A rare excuse to make it look like my blog is active, it’s the 87th Academy Awards (liveblog)

Don’t think I don’t see you hiding inside that A, Oscar. You gotta come out, you’ve got a show to do!

Another year, another lengthy Oscar show. I’m your host for the Neil Patrick Harris Show. Just sit back and enjoy the ride, I promise I’ll try not to complain about films I didn’t like too much.

[All times are Pacific Time. Because I’m anal like that]

4:11pm – Just tuned in and Rosamund Pike’s dress has made me need to lie down.

4:18pm – Costumes montage! Better during the Red Carpet Show than during the Oscars themselves…

4:19pm – The hosts are discussing #askhermore. Which is the only thing other than dresses they’ll be discussing tonight.

4:24pm – Felicity Jones is wearing half an excellent dress. She’s also wearing half a shark.

4:27pm – Who’s the blonde Red Carpet host on ABC wearing the violently clashing pink dress? You had ONE JOB!!!

4:33pm – Julianne Moore is celebrating her guaranteed win by wearing a dress that resembles a veritable oyster holocaust of pearls.

4:35pm – This 50 Shades of Grey banter with mum and daughter Melanie and Dakota is like my dad explaining proper condom use to me awkward.

4:42pm – Chris Pratt and Anna Faris are here to make everyone else seem unlikable. Deal with it.

4:43pm – Benedict Cumberbatch is dressed as Sean Connery as James Bond. Classy fuck.

4:45pm – Holy shit Lupita Nyong’o is LITERALLY wearing the oyster holocaust dress! I spoke was too soon.

4:47pm – Team Oscar 2015. Nope.

4:50pm – ABC are now just stealing celebrity Instagram accounts for content now. I guess that stops them from having to #askhermore…

4:50pm – This Aveeno ad is the only appearance Jennifer Aniston will make at the Oscars tonight.

4:55pm – J-Lo’s doing that thing where we can see so much cleavage it’s barely even cleavage any more. It’s just torso.

4:58pm – In tonight’s episode of Oscars, the role of Sex Goddess will be played by Scarlett Johansson.

5:07pm – Ethan Hawke looks younger than when Boyhood started. Naomi Watts looks like the world’s most incredibly beautiful garden wall.

5:20pm – Lady Gaga is doing The Sound of Music tribute. I assume she’s dressing up as sexy Rolf.

5:24pm – Only 6 minutes until the show and Chris Evans has already been mildly humiliated.

5:30pm – OK here we go there’s a show on or something!

5:31pm – Neil Patrick Harris just went right for it with an #OscarsSoWhite gag!

5:34pm – A few too many recent movies in NPH’s Moving Pictures song, but man it’s so good. And look, here’s Anna Kendrick and Jack Black!

5:37pm – Can we please bring back “moving pictures” as the term for films? Please?

5:39pm – Neil Patrick Harris nails it, the Oscars are a good time to remind ourselves we all love the movies.

5:40pm – Best Supporting Actor is up first. Gotta be a straight-up J.K. Simmons win.

5:43pm – And here’s J.K. Simmons! A huge ovation from the get-go! A witty and heartfelt speech. Great start to the night.

5:45pm – Neil Patrick Harris is doing an over-elaborate bit about his Oscar predictions and I’m loving it all.

5:48pm – Why is Liam Neeson introducing Grand Budapest Hotel. AND American Sniper?

5:50pm – Dakota Johnson deers-in-headlights her introduction of Adam Levine singing a song from Begin Again.

5:56pm – Neil Patrick Harris makes a gag on the huge swag bags at Oscars, just a week after John Oliver revealed how excessive they are.

5:58pm – Grand Budapest Hotel takes Best Costume, well deserved, even I will say.

6:00pm – Makeup time. Surely Guardians of the Galaxy.

6:02pm – Grand Budapest Hotel wins! I’ll allow it for sure (as much as I dislike that movie).

6:04pm – Channing Tatum looks like an Oscar with a goatee.

6:10pm – Best Foreign Language time. I think Polish should win. I mean Ida.

6:11pm – “This is the fourth Oscar and 10th nomination for POLAND.” Glad to see the entirety of Poland is a filmmaker now.

6:12pm – He just broke the orchestra!

6:14pm – Birdman, Boyhood and Theory of Everything introduced together. One of those films does not have a chance of winning.

6:16pm – Neil Patrick Harris is flirting with the seat-fillers. Kinda cute.

6:18pm – The Lego Choir begins a chorus of Everything Is Awesome. Nice!

6:19pm – Was that Will Arnett in a Batman suit singing DARKNESS?!?

6:20pm – That was the greatest thing I have ever seen.

6:25pm – Here are the shorts! I have no contributions to make! Everyone’s a winner!

6:26pm – Best Live Action Short is The Phone Call! I’m told it had famous people in it! Hooray!

6:30pm – Best Doc Short goes to Crisis Hotline. Important theme for sure. But really I think the producers are winning for those dresses!

6:32pm – Lifetime achievement award for Ohio Miyazaki, this year’s Japanese Adele Dazeem.

6:33pm – Miyazaki, Carrière, Belafonte and O’Hara. Those are some solid champions of cinema.

6:35pm – David Oyelowo vindicated for not having a nomination with a good gag and the world’s awesomest tux.

6:36pm – Country music! Country music is a thing! It’s at the Oscars! So it must be a thing!

6:37pm – This is nice, unless the stage falls down I don’t need to tweet anything for the next 4 minutes.

6:43pm – Elongated Birdman sketch in front of 1 billion viewers is pretty damn special.

6:44pm – Miles Teller and Margot Robbie are attractive people who are attractive and I hope they have beautiful babies together.

6:45pm – Sound Mixing. Who knows where this will go? Who did I even guess it’d go to?

6:47pm – Whiplash wins! Unexpected but wonderful.

6:49pm – OK now Sound Editing. Um… Birdman, right?

6:49pm – American Sniper draws blood. This is mixing the night up a good deal.

6:51pm – Neil Patrick Harris is the Duke in Burgundy.

6:52pm – Jared Leto looking like a homeless man in a tux is here to present Best Supporting Actress.

6:54pm – Patricia Arquette has it and it’s most deserved! First win for Boyhood. More to come…

6:56pm – Patricia Arquette shoots out a rapid-fire thanks to everyone including I hope me.

6:56pm – Plus bonus income equality declaration!

7:01pm – I hear good things about Beyond the Lights, but I remain very unsold on this song by Rita Ora.

7:03pm – Chloe Grace Moretz wheeled out an Andy Samberg mannequin to present Best Special Effects.

7:05pm – Best Special Effects goes to Interstellar. Hardly undeserved, though I was hoping for Guardians.

7:06pm – I am finally seeing Anna Kendrick’s dress and it’s magical.

7:07pm – Best Animated Short goes to… Feast! It’s so cute and I love it I want a puppy now. Maybe I should call my mum and ask for one.

7:10pm – Best Animated Feature is being presented by Zoe Saldana and The F’ing Rock! So much beauty and charisma.

7:10pm – I’m gonna cry and rage when How to Train Your Dragon 2 wins.

7:11pm – Big Hero 6 wins! Disappointed for Kaguya. But so happy HTTYD2 bit it hard.

7:19pm – The President of the Academy is asking us to be excellent to each other.

7:20pm – So many Chrises at this year’s Oscars. I’d argue… too many?

7:21pm – Production Design. Even I feel Grand Budapest Hotel should walk away with this one…

7:23pm – Grand Budapest Hotel gets it. Some nice short speeches there.

7:24pm – Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain ARE Cinemtography.

7:26pm – Emmanuel Lubezki wins for a second year running! The work on Birdman was incredible, very rebellious cinema. Bravo!

7:31pm – Meryl Streep is here to make us feel very sad…

7:36pm – Can’t decide if I like this water colour style of presenting the in memoriam. But man it’s all so moving… Bob Hoskins. Sigh…

7:43pm – Cumberbatch and Watts sounds like a political talk show. Awards for Editing now.

7.44pm – Whiplash takes Editing over Boyhood! Very deserved, but a real blow to Boyhood’s chances tonight…

7.48pm – Terrence Howard is announcing Whiplash and Selma. That’s the last of our big contenders this year. Home straight ahead.

7.50pm – Best Documentary. Citizenfour kinda needs to win this.

7:52pm – Citizenfour wins! So deserved, a remarkable work of journalism and presenting of complex information.

7:53pm – Dammit, Neil Patrick Harris just made my “Edward Snowden can’t be here tonight” joke as I was typing it!

7:58pm – OK, here’s Glory. It’s kind of a quality tune.

7:59pm – A huge recreation of the bridge scene from Selma for this performance. Pretty damn impressive staging.

8:01pm – What happens when they reach Common? Will they push him off the stage?!

8:03pm – Oprah drying David Oyelowo’s tears away after Glory is undoubtedly the sweetest moment of the night.

8:05pm – Idina Menzel and John Travolta just made up on stage! It was so fun until he started touching her face…

8:06pm – After a few great performances, Best Song goes to John Legend and Common for Glory! Properly deserved. Everything is still awesome

8:09pm – The audience had a moment of “do we clap?” when Common mentioned more black men being in prison now than enslaved in 1850. Eep.

8:13pm – I don’t want Scarlett Johansson to stop talking. Don’t show me The Sound of Music!

8:15pm – Is the colour timing all off on these Sound of Music clips?

8:16pm – Lady Gaga is doing a decent Julie Andrews here. But still, this is pretty bland staging so far…

8:18pm – No not Edelweiss, it’s a lovely song! But we’ve been here three hours!

8:20pm – Julie Andrews comes out to anoint Lady Gaga as the new Julie Andrews. That’s nice. For a while we have two now.

8:22pm – Julie Andrews morphs Sound of Music banter into a Best Score chat.

8:24pm – Alexandre Desplat wins Best Score, but for Grand Budapest Hotel rather than Imitation Game. I’d have given it for the other.

8:24pm – With all these wins, is Grand Budapest Hotel in the running for Best Picture again?

8:30pm – Hey it’s Norbitt star Eddie Murphy!

8:30pm – Eddie Murphy did not sound committed to that spiel at all.

8:32pm – Birdman wins Best Original Screenplay, which is pretty deserved (if we forget the final scene).

8:34pm – Oprah presents Best Adapted Screenplay. Could go anywhere…

8:35pm – Imitation Game wins… Sometimes it’s the film you didn’t imagine could be the film that wins the thing you didn’t imagine.

8:37pm – “Stay weird” says Graham Moore, writer of The Imitation Game. He said lots of other stuff but that’s basically it.

8:42pm – Ben Affleck to announce Best Director. This is a big decider…

8:43pm – Alejandro González Iñárritu wins Best Director! Biggest surprise of the night so far!

8:44pm – Iñárritu’s underwear smells like balls right now.

8:46pm – That makes it look like Birdman for Best Picture. Unless we get a third director/picture split in a row.

8:48pm – Cate Blanchett looks like a druid. I mean that in a good way!

8:51pm – And now Best Actor goes to… Eddie Redmayne! Truly deserved. Shame for Keaton, but a genuinely fair trade-off.

8:53pm – Redmayne holds his tears back so awkwardly it is truly endearing in a way that only happens at the Oscars every few years.

8:54pm – Hey look Matthew McConaughey has Bradley Cooper’s beard from American Sniper!

8:55pm – Hey if Julianne Moore doesn’t win does the earth collapse in on itself?

8:57pm – Julianne Moore wins Best Actress for Still Alice. I hear good things, but I daresay I know no one who’s seen it.

9:00pm – The audience reaction shots during Julianne Moore’s speech were very strange indeed. Her husband taking a photo was the oddest.

9:02pm – Neil Patrick Harris’s briefcase gag has surprisingly played off. A little bit of magic goes a long way.

9:03pm – Sean Penn is mumbling something. Is the show over yet?

9:05pm – Birdman takes Best Picture. I’m happy enough with it, but coulda done without that green card crack by Penn beforehand.

