Oscar, oscar oscar! Who will win?

[jlh]

Whee live blogging, but I hadn't watched much red carpet in advance, so Ryan gets his later. We're watching on delay because we were making dinner

Weird music to start us off, eh? Like, Lawrence of Arabia with the beat from Sing Sing Sing?

I cannot say anything that can improve on Hugh's opening number. It was pretty amazing.

Supporting Actress: I like the whole let's congratulate the nominees thing, though it did slow the show down a bit. The ladies all look amazing. Yay Penelope! Yay us for knowing just enough Spanish to decipher what she said at the end!

And now, the "leaked" oscars are completely wrong.

Original Screenplay: People who don't love Steve Martin, I don't understand. Never mind Tina Fey (man is it her year!). We were all "woah!" at the slam at Scientology. Dustin Lance Black totally made me cry.

Adapted Screenplay: Yay Simon Beaufoy! Yay Slumdog!

Animated Feature: Nice package to introduce the film. Also nice shout out to ali_wildgoose with the sort-of slam at Pixar. Wall-E, whatever, though it was the first award that the "leaked" oscars got right.

Animated Short: La Maison en Petits Cubes. How adorable was he? And as Ali points out, a 2-D film!

Art Direction: Benjamin Button. Well, that's very nice. SJP looks odd to me. Dark Knight fans are irritated.

Costume Design: The Duchess, a movie no one saw, but a period piece, so you get something for making a lot of corsets.

Makeup: Benjamin Button again, and again the Dark Knight fans are irritated.

Romance montage with R Patz and Lilly Kane! Including much kissing from Milk!

Cinematography: I'm loving the Joaquin Phoenix dig from Ben Stiller. Yay Slumdog!

Science & Tech Awards: Ugh, what is Jessica Biel wearing?

LOL comedy montage!

Live Action Short: Aww, Toyland, sweet!

I wanted this number to work, and I feel like it sort of didn't. It was insane, but not in a way that really worked as some kind of coherent number. Nice to see the High School Musical kids and the kids from Mama Mia (Dominic Cooper really is in every movie, isn't he?) but Beyonce didn't feel quite right. And I really like Beyonce. However, seeing that Baz Luhrmann staged it made it all make sense; it felt as disconnected as all those numbers in Moulin Rouge

Supporting Actor: On the way to Heath, I did adore Cuba Gooding Jr. telling Robert Downey Jr. that "a brother needs work!" Also, I honestly do think that Heath would have gotten the award even if he hadn't died.

Documentary Feature: Man on Wire! He was on Wait, Wait a few weeks ago and was hilarious!

Documentary Short: Wow, that woman has an amazing dress!

Action montage. I feel like they're doing all these montages of the movies people actually saw, since none of them were nominated. This was the best so far—it was like a really good AMV.

Visual effects: Benjamin Button, whatever. We did sort of want Iron Man to win, though.

Sound editing: Wow, the Dark Knight won something other than for Heath.

Sound mixing: Slumdog! They really did do a great job—the movie was very complicated, sound-wise.

Editing: Slumdog! Though I would have been really happy if Milk had won for their use of archival footage, which was seamless.

Wow, the orchestra is playing Aimee Mann. Damn.

Jean Hersholt: Oh Jerry. Very deserving.

Music (Score): Yay Slumdog!

Music (Song): An actually great production number, and it had to be difficult to pull the Wall-E song into all that Slumdog music. Yay Slumdog! (Oh my god Danny Boyle is SO CUTE.)

Foreign Language: We like tiny Japanese men

Then we squeed through Colicchio's diet Coke ad, which was awesome.

People who died, my favorite montage on any award show.

Director: Danny Boyle! And while he didn't explode, he did bounce like Tigger.

Actress: We just fell in love with Kate Winslet's dad!

Actor: Did you notice that in the shot of Mickey Rourke RPatz was over his right shoulder and Tina Fey over his left? OMG SEAN PENN!!!

Picture: What a great way to do the montages for the films. And a final YAY SLUMDOG!!!!

I really like the way they presented the acting awards, with all those previous winners saying nice things about the nominees. I also liked the pre-in-post production arrangement of the smaller awards. Kudos to the producers of this year's show, because it was fantastic.

But where was Jack?

Comments

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

The music is weird in very intentional ways, it turns out. I don't have E so I was watching the abc pre-show and the did a bit with the musical director of the show tonight, talking about how he was going to do this bit using famous movie themes with a twist.

Re: Makeup, I'm actually more aggrieved on Hellboy's behalf than DK.

I'm really liking the montages, and while I agree the musical was oddly disconnected, I love Luhrmann so I kind of liked it in all it's weirdness.

[illogicalvulcan.livejournal.com]

You know, Toyland (winning) annoyed me, because I didn't think it was that good. But it was the Holocaust movie, so...

[scrabble.livejournal.com]

I have to agree about editing! That was the one technical award I had an opinion on. Milk's archival footage was one of the best things about the movie, in my mind.

[zorb]

Yay, Slumdog!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I saw that, and I'm not sure he was always successful. They tried to do a lot of mixups without really thinking about them all the way through.

I love Hellboy too, and I don't really care that much about Benjamin Button, certainly.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

It was the thing that really impressed me about the movie, definitely. It's so smart, when they do that. It reminded me of American Splendor where they blended the stuff with the actors and the stuff with the real people.

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my thought - some worked, some really didn't, and some just made the theme incomprehensible.

It's just one of those things were SF really doesn't get much respect. As far as makeup goes, Benjamin Button and DK were both one trick ponies, and yes, they absolutely both did their one tricks really well, but compare it to the visual panorama of Hellboy and they're not even in the same league.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Exactly, the Holocaust movie always wins.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I don't know that this is actually about how SF doesn't get respect. I think it's more that makeup that has to look realistic, that is, true to life in some way, but still transformative, tends to win awards over makeup that is spectacular, and that is looking like something that isn't true to life in any way. Also, DK was at least a two-trick pony (Joker and Two-Face) and Benjamin Button was doing all kinds of aging things to Brad and Cate. It's the same with the other visual design awards; period pieces tend to win because people have a sense of what those things looked like, and recreating a thing that exists in the world is deemed trickier than creating a thing that never existed in the first place—because there's no way to say, "they got it right."

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

Hmm, true (belatedly - should possibly check my other email address more often). Although for some reasons I'm remembering there having been cgi involved in Two-Face as well as the prosthetic, but I could be mis-remembering.

And while I agree that the lack of ability to go "look, look, see how spot on accurate that is!" is what hurts SF/F when it comes to these awards, it still sort of bugs me, although I couldn't necessarily say why.