Red Carpet coverage of the 2008 Oscars is in full swing, and so is the party. Random pretty people mill about, drinking wine and dishing about celeb gossip.
“Did you hear Colin Firth ask if way-dead Adrienne Shelley was in the house at the Spirits?”
“That Wanker Darcy!”
The Jay is hosting like a champion, workin’ the room, making sure everyone is having a good time.
Hot Chick At Party: Do you have any Excedrin or extra-strength Tylenol?
The Jay: Gee, I think all I got is acetylsalicylic acid, generic. See, I can get six hundred tablets of that for the same price as three hundred of a name brand. That makes good financial sense, good advice…
/The Jay brings a platter of meat into the living room
The Jay: Hey, this is real smoked salmon from Nova Scotia, Canada, $24.95 a pound! It only cost me $14.12 after tax, though.
/The Jay walks up to a random guest, speaks sotto voce
The Jay: I’m givin’ this whole thing as a promotional expense, that’s why I invited clients instead of friends. You havin’ a good time, Mark?
/The Jay heads across the room, greeting other guests
The Jay: How you doing? Why don’t you have some of the brie, it’s at room temperature! You think it’s too warm in here for the brie?
Tall Woman at Party: The Jay, I’m going home.
The Jay: Aw, don’t leave yet. Well, listen, maybe if we start dancing other people will join in!
Tall Woman at Party: Okay!
/The Jay and the Tall Woman dance. It’s hot.
The doorbell rings.
The Jay: Oh, don’t move, I just gotta get the door. Ted! Annette! I’m glad you could come, how you doin’, give me your coats. Everybody, this is Ted and Annette Fleming! Ted has a small carpet cleaning business in receivership; Annette’s drawing a salary from a deferred bonus from two years ago! They got fifteen thousand left on the house at eight percent.
/The Jay throws the guests’ coats in the closet, oblivious that Renee Zellweger is being interviewed on the Red Carpet.
The Jay: So, does anybody wanna play Parcheesi?
Something odd appears on the TV.
The Jay: (grinning) Okay, who brought the BitchFace?
Oh look, the Academy Awards are o-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Wuh? Huh? What I miss? Did Daniel Day-Lewis drink a milkshake?
Yikes, that was forgettable. It says a lot about the quality of the telecast when the best thing all night was the fake montage for binoculars and Hottie Mirren saying balls in Spanish. Why couldn’t Jon Stewart have secretly started working before the strike ended? Would anyone have really minded? At least we would have been saved the painful Nintendo Wii bit and the obnoxious Bee Movie bullshit; and maybe Amy Adams would have gotten some freaking Debbie Allen-style SUPPORT during her musical number! That being said, I would totally vote for Gaydolf Titler.
On the predicting front, I went seven for eight on the big races, and also nailed Animated Feature, Score, Costume Design, Editing, Cinematography, both of the Sound Awards and Jon Stewart’s B- perf (and won my party pool, btw). I biffed on OG Song (too much love for Amy Adams, though the Once song was pretty), VFX (guess the Academy loves hot Polar on Polar bear action as much as me), and Best Documentary. I was happy about No Country as Best Picture; my first true favorite since American Beauty in ’99, and was impressed that the Academy recommended so many worthy performances. A solid year for Oscar.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my Mom nailed the Cotillard win the moment she stepped on the red carpet. “That’s a Best Actress dress,” she said. “Just like when Julia wore the black and white dress in 2000.” Now you know where I get my mad predicting skillz.
So you know the drill: check any of the kagillion other pop blogs for a full recap or liveblog, cause you’re not getting one here. I have what I always have: the lowdown on what the stars were talking about on the Red Carpet.
Things Overheard on the Oscars Red Carpet…
Jack Nicholson: What am I even doing here? There’s not one Best Actress nominee here worth nailing. I already tagged Christie, and I don’t do Frenchies or pregnant chicks. Who in the hell is Laura Linney? And this Juno girl? Am I allowed to bang children now? Is that cool? What was it Roman used to say about that…
Daniel Day-Lewis: I will go Bill the Butcher on the next dippy journo who asks me about milkshakes. I will smear his blood on my boudoir. Two coats! Oh hi Roeper. Yes yes you drink my milkshake, ha ha!
