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| Name: Ryan Roe Email: prawnrr-rmv@this.com-yahoo.com Position: Movie / Television / Comic Book / Trivia Geek View Ryan's Personal Profile |
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| The Oscars happened! I watched the whole thing, with Golden Oreos and peanut-flavored Israeli snack food close at hand. I hope you did the same. Was it me, or did the show seem shorter and more streamlined this year? That may have been because they only had eight days to write everything, but the brisker pace was not a bad thing. I did a heck of a lot better with my predictions this year than last year. Joe and Michal and I marked our Academy-approved ballots before the show, and it was quite gratifying to end up with so many check marks. In case you forgot, here are the winners, and in those cases where I predicted incorrectly I'll put my guess in parentheses. Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis. He seems like a classy guy. I'm glad he won... and I should see more of his work, like My Left Foot. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to catch up on his ouevre, as he seems to come out of hiding only once every few years to give a spectacular performance before retreating back to his secret treehouse. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem. He gave a good acceptance speech, and I was proud of myself for understanding much of the Spanish part. Best Actress: Marion Cotilliard (I predicted Julie Christie) Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton. (I predicted Cate Blanchett) I'm not too disappointed about being wrong because Swinton's speech was one of the night's most memorable, as she devoted many of her precious seconds to accusing George Clooney of wearing his old Batman suit everywhere he goes. Well done, Tilda. Poor Cate Blanchett went 0 for 2... but hey, it's two honors just to be nominated twice. Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille. Justice was served, and it was pretty tasty. I was surprised that they didn't show us the animated characters from the nominated films sitting in the audience as they have in years past... but it may have been too weird for the lead from Persepolis to be sharing auditorium space with a surfing penguin. Best Art Direction: Sweeney Todd I just saw Sweeney Todd the other night. It deserved this award, as it created a grimy London that was just removed enough from reality. It also deserves an award for Most Blood Flying All Over the Place. Best Cinematography: There Will Be Blood (I predicted Atonement.) Best Costume Design: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (I predicted Sweeney Todd.) So big, colorful dresses and giant collars beat gray, dirty peasant clothes. I guess that's okay. Best Documentary Feature: Taxi to the Dark Side (I predicted No End in Sight) Best Documentary Short: Freeheld Best Editing: whoever edited The Bourne Ultimatum (I predicted Roderick Jaynes for No Country For Old Men) I was pretty disappointed that Jaynes (a pseudonym for Joel & Ethan Coen) didn't win. According to Entertainment Weekly, the photograph seen of Jaynes when the nominees were announced was that of a Dust Bowl farmer the Coens found in a book, and they had no intention of accepting the award on his behalf if he won. Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters. If I had infinity of money and infinity of time, I would see this movie. Heck, if I had infinity of time I could learn Austrian and I could see the movie without subtitles. Best Makeup: La Vie en Rose. I wonder what kind of makeup this movie has that's better than Norbit and Pirates' prosthetics. Best Score: Atonement. This brings legitimacy to the role of the typewriter as an orchestral instrument. I'm going to try out for First Chair Typewriter in the high school band. Best Song: Well, this is weird... In my earlier journal post, I called this one for "Falling Slowly" from Once, but I was really hoping that "That's How You Know" from Enchanted would get it, and that's the one I marked my Oscar ballot for at home. "Falling Slowly" won, which means I got it wrong in my living room, but correct on my journal. Fortunately there was no money at stake in said living room, so... yay for me? Also, I have to say that "Falling Slowly" didn't do much for me, but then, I haven't heard it in the context of the movie. Most Surprising Nudity: Raphael in TMNT ( I predicted Bart Simpson in The Simpsons Movie.) What?! Are you kidding me?!? Turtles are always naked! Best Animated Short: Peter and the Wolf (I predicted Madame Tutli-Putli.) I dismissed Peter and the Wolf because I couldn't imagine how anyone could bring something new and exciting to the telling of that story. Now I want to see it for myself. Best Short: The Mozart of Pickpockets (I predicted At Night.) I guess I'm not too shocked on this one... I hear The Mozart of Pickpockets is the Beethoven of short films. Best Sound Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum Best Sound Mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum. I wasn't especially confident about either of these sound award predictions, but I was right. The sound you hear now is my whoop of victory. Best Visual Effects: The Golden Compass (I predicted Transformers.) When it comes to visual effects, talking polar bears > warring car-robots. But who would win in a fight? Yeah, that's what I thought. Hey, did you hear about that guy who's now something like 0 for 19 in visual effects nominations? Poor guy. My advice to him: Next year, work on a movie about the making of The Golden Compass. Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men. I don't know much about the book, but it struck me while watching the movie that the script was very efficient. Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody for Juno. She's an inspiration to former strippers everywhere, and I'm only slightly joking when I say that. Best Director: Joel & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men. Great job, guys! Now if only I could ever remember which of you was which. Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Also: This year the televised Academy Awards show earned its lowest ratings ever of all time in the history of the universe. I fully expect that next year will be the first year that the Oscars rank 2nd in the ratings for the week, perhaps behind American Idol. The way I see it, there are really only two options available to the academy: They can make drastic changes to overhaul the way the show is presented, or they can just accept the fact that the ceremony is more prestige event than Super Bowl of movies. The latter choice seems appropriate given the fact that most of the movies that get nominated these days aren't hugely popular moneymakers anyway. By now everyone has seen the pre-show clip of Gary Busey descending on Jennifer Garner like a ravenous wolf on a fat antelope and kissing her neck. If I were a programmer, I would devise a simple computer game in which the player takes the role of Garner, navigating her way across the red carpet through a dangerous maze of photographers, reporters, and less-pretty stars, all the while avoiding the deadly kiss of the pursuing Busey. By the way, where was Affleck? Jack Nicholson should receive a lifetime achievement award, not for his acting career, but for his role as Oscars audience member. Every year there are oodles of cuts to the audience for Jack reaction shots, and he always makes it into at least one punchline from the host or a presenter. It was oddly entertaining to see Colin Ferrel, Miley Cyrus and John Travolta get tripped up by the slippery spot on the way to the lectern. Here's one suggestion to make the show more interesting: require the stars to run an obstacle course to reach the mic. Wouldn't you love to see Meryl Streep bounding her way across a moon bounce? It was great for Best Song co-winner Marketa Irglova that she got to come back on stage to finish her acceptance speech after the orchestra cut her off, but I felt bad for the other people who also got cut off but didn't get to retake the stage. I really liked the gag of Jon Stewart and the girl from the August Rush song playing Wii Sports on the giant screen. Is it really possible to play on a screen that big? It was inevitable that the biggest round of applause during the death montage went to Heath Ledger. But I agree with the people who are complaining at Brad Renfro's absence from the montage. They couldn't have added another three seconds to the thing? Speaking of montages, I loved the "good thing we have writers so we don't have to show you stuff like this" bit that included montages of "binoculars and periscopes in film" and "people waking up from bad dreams." I would much prefer to see full-fledged montages like those than the boring ones they really throw at us year after year. The possibilities are endless: "eating cereal in film," "gorilla suits in film," "parodies of the Psycho shower sequence in film," "people scratching their noses in film," etc. In the end, I correctly predicted 15 out 24 awards. Not bad, I'd say. How'd you do? Comments on this post are closed. |
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| I'd like to see an "actual utilization of mail-in rebates in film" montage. |
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