Oscars 2009

E!'s Red Carpet-

While talking to Michael Sheen, Danny Elfman walked by in the background- go Danny!

Amy Adams is starting to use Cruel Intentions 2 in interviews as her own personal mocking tool a la Turner & Hooch.

ABC red carpet- accounting montage- loads of fun! Midnight Run, Casino Royale, Untouchables...

ceremony-

Great opening number with Hugh Jackman and a "surprised Anne Hathaway" as Nixon

Nice concept of 5 past acting nominees talking about why this year's nominees are up- but I want to SEE why they are up.

Best Supporting Actress- Penelope Cruz- not a Woody Allen fan, but because of this award and Rebecca Hall being in it as well, it now becomes a must see.

Fun bit of having Steve Martin and Tina Fey actually read parts of the nominated screenplays.

Original Screen play- Milk- Way to have a purely emotional speech about how great all gay and lesbians are and how they are all beautiful( read sarcastically). I have been heterosexual all my life and have met quite a few idiot heterosexuals. You can't tell me that being gay makes you a great person either. I love how everything is black or white on this issue in Hollywood.

Adapted screenplay- Slumdog- I totally disagree with this because I feel it is one of the most hackneyed screenplays of the year- even Crystal Skull was a better screenplay.

Best Animated- WALL-E. It better have been! Later on in the show, they show a clip montage of Romance and it ends with WALL-E and EVE. It's best animated and best romance and it's not up for Best Picture- WHY? Dirfector talks about how he was cast in his High School production of Hello Dolly- that explains the mystery of WALL-E's love for that musical.

Art Direction- Benjamin Button- Because it was much harder, obviously, to create something that existed as opposed to something that didn't (Dark Knight, cough). And in the clips, why did they show the plain white interrogation room with table and chair?

Costume Design- Duchess- Nothing here that was nominated was for anything interesting at all! And, as Aleisha says, Can't they get away from this damn time period? I wholly second that!

Makeup- Benjamin Button- Chris Cannom has always done good work, although I personally would have gone for Hellboy 2. In its defense, though, It is hard to make people age realistically as opposed to demons and monsters which can look like anything.

Cinematography- Ben Stiller mocking Joaquin Phoenix- very funny. Slumdog Millionaire- Based on the clips, I would have given it to Changeling. I found nothing special about the cinematography of Slumdog- parts of it have been done by years of television lighting.

Best Supporting Actor- Heath Ledger- again, I can't fault the choice. Amazing performance that will go down in history, only a bit more because of his death. I still feel Downey, Jr.'s performance is the toughest role, though in the same way that Bale in Prestige and Norton in Fight Club were.

Documentary- Man on Wire- haven't seen it, but friends who have really enjoyed it and were amazed.

Visual Effects- Benjaman Button- Haven't seen, but again, it was something realistic instead of fantastical

Sound editing- Dark Knight- It was good, but it wasn't Ben Burtt!

Sound Mixing- Slumdog Millionaire-WTF?

Editing- Slumdog Millionaire- The hyper-kinetic style wins an Oscar, however, Natural Born Killers was regarded as being too much for any audience member to handle.

Humanitarian award given to Jerry Lewis- fast forwarded through it.

score-Slumdog- predicted it- but I still liked Elfman and Newman's scores better. I will be surprised if we ever hear from A.R. Rahman again, though.

song- performance-WALL-E doing counterpoint to Slumdog? How weird was that?

song-award- Jai-Ho (sp?)- Since Down to Earth wasn't going to win, at least they picked the best of the 2 songs from Slumdog.

foreign film- Departures- no opinion

in memorium- they remembered Stan Winston, ended on Paul Newman, and the final clip was Sting.

Director- Danny Boyle- Slumdog- as said before- very disappointed in the film and also, I don't feel like he should ever have won. The second credit during the end credits was "Co-Director-India' which means that Danny should not win this award.

Actress- Kate Winslet- although I feel it is a make up award (5 previous nominations, zero wins) her call out and wave to her dad after she asked for him to whistle, was one of the highlights of the show.

Actor- Sean Penn- Milk- still haven't seen it, but I must say, he is a great actor and deserves it.

Picture- Slumdog Millionaire

I am going to go on record right now and say that in the year 2020, Oscar watchers are going to look back and say "Slumdog Millionaire? Really?"

I worked at Blockbuster Video for a very long time and although it was very popular when it was first released on video 7 months after winning Best Picture, a short 4 months later and Shakespeare in love was totally forgotten. It won over Saving Private Ryan which, almost a decade after it was originally released, is still constantly checked out at all times.

Slumdog Millionaire will follow in Shakespeare in Love's footsteps.

Count n it.