9:09pm – Well that’s it for this year. Some big surprises, overall an entertaining show. Strong final note for the ‘immigrant nation” from Iñárritu.

And we’re done folks, thanks for sticking with me!

Oscarhood – Predictions for the 87th Academy Awards

With your host, Dougie Stinson.

If I’m to understand this correctly, California is the only American state right now not crippled by unnaturally cold February weather. And it’s a good thing too, or this weekend’s Oscars would feature 90 very unpleasant minutes on the white carpet, and those of us on the East Coast wouldn’t have good excuses to hide inside from the snow on a Sunday night.

So yes, it’s Academy Awards time again, that one magical time of the year where everyone cares as much about movies as I do. The theme for this year’s show is “Neil Patrick Harris finally gets to host the Oscars”, so there’s a lot of pressure on the Starship Troopers star to make sure MC stands for ‘most charming’.

Twelve months on from 12 Years a Slave’s deserved win, and 12 years are again a major contender – this time the 12 years of Mason Evans’s life in Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s film is surprisingly lo-fi for a Best Picture contender, but the scope of its production makes it that one-of-a-kind film the Academy occasionally like to acknowledge. But it’s not quite a given yet, with the likes of Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel and the struggling British scientist twins Hawking and Turing all viable contenders. There’s been a notable best picture/director split the last two years, also, and although Interstellar has been denied the role of this year’s Gravity, there’s still a good chance of the top film of the night won’t walk away with all the gold.

The big event no one is talking about is The Sound of Music 50^th anniversary something-or-other we’re all going to be subjected to because AMPAS have officially run out of ideas for how to throw a party. The only way it’s going to be truly entertaining is if they just play this clip on a loop for five minutes.

 

Anyways, where was I?

 

Best Picture

Free Mason: Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

Only eight nominees this time around? What does that say about the movies in 2014? And what was the point of the whole Dark Knight-inspired revival of up to 10 nominees if Interstellar was gonna get shut out? And where the hell is Nightcrawler on this list? Boyhood has all the prestige in its pocket, but it also comes with plenty of fatigue given its summer release and the endless parade of praise since its Sundance debut more than a year ago. It’s a deserving winner though, and it’s hard to pick out a true opponent. Birdman is just that bit too out there to take the prize, and Grand Budapest Hotel suffers from both fatigue and over-whimsy. The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything would almost be shoe-ins in their own years (although the latter is a far more affecting film than the rather flaccid Turing tale), but I suspect they cancel one another out. Whiplash is terrific, but its real-world appeal is utterly overshadowed by Boyhood’s. American Sniper has courted so much ire and controversy it’s hard to see it taking the top prize, but then I remain astonished it was nominated in the first place – it has to be the weakest BP nominee since Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Selma follows a Black History winner last year, and despite some superbly staged scenes just cannot live up to 12 Years; it’s a worthy nominee, but not a deserving a winner.

Should win: Boyhood or Whiplash

Will win: Boyhood

 

Best Director

Period Piece: Ellar Coltrane and director Richard Linklater check out some very dated hardware

Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher) and Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) are the placeholders here, while a win for Wes Anderson would be more a career achievement prize than a win for GBH. Really it’s between Alejandro González Iñárritu and Linklater. Iñárritu has energy behind him after Alfonso Cuarón’s win last year, ut really it’s hard to imagine Linklater not taking this home for committing twelve years to such an ambitious and personal project.

Should win: Richard Linklater or Bennett Miller

Will win: Richard Linklater

 

Best Actor

A Short History of Hawking: Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

This one will go down to the very last vote. Michael Keaton has made an astonishing career comeback with Birdman, and it’s hard to know if he has another performance of this quality in him. But the astonishing physicality of Eddie Redmayne’s take on Stephen Hawking, which pushed through impression into a remarkably affecting conjuring of the scientist, is the sort of prestige performance the Academy adores. Steve Carell, Benedict Cumberbatch and Bradley Cooper can all sit this one out.

Should win: Michael Keaton or Eddie Redmayne

Will win: Eddie Redmayne

 

Best Actress

Forget-Me-Not: The internet assures me this is a picture of Julianne Moore in Still Alice

Julianne Moore seems anointed for Still Alice, although the film escaped me this awards season. Of the three performances I did catch, of Marion Cotillard, Rosamund Pike and Felicity Jones, all were stellar, although Jones did not completely carry her movie as the other two did.

Should win: Marion Cotillard or Rosamund Pike (but probably Julianne Moore?)

Will win: Julianne Moore

 

Best Supporting Actor

Srsly, no jk: Simmons offers a little encouragement to Miles Teller

Robert Duvall gets his pat on the back for still being with us and wonderful. Ethan Hawke wins the award for most eternally youthful, so doesn’t need an Oscar. Ed Norton gave one of the finest (and most entertaining) performances of his career in Birdman, while Mark Ruffalo was solid throughout Foxcatcher. But yeah, why am I still writing here? J.K. Simmons dominated Whiplash. This is all his.

Should win: J.K. Simmons

Will win: J.K. Simmons

 

Best Supporting Actress

The single parent trap: Patricia Arquette with Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltraine

Emma Stone would be a deserving winner for Birdman, but something tells me (and I think everyone else) that she has a lot more performances of this quality in her. Patricia Arquette, on the other hand, deserves this on the power of her final scene in Boyhood alone, in which she summons millennia of forgotten, neglected womanhood and channels it into a wail lightly tinged with ironic wit.

Should win: Patricia Arquette

Will win: Patricia Arquette

 

Best Original Screenplay

This is a tight one too. It would seem unfair for Linklater to take this, given the script was worked so much on the fly. Anderson has lost momentum too, and assumedly his script says “[funny cameo]” one too many times for it to be taken too seriously. Dan Gilroy’s screenplay for Nightcrawler is one of the most brilliantly dark works to come out of Hollywood in years, but it’s so scathing of the entertainment business it’s hard to imagine it getting a bite. The Birdman gang, whose praise for real artists is found on every page, will take this.

Should win: Dan Gilroy

Will win: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo

 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Whiplash would be a very deserving winner here, as would Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Inherent Vice, however incoherent at times, is loaded with punchy scenes and dialogue. This could be where American Sniper takes it, but somehow I suspect Graham Moore’s (lacklustre) screenplay for The Imitation Game will win for simplifying so much complicated science in the manner of a tour guide at Bletchley Park.

Should win: Damien Chazelle

Will win: Graham Moore

 

Best Animated Feature

Bewilderbeasting: A satirical cartoon depicting DreamWorks pressuring the Academy to vote for their shitty sequel

Why even bother? The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, assumedly Isao Takahata’s swansong, was probably the finest film of 2014. It’s hard to believe any of the Academy’s members even watched it. Song of the Sea was equally as enchanting if not quite as deep or visually mesmerising. But that’s all irrelevant. DreamWorks have shovelled out enough money to claim it for the bog-standard How to Train Your Dragon 2 (a film whose predecessor was superior to Oscar-winner Toy Story 3, back in the day). Likely to be the biggest farce of the night.

Should win: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Will win: How to Train Your Dragon 2

 

Best Animated Short

I waaaaaaaan’ it! Winston, the hero of Disney’s Feast

I’ve only seen Feast so I’m guessing Feast because I want a puppy and now I’m hungry.

Should win: Feast

Will win: Feast

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Ida-ntity crisis: Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza take a break on their journey

Embarrassingly I have only seen Ida of this batch, but it is magnificent. I have yet to read a review of Leviathan that wasn’t overflowing with praise, but really this can only go to Ida, if only for proving that the Holocaust can still be mined for the most exceptional drama.

Should win: Ida

Will win: Ida

 

Best Documentary Feature

Metadata is betta’data: Edward Snowden breaks down some complex coding for Glenn Greenwald 

Two warzone films (Last Days in Vietnam and Virunga). Two photographer films (Finding Vivian Maier and The Salt of the Earth). And then there’s the astonishing and frighteningly potent Citizenfour. Maier is the only real competition, but as incredible as its subject is the film itself is very blandly thrown together. Citizenfour on the other hand grips like a thriller and chills like a horror. We have to trust the Academy on this one.

Should win: Citizenfour

Will win: Citizenfour

 

Best Documentary Short

I promise one of these years I’ll see one of these, OK?

 

Best Live Action Short

Ugh now you’re just trying to make me feel bad.

 

Best Original Score

What is the sound of science? The big competitors here are Interstellar (Hans Zimmer), The Imitation Game (Alexandre Desplat), and The Theory of Everything (Jóhann Jóhannsson). Criminally locked-out of the major categories, Mr. Turner appears here for Gary Yershon’s score, but like Desplat’s Grand Budapest Hotel score both were less memorable in the face of such exquisite visuals.

Should win: Hans Zimmer or Jóhann Jóhannsson

Will win: Jóhann Jóhannsson

 

Best Original Song

Hey did you notice how I managed not to piss and moan about The Lego Movie getting cut out of Best Animated Feature? Well now I’m gonna! Because that was bullshit. But just because it was cut out does not mean it should be patronised with a bonus Oscar elsewhere. ‘Everything Is Awesome’ is amazing fun, but musically and thematically John Legend and Common’s ‘Glory’, from the also largely overlooked Selma, is probably the more deserving winner.

Should win: ‘Glory’

Will win: ‘Everything Is Awesome’

 

Best Sound Editing

Hey look the third Hobbit movie got a nomination for something! But no seriously fuck that movie. Birdman gets this.

Should win: Birdman

Will win: Birmdan

 

Best Sound Mixing

Oh right! The other sound one! This will be tight between Birdman and Whiplash, but I suspect the former has it as it goes for a minor technical sweep.

Should win: Birdman or Whiplash

Will win: Birdman

 

Best Production Design

Box art: Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan in The Grand Budapest Hotel

I’m sure I’ve made it very clear I am no fan of Wes Anderson’s latest, but even I think it would be criminal to let The Grand Budapest Hotel be beaten here, unless it was by the sensational Mr. Turner. But no, give it to Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, seriously.

Should win: The Grand Budapest Hotel or Mr. Turner

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Best Cinematography

Flight the power: Michael Keaton takes to the skies in Birdman

Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on Birdman was that film’s greatest draw, but with a win for Gravity last year and up against the likes of Grand Budapest, Ida, and Mr. Turner it’s hard to just hand it to straight to him. But the Academy will.

Should win: Emmanuel Lubezki, Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski (Ida), or Dick Pope (Mr. Turner)

Will win: Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman)

 

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Skin-jobs: Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldana show off some impressive full-body makeup

Steve Carell’s nose takes on Dave Bautista’s full-body tattoos. You just never know which way the Academy will go. I suspect the tremendous goodwill towards Guardians of the Galaxy will see it through.

Should win: Guardians of the Galaxy

Will win: Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Best Costume Design

Purple pros: Ralph Fiennes comforts Tilda Swinton in the lift of the Grand Budapest Hotel

This is the sort of place outsiders like Mr. Turner or Into the Woods could sneak one through. Even Maleficent got a nod here. If we take it the fairytales cancel one another out, that throws the period dramas up against one another. Inherent Vice could take it for cool, but I’d put my money on another win for the look of Grand Budapest Hotel

Should win: Inherent Vice

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Best Film Editing

There’s only two choices here: Whiplash for rhythm, or Boyhood for scope. If Boyhood doesn’t take this early, the rest of the night could go very differently to what’s expected, and you may then dismiss the entirety of this article.

Should win: Whiplash

Will win: Boyhood

 

Best Visual Effects

Spirit in the sky: Star-Lord’s ship the Milano flies over the planet Xandar

This is like making me choose between my children. I cannot remember the last time I would be delighted for any of the nominees to win. Captain America: The Winter Solider – fantastic. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – fantastic. Guardians of the Galaxy – fantastic. Interstellar – fantastic. X-Men: Days of Future Past – fantastic. Not only are they great effects films, but they’re also probably the five best blockbusters of last year, with films like Transformers 4 and The Hobbit 3 getting deservedly cut. I dunno, I just want to congratulate the winner and move on.