Helen Mirren: The Queen demands you bring her James McAvoy. Place him in my private study. I shall tend to him shortly…
Hal Holbrook: What? Who? Where am I? I thought I was going to the Opera tonight? Is this a Designing Woman on my arm? Delta, is that you? … I am old.
Diablo Cody: Has anyone seen my date, Bam Bam?
Katherine Heigl: I am such an international movie star. It’s only a matter of time before I’m winning one of these bitches. /smokes a carton of cigarettes, is obnoxious
Ellen Page: Cute words cute words cute words LOVE ME(!), derf, I’m wearing Connie’s! I’m Rowr! But cute!
Cameron Diaz: It’s 5 o’clock, did I miss the free crack giveaway?
Jennifer Garner: So I didn’t get a nomination, that’s OK. That’s fine. They’re just jealous because I get to go home and fuck Ben Affleck. That a REAL honor! Just ask The Jay.
The Jay: True story.
Tilda Swinton: I heard it might rain today, so thankfully I remembered to bring my garbage bag poncho. Phew, that could have been embarrassing!
Javier Bardem: Hola, yo soy swarthy swarthy swarthy! /instantaneously knocks up Amy Adams just by looking at her
Jessica Alba: If I had known I’d get invited to the Oscars just for getting knocked up and making four or five bad movies in a year, I would have started years ago. Oh wait, I did…
Johnny Depp: /mumbles incoherently, immediately called the frontrunner for next year’s Best Actor race
Amy Adams: I swear to Jesus if they send me up on that stage by myself without any backdrop whatsoever and I have to sing that ridiculous song while waving my hands like an idiot, I’m gonna sick Anton Chigurh on bitches. I’m the new Julie Andrews, dammit!
Tommy Lee Jones: What’s all this wrassle frassle commotion? Dagnamit, this is hogwarsh! I ain’t got time for this. I have horses to tend to! And things in the distance to look weary at! I’m grisled!
Nicole Kidman: Chandelier delivery! Who ordered the chandelier?
Will Win: No Country For Old Men - Not as socially retarded as There Will Be Blood, just as third-act annoying as Atonement but with better bonafides, a story structure Michael Clayton would mercy kill a thai hooker for, Juno is a comedy and comedy’s never win. The film definitely has it’s problems: the ending is too abrupt, it takes too long to figure out that the movie is about Tommy Lee Jones and not Josh Brolin, Woody’s character gets a short shrift, Anton Chigurh is a hair too over the top and there needed to be at least 10 minutes more of Kelly MacDonald talking in her deliciously cute Texas twang, but it’s a beautiful, lyrical film that lingers in your mind far after the lights come up. Moreover, the Academy usually doesn’t honor films like this. Ten years ago this would be a gimme for Atonement, but after Crash and Million Dollar Baby, the Academy is OK with giving its Big Kahuna to a dark flick. That may be the only good thing the career of Paul Haggis has ever wrought.
Should Win: Juno - The populist part of me says that whichever film is the clear cut national favorite should win the award. Juno more than doubles the domestic box office of all the other nominees, and I believe comes close to eclipsing the TOTAL B.O. of the other films COMBINED. It earned that money not off of star power or a huge marketing campaign, but from word of mouth and audience love. Hell, even the soundtrack is kicking ass. But not unlike the Presidential Race, the Academy belongs to the Industry not to the people, which is why The Coen Bros. should start prepping their speech and Juno can go on to save the rainforest set to the soundtrack of The Mars Volta.
Julian Schnabel, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Jason Reitman, JUNO
Tony Gilroy, MICHAEL CLAYTON
Joel and Ethan Coen, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Paul Thomas Anderson, THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Will Win: The Coen Bros. - For all the reasons that No Country deserves Best Picture, these guys deserve Best Director. They hit their creative peak in their 11th movie, delivering a powerhouse crime movie that is as intense as any thriller in a decade! They made Texas look interesting without football, resurrected Josh Brolin, got Tommy Lee Jones out of woman-in-jeopardy thriller hell, and gave forth unto this world the 2nd greatest movie villain of the modern era. And for doing that, well, they get an award.
