Tag Archives: entertainment

Missed all the movies? This Oscars Live-Blog is For You!

8:35:  Enjoyed the cheezy opening number with Neil Patrick Harris. It was retro and funny while being awkward and amateurish.  It reminded me of why I used to like the movies.

8:41:  Martin and Baldwin. Now it’s just non sequitiers and in-jokes.  Par for the course. But Steve and Alec seem to be having fun.

It all reminds me of being a kid and watching Bob Hope and old Hollywood and now Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are old Hollywood.

8:44: Penolope Cruz presenting supporting actor.  My better half just started to pay attention.

I have not seen anything this year! But from what I heard Waltz deserved it.

8:50:  Ryan Reynolds?  Brian Reynolds? WTF.  Who is this person?  Boy, do I not want to see The Blind Side! Was it written by randomly putting together cliches?

8:56: Animation…. Oh crap — Waltzing with Bashir was how many years ago?

9:02 — Why does Miley Cyrus need a bustier? She’s a teenager.  Her breasts should be able to hold themselves up.  I like Randy Newmann.  I’m really old.

9:05 — Chris Pine?  Chris Hine?  What am I Emily Latella?  (My better half also said, “Who?”)  District 9 looks worth seeing.

Commercial break: Let’s talk about me.  When we do go to the movies we go to what we refer to as the “Lincoln Center Home for Adults” it’s where they show foreign films to New Yorkers.  I don’t think anyone under 45 is allowed in.  The whitest crowd in NY except for Elvis Mitchell.  Or we go to the multiplex in Edgewater NJ — the little city across the river.  It’s kind of like going to Florida to see my in-laws except for the weather.  In the dark, nobody knows you’re in NJ.

9:12 — I think Robert Downey Jr. is high and Tina Fey is having a nervous breakdown about it.  Live!  Anything can happen. Oh, that’s the bit!

9:14 — Damn, just checked Facebook.  David Rees is live blogging the Oscars.  He’s famous.  I’m not.  I hate you facebook friend David Rees.

9:15 — The Hurt Locker, another film I kinds wanna see, maybe.  Oh shit.  Doesn’t anyone even ask wtf all those troops are doing over there?

9:17 — John Hughes memorial thingy:  Molly Ringwald really does look like a deer in the headlights.  Matthew Broderick has that weird look of a never aging elf.

9:22 — Now they’ve sprung a bunch of 80’s has beens out of rehab.   It’s like a high school teacher’s memorial.  I’m finding this whole thing iccky.  Was he a GREAT filmmaker?  Are they giving him a posthumous award?  WTF?

9:24 — Audience shot of Ed Asner.  Anyone for a pool of who’s next to go from the MTM show?

9:27 — Zoe Saldana’s dress:  First, it looks like it weighs a ton.  Second, I’m trying to figure out how you use a toilet in a dress like that?  Third, the slit goes up to the crotch?

9:30 — We’ve hit some horrible dead zone in the descriptions of short films.  Don’t they have a pre-Oscar show for this?

Animated shorts:  now I’m having some flashback to being a teenager and Sunday night after Monty Python, channel 13 followed with a half-hour animation show.  If this wasn’t a special hour for stoned adolescents, then what was it?

The short docs actually look interesting…

The winning is making a speech and OH MY GOD who is this awful woman!  And now the music.  Do they take them off stage and yell at them for going past 45 seconds.

Short feature —  This is sad.  The first guy makes his speech.  Then they start the music before the second guy makes his.  This is a terribly ungracious way to give an award.

9:38 — Ben Stiller bombing in the Avatar bit.  (Haven’t seen it, but my friend Maria Bustillos wrote a scathing review for The Awl — no time to link — live blogging)  I hope Star Trek doesn’t get it.  I did see that one and thought the kabuki Romulans were just silly.

Oh crap!  They won!  Well, maybe it was better than the other guys.

9:43 — Jeff Bridges.  Oh Jeff I remember your perfect behind from Starman.

We are SO netflixing A Serious Man!

Commercial: Why no comments?  Is it because all my friends are also blogging?  Or asleep? Or don’t own television machines?

9:48 — Adapted screemplay:  Haven’t read the books.  Haven’t seen the movies.   I’m glad Precious won.  I used to teach high school in NYC and for lots of girls Push meant everything.  They loved that book and found it hugely inspiring.