Should win: Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar

Will win: Guardians of the Galaxy

 

And that’s all there is. I wish I could predict which winners will be booed or orchestra’d off the stage, but that’s a very different kind of Oscar prediction. We’ll know around this time tomorrow night anyways… See you back here then!

Live from Culpeper, Virginia, it’s the 86th Academy Awards (liveblog)

Life is good. Oscars may be.

There’s a snow storm coming, but inside there is beer and the Oscars. We can only hope for an entertaining night, full of probably not that many surprises, but surprising non-surprises.

[All times are in Pacific Time, all Thai food is in my belly.]

4:44pm – Chiwetel Ejiofor is the coolest African-American guy who is not African-American in the world.

4:46pm – Who are all these Oscar interns and why am I none of them?

4:47pm – Thank god U2 are here. I thought for a moment I couldn’t play the bitter annoyed Irish card all night.

4:51pm – Alfonso Cuarón, his O looks small because you can’t put an accent on a normal O.

4:54pm – Russell Brand Jesus is wearing a white tux. Good for him/her.

4:56pm – Tyson Beckford looks like he has been PhotoShopped to life.

4:59pm – Bradley Cooper: too handsome to like, too charming to hate. He’s the Switzerland of people.

5:01pm – Good lord look how much Mrs. Hill looks like wee Jonah!

5:02pm – Lupita Nyong’o in white. Seems she takes her memes to heart.

5:05pm – Wow, a homeless man in a tux! And oh no it’s Bill Murray.

5:06pm – The Oscar coverage is making fun of people tweeting the Oscars… this sketch is going nowhere good fast.

5:09pm – That Jimmy Kimmel sketch was drenched in classism, and lightly sprinkled in not good comedy.

5:13pm – It’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith! No, not Brad and Angelina (nor Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard), it’s Will and Jada Pinkett!

5:15pm – Nobody doesn’t quite wear a goatee quite like Jeremy Renner.

5:16pm –

“The person I went into as filming this movie is not the person I came out of this movie as.” – Sandra Bullock says, referring to her paycheck.

5:23pm – Take a deep breath everyone, we are now in the theatre!

5:30pm – It’s the Oscars. Champagne please! Also Ellen.

5:31pm – Weak start for Ellen. Pick it up pick it up pick it up!

5:33pm – I hope the real Captain Phillips and the real Philomena make out at the after party.

5:35pm – Some savage material from Ellen DeGeneres here. It could be more biting than actually funny.

5:37pm – Jennifer Lawrence getting a ribbing for falling on her face. Ellen managing to get off her own with this bit.

5:39pm – Ellen has gone for the penis joke!

5:40pm – Crap, if 12 Years a Slave doesn’t win, we are ALL racists!

5:42pm – If Best Supporting Actor goes where I think it’s going, it’s gonna be a very predictable night.

5:43pm – Jared Leto wins! He played Rayon, now he’s wearing spray-on.

5:44pm – Leto tells the story of his mother instead of thanking people he worked with. Ungrateful prick!

5:46pm – Ellen DeGeneres makes a live-tweeting joke. So contemporary.

5:48pm – Jim Carrey is recovering this sketch… just about.

5:50pm – About 70% of those animated films were made after the year 2000. An absolute embarrassment from the Academy there.

5:51pm – Will Ferrell is performing a happy song in blackface. How is this appropriate?

5:53pm – In fairness, the choreography here is pretty delightful.

5:57pm – What’s with the wall of roses?

5:58pm – Naomi Watts and Sam Jackson throwing out some tech awards. First up: costume design.

5:59pm – Gatsby wins! This spells ill American Hustle. Ironically the costume designer’s dress is awful.

6:00pm – Now… Dallas Buyers Makeup.

6:02pm – Shouldn’t Matthew McConaughey be home watching True Detective?

6:03pm – Harrison Ford is out. Of. It.

6:05pm – Channing Tatum is here to show us those damned students again. But I wanna be one of them!

6:11pm – Hahaha remember Ed TV.

6:12pm – Best Animated Short goes to Mr. Hublot. I did not see it. My friend said it was awful. Now I don’t know what to think!

6:13pm – Aw, nervous French guy is nervous.

6:15pm – Frozen or The Wind Rises or I go home.

6:16pm – Hooray for Frozen! Plus it burst a billion today! All the money and success. Disney’s first animated feature Oscar.

6:17pm – Sally Fields!

6:19pm – Look at all these famous films! They’re so famous! Yay! Fame!

6:20pm – Did Peter O’Toole just light up the Will Smith?

6:21pm – And the gravity award for best gravity in a gravity-themed film goes to… Gravity!

6:24pm – Zac Efron presents Karen O. She will now sing a lovely song that will slow down the entire night to a crawl.

6:30pm – Kate Hudson, absent from Kate Hudson’s life for some years, looks rather well presenting the short film awards.

6:31pm – Helium, assumedly the antithesis to Gravity, wins Best Short Film.

6:34pm – Best Documentary Short goes to The Lady in Number 6. The subject of which like just died the other day. What terrible terrible timing.

6:36pm – Not enjoying Ellen’s aisle shtick. Not at all.

6:37pm – Best Documentary Feature goes to 20 Feet From Stardom. I did not see it, but The Act of Killing was surely robbed.

6:39pm – There is a singsong going on on stage right now. It’s the Oscars, why isn’t this happening always?

6:40pm – Kevin Spacey cannot shake his Frank Underwood accent.

6:41pm – Lifetime awards to Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Angelina Jolie. Which coincidently enough is the dream cast to play me in the movie of my life.

6:49pm – Ewan McJared Leto and Viola Davis presenting Best Foreign Language Film.

6:50pm – Paolo Sorrentino wins the Oscar for Il Divo! But also I guess for The Great Beauty.

6:51pm – Oh, so that’s what Tyler Perry looks like.

6:54pm – Brad Pitt is here. He is going to do something important I wager.

6:55pm – Oh nope he’s just presenting U2. Never mind.

6:56pm – I can’t deal with ordinary U2.

6:58pm – In fairness, Bono can still kinda bring it. I guess.

7:03pm – Not retweeting Ellen’s tweet out of principle.

7:04pm – WHERE’S WALLACE?!? Oh, he’s at the Oscars…

7:06pm – It’s Thor and Charlize Thoron!

7:07pm – Sound Mixing goes to Gravity. Which is ironic because there’s no sound in space.

7:10pm – Sound Editing. Gravity. Called it. So there you go.

7:12pm – Christoph Waltz is here to present the decider for the rest of the night; Best Supporting Actress.

7:14pm – Cheers for Lupita Nyong’o! That makes tonight a rollover, in exactly the right direction.

7:16pm – A beautiful, passionate and tear-flecked speech from Nyong’o. Bravo bravo and bravo.

7:21pm – Ellen ordered in pizzas. They have Coca-Cola logos on them. This is not OK.

7:22pm – Remember when the Oscars did music numbers and was an actual show?

7:24pm – Wooo! Archives!

7:26pm – Amy Adams and Bill Murray. I would read that slash fiction.

7:27pm – Harold Ramis! We miss him.

7:28pm – Gravity wins Best Cinematography. But it already won this award for Best Special Effects…

7:29pm – Anna Kendrick and Gabourey Sidibe, announce the nominations for Editing.

7:31pm – Gravity wins again. Another tech award for the pile. Not convinced it deserved that one either…

7:33pm – Whoopi Goldberg presents a Wizard of Oz retrospective, in Wicked Witch footwear.

7:35pm – It’s Pink! In red! Those things clash!

7:36pm – I associate Pink Floyd with The Wizard of Oz, not Pink…

7:38pm – Remember when they made films like The Wizard of Oz… not like Oz: The Great and the Powerful?

7:42pm – Ellen is dressed as Gilda. I guess this is OK.

7:44pm – Jennifer Garner and Sherlock Khan present Best Production Design. Gatsby?

7:45pm – Gatsby gets it again! Can American Hustle win anything?

7:46pm – Everyone who didn’t design the Oscar stage tonight deserves Best Production Design.

7:47pm – A tribute to superhero movies. Otherwise known as the box office.

7:54pm – Glenn Close presents the sad bit.

7:58pm – Not Jim Kelly! Paul Walker! Peter O’Toole! Richard Griffiths! Joan Fontaine! Harold Ramis! Philip Seymour Hoffman! (and no Alain Resnais)

7:59pm – Bette Midler sings ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’. Everyone everywhere is crying and sad and crying sad.

8:05pm – The Oscars crashed Twitter. Hopefully that’s not the best thing that happens at the Oscars tonight.

8:06pm – Goldie Hawn is talking 12 Years a Slave. I have never thought of one without the other.

8:08pm – John Travolta present Idina Menzel singing ‘Let it Go’.

8:09pm – Well now they know.

8:11pm – Menzel kills it. The audience has to stand because they did for U2.

8:13pm – Jamie Foxx and Jessica Biel are getting their groove on on stage. Or at least he is.

8:15pm – Steven Price wins for Gravity’s score. Certainly one of Gravity’s most deserved awards.

8:17pm – ‘Let It Go’! let it go! I can’t because it deserved to win!

8:18pm – OH MY GOD THOSE TWO ARE SO ADORABLE!!!

8:22pm – Are the Oscars over yet?

8:23pm – Ellen is passing a hat around the audience to raise some money. Hopefully to go towards some better bits.

8:23pm – De Niro. Cruz. Writing awards. Coming this summer.

8:25pm – Best Adapted Screenplay goes to 12 Years a Slave. Good job.

8:26pm – “All the praise goes to Solomon Northup; those are his words.”

8:27pm – Best Original Screenplay goes to Spike Jonze for Her! Great stuff. Very emotionally honest and mature writing.

8:32pm – Angelina Jolie helps Sidney Poitier to the stage. A superb ovation for him. Nomination for Best Director pending…

8:34pm – Alfonso Cuarón wins Best Director, for best handling of a film that should have been awful.

8:37pm – A fine speech by Cuarón, and an important moment for Hispanic filmmakers overall.

8:41pm – Daniel Day-Lincoln is here to present Best Actress. Also Best Handsome. For him.

8:43pm – Terrible clip to show off why Sandra Bullock is even nominated in the first place.

8:44pm – Cate Blanchett wins which was expected why I am even mentioning this?

8:45pm – “Random and subjective” – Cate Blanchett on the Best Actress Oscar. Good for her.

8:47pm – No thanks for Woody Allen…?

8:48pm – Jennifer Lawrence is here to present lust. Lust to all. Lust.

8:51pm – Matthew McConaughey wins the Oscar for Best Career Comeback Fuck All Y’All Alright Alright Alright.

8:53pm – Matthew McConaughey thanks his mama, and… Charlie Laughton? Sure, why not?!

8:55pm – Best Picture Make Go Now. Shut up Ellen. Shut up Will Smith.

8:56pm – Best Picture goes to the animation to present best picture.

8:57pm – Actually 12 Years a Slave. So deserved. So gloriously deserved.

8:58pm – BRAD PITT ENDED SLAVERY!

8:59pm – Steve McQueen gets his say. Nervous, emotional, but he says what he must, focusing on the powerful women in his life. Wonderful.

9:00pm – A final call to end slavery around the world, and a leap. A leap for joy from Steve McQueen. True Oscar magic.

And that was the Oscars 2014. An enjoyable night, although low on spectacle, but the awards went mostly to the right people. And now to not think about next year’s show for a very, very long time…

12 Months a Film – Predictions for the 86th Academy Awards

Cue the spotlight

Holy jaysus it’s Oscar time again!

Another year fades into memory. Remember how Argo didn’t surprise anyone but Life of Pi winning best director did? Remember how Seth MacFarlane had seen people’s boobs? No, me neither. Let’s move on with 2014 so

Rudely pushed from February by the Sochi Winter Olympics (which I totally watched a minute of, honest), March kicks off with the death knell of awards season, and supposedly the tightest race in recent Oscar memory. Awards have been split between three major players thus far; the relative outsider being Gravity (superb production, but a philosophic tabula rasa), while American Hustle (lively gloss with undercooked ideas) and 12 Years a Slave (harrowing majesty) will test the Academy’s love for art versus entertainment. It really could go either way.