Should Win: Paul Thomas Anderson - It seems easy to deliver a good movie when you have Daniel Day-Lewis as your lead. But, the task gets exceedingly more difficult when it’s a three hour movie about oil drilling at the turn of the century which has no love story or any hottie to speak off, has a villain as a the hero, and a whiny preacher kid as the antagonist, and there are whole chunks of film where no one speaks. It’s a miracle the film was even watchable. PTA should win this thing simply for getting me to finally forgive him for Magnolia.
Should Also Win: Ben Affleck - When you’re a reviled leading man chased off the screen by the entire movie-going public and then turn around and make a gripping detective movie where your mongoloid kid brother is acting against Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman and pulling it off, critics say your depiction of Boston was more spot-on than Scorsese’s and you give the inside track for Best Supporting Actress Oscar race to a comPLETE nobody, you DESERVE some recognition. Also, was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!
Will Win: DDL - Let’s say you have a nomination, and I have a nomination, and I have Daniel Day-Lewis. See here, that’s Daniel Day Lewis. My Daniel Day-Lewis reaches all the way across the room, goes right into your Oscar ceremony and starts to drink up your award. I drink your Academy Award. I DRINK IT UP!
Should Win: DDL - DRAINAGE!!!!!! Drainage, my dear boy! (See above.)
Will Win: Who gives a shit? Ugh, fine, Julie Christie, but only because old actors give fun, rambling, incoherent speeches. Just ask Peter O’Toole. Beyond that, nobody can even pronounce Marion Cotillard’s name, nobody saw The Savages, Cate Blanchett didn’t win for this perf the first time and she was better in the Dylan movie, anyway, and Ellen Page was, honest to blog, not as good as you remember. Sure, she was charming, for shizzle, but the risk factor on that movie was SO LOW. All she had to do was show up on set, get into wardrobe and not stutter and she was coming off brilliant. You’re saying two hundred other acerbic teen actors couldn’t have done just as good a job? Hell, I’ll give you one to start: Alia Shakwat, Michael Cera’s cousin crush Maebe from Arrested Development.
Should Win: Since we can’t give an Oscar to Megan Fox’s tummy, or to Marisa Tomei’s great older chick boobs, and Angelina Jolie was great, but in a movie too boring to sit through, I’ll say I wouldn’t complain if Amy Adams got recognized for her ultra-charming perf in Enchanted. And I personally LOVED Keira Knightley in Atonement, but then again, I have actual taste.
Will Win: Javier Bardem - Let me answer that question by asking you to watch this short clip without crapping your pants.
Should Win: In any other year I’d give it to Tom Wilkinson, who gave the type of thoroughly crazy performance this category was MADE for, or to PSH, who was the best thing in a bad movie (always a good reason to give someone this award), but no, this year is all about Anton Chigurh. Trust me, friend-o.
Will Win: Tilda Swinton - The Michael Clayton groundswell needs to be justified somwhere, and this is the ticket. Tilda is legit good in the flick, is the reason Clooney comes off well in the closing scene and has been a very good actress for a very long time. Also, people know who she is. Can you name one other movie or TV show Amy Ryan has EVER been in? The Academy cannot give her this award when her director wasn’t nominated. It just doesn’t make sense.
Should Win: Amy Ryan - The Best Supporting Actress race is always unpredictable because there are no clear rules for winning. They like to award fun performances and goofy actresses (Tomei, Mira Sorvino), kids (Anna Paquin), newcomers (J-Huds), established stars who don’t have the drawing power to get a Best Actress win (Catherine Zeta-Jones), squinty chicks (Renee), and Kim Basinger. So why not give it to Amy Ryan? She was fantastic, after all.
Will Win: Juno - The copy writes itself. “Former Stripper Wins Academy Award For Writing”. Only Hollywood could make that shit up and call it cool.
