The Unofficial Academy Awards Thread

Cafe Society
201

Man, what an unbelievably crappy production. I mean, it usually is anyway, but this year’s seems the worst in some time. Forcing the winners of ‘lesser’ awards to make their acceptances standing in the frickin’ aisles, and the horrendous mangling of most of the musical numbers were especially egregious. And is there no one who can step forward to be a halfway decent host for this thing? Shit, I’m ready to suggest Bill Murray, I’m so desperate.

Did enjoy the speeches by Lumet, Swank and Fox, and was glad to see Morgan Freeman, Brad Bird, and Charlie Kaufman get awards. The bizarre parade of drunkeness exhibited by Pacino, Penn and Hoffman was ineresting in a car-crash sort of way. Otherwise, almost entirely devoid of interest.

Plus, we don’t get to see the inevitable post-show fistfight between Sean Penn and Chris Rock. Damn.

202

Chris Rock and Adam Sandler are starring together in the remake of The Longest Yard, coming out this summer. Which explains the phoniness of the pairing and the awfulness of the jokes. Maybe everybody can just boycott the movie now.

Rock was probably the worst host since Letterman. I expected better, but he must have had too many people telling him to be on his best behavior. He kept cutting loose in all the wrong places. Nobody wanted either Michael Moore jokes or Bush jokes. And while you can make fun of actors, the one thing you can’t do is tell them they aren’t as good as other actors. When the host gets schooled by one of the presenters, the game’s over. Rock’s not coming back.

Boring host, boring show. Remember the extremely cool way the Triples of Belleville song was presented last year? It should have won just because it blew everything else offstage. These songs were too dignified and nothing of any interest happened between. Not a cool montage sequence, not a skit, certainly not too many funny jokes from Rock. I’ll bet the ratings will be shown to have plummeted for tonight.

The only fun part was watching the models who bring out the Oscars tower over everybody else on stage. At one part the girl in the gold gown was so comparatively huge she looked like a special effect for Shrek 3.

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I don’t know, I thought Penn made a great joke. “Jude Law is one of our finest actors?” :smiley: Actually I like Jude Law okay, but what Rock said is true. He’s in every movie these days and he’s overexposed. It’s starting to hurt his career.

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Ok, good. I’m not the only one who kept noticing them. I was thinking, Gwenneth and Renee must feel really short and really ugly next to those models bringing out the Oscars.

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(a) America, Fuck Yeah!, from Team America, should have been nominated

(b) I thought the bit with Adam Sandler was hilarious, in that the writing was intentionally and obviously awful. Although the Oscars is so often unintentionally awful that self-parody is a dangerous game.

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Rock in the first round. No way would that be close. Now, a free-for-all between all the guys who were drunk might be interesting…

207

Thank you for confirming my assertion that Hunter S. Thompson was not in the movie industry. (BTW, I recently linked to that same IMDb page in another thread to support my assertion.) Of the five titles listed under him as “writer”, three were movie adaptations by others of his writings; one was the pilot to a television series; and the fifth was for “special material” (?) for something called Woman Found Dead in Elevator.

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I loved him interviewing the audience at the Magic Theatres!

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I was expecting more from Chris Rock. Kind of a boring show.

No big surprises, except I had assumed “Maria, llena eras de gracia” (Maria Full of Grace) had gotten a nomination for best foreign language film. I saw that on DVD a few months ago, and thought it was excellent.

“Sideways” got best screenplay (non-original) which I think it deserved. I didn’t see “Ray”, but the clip of Foxx they showed looked like he was the right pick-- I didn’t think Clint was all that good in MDB.

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“Maria, llena eres de gracia”, that is.

211

No

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Hey, hey! I’m glad Kaufman won for best original screenplay. And I was happy that MDB won and it wasn’t a Scorcese lifetime achievement award. Though I really wished that we could take all the female presenters and give them some food and put them in the sun for a bit. What’d ya think?

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I agree. I don’t know what people were expecting, but I thought Chris Rock did pretty well.

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It was really just their backhanded way of saying Michelle Rodriguez was the worst female lead ever to play a boxer on film. :smack:

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How do you figure he was not involved in the movie industry? He wrote books that were turned into movies. He was a writer for films. I really think the reason he wasn’t included was because he died after the new year. I guess we’ll find out next year. I’ll be very surprised if they don’t honor him, actually.

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Which films would those be?

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Well, as you yourself noted in the other thread, for Woman Found Dead in an Elevator, who cares if you’ve never heard of it? And while he isn’t directly credited for writing the screenplay for *Fear & Loathing *(or The Rum Diary, which I confess not to know much about), the words he wrote comprise much of the script. The movie itself documents a piece of his life. Yeah, I would say Hollywood owes him some recognition.

What’s the deal, man?

218

I, uh, searched for Oscars rather than Academy Awards so I opened my own general thread not seeing this one. If you guys don’t mind I’m just gonna drop these over here in the corner;

Assorted Observations About the Oscars
These have no real point and are piecemeal- feel free to add your own:
*Looks like I’ll have to wait another year to collection my million dollars from James Randi (I thought THE AVIATOR would trump MILLION DOLLAR BABY [though I haven’t seen the latter])

*Chris Rock is at his best a brilliant comedian but his Angry Young Black Man™ schtick is tiring- Dude, you’re hosting the Oscars, how much more establishment do you get?

*Hillary Swank is too thin for a backless dress

*Charlize Theron could turn me straight for at least a day or two (especially if Chad Lowe stopped over)

*Sean Penn is a total tool (I really don’t think that Jude Law was home crying and trying to cut his wrists with a lemon zester over Rock’s jokes)

*Did anybody else think that the huge hoorays for Marlon Brando were ironic considering his opinion of the Oscars?

*Did anybody think that Ronald Reagan got too little applause considering he was President of… the SAG?

*Cate Blanchett was good but didn’t deserve the Oscar for her Hepburn

*Now that Jamie Foxx has won the Oscar I guess the budget of WANDA: THE MOTION PICTURE will be $20 million higher

*I liked SIDEWAYS but still can’t understand why Thomas Haden Church was nominated (if you’ve seen WINGS you’ve seen his performance [and on a non-Oscar note, how the hell did that movie cost $16 million to make?])

*Has anybody else ever noticed that Johnny Depp is really hot?

*Ditto Josh Groban

*If Sean Penn was female and Jewish and could sing and was 20 years older he’d be Barbra Streisand

*YoYo Ma could make the angels cry- the man is a demi-god

*Ossie Davis died in 2005, not 2004

*Sean Penn is a tool (it bears repeating)

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Actor Ossie Davis also died in 2005 (February 4), but he was included in the “In Memoriam” section.

Hunter S. Thompson fans: get over it. He wasn’t in this year’s, he won’t be in next year’s.

220

Is Chris Rock always that resoundingly unfunny? I kept feeling like saying “You’re black. We get it. Those of us watching might have noticed a good comedian instead of a black man if you’d let us, but you didn’t.” I can’t think of a single genuinely funny thing to come out of his mouth all evening. He was offensive enough to be tacky, and not offensive enough to be funny. Blech.

What was with all those visibly drunken presenters on stage? Has any presenter - let alone multiples - ever been that visibly smashed during the ceremonies, or does my memory fail me?