Ellen DeGeneres hosts again, having put in a passable performance at the 2007 awards, but the big moment will likely come when the PowerPoint of the recently deceased plays, following a series of sad and shocking deaths in the American film industry in the past months. Much of the rest of the events are unpredictable, but that’s not gonna stop me from trying to guess the winners. Here goes.

 

Best Picture

His master’s voice: Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) listens to the cruel whispers of Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) in 12 Years a Slave 

Once more the line-up is nine, suggesting the Academy really can’t decide what to do with the expanded 10-position nomination hole it’s opened up for itself. Philomena, Nebraska and Captain Phillips are strong seat-holders. Her, Dallas Buyers Club and the cruelly maligned Wolf of Wall Street remain outside bets, that could’ve had great chances with bigger buzz and better campaigns behind them. Gravity is this year’s Avatar, although with the added benefit of being a great movie; it will likely choke in the airless vacuum of being too commercial. That leaves Hustle and Slave. The chance to make a little bit of history won’t be lost on the Academy.

Should win: 12 Years a Slave

Will win: 12 Years a Slave

Best Director

Starman: Alfonso Cuarón directs Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Gravity 

Alexander Payne did a solid, gentle job with Nebraska, but that film has been slid under the awards mat for months now. Scorsese has earned an Oscar for the first time in decades, but sure when has he ever been given an Oscar he deserved?! David O. Russell (American Hustle) has been lucky with the surge of positivity his film gotten, but it won’t get him anywhere in this race. It comes down to Cuarón (Gravity) or McQueen (12 Years) – either win would be historical. In such a tight year, a split seems likely.

Should win: Steve McQueen

Will win: Alfonso Cuarón

Best Actor

The man with the plan: Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof

Leonardo DiCaprio found a new peak in his career with The Wolf of Wall Street, but whether or not the Academy will reward him thus is uncertain given the often negative reaction that film has received. Chiwetel Ejiofor gave an overpowering performance in 12 Years a Slave, but his name remains unduly obscure in Hollywood, whereas Matthew McConaughey’s comeback, of which Dallas Buyers Club is but a brick, is now legendary.

Should win: Leonardo DiCaprio

Will win: Matthew McConaughey

Best Actress

Blue is the loneliest colour: Cate Blanchett as Jeanette Francis in Blue Jasmine

Cate Blachett.

Should win: Cate Blanchett

Will win: Cate Blanchett

Best Supporting Actor

Trans-formation: Jared Leto as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club 

Bradley Cooper (American Hustle) once more stands in the wing, as will Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street). No, unless there’s an unexpected surge for Michael Fassbender (12 Years) or Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips), this one is in the bag for Jared Leto’s impressive but unexceptional performance in Dallas Buyers Club.

Should win: Michael Fassbender or Jonah Hill

Will win: Jared Leto

Best Supporting Actress

Darling of the Academy: Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle

Last year’s Best Actress winner Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle) was an early call for this one, but there is new energy behind Lupita Nyong’o for her astonishing role as an indoctrinated slave in 12 Years a Slave. As that film begins a late surge towards best picture, this award could clarify things right from the beginning of the night. Julia Roberts (August: Osage County), Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine) and June Squibb (Nebraska) are all worthy but out of the race.

Should win: Lupita Nyong’o

Will win: Jennifer Lawrence

Best Original Screenplay

Recent allegations against Woody Allen have surely crippled Blue Jasmine here, while Nebraska and Dallas Buyers Club are likely to have to sit this one out. Spike Jonze’s Her has deserving energy behind it after a win at the Globes, but don’t rule out American Hustle just yet, especially if it targets a clean-up on the night.

Should win: Spike Jonze

Will win: Spike Jonze

Best Adapted Screenplay

Despite everything, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke don’t stand a chance for their superb Before Midnight. Billy Ray’s Captain Phillips screenplay sticks out here like a sore thumb, while Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope’s Philomena is just too slight to win this one. The split comes down to Slave (John Ridley) and Wolf of Wall Street (Terence Winter). It can really only go one way I think…

Should win: Terence Winter

Will win: John Ridley

Best Animated Feature

Snow chance of losing: Disney’s Frozen

Despicable Me 2 was too slight (and racist?), while The Croods was too inconsistent; neither has the buzz behind them to pull this one off. Speaking of buzz, there’s been so little word on Benjamin Renner and Didier Brunner’s Ernest & Celestine that I’d be shocked if a single member of the Academy even watched their screener of it (assuming they received it). Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises is truly deserving and it would be a glorious capstone to his career, but the public adoration behind Frozen will surely propel it to victory. And in fairness, Miyazaki’s already won this Oscar; Disney has not!

Should win: The Wind Rises or Frozen

Will win: Frozen

Best Animated Short

Of this lot I must confess I have only seen Disney’s Get a Horse!, and while amusing I daren’t think of it as an Oscar competitor. The other nominees are Feral, Mr. Hublot, Possessions and Room on the Broom. I shall make a monumental guess.

Should win: Not Get a Horse!?

Will win: Room on the Broom (only because I once read my niece the book and it was lovely)

Best Foreign Language Film

La Dolce Via: Tony Servillo in The Great Beauty

Some strange nominees here, with films from Palestine (Omar) and Cambodia (The Missing Picture) in the running. The Broken Circle Breakdown is Belgium’s entry, but there’s no energy behind it. Thomas Vinterberg’s superb The Hunt has become little more than a Netflix blip, meaning Paolo Sorrentino, outrageously overlooked years back for his sensational Il Divo, will now win for his stunning but over-indulgent/rated The Great Beauty.

Should win: The Hunt

Will win: The Great Beauty

Best Documentary Feature

Hearts of darkness, minds of light: Anwar Congo and Herman Koto re-enact their dreams in The Act of Killing

Honest to god if The Act of Killing doesn’t win I will break something. Cutie and the Boxer winning might appease my wrath. The Square winning will make me break a person. Dirty Wars and 20 Feet From Stardom are also nominated.

Should win: The Act of Killing

Will win: The Act of Killing

Had better win: The Act of Killing

Best Documentary Short

Two years in a row I have succeeded in not seeing any of these! Why do I draw such attention to my own failings?

Should win: ?

Will win: CaveDigger (has the best title)

Best Original Score

This is an odd selection, with Her (William Butler and Owen Pallett) and Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman) surely in the running in any other year. But in Gravity Steven Price created an aural blast that has not been experienced since Strauss was sampled in 2001. A sure-fire winner.

Should win: Steven Price

Will win: Steven Price

Best Original Song 

When U2’s ‘Ordinary Love’ from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom won at the Globes, there was outrage. Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ is not just a superb piece of music with clever lyrics, it is also a fantastic piece of storytelling in and of itself. Surely the Academy will recognise this.

Should win: ‘Let It Go’

Will win: ‘Let It Go’

Best Sound Editing

Last year I joked that nobody cared about the sound categories. But then Best Sound Editing was split between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty and the world nearly imploded in confusion. So, let’s be serious here. Um… no, let’s just give it to Gravity.

Should win: Gravity

Will win: Gravity

Best Sound Mixing

I still can never quite work out what this award is for. But the sound in The Hobbit was pretty great, so let’s say it’ll win, if Gravity doesn’t.

Should win: Depends on what exactly is being judged…

Will win: Gravity

Best Production Design

Letting the ’20s roar: The incredible design of Baz Luhrmann’s largely misguided take on The Great Gatsby

Her and 12 Years a Slave would be very worthy winners here, but the options are so grand. Gravity is so heavily digital it should rule itself out, leaving the fight between the ultra-’70s sheen of American Hustle or the outlandish brilliance of The Great Gatsby. It’s very tight.

Should win: The Great Gatsby or Her

Will win: The Great Gatsby

Best Cinematography

Cinema software: The digital cinematography of Gravity astounds, but is it really cinematography?

Much like Avatar a few years back, I have no respect for Gravity’s inclusion here. Bruno Delbonnel should be in the running for Inside Llewyn Davis, but that film has gone down with the Academy about as well as discussions of Zionist hoodlums. This could go just about anywhere.

Should win: Roger Deakins (Prisoners) or Bruno Delbonnel

Will win: Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity) 

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Styling AIDS: Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club

Good lord am I still here writing this. Um… Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa winning would be funny for all kinds of reasons. No one wants The Lone Ranger to win any awards, so it’s out. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto did, admittedly, look like they had AIDS. That beats William Fichtner with a dodgy hairlip any day.

Should win: Dallas Buyers Club

Will win: Dallas Buyers Club

Best Costume Design

That ’70s glow: Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence all looking très chic in American Hustle

Once again it’s Gatsby versus Hustle. The former was outlandish, but the latter had more sideboob.

Should win: The Great Gatsby

Will win: American Hustle

Best Film Editing

The two big deserving films are Dallas Buyers Club and Captain Phillips, but it’s never been clear to me that the Academy understands what editing is. Will they just give it to Gravity because it didn’t need editing due to long takes? Who knows…?

Should win: Dallas Buyers Club or Captain Phillips

Will win: American Hustle

Best Visual Effects

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble: Satellites and space stations are shredded apart in Gravity

Desolation of Smaug, Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness… hell, even The Lone Ranger! These are all deserving films. But Gravity is the one that made special effects shine this year, so it’d be an absolute shock if it didn’t take the gold.

Should win: Gravity (or Smaug)

Will win: Gravity

 

So those are my calls. We’ll see how right I was in about 36 hours. I’ll be live-blogging the event as always, this year from a hotel somewhere in the middle of Virginia. Don’t ask. I’ll see you then.

The coffee’s on, the beer is chilling, popcorn’s popping… it’s nearly time for the 85th Academy Awards

The Oscars Liveblog hosted by David Neary

Last year life got a little in the way of some good old-fashioned live-blogging, so this year there’s simply no excuse. It’s gonna be a long night… good thing I stocked up on supplies. For those of you joining me from East of USA, start the coffee now (and have a reserve Red Bull tucked away at the back of the fridge). For those of you in the US and Canada, welcome, be grateful for your timezone and be understanding of the several typos that follow – things won’t kick off ’til after 1am and I won’t be watching what the keyboard.

If you missed my predictions, check them out here, but in short Argo for Best Picture, Spielberg for Best Director and a cleanish sweep of the technicals for Life of Pi.

Be sure to check back here as events on the red carpet, and later and more importantly the Awards themselves, kick off. As always I will be simultaneously live-tweeting on @DeusExCinema.

See you back here in a little bit…

[all times are in Pacific Time. Add eight hours to comprehend how tired I am]

3:20pm – OK, here we go.

3:22pm – Jessica Chastain looks sensational. If her dress was a little more gold she’d be an award statuette herself.

3.27pm – Amy Adams does not like Ryan Seacrest much. Also, her dress looks it would be good for dusting.

3.28pm – Samantha Barks’s dress! Give it the Oscars! All the Oscars!

3.30pm – Reese Witherspoon looks better than many of the nominees. Good dress, great hair. Now all she needs is a good movie.

3.32pm – Channing Tatum. So hot right now. Never gonna win an Oscar though.

3.34pm – Quvenzhané Wallis’s little princess outfit is perfect. She looks like Tiana in The Princess and the Frog. Ryan Seacrest is the frog.

3.37pm – Taking Octavia Spencer after her recent cameo in 30 Rock is not very easy.

3.43pm – Kerry Washington has just been talking to Ryan Seacrest longer than she was in Django Unchained.

3.46pm – In my head I imagine Jacki Weaver is married to Cloud Atlas star Hugo Weaver.

3.49pm – Kelly Osbourne’s hair is a colour I describe as dead pink.

3.51pm – Love Amanda Seyfried’s dress. She looks superb, but did she drive to the Oscars with the top down?

3.52pm – THAT’S what every Oscars has been missing up to now – Bryan Cranston!