Should Win: Juno - That being said, Lars and the Real Girl is slight, Michael Clayton is a mess, Ratatouille is charming because of it’s animation not its writing and again, people, NO ONE has seen The Savages. Hell, I’d bet dimes to dollars the majority of America thinks its a documentary about the kid from Wonder Years. As much as Juno is cutesy and small, it’s also hella charming, very confident in its story, creates interesting, original characters and has the best exchange in any movie all year.
Juno: Cause you’re, like, the coolest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even have to try, you know…
Will Win: No Country For Old Men - It’s the most classicly well-written film of the year. No more needs be said.
Should Win: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Because it was the fifth film of the series and I felt like I finally GOT the world (even though I’m a Potter Head), because it successfully condensed a horridly angsty 800 page book into a gripping two hour entertainment and because the climax was Hans Gruber dueling with Drexl Spivey! “Now I know I’m pretty, but I’m not as pretty as a couple of AVADA KEDAVRA’S!”
In my ever-continuing pursuit to give you the best Oscar coverage on the interwebs, I have persuaded several actors nominated for Academy Awards to take the time to tell you why they deserve the Oscar. Here now is Tom Wilkinson, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his gripping performance as the unraveling, terrified Defense Attorney Arthur Edens in Michael Clayton, sharing his delusions of grandeur with Oscar.
Oscar. Dear Oscar. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go the Kodak Theatre… all I’m saying is just wait, just… just wait and please just hear me out because this is not an episode, sequel, remake it’s… I’m begging you Oscar. I’m begging you. Try to make believe this is not just method acting madness because this is not just method acting madness. Two weeks ago I came out of Spago’s OK, I’m running across Wilshire Blvd., there’s a car waiting, I’ve got exactly 38 minutes to get to the studio lot for a screen test and I’m reading the sides off of my Blackberry. There’s this panicked junior agent sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I… I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered in some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of botox - restalyne - fluid. I’m drenched in plastic surgery waste, I’ve breached the facelift, I’ve been reborn as a younger actor. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no, reset, this is not film career rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before your agent drops you and you’re begging FOX to give you the second lead in some drama pilot written by a hotshot sitcom whiz kid. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I realized Oscar, that I had emerged not from the doors of the William Morris Agency, not through the portals of our vast and powerful entertainment industry, but from the asshole of an agency management team who’s sole function is to excrete the… the… the residual rights, the back-end profit points, the DVD sales, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful moive studios to destroy the miracle of cinema. And that I had been coated in this silver-screen patina of bad movie shit for the best part of my creative life. The stench of it and the sting of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undue, without even going near my starring in a Brett Ratner movie a few years ago. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time, and Oscar, the time is now.
In my ever-continuing pursuit to give you the best Oscar coverage on the interwebs, I have persuaded several actors nominated for Academy Awards to take the time to tell you why they deserve the Oscar. Here now is Javier Bardem, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his bone-chilling performance as psycho hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, having a conversation with Oscar.
NOTE: Watch this video before reading
OSCAR: Y’all getting any awards up your way?
JAVIER BARDEM: What way would that be?
OSCAR: I seen you was in No Country For Old Men.
JAVIER BARDEM: What business is it of yours what movie I was in, friendo?
OSCAR: I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.
JAVIER BARDEM: Didn’t mean nothin’.
OSCAR: I was just passin’ the time till Access Hollywood comes on.
JAVIER BARDEM: I guess that passes for manners in your cracker TMZ view of things.
A beat.
OSCAR: Well sir, I apologize. If you don’t wanna accept that I don’t know what else I can do for you.
A beat.
OSCAR: Will there be something else?
JAVIER BARDEM: I don’t know. Will there?
Beat.
OSCAR: Is somethin’ wrong?
JAVIER BARDEM: With what?
OSCAR: With anything?
JAVIER BARDEM: Is that what you’re asking me? Is there something wrong with anything?
OSCAR: Will there be anything else?
JAVIER BARDEM: You already asked me that.
OSCAR: Well… I need to see about my Oscar votin’.
JAVIER BARDEM: See about voting.
OSCAR: Yessir.
JAVIER BARDEM: What time do you vote?
OSCAR: Now. I vote now.
