would win the Oscar too. Her performance as Edith Piaf is also likely going to be studied in acting classes for many years to come. Many people saw Actress ending one of three ways: honor the veteran (Christie), honor the breakout star (Ellen Page) or honor the best performance (Marion).
In Swinton's case... there wasn't really a favorite to win that category. Any of the 5 could have won and it wouldn't have been a shock. They each had something going for them and at least one big thing against them. Tilda was clearly astonished, and she charmed the pants of the press backstage. She's actually one of the coolest actresses I've encountered in a long time.
The overall mood post-show was that the right people won, and no one expected them to, which put everyone in a good spirits.
{
Aside: I feel silly using "upset" when it comes to Oscars... I realize why people do, but... an upset would be Reese Witherspoon defeating Mike Tyson, not Felicity Huffman. 
}
plus, were there a bunch of problems backstage or for you considering the limited amount of time they had to construct and organize the ceremony?
Not really. Most anyone involved with the show had a brutal week last week, but the show itself went off without a hitch. Other than the emergency tenting of the red carpet because it rained here yesterday.
who looked great in person? i know Amy Adams looked great, and Nicole Kidman was simple but i was too glad to see her there (even though she should stay her ass home in her condition)
Kate Beckinsale - holy crap. Amy Adams is a-fucking-dorable. Heidi Klum. Helen Mirren. Portia de Rossi. Petra Nemekova - who's dating Sean Penn now, which I was very slow on the pick-up to realize. Marion Cotillard. They're the folks who stand out in my memory, will probably think of others when I'm more awake.
I can't tell you where Nicole Kidman ends, or where Katherine Heigl begins...
I think the women are ALL starting to look the same... hair tied up like it's a wedding/prom... the plain, elegant, zzzzzzzzzzz dress. They all need to have this classic, clean look. They either make ZERO statement, or an awful statement.
I don't watch the Grammy's but a few stunners always seem to come out of the red carpet there every year.
You crystalized my thoughts - I actually had to look at Katherine Heigl four times before I realized it was her. A lot of the women last night looked like they just pulled whatever was hanging in the closet.
Don't know his name but did the director for NO COUNTRY thank his boyfriend?
Huh? The directors of No Country are brothers, and both are married to women. Unless you're making some sort of dig at Frances McDormand?
Did Elton's new weave look as fierce in person as it did on the tele?
Yes. :biggrin1: He was in a great mood last night too. Normally Elton is... unpredictable. Ahem.
Were the atendees just as bored with the telecast as the rest of us?
Probably less bored. Operative word is "less." It's the big party in town, so to speak. And Hollywood loves self-congratulating.
In re NIC/FK's discussion of documentaries. The documentary category has traditionally always been a cock-up, second only to foreign language film. Arcane rules about who can vote, how a film is submitted, etc. The whole Academy doesn't vote for Doc. You have to see all 5 nominees in order to vote in the documentary category, and there's only so many screenings. So that severely limits the pool of voters and skews toward the much older members of the Academy. After the Hoop Dreams fiasco they changed the rules to try to improve the chances of "popular" documentaries, which is probably the reason why Michael Moore's films have subsequently gotten nominations. The subject matter alone wasn't the reason why Hoop Dreams failed to get nominated; the fact that it actually made money was a huge factor as well. The documentary filmmaker branch of the Academy is notoriously stuck-up and tends to discount "popular" documentaries as not being "pure" enough to warrant recognition. Obviously there was (and is) a lot of jealousy directed toward doc's that are box-office draws as well, because most of the time they don't make a dime.