3.54pm – Jennifer Lawrence; looking perfect, if a little minimalist. Dress isn’t exactly… accentuating anything…

3.59pm – Not liking Sally Field’s dress. Also, why is Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking in that deeper-than-usual voice?

4.03pm – Jennifer Hudson looks better and better every year. Does she still do movies though?

4.05pm – Is it just me, or is the red carpet actually kind of mauve?

4.07pm – Anyone else want Channing Tatum’s baby to be born during the show?

4.12pm – Catherine Zeta-Jones looking like a Valkyrie. Michael Douglas looking healthy. Things we like to see.

4.14pm – Helen Hunt looks like she just showed up for the 1998 Oscars. Still as good as it gets, apparently.

4.17pm – I can’t make fun of Christoph Waltz’s hispter glasses because my new glasses are sadly very similar.

4.18pm – Argo or Lincoln… who cares? Anne Hathaway’s dress is clearly going to be the most divisive issue of the night.

4.20pm – Naomi Watts came to the Oscars wearing Nicole Kidman’s skin.

4.22pm – Charlize Theron is still the best-looking woman in Hollywood. Unless, as her last film suggests, you count Kirsten Stewart.

4.27pm – Bradley Cooper’s hair is more handsome than my face.

4.45pm – Adele looks totally ready for the 1965 Oscars.

4.47pm – Nicole Kidman is dressed like an evil female Oscar. I kind of love it.

4.51pm – I wish Hugh Jackman wasn’t so charming, I’ll feel bad now when he loses to Day-Lewis.

5.01pm – Somehow Jennifer Aniston’s red dress clashes with the red carpet. Someone did their job wrong.

5.03pm – And Jennifer Garner’s (stunning) mauve dress matches the red carpet! What is going on?!?

5.05pm – Halle Berry: “I’ve never been more proud to be part of a franchise as that one (Bond).” Sucks to be the X-Men franchise right now.

5.15pm – Jamie Foxx’s grey tux has more personality than Jamie Foxx.

5.19pm – No, seriously, is it the Oscars yet?

5.24pm – Renée Zellweger is ready for the Space Oscars!

5.30pm – Here we go! Seth MacFarlane, you are very welcome.

5.31pm – Making Tommy Lee Jones laugh on the first beat. Terrific comedy.

5.32pm – And a direct swipe at the Oscars for snubbing Ben Affleck. Wow, amazing start.

5.34pm – “If you bumped into Don Cheadle on the studio set, did you try and free him?” Seth to DDL on his method.

5.36pm – William Shatner cameo! This is pure Family Guy.

5.38pm – A jaunty musical number about boobs. Shame it’s pre-recorded.

5.40pm – Channing Tatum dancing with Charlize Theron. The world cannot handle this much sex appeal.

5.42pm – Flight done with sock-puppets. I now never need to see that film.

5.43pm – And now MacFarlane is singing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe this is properly entertaining stuff.

5.45pm – Gidget jokes! I get these now!

5.47pm – And a parody of Be Our Guest. This is far more Beauty than Beast.

5.49pm – Octavia Spencer presenting Best Supporting Actor. All of the nominees have an Oscar already. Huh. Hoping for Jones, but we’ll see.

5.50pm – Christoph Waltz wins! For basically an identical role to the won he already won for! Hooray!

5.52pm – Waltz quotes Tarantino at Tarantino. Surely Tarantino quotes Tarantino at himself often enough.

5.57pm – Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy here to be loud and silly. I have no problem with this as long as it’s short.

5.58pm – Yes, that went on too long. Now, Best Animated Short.

5.59pm – Paperman wins. Very deserving. Gorgeous film. Plus I called it. So yeah. I win!

6.00pm – Best Animated Feature goes to Brave. Controversial stuff. Gutted for The Pirates! and Wreck-It Ralph.

6.02pm – Reese Witherspoon is here to look amazing. Also to talk about Life of Les Beasts of the Misérable Pi.

6.04pm – Quevenzhané Wallis looks delighted to be mentioned by the voice of Stewie Griffin.

6.06pm – The cast of The Avengers are here to make sure that people care about cinematography. This is good for everyone.

6.07pm – Claudio Miranda wins for Life of Pi. Superbly deserving.

6.09pm – Claudio Miranda should also win for Best Hair.

6.10pm – Best Visual Effects goes to…

6.11pm – Life of Pi! I called a clean sweep of technicals. Think I may have been right…

6.13pm – Oh wow, that may have been the most embarrassing musical ushering off stage I have ever seen.

6.17pm – Channing Tatum and Jennifer Aniston make an odd couple. Here they are to prepare us for the “less interesting” styley awards.

6.18pm – Anna Karenina gets the costume nod. Hugely deservingly. I think I called that. Did I call that?

6.20pm – And now Best Makeup goes to Les Misérables. Didn’t see that one coming at all.

6.21pm – Halle Berry is here to launch the Bond love-in. Even though she may be the worst Bond girl ever. I think we’ll all die another day.

6.24pm – Well now I just want to watch Bond films…

6.26pm – Shirley Bassey. Goodness!

6.28pm – Auric Goldfinger would be pissed to realise Oscars are only covered in a very thin layer of gold.

6.32pm – *snooze* Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington out on stage to some very dull applause.

6.34pm – Best Short Film goes to Curfew. I did not see it, so have no comment to make. I’ll be over here when you need me.

6.36pm – Oh, Washington and Foxx are still there. Best Documentary Short goes to Inocente.

6.38pm – Liam Neeson is here to be badass.

6.39pm – Oooh, here come some clips from Argo Dark Lincoln.

6.42pm – “150 years and it’s still too soon.” MacFarlane got gasps there with a Lincoln assassination joke.

6.43pm – Ben Affleck is here to talk about documentaries. And to talk a swipe at Seth. Ouch.

6.44pm – Searching For Sugarman takes Best Documentary! I didn’t see it, but I sure as hell called it!

6.46pm – MacFarlane makes a quick stab at Prometheus. I’ll allow it.

6.50pm – Jennifer Garner and Jessica Chastain come on stage to the Cinema Paradiso theme. Now I’m just thinking of kissing in the rain…

6.51pm – If Amour doesn’t take Best Foreign Language Film this’ll be a big upset… and it does!

6.52pm – Michael Haneke seems a surprisingly chirpy fellow.

6.54pm – John Travolta looking suspiciously young is here present a celebration of recent movie musicals. Some of them are going to be awful.

6.56pm – I really dislike Chicago. The movie. The music. This is not pleasant.

6.57pm – That said, I probably hated Dreamgirls even more. Just get to Les Mis already!

6.59pm – But yeah, Jennifer Hudson can seriously damn well sing!

7.01pm – Excellent, sounds like the Les Mis crowd are doing ‘One Day More’. Epic tune.

7.02pm – This is a superb medley. And everyone looks fantastic.

7.05pm – OK, so the set-up is stolen from the 25th Anniversary Les Mis concert. But they’ve kind of killed it. Better than in the movie!

7.07pm – The upcoming films advertised in the ad breaks look almost universally terrible.

7.09pm – Here’s Chris Pine, our second Captain Kirk of the night, to regale us with a “previously on the Oscars” about the tech awards with Zoe Saldana.

7.12pm – Oh, OK, Ted and Mark Wahlberg are here. What are the audience seeing right now?

7.13pm – Best Sound Mixing goes Les Misérables. Deserved I guess.

7.15pm – Slightly dodgy Jewish jokes from Ted there. Sure they went down a treat with the audience.

7.16pm – Best Sound Editing is a tie! This very rarely happens. Zero Dark Thirty takes the first…

7.17pm – Skyfall takes the second! A huge surprise, but a great win!

7.19pm – Christopher Plummer welcomed onstage with a MacFarlane-esque movie reference. Clever stuff.

7.20pm – This is a rather lovely intro from Plummer to the Best Supporting Actress nominees.

7.22pm – If Anne Hathaway doesn’t win the world may vomit. Just a universal vomit.

7.23pm – Thank god. I wanted to keep down all this beer and popcorn.

7.24pm – It’s not an Oscars ’til there’s a hint of tears. Nice job Anne Hathaway!

7.30pm – Brief discussion about the upcoming Academy Museum. I like to work in film museums. Can I work there please?

7.32pm – Sandra Bullock is here to give out the editing award. One of the most important of all – let it never be forgotten. I called Argo.

7.34pm – And how right I was! Argo takes Best Editing. William Goldenberg did a terrific job, especially in the opening scenes.

7.35pm – Jennifer Lawrence and her Metroid dress introduce Adele to sing ‘Skyfall’. Wonder if it’ll win Best Song later…

7.38pm – Great performance of a great song. Worried Shirley Bassey is gonna kick Adele’s ass backstage after for stealing her thunder.

7.44pm – Nicole Kidman is here to tell us a little about Silver Django’s Amour.

7.48pm – Daniel Radcliffe and an amusingly hobbling Kristen Stewart, who keeps grunting in pain, announcing nominees for Production Design.

7.49pm – Lincoln takes it! I think I actually called that one! Hooray for Lincoln! Hooray for me!

7.52pm – Salma Hayek, looking like an exotic princess from a Pink Panther movie, tells us about some people who won some nice awards for niceness.

7.57pm – George Clooney, proving with his grey beard that time rolls forever onward, reminds us of those we’ve lost. Tears time!

8.01pm – A lot of sad losses this year, from Borgnine to Tony Scott. But the big surprise is Barbra Streisand coming out to sing ‘The Way We Were’. Fitting.

8.09pm – Chicago being honoured for no great reason. Oh wait, it’s to announce the Best Score award. That… sort of makes sense.

8.11pm – Another envelope struggle and… Life of Pi wins it! That puts it well in the lead tonight!

8.13pm – Best Song goes to ‘Skyfall’ or I know nothing of the Oscars.

8.15pm – Norah Jones performs ‘Everybody Needs a Best Friend’ from Ted, co-written by host Seth MacFarlane. A nice touch.

8.17pm – But still Adele takes it, and she weeps. Thank goodness, we’re overdue some proper tears!

8.19pm – Yet another ad break. And still six awards to go. Getting sleepy…

8.23pm – Dustin Hoffman propping up Charlize Theron. The unoriginal odd couple. Now some writing awards.

8.24pm – Best Adapted Screenplay. This could go almost anywhere…

8.25pm – Chris Terrio wins for Argo! Pretty much seals the deal for Best Picture later…

8.26pm – A great, rapidfire speech about the good of solving troubles non-violently there.

8.27pm – Somewhat disgracefully, Quentin Tarantino takes Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained.

8.28pm – Tarantino takes a moment to thank people other than himself. Good for him.

8.33pm – Some good gags from MacFarlane there to bring out Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, children of Hollywood legends.

8.34pm – Though my goodness Jane Fonda’s dress is loud! Best Director is on the way…

8.35pm – Shock and terror! Ang Lee takes it for Life of Pi! This could mean a lot of things. Terrible for Spielberg, but a deserved win all the same.

8.35pm – “Thank you movie god.” – Ang Lee

8.40pm – And Jean Dujardin is here to present Best Actress. There may some swooning.

8.43pm – I know I’ve called this for Lawrence already, but now I just don’t know…

8.44pm – But I was right! And then she fell on the steps going up. At least she made a gag about it!

8.45pm – A good quick speech by Jennifer Lawrence there. Now Meryl Streep is here to give Daniel Day-Lewis something.

8.48pm – Three for you Day-Lewis. You go Day-Lewis.

8.50pm – Standing ovation for a charmingly beffudled Day-Lewis. Who makes a great joke to Streep about swapping Lincoln for Thatcher.

8.52pm – A brilliantly worded and emotive speech there. Day-Lewis did the tall man proud.

8.52pm – Jack Nicholson to give out Best Picture. Surely it’s Argo…

8.53pm – Nicholson joined via videolink by Michelle Obama from the White House. What a brilliant, if strange, surprise!

8.56pm – Michelle Obama announces it for Argo! No big surprise, other than in the way it was read out.