9:52 —  Queen Latifah!  Yay!  I love that now allow large lesbians to be Cover Girls!  What a thankless task she’s got having to basically present highlights from the Governor’s Award. Are those the awards they don’t do on TV anymore?  That sucks!  I wanna see Lauren Bacall  and Roger Corman live! Oh good, they are bringing them out!  Oh no, they’re not letting them speak. This sucks!

9:55 — Supporting actress — Penelope Cruz.  Penelope Cruz with glasses.  My better half is drooling.  Vera Famiga — I’ve never actually seen her in anything.  Maggie Gylenhall –I don’t want to see her being Jeff Bridges girlfriend.  It’s icky!  What’s her name, not Vera from, Up in the Air, — gotta netflix that.  Monique — They’ll give it to her maybe.  They like comedienne’s playing serious parts.

Called it!

Monique — great way of addressing the “controversy”.  Smart speech.  I’m now a fan.

10:05 — Sigourny Weaver — Is that a dress or did she just grab a bedspread?  She’s doing the award for set decoration.  Do we care?  Oh, it’s Avatar so this could be a portent.  There’s a theme here:  James Cameron is god or the king of the world or something.

10:09 — Steve Martin made a joke.  Sarah Jessica Parker has something weird growing out of her skull!  Costumes: Is the winner the one who had that credit card dress a few years ago?  Yes, I think she is.

10:11 — Charlize Theron — She is fierce!  And she does a great American accent.  She introduces Precious.  Is this because she once said on TV that she was an African-American because she’s born in South Africa?  My better half and I discuss Precious which we haven’t seen but we both agree that Helen Mirren would have been terrible in Mariah Carrey’s part which she was initially slated for.

10:17 — Back from the commercial.  Martin and Baldwin in a bit.  Strangely funny.

10:18 — Two more people I haven’t heard of.  I am ANCIENT.  Are these The Twilight kids? That would be the logical guess.  They are presenting something about “horror films.”  I don’t consider movies about vampires who have to wait until marriage, horror films.

Jaws — That was when Spielberg was good.  Psycho by the master!  Poltergiest — scary.  The Shining — great!  Rosemary’s Baby!  I’ve seen most of these!  Movies used to be fun.  I miss movies.  Shit now they showed the twins from The Shining.  I won’t sleep for a week!

10:23 — Oh, they’re making the poor girl who just lost to Monique present an award.  She’s presenting Morgan Freeman doing one of those “educational” videos explaining what a sound editing and mixing means.  Can’t they just give these at the show that’s not on the TV?

Yayyy!  Sound editing.  Let’s applaud like we know these guys.  Hmmm.  It’s the Hurt Locker.  Does that mean something?

It also won for sound mixing.  Now I’m thinking there’s a pattern — a CONSOLATION pattern. It’s not going to get best picture.  Or will it?

10:28 — Sci Tech awards! Elizabeth Banks.  Has she been in any movies?  Did they make her speak?  Now John Travolta, Mr. Scientology himself, is talking about Quentin Tarrantino and introducing Inglorious Bastards.

Commerical break. Are these commercials national?  Geoffrey Canada, I love you!

10:34 — Martin introduces Sandra Bullock who looks pretty in her dress.  It’s cinematography. Sandra seems to like pronouncing the Italian name of the winner.  It’s another Avatar win and Cameron again gets thanked.

10:37 — Demi Moore presenting this year’s dead.  No, she’s presenting James Taylor who will sing a song about this year’s dead. Will this be a medley of dead people names?  No, it’s an old Beatle’s song.  Ironically, one played at my sister’s wedding,  so not one I associate with dead people.

They are now showing pictures of dead people while James Taylor sings.

I do not forgive Ron Silver for speaking at the Republican Convention.   Yeah, it’s personal.  I don’t care if he could see the Towers burning from his house in New Jersey. I was less than a mile away, could smell the smoke and feel the earth shake as the Towers fell.  I didn’t suddenly  lose my mind.  Maybe he already had the cancer and it was interferon or something messing with his brain.  If that turns out to be the case, I will forgive him.

Commercial.

