I know it’s silly and insipid, but I love watching the Oscars. I love going to or hosting a party, making my pool pics, laughing at or coveting the clothes and mocking certain speeches (please see Halle and Gwenie). I get even get teared up when they do the montage of who has passed in the last year. . .
If you have ever seen the film Double Indemnity, the apartment where Fred MacMurray lives in was my apartment. It is just off of Hollywood, a hop, skip and a jump down the street from The Kodak Theatre (home to the Oscars the last few years). Traffic would be diverted around that area for days before and the subway won’t stop at the Hollywood and Highland stop on Oscar Sunday. You can’t help but notice that it’s going on. Even if you don’t work in ‘The Industry’, movies are everywhere and everyone has a screenplay in their back pocket and everyone has an opinion.
Here in the UK, once again the Oscars are on pay cable and ABC hasn’t wised up that maybe people would be willing to pay to watch them online, so I am out of the game again this year. We did just order Virgin cable, but I’m a day late, dollar short for this particular pop-culture banality.
Last year I made a roast dinner for something like ten/twelve people. (It was an accident that it was Oscar Sunday.) We got a bit drunk, everyone left or went to bed and I stayed up (my job hadn’t started yet. Oh the sweet days of freedom) listened to the telecast online (until it switched to the interviews) and drunk blogged play by play. If you go to the March archives you relive this pointless exercise.
This is the first year in a very long time that I haven’t seen 99% of what has been nominated. . . I’m off my game, but here are my pics.
I must go on the record with saying that my favourite film of 2006 was Pan’s Labyrinth. . .
Actor- Leading- Forest Whitaker
Actor- Supporting- Alan Arkin
Actress - Leading- Helen Mirren
Actress- Supporting- Rinko Kikuchi
Animated Feature- Monster House
Art Direction- Pan’s Labyrinth
Cinematography- Pan’s Labyrinth
Costume Design- Curse of the Golden Flower
Directing- The Departed
Documentary Feature- An Inconvenient Truth
Documentary Short- The Blood of Yingzhou District
Film Editing- Babel
Foreign Language Film- Pan’s Labyrinth
Makeup- Pan’s Labyrinth
Original Score- Pan’s Labyrinth
Original Song- “Listen†– DREAMGIRLS
Best Picture- Letters From Iwo Jima
Short film- Animated- The Little Matchgirl
Short Film- Live Action- West Bank Story
Sound Editing- Blood Diamond
Sound Mixing- Dreamgirls
Visual Effects- Pirates of the Caribbean
Screenplay - Adapted- The Departed
Screenplay Original- Little Miss Sunshine
February 25th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I was in London a couple of years ago when the Oscars were televised. Like an idiot, I actually stayed up until about 4:30 am to watch them. Odd, as I don’t usually do it when home. I do like to watch the beginning, to see what everyone is wearing, and often wonder why most of them left home without combing their hair.