8.58pm – Did George Clooney really need another Oscar? Stupid perfect Clooney.

8.59pm – Ben Affleck given the nod to discuss the film as its director. The whole team seem a little upset at him not getting that nomination.

9.00pm – Ah, but can Ben Affleck win an Oscar for acting?

9.01pm – Kristen Chenoweth joins Seth MacFarlane on stage to sing a song for the losers. The credits roll, no one really cares any more.

9.05pm – And that’s the end. A decent show. With the exception of the gongs for Django and Brave‘s win, I am very happy with the night.

9.08pm – OK, that’s me wrapped for another year. Now to look forward to tomorrow when the average person once again no longer cares very much about the movies. Oh well, it’s always good while it lasts. Hope you enjoyed following. Good night to all!

10 People You Didn’t Know Have Oscars

1. Uncle Ben

Cliff Robertson as Ben Parker in Spider-Man

No, not the rice mascot.

Cliff Robertson’s Ben Parker, beloved uncle to Peter Parker, was perhaps the best-judged performance in the entirety of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The actor, who passed away in 2011 aged 88, was not familiar to younger audiences for anything other than this iconic role. So it will surprise some to learn that Robertson was the proud owner of an Academy Award for Best Actor, won in 1969 for his role in the film Charly.

Yep, that’ll win you an Oscar: Cliff Robertson in Charly

The disappointing flipside to this, however, is that the current Uncle Ben, Martin Sheen, has never won an Oscar. Mull on that for a moment, and then let’s move on.

2. This guy

I know that guy from something…

More like THAT guy! That guy is Fisher Stevens. A character actor known for his snide antagonists and sidekicks, he will be most familiar to viewers of the 1990s magic newspaper TV series Early Edition, and more surprisingly familiar to fans of the Short Circuit movies, in which he donned brown-face to play Steve Guttenberg’s Indian business partner Ben, taking the lead role in the sequel.

Well that’s just unfortunate

He also played an obnoxious boyfriend of Monica in an early episode of Friends, and played the villain in the ridiculous 1995 computer caper Hackers.

But when he’s not acting, Stevens is a director and producer, who notably (and not widely known-ly) produced the 2009 documentary The Cove, the film which people claimed they were seeing out of support for dolphins, but actually just wanted to catch a glimpse of Hayden Panettiere in a wetsuit. The Cove won Best Documentary, and Stevens was there to pick up the statue.

Lucky for some

3. Walton Goggins

Walton Goggins in TV’s Justified

Like Fisher Stevens’s Early Edition co-star Kyle Chandler (Zero Dark Thirty, Argo), The Shield actor Walton Goggins can be proud to have appeared in two Best Picture-nominated films this year – Django Unchained and Lincoln. In Django he played Billy Crash, all too comfortable with a burning-hot poker. In Lincoln he played nervous Democratic Congressman Clay Hawkins, whose backing-and-forthing on the subject of abolition much of the plot rests on. That’s some range right there.

But before any of this Goggins starred in and co-produced a short film called The Accountant, way back in 2001. That took home the Best Live Action Short Oscar, which he shared with director Ray McKinnon and producer Lisa Blount. Yet another person on the set of Django to have more Oscars than Leonardo DiCaprio.

4. Malcolm Tucker

Peter Capaldi in The Thick of It

Peter Capaldi is best known for playing Malcolm Tucker, the terror-striking Director of Communications for the British Government in satirical BBC comedy The Thick of It, and its spin-off movie In the Loop. Malcolm is one of TV’s greatest monsters, whose abuse-filled tirades make symphonies with profanities. On the flipside of that, some film fans will recognise him as the timid Danny Oldsen in the wonderful 1983 dramedy Local Hero, in which he falls in love with a girl with webbed-toes, believing she’s a mermaid.

But back in 1993 he directed the gloriously titled short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, which tied for Best Live Action Short with the film Trevor in 1995. You can watch the whole demented film here.

5. Keith Carradine

Keith Carradine, back in the day

The Carradine name has been tainted in recent years by rambling speeches about Superman, and autoerotic asphyxiation. But David’s half-brother Keith has kept up the good work begun in The Duellists and Southern Comfort with roles in TV’s Deadwood and Dexter. If any Carradine was going to have an Oscar under his belt, it was going to be him. And he does!

But what’s strangest about this is that he won his gong for Best Song. ‘I’m Easy’, from Robert Altman’s dramedic masterpiece Nashville, was not just performed by Carradine, but written by him as well. It’s a pretty damn good tune too, I’ll have you know.

6. Dean Pelton

Jim Rash has yet to win an Oscar for playing Dean Pelton

While audience’s expect to see Community’s Jim Rash dressed as Carmen Miranda before they’d imagine him in a tuxedo, Rash has a lot more to him than the gloriously flamboyantly clown he appears as on TV. Last year Rash took home a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his work on Alexander Payne’s The Descendants.

While Payne gave the speech, Rash unwisely spent his time on stage impersonating a meme-worthy pose of Angelina Jolie, ensuring the speech would forever be incomprehensible to future generations.

7. Christine Lahti

Christine Lahti

Nowadays more famous for not actually being Allison Janney, Christine Lahti was one of the biggest stars of ’90s hospital drama Chicago Hope, and was a Best Supporting Actress nominee at the Oscars for Swing Shift back in 1984. But like so many on this list, her biggest achievement came as a Best Live Action Short Film award, which she won for directing 1995’s Lieberman in Love (in which she also co-starred with Danny Aiello). That tops Allison Janney’s two Emmys any day!

Not Christine Lahti

8. Homer Simpson

Wooo-hooo!

No, Homer Simpson has never actually won an Oscar. In fact 2007’s The Simpsons Movie wasn’t even nominated for Best Animated Feature. There is no Academy Award for best voice-acting (there should be), so Dan Castellaneta has never won an Oscar either. In fact, if any member of the Simpson family is likely to win an Oscar, it’s little Maggie Simpson, whose short adventure The Longest Daycare is nominated for Best Animated Short this Sunday.

But while Homer has never won an Oscar, he does have an Oscar, as revealed in the season 7 episode of The Simpsons ‘Team Homer’. Displaying his trophy collection, Homer is shown to have come into possession of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar won by Dr. Haing S. Ngor for The Killing Fields in 1985.

Haing S. Ngor

Which is a nice way of segueing into Ngor’s win. The physician was a first-time actor when he took the pivotal role of Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. He starred in a dozen lesser-known films before he was murdered by a street gang outside his Los Angeles home in 1996, only a month after ‘Team Homer’ aired. Out of sensitivity, for subsequent syndication and DVD release Homer’s Oscar was shown to be that of Don Ameche, won for 1985’s Cocoon.

9. Lionel Richie

The epitome of ’80s cool

Here’s a strange one. Not content with having No.1 songs with ‘Hello’ and ‘All Night Long (All Night)’, the ’80s R&B icon also has an Oscar to go with his Grammys. He won the little gold man for ‘Say You, Say Me’, which he composed for the now much-forgotten Cold War ballet drama White Nights (1985). More troubling is that the music video for ‘Hello’ wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. That thing is amazing.

10. This goat

She-Goat

Well no, obviously this bronze goat sculpture has never won an Oscar, but, and bear with me here, it does share a home with one. Pablo Picasso’s ‘She-Goat’, cast in 1952, is one of the most recognisable works in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. MoMA has one of the oldest film departments of any museum in the world, and in 1978 had an Honorary Award bestowed upon it by the Academy, “for the contribution it has made to the public’s perception of movies as an art form”.

MoMA’s Oscar has an interesting history of its own, being the subject of a theft some years back. When it was recovered, a small patch of the figure’s crown had been scratched away by crooks eager to see just how much gold the statue contains (note: not very much, it’s a very thin coating). After the recovered Oscar returned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fully restored, it was locked away in a drawer for its own protection for several years. However, in happy news, MoMA’s Oscar was only this month returned to the Museum, where he now greets visitors at the film entrance on 53^rd Street. Hooray!

Home is where you hang your Oscar

And the Osc’Argo’s to… – Predictions for the 85th Academy Awards

85 Years of Oscars by ollymoss.com (click to enlarge)

Sunday night will see the usual meat parade of celebrities march down the red carpet at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, in their excessive ball gowns and ever-so-slightly personalised tuxedoes, before giving each other gold man-shaped pats on the back for being ever so special – or so the cynics would have you believe.

There are those amongst the cinephiles of this world who do feel the Academy Awards are a meaningless black hole of self-congratulation and commercialism, and they may be right in many respects. But they can’t take the fun away. For the more optimistic film fanatic, the Oscars provide the one night of the year where every person in the world (or so it seems) cares just as much about the movies as we do. Who cares if they cheapen it – at least they care!

The somewhat bold decision by the Academy to have the unpredictable and untested Seth MacFarlane host could well prove a trump card or a bright red self-destruct button. At the very least the quality of lampooning should be stepped up a notch from previous years. Other events of the night differ in the levels of excitement they inspire. A tribute to 50 years of James Bond should provide a quality showreel. A tribute to Hollywood musicals of the last 10 years will surely have less life in it than the roll call of the recently departed.

So how are the awards lining up? Well…

Best Picture

For a long time there this was anyone’s game. Les Misérables seemed a lock, before anyone saw how blandly it was shot. Lincoln was also an early call, which took a dip and then rose back up to the top of the charts. Zero Dark Thirty appears to have waterboarded its own Oscar hopes. Django Unchained has been greeted with bewildering raves from critics and audiences, but it is surely a little eccentric and excessive to warrant a win. Life of Pi and Silver Linings Playbook, both fine films warmly received, seem to have been pushed out by their more realistic and historically themed peers. Amour is the token nod to a master filmmaker, which is all-but-assured the Foreign Language Oscar. Beasts of the Southern Wild feels like a similar nod to a newly shining star in Benh Zeitlin, but don’t count it out completely – it’s been a huge hit with critics and would tickle the liberal hearts of Academy voters.

Have… have we won yet?: John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Ben Affleck in Argo

But realistically if anything is going to give Lincoln a run for its money it’s Argo. Ben Affleck’s light espionage drama has crept back into pole position after waltzing home with pretty much every best picture (or equivalent) award at every awards show thus far. Despite Affleck not being nominated for Best Director, it is unwise to count Argo out – with no best picture/director split since 2005, the Academy is well overdue such a discrepancy, although it would be the first film to win Best Picture with a directorial nod since Driving Miss Daisy in 1989. Evidently, stranger things have happened.

Should win: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Will win: Argo

Best Director

Making history: Steven Spielberg directing Lincoln

This seems an easier one to bite, what with Lincoln one of the top two Best Picture contenders. Steven Spielberg has already a Best Director statue without a Best Picture twin, for Saving Private Ryan, and his work on Lincoln is more than deserving. But so does Ang Lee, for Brokeback Mountain, and Life of Pi is assuredly the work of full-blooded auteur. David O. Russell seems an unlikely candidate, if only for the scale of his film, and that goes double for Michael Haneke. A Benh Zeitlin win would be a coup and a half. He should be very proud just to be there.

Should win: Ang Lee

Will win: Steven Spielberg

Best Actor

Abolition impossible: Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln

I won’t insult your intelligence by writing anything here. Other nominees include Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Joaquin Phoenix (The Master), Hugh Jackman (Les Mis) and Denzel Washington (Flight).

Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actress

The Oscar Games: Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook

Now here’s a proper contest. So much to play for. Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) are fighting to be crowned the new Queen of Hollywood. Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) is fighting to be the new Princess. Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) is fighting for one last great honour. Naomi Watts (The Impossible) is fighting to stay in movies and not be condemned to television. The tide against Zero Dark Thirty seems to be squeezing Chastain’s hopes, and she will no doubt be back for more in the years to come. Lawrence is here a second time, and seems the likely winner. Riva and Wallis would both be record holders, oldest and youngest winners respectively. With a performance as strong as she gave in Silver Linings however, the same year her Hunger Games was such a surprise hit, Lawrence seems the best bet.