10:45 — Jennifer Lopez and Sam Worthington.  Best score.  So they are playing all the scores, while having dancers running around the stage?  I think?   I’m watching the dancers.  This looks like a combination of old West Side Story choreography, jogging on stage and some break dance moves leftover from teh eighties.   The music changes, but the basic dance moves and whatever “story” the dance is trying to tell doesn’t.  They are getting more acrobatic at points, more frantic, but there’s really a desperation and clulessness to the choreography.  It’s showy, but meaningless and distracts from the scores rather than enhancing them.  If dance moves are letters, isn’t choreography supposed to form them into words or sentences?

Winner is…. Michael Giachino (?)  for Up. Another movie I will never see.

Ladies and gentleman:  Gerod Butler and Bradley Cooper — or was it the other way around.  Presenting Special Effects.  They just showed a clip from Avatar and better half says:  “It doesn’t look that outstanding.”  But then, he doesn’t have the special glasses and we still don’t even have a flat screen.  Avatar wins.  James Cameron gets thanked again.

10:56 — Jason Bateman, introduces Up in the Air. We like Jason Bateman.

11:02 — Matt Damon — best documentary.  Oh my god there’s a documentary, The Cove about people killing dolphins for food.  And another about food and bad meat.  Do I sense a theme here you Hollywood radical vegans?   Now a documentary about Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers.  And another about Mexican kids trying to get over to see their illegal parents.

The dolphin film wins.  Wow.  Documentarians are heros!  Could we have an all documentary academy awards next year?

11:06 — Tyler Perry  explaining “editing”.  The Academy Awards, it’s kind of like going to school and being left back and having different teachers explain the same shit to you year after year.   Hurt Locker wins again.

11:08– Keannu Reeves presenting  Hurt Locker.  He is a very pretty, is Keannu Reeves.

Commercial.  If it were just me, I would have changed the channel at the score/dance fiasco, but having started this I’m going to see it through.

Pedro Almodavar and Quentin Tarrantino! — Yeeah!  Best Foreign Language Film. Did I miss something or is the actual name of the Peruvian film: The Frightened Tit?  Argentina wins.  Given that we live in New York and are snooty intellectuals, we may even see it at the movies.

Back to Martin and Baldwin.

Commercial break.  Toilet paper commercial.  My better half is now actually arguing with me about “over” being the only correct way.

11:25 — The woman who used to be Michelle Pfeiffer is talking about what a swell guy Jeff Bridges is.  Like Sigourny Weaver, she is wearing a red dress made out of a bedspread.  It must be the look for “older’ women in Hollywood.

11:27 — Vera what’s her name is talking about Mr. George Clooney, but they keep cutting to him and he is just soooooo  hot.

11:31 — Kate Winslett announcing best actor. Jeff Bridges wins.  Jeff Bridges is  talking about his parents, and thanking a lot of people.  I dare them to start the music.  I guess the biggies get more than 45 seconds.  I love when he keeps saying “man”.  He is, after all, the dude.

11:39 — It’s a commercial break, but I predict that the jokes about going over will now be starting.

11:40 — Best actress.  They’re doing the presentation thing.  Why is Moon River playing?  Haven’t seen any of them, but if Helen Mirren doesn’t win, then I hope the young woman from Precious does.  I want a tee-shirt that says: What would Jane Tennyson do?  Helen Mirren should get the lifetime achievement award for fierceness.

11:44 — Oprah introduces Gabaney.  Oprah’s introduction sounds like a lawyer making her case. If I am ever indicted for murder, I want Oprah defending me.

11:47 — Sean Penn to present.  Man, he was great in Milk. Winner is: Sandra Bullock!  I don’t think so.  WTF?  I’m moving to Canada.

11:52 — Babs. That is one ugly tux or whatever it is.  What’s that around her neck? Did she borrow Rachel Ray’s keffiyah?

Winner:  Kathyrn Bigelow!  I am SOOO happy that Avatar didn’t win! Amazing though she gives her speech about the military, but no one this evening ever questions the mission.

Tom Hanks:  Explaining the 10 nominee thing and then boom.  He just reads the winner without going through the other stuff.  I guess they really have to be done by midnight! It’s Hurt Locker.

Now the writer who was embedded is speaking.  Will he address the occupation in any meaningful way?  Nah.

It’s midnight. Bigelow is speaking again and I’m expecting the music.  She thanks the military one more time. “They’re there for us.”   Ok, I know there’s a time and a place, but ….

Cheesy joke by Martin about going over time “Avatar now takes place in the past”.  A thank you to our sponsors.  And we’re out….