JAVIER BARDEM: Now is not a time. What time do you vote?
OSCAR: Generally around mid-February. In February.
JAVIER BARDEM: You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?
OSCAR: Sir?
JAVIER BARDEM: I said you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Pause.
JAVIER BARDEM: What time do you watch your Academy screeners?
OSCAR: Sir?
JAVIER BARDEM: You’re a bit deaf, aren’t you? I said what time do you watch your Academy screeners?
OSCAR: Well. . . I’d say somewhere around nine-thirty.
JAVIER BARDEM: I could come back then.
OSCAR: Why would you be comin’ back? I’ll be watchin’ a movie.
JAVIER BARDEM: You said that.
OSCAR: Well… I need to vote now-
JAVIER BARDEM: You hold the Oscars in that Kodak Theatre behind Hollywood & Highland?
OSCAR: Yes I do.
JAVIER BARDEM: You’ve held the Oscars there all your life?
A beat.
OSCAR: It’s the Academy’s new staging place.
JAVIER BARDEM: You moved into it.
OSCAR: We held it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Downtown for many years. Gave away a lot of Oscars there. In Downtown. We came out here about six years ago.
JAVIER BARDEM: You moved into it.
OSCAR: If that’s how you wanna put it.
JAVIER BARDEM: I don’t have some way to put it. That’s the way it is.
Short pause.
JAVIER BARDEM: What’s the most you’ve ever lost in an Oscar pool?
OSCAR: Sir?
JAVIER BARDEM: The most. You ever lost. In an Oscar pool?
OSCAR: I don’t know. I couldn’t say.
Javier is digging in his pocket. An Oscar ballot: he slams it on the desk. Puts his hand over it.
JAVIER BARDEM: Award it.
OSCAR: Award it?
JAVIER BARDEM: Yes.
OSCAR: For what?
JAVIER BARDEM: Just award it.
OSCAR: Well — we need to know what it is we’re awardin’ for here.
JAVIER BARDEM: You need to award it. I can’t award it for you. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t even be right.
OSCAR: I didn’t put any nominations up.
JAVIER BARDEM: Yes you did. You been nominating it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it. You know what date is on this ballot?
OSCAR: No.
JAVIER BARDEM: Two-Thousand One. I’ve been waiting for seven years to get back here. And now I’m here. And it’s either Best Supporting Actor or another boring win for Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and you have to say. Award it.
A long beat.
OSCAR: Look… I got to know what you stand to win.
JAVIER BARDEM: Everything.
OSCAR: How’s that?
JAVIER BARDEM: I stand to win everything. But mostly I get a better back-end percentage on my next movie. Award it.
OSCAR: All right. Anton Chigurh then.
Javier takes his hand away from the ballot to look at it. Bardem’s name is circled in his category.
JAVIER BARDEM: Well done.
He hands the ballot across to Oscar.
JAVIER BARDEM: Don’t put it in your pocket.
OSCAR: Sir?
JAVIER BARDEM: Don’t put it in your pocket. It’s your lucky Oscar voting ballot.
OSCAR: Where you want me to put it?
JAVIER BARDEM: Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it’ll get mixed in with the others and become just another Oscar voting ballot. …which it is.
Javier walks away. Oscar watches him go; silently wets himself.
Will Win: Who gives a shit? Ugh, fine, Julie Christie, but only because old actors give fun, rambling, incoherent speeches. Just ask Peter O’Toole. Beyond that, nobody can even pronounce Marion Cotillard’s name, nobody saw The Savages, Cate Blanchett didn’t win for this perf the first time and she was better in the Dylan movie, anyway, and Ellen Page was, honest to blog, not as good as you remember. Sure, she was charming, for shizzle, but the risk factor on that movie was SO LOW. All she had to do was show up on set, get into wardrobe and not stutter and she was coming off brilliant. You’re saying two hundred other acerbic teen actors couldn’t have done just as good a job? Hell, I’ll give you one to start: Alia Shakwat, Michael Cera’s cousin crush Maebe from Arrested Development.
Will Win: No Country For Old Men - It’s the most classicly well-written film of the year. No more needs be said.