Should win: Emmanuelle Riva or Quvenzhané Wallis

Will win: Jennifer Lawrence

Best Supporting Actor

Oscar, the grouch: Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln

Coming out of the Golden Globes, Christoph Waltz has momentum behind him, but his character Dr. King Schultz, the highlight of Django Unchained, is perhaps a little too similar to Hans Landa, the character who previously won him this award for Inglourious Basterds. Alan Arkin already has his tokenistic Best Supporting award for Little Miss Sunshine, so he seems an ill-fit. Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook) gave his finest performance in over a decade, but it was hardly the finest supporting performance of the year. The disdain the Academy has shown for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master will work against Philip Seymour Hoffman. This one has to go to Lincoln’s Tommy Lee Jones.

Should win: Philip Seymour Hoffman or Tommy Lee Jones

Will win: Tommy Lee Jones

Best Supporting Actress

Fantinetastic: Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables

There was a lot of talk early on about Sally Field’s performance in Lincoln making her a likely winner, but the performances of Day-Lewis and Jones (and Spader!) have undermined her hopes considerably. Amy Adams gave a chilling performance in The Master, but it is perhaps too dark (and complex) for the Academy’s tastes. Helen Hunt (The Sessions) is surely just delighted to back in the A-list. Jacki Weaver was definitely in Silver Linings Playbook, but I don’t remember a lot else about her performance. No, this is as assuredly Anne Hathaway’s win as anything could be. If Les Mis didn’t convince you of that, surely this video will.

Should win: Amy Adams

Will win: Anne Hathaway

Best Original Screenplay

Tarantino has already taken a few trophies for his Django Unchained script, a fact which continues to baffle me. Mark Boal will no doubt suffer the Zero Dark Thirty backlash. John Gatins (Flight) and Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom) seem like seat fillers, but count neither out just yet, especially the latter. This is the one category where Amour could really step-out of the woodwork, and not just be another Best Foreign Language Picture winner and nothing more. Here’s hoping.

Should win: Michael Haneke

Will win: Michael Haneke

Best Adapted Screenplay

With so many exceptional adaptations this year, this could turn out to be the most exciting and unpredictable race of the lot. Chris Terrio (Argo), David Magee (Life of Pi) and Tony Kushner (Lincoln) have all done remarkable work in their adaptations, while David O. Russell has written a truly charming yet affecting work from Silver Linings Playbook. But in terms of transmogrifying a source material into a work of cinema, there seems no greater nominee than Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin’s script for Beasts of the Southern Wild, from Alibar’s one-person play Juicy and Delicious. But who the hell knows that the Academy wants!? Usually everyone, so why is this so hard to call?

Should win: Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin

Will win: Chris Terrio or David Magee

Best Animated Feature

Tall order: Wreck-It Ralph

Here’s another unpredictable little venture. DreamWorks’ confusing but beautiful Rise of the Guardians didn’t even make the grade, leaving an odd band of five vying for the Oscar here. Brave is decidedly a weaker entry in the Pixar canon, but it is at times breathtaking to behold. A respectful nod to the studio with a win, or a “must do better” note sent home to the parents? That would leave the major contenders Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph. The former has the artistry, the latter the ideas – but both suffer from weak third acts. ParaNorman could scrape in, but its poor box office makes it the most forgettable of the quintet to the untrained eye. That could leave Aardman’s superb The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (I won’t be caught dead using its American title), but it has been largely overlooked in previous awards nominations. Another tough one to call, especially for one that film fans are so surprisingly passionate about.

Should win: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (aka Band of Misfits)

Will win: Wreck-It Ralph

Best Animated Short

Love-struck: Paperman

Disney’s utterly delighting Paperman goes up against the surprisingly sweet Simpsons short The Longest Daycare. Both feature playful acts of defenestration, but the former is surely the forerunner in this contest. That said, it would be nice to see PES’s remarkably inventive Fresh Guacamole win. I mean, just look at the damn thing!

Should win: Paperman

Will win: Paperman

Best Foreign Language Film

Waiting for the end: Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour

Amour

Moving on.

Best Documentary Feature

Due to unfortunate release schedules in these parts and unfortunate me schedules in my own life, I have not seen any of the nominees. Searching for Sugarman seems a firm bet based on word of mouth, but that’s all I can offer.

Best Documentary Short

See above, only shorter!

Best Original Score

This one could get interesting. Skyfall is a surprise nomination for Thomas Newman, and Dario Marianelli seems a wild card for Anna Karenina. Alexandre Desplat’s Argo score was one of the year’s better, while John Williams’s Lincoln was but a pleasant shadow of what the man used create in his prime. In terms of evoking a mood and sounding truly original, nothing should beat Mychael Danna’s Life of Pi score. Although the absence of both Beasts of the Southern Wild and Cloud Atlas from this category is definitely disconcerting.

Should win: Mychael Danna

Will win: Mychael Danna

Best Original Song

That Adele is so hot right now. Not much chance of that going any other way. Expect the manner in which Seth MacFarlane handles his nomination in this category (for ‘Everybody Needs a Best Friend’ from Ted) to be the making or breaking of his performance on the night.

Should win: ‘Skyfall’

Will win: ‘Skyfall’

Best Sound Editing/Mixing

Stop pretending you care.

But for what it’s worth I’m calling both for Life of Pi.

Best Production Design

As was the style at the time: Lincoln’s stellar production design

Another potential shocker that could turn up just about anything. Certainly Anna Karenina was intriguing to behold, and Life of Pi did some remarkable things with its visuals. But bigger is surely better in these sorts of categories, so The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Les Misérables and Lincoln seem the better calls.

Should win: Anna Karenina or The Hobbit

Will win: Lincoln

Best Cinematography

Shadow play: Roger Deakins’s cinematography in Skyfall

Roger Deakins has quite horrifyingly never won an Oscar, and while it would be unlikely for him to finally win for a Bond film, it isn’t impossible Skyfall could nab this one. Still, Seamus McGarvey’s luxuriant Anna Karenina and Claudio Miranda’s magisterial work on Life of Pi are almost too much for Deakins to counter. Janusz Kamiński’s bright yet dreary Lincoln looks real and beautiful, but is perhaps too drab for Academy tastes. Robert Richardson’s work on Django is more than anything what creates that film’s style, but away from its frankly gorgeous exteriors, it has not much to offer. Another tough one to call.

Should win: Roger Deakins or Claudio Miranda

Will win: Claudio Miranda

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

“It’s the beards”: The dwarves of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Oh right, this is still an award. Um… The Hobbit? Actually, going by traditional winners Hitchcock will probably nab this. But no, I’m saying The Hobbit. If only for making Christopher Lee look in his 60s (he’s 90!).

Should win: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Will win: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Best Costume Design

All dressed up and somewhere to go: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michelle Dockery and Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina

2012 was the year of not one but two dreadful Snow White films, but both deserve a bit of credit for the costume work, and here that credit is. The late Eiko Ishioka could well receive a posthumous Oscar for her work on Mirror Mirror, but the film was so frankly despised it seems improbable. Snow White and the Huntsman seems even less likely a winner. With Les Mis vying for a top spot with Lincoln in terms of historical realism, the eye-melting costume work of Anna Karenina, by Jacqueline Durran, has a very good shot at stealing the title, especially if diamonds can count as costuming.

Should win: Anna Karenina or Mirror Mirror

Will win: Anna Karenina

Best Editing

There were no standout examples of editing nominated this year, and thinking back on 2012 it’s hard to think of anything exceptional that has been cut from the list, either. Zero Dark Thirty was the real disappointment, after the phenomenal editing Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker displayed. Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook were both edited efficiently but without flair. While Tim Squyres tied Life of Pi together beautifully, the energy created by William Goldernberg’s editing of the opening 10 minutes of Argo more than makes him deserving of the award.

Should win: Life of Pi or Argo

Will win: Argo

Best Visual Effects

Film school: Life of Pi’s astonishing whale

Snow White and the Huntsman gets another nod here, and will go home empty-handed and undeserving. The Avengers and Prometheus will cancel one another out, leaving this a battle of scale versus creativity. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey could win out through sheer force of everything, but it seems unlikely to beat Life of Pi’s controlled, fluid and never utterly in-your-face world building. All the orcish hordes of Middle Earth can’t compete against the colossal might of a leaping whale.

Should win: Life of Pi

Will win: Life of Pi

And that’s the lot of them. How right I’ve been we’ll see on Sunday night. It’s the predictability of the Oscars that makes the upsets all the more shocking, and entertaining, so with any luck, for my sake at least, I’ve been very, very wrong.

If all goes to plan I’ll be live-blogging the event, so be sure to check back here, or follow my Twitter feed. It’s gonna be a long, fun night.

Well, maybe not fun. But long. Definitely long.

Les Misérables – Life is a barricade, old chum, come to the barricade

Jean Valjean on the run (valrun)

“Do you hear the people see?

They’re seeing the film that’s Oscar bait?

It is the film made to please people

’Though it’s only good, not great!”

Few films in recent memory have screamed Oscar-bait more than Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables. When an Academy Award-winning filmmaker takes one of the world’s most beloved musicals based on one of the most powerful novels ever written and casts it with cream-of-the-crop performers, including a former Oscar host, an Oscar-winning actor and two Oscar-nominated actresses, how could it fail come February?

Well, with surprising ease, apparently. It takes quite a talent to so thoroughly slaughter this golden egg-laying musical goose, but Hooper has found a way. A masterful director of actors (check out The Damned United) who has been remarkably lucky with his script choices, never more so than for his multi-award-winning film The King’s Speech, Hooper has never been accused of having outstanding visual flair. Here, that lack of flair is downright unimaginative, and results in a lazily produced and bloated film that never manages to engage the eyes, even as it haunts and delights the ears.

Hooper’s misdirection has not been enough to block out the power of Victor Hugo’s story, or the arresting music and lyrics of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s 1980 musical, and Les Mis retains a certain magic.

Tony Award-winning musical performer and Wolverine Hugh Jackman stars as Jean Valjean, a beleaguered Frenchman in post-Napoleonic France, starving and unable to find work due to his status as an ex-con; he has just served 19 years for stealing a single loaf of bread. Daring to start a new life, he breaks parole and creates a new identity for himself, within years becoming a successful factory owner and mayor of a provincial town. Valjean’s past catches up with him in the form of Javert (Russell Crowe), the foreman of his former chain gang, now a high-ranking police inspector who views Valjean as the one who got away, and someone whom the law must punish once more.

Valjean’s life on the run from Javert is complicated by his adoption of Cosette, a sweet urchin whose prostitute mother (Anne Hathaway) was unable to take care of her. Years later, as revolution stirs once more in the streets of Paris, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) finds herself besmitten with a young rebel named Marius (Eddie Redmayne), and is soon dragged with her father into the political tumult, pursued ravenously by Javert.

Amour: Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne

Hugo’s themes of persecution and faith echo wonderfully in the film’s finer songs. Anne Hathaway sobs her way through ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, her hair shorn and her cheeks bloodied, having just sold her locks, teeth and body. Jackman belts out “Who am I? I’m Jean Valjean!” as he decides to take responsibility for his actions in order to save another man. Samantha Barks, the only professional singer in the main cast, brings a mournful elegance to ‘On My Own’. Hooper’s insistence on using single-take close-ups throughout many of the numbers show off his actors’ talents well, but they are anything but cinematic, more akin to watching the big screen at a pop concert than a Hollywood musical. The only properly choreographed performance is ‘Master of the House’, a jaunty, nasty song that feels out of place in the midst of so much real drama.

Because of this, the musical numbers have no energy, and you would be forgiven for wishing Gene Kelly would burst onto the screen and roar “Gotta dance!” If only. It is not until well into the third act that the medley ‘One Day More’ properly electrifies the film, followed swiftly by the show-stopping ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’; but it’s too little too late. As the rebels set up barricades in a Parisian cul-de-sac so fake it looks like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, it’s hard to care anymore about the young lovers’ plight, let alone the attempted revolution. When the film reaches its apparent climax, there are still 20 minutes to go, although the overwhelming finale just about makes up for that drag.

Hooper’s decision to have the actors’ singing recorded live on set results in some very affecting performances that hammer the emotions through the songs; although this doesn’t always facilitate their hitting the right notes. Jackman makes a believable Valjean, but the boy from Oz rarely flexes the vocals (and not once the dance moves) that made him a Broadway darling. Russell Crowe, a rock ’n’ roll singer in his spare time, scoops his voice repeatedly to reach the notes required, but the effect is more Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia! than Michael Crawford. Due as much to some of Hooper’s more incomprehensible directorial decisions as to the Gladiator star’s miscasting, Crowe only manages to capture a fragment of the obsessive, sadistic and homoerotic nature of Javert that Charles Laughton mastered in the role nearly 80 years ago.

Last Man Standing: Russell Crowe

And fragments are all this film is; pieces of a glorious story, with moments of fine acting and superb songs brought low by excessive Dutch tilts and face-hugging close-ups. Not since Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc have expensive sets been this lost, buried out of focus, behind the faces of a film’s stars.

Yet it’s still hard not to recommend Les Mis, on some level. The story is timeless and the music resplendent, and Jackman and particularly Hathaway deserve to have their performances seen and heard. The un-cinematic quality of Hooper’s interpretation may yet lead to it finding a more respecting audience on the small screen, where the careless photography and in-your-face close-ups can cause less offence.

It could be worse. It could be Nine.

3/5

(originally published at http://www.filmireland.net)

Samurai Boogie! (or why it pays to not pay attention)

Last week I checked out this year’s Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job, as much to educate myself in the global financial meltdown that has become the defining event of the past three years as to see the film that took the award from Banksy’s delightful Exit Through the Gift Shop. Inside Job is a terrific, if simple, documentary on a tough subject, and it certainly deserves the accolades coming its way. For two hours I was amused, educated, upset and enraged by the events, figures and interviews the film covers in its scope.

But I’d be lying if I said I took it all in. A combination of tiredness (later revealed to be caused by the onset of a bronchial infection – plot twist!) and an awful lot of figures (economics is in my DNA, but I am a mutant) caused me to occasionally lose the flow of the debate, during which time I found myself studying the limited detail on screen. In a talking heads documentary, this could mean only one thing… reading the titles of books on the shelves behind the interviewees.

Oh don’t say you’ve never done it! We’ve all been there. Strangely however, my meandering eye would eventually pick out the highlight of the film for me. Amidst the piles of economic textbooks, banking forecasts and Icelandic census data, was a book titled Samurai Boogie.

Samurai Boogie: Honestly, it was clearer on the big screen

One of the most interesting things about this little discovery is that it is on the shelf of Robert Gnaizda, the moustachioed former policy-maker who is one of the few interviewees who acquits himself admirably, if not heroically. Compare him to these creeps, with their shelf-loads of books like Beyond Greed and Fear, Inside the Economist’s Mind and The Theory of Corporate Finance. In this light Robert Gnaizda seems all the more honest, approachable and human.

Admittedly, a little bit of internet searching has revealed that Samurai Boogie was written by Peter Tasker, a “former financial analyst-turned-author“. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a trashy political thriller with a cover that looks like this:

So the real question now is not how do we get ourselves out of the financial hole that years of Wall Street and Washington recklessness have dug for us, but who owns the rights to the movie version of Samurai Boogie and is there some way we can get Robert Gnaizda a cameo in it to thank him for bringing it to our attention?

A guide to recognising your Oscar nominees

The BAFTAs are now over so it is officially time to go into Oscar-mania overdrive. A fortnight from this moment fever pitch will have been reached, and four hours of so-so entertainment will begin. As someone switching on Around the World in 80 Days for the first time will think: with this many stars it has to be amazing, right?! Eh, it’s fine. The Oscars will be too.

As many have noted the problem with the Academy these days is that, coming in rapid succession after the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and VAGs (Various Assorted Guilds), the word Oscar is now synonymous with predictable. But somehow I am holding out hope for a few surprises this year. I’m also holding out hope that hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway don’t suck – a boy can dream, right?

And the nominees for Best Picture are…

The King’s Speech

Leading the pack with an impressive, perhaps surprising twelve nominations, The King’s Speech is certainly a forerunner, though hardly anointed. It has the Hurt Locker edge, having won the BAFTA while the curiously unprescient Globes* gave their top nod to The Social Network (the Globes embarrassingly whored themselves out to Avatar in 2010). It also has a slew of top talent at next-to the height of their game – Colin Firth is a very difficult one to challenge for Best Actor, while Geoffrey Rush has lost none of his Shine (not apologising, you can’t make me) and would be a shoe-in for Best Supporting in other years. But the film has everything an Academy favourite needs: costumes and colour, wit and drama, happily-ever-after love, a WWII setting and of course a triumph-over-adversity tale that would make it this year’s Rocky if Rocky weren’t already nominated this year (see The Fighter, below).

Don’t expect a clean sweep, but if it starts one, it’ll nail Best Picture.

True Grit

The Coen brothers have been Academy favourites for some time now, and in the rare position that the film-going public at large love them also. True Grit is a spectacle alright, put together with all the flair the Coens can manage, but is it enough? Jeff Bridges could dethrone Firth (pun noticed, but unintended) for Best Actor, but despite their shared alcoholism the role is more The Dude than Bad Blake – his Oscar-winning role from last year’s Crazy Heart, and unlikely to steal the Academy voters’ hearts in quite the same manipulative way. The film’s breakthrough star, Hailee Steinfeld, has a much greater chance of taking home the Best Supporting Actress gong, although the Academy has been destructively patronising in not granting the youth a nomination in the leading category.

With ten nominations, most positively Art Direction, Costume Design and Cinematography, it may not win big, but it’d be a shock if it walked away empty-handed.

Inception

So The Dark Knight is held solely responsible for there being ten nominees in the Best Picture category now. Christopher Nolan is one of the most talented filmmakers alive today, but damn his fans are more terrifyingly devout than a Jihadi horde! So with an extra five spaces there would be further outrage/terror campaigns if his first film since The Dark Knight did not make the cut. And rightly so, Inception was one of the best films of 2010, but it is still the token audience-panderer, and has no chance of taking the big prize. The big coup would be for it to win Best Original Screenplay, but against The King’s Speech, Another Year and The Kids are All Right it seems to hold only a small chance. But technical awards should abound, and its music stands a fighting chance as the bombastic epic score against The King’s Speech‘s more traditional and The Social Network‘s more experimental nominees.

The Nolanistas will be disappointed.

The Social Network

Until recently this appeared unchallengeable to take Best Picture, but that seems uncertain now. Fincher’s drama has a lot to say for itself; it’s modern, character-driven, dripping in style. Outside of the director’s traditional thriller zone, he’s produced a mighty impressive movie. But it’s one that is greater than the sum of its parts (unlike The King’s Speech, which is simply a collection of great parts), so it will likely not clean up on the awards, which may affect its Best Picture chances. Jesse Eisenberg stands almost no chance at Best Actor, but if it loses out on Best Picture a win for David Fincher would be a great runner-up prize. Aaron Sorkin, a master of dialogue, seems destined to win a writing Oscar some day. Taking Best Original Screenplay this year is a strong possibility.

If it doesn’t win Best Picture, it could easily cut into The King’s Speech‘s spoils. It’s not out of the race yet.

The Fighter

Ah bless, how we struggle against adversity. And not just one adversity, but two! Two characters, struggling against two adversities! Why the fighter of the title could refer as easily to the struggles of the main characters as it could to the fact that the film is about boxing! OK, I’m being far meaner than this strong film deserves. The Fighter would be a superb film if it weren’t so darn familiar. With no chance at the big awards and unlikely to receive many technicals, The Fighter‘s strongest suit is in its supporting stars. Christian Bale will have little competition for Best Supporting Actor, given a superb turn as a crack-addicted former “star” boxer, unless the Academy decides to effectively dry hump The King’s Speech and throw this to Geoffrey Rush. Amy Adams, always the supporting bridesmaid, never the supporting bride, has already lost this to her co-star Melissa Leo, who is Hailee Steinfeld’s big competition. That will be a fun one to watch…

In another year it’d have had a crack at the title. All it can hope for now is a supporting sweep.

127 Hours

Danny Boyle is clearly still riding high on Slumdog Millionaire, as the same film made by any other director (not that it could have been, this well) would never have gotten a nod here. Still, it’s good to see this terrific film getting a chance at the big award – no ‘arm in that now, is there? (sorry) It’s biggest chance at an award is in the editing category, which it is undoubtedly deserving, but may be a touch too experimental for the Academy’s liking. James Franco deserves his Best Actor nomination in a role that showed the performer reveal a more mature side to himself, although the show’s host will no doubt be left a little red-faced when his name is not announced on the night. This is a problem the Academy should have foreseen and never allowed to happen.

Maybe editing, maybe nothing.

Black Swan

Quite the nail-biter (OK, I’ll stop), Black Swan looked like a major contender when its trailer first hit the internet last year, but I suspect it will be too much of a horror for the voters to make it Best Picture. A Best Director trophy for Aronofsky seems similarly unlikely, but the film will likely escape with an enviable Best Actress award in a very competitive year – Natalie Portman’s mesmerising physical presence in the film is worth a nomination before she even opens her mouth. Cinematography could go Black Swan‘s way, but competing with True Grit, Inception, The King’s Speech and The Social Network, I wouldn’t hold out hope for it.

Too gruesome to take anything more than a well-deserved Best Actress award.

Toy Story 3

Last year, Up‘s nomination in the Best Picture category made a bold statement about what a remarkable animated achievement that film was. While Toy Story 3 is also a triumph for Pixar, it is not one on the same level as Up, and its nomination in the Best Picture category only serves to give it an unfair advantage in the Best Animated Feature category, where it is up against superb (and arguably superior) competition in the form of The Illusionist and How to Drain Your Dragon. A shame really.

Pixar win another gong, but it should not have been the anointed animated victor the Academy has made it.

The Kids Are All Right

The token indie drama, this pleasant but confused little film never stood a chance at Best Picture. Mark Ruffalo, nominated Best Supporting Actor for his hardly outstanding role, needn’t bother turning up on the night, while Annette Bening is standing in for Meryl Streep this year. Its only hope is Best Original Screenplay, but even that seems far out of reach.

The Awards Are All Lost

Winter’s Bone

A curious addition, more comfortable triumphing at Sundance than in Hollywood, Winter’s Bone has few hopes of victory, though the nominations will boost its profile (and particularly that of its star). Despite its bleak setting and social commentary, it’s a surprisingly straightforward tale – perhaps why it sat well with the Academy voters – so it hasn’t really got the narrative punch to get it much of a look-in for Best Picture. Jennifer Lawrence would be a deserving Best Actress winner, but to steal it would be almost impossible; this is Natalie’s year. John Hawkes, star of several films previously but practically unknown to most, can expect a surge of interest after his turn here, but with Rush almost guaranteed the Supporting Actor gong if Bale somehow fails to take it home, he doesn’t stand much of a chance.

A miracle, albeit a happy one, is needed to get this a single gong.

As for the rest of the awards, nothing is too certain. Certainly a win for Banksy with Exit Through the Gift Shop would be a turn-up for the books, and perhaps lead to the most memorable acceptance… speech?… in Academy Award history. Biutiful has Javier Bardem behind it for Best Foreign Language Film, but after last year’s frankly insane spurning of The White Ribbon and A Prophet (as well as the noticeable absence this year of the heart-wrenching Of Gods and Men) anything could happen. Dogtooth could win the damn thing!

The real winners or losers on the night will be the show’s producers, however. They’ve taken a huge gamble on their hosts that could backfire enormously. We’ll have to wait and see.

See you in two weeks.

* Since 2004 the Golden Globes have only awarded their Best Motion Picture – Drama award to the eventual Oscar winner once; Slumdog Millionaire in 2009.