The 79th Annual Academy Awards

[MacGuffin]

Ellen DeGeneres Tapped to Host Oscars

Ellen DeGeneres has been tapped to host next year's Oscars, the Academy of Motions Pictures Arts and Sciences said Thursday.

It will be the comedian and TV talker's first time hosting the Oscars show and first appearance on the award show. She has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast twice and co-hosted it once, and hosted the Grammys twice.

"Ellen DeGeneres was born to host the Academy Awards," said producer Laura Ziskin in a statement. "I can already tell she is going to set the bar very high for herself and therefore for all of us involved in putting on the show. Now all we need is a lot of great movies."

The 79th Annual Academy Awards are scheduled to be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 25. This year's Oscarcast, in March, was fronted by "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.

DeGeneres is the host of the syndicated talk show "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," which has won 15 Daytime Emmys since going on the air in 2003.

DeGeneres also starred in the ABC sitcom "Ellen," which aired between 1994 and 1998, and the CBS sitcom, "The Ellen Show," which ran 2001-2002. She has also been a regular in films and has authored several books.

"When Laura Ziskin called, I was thrilled," said DeGeneres in a statement. "There's two things I've always wanted to do in my life. One is to host the Oscars. The second is to get a call from Laura Ziskin. You can imagine that day's diary entry."

[modage]

cool.  i hope she will be great.

[Derek237]

*Kills self*

[MacGuffin]

Score one for Morricone at the Oscars
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Ennio Morricone, who has composed more than 300 motion picture scores during a 45-year career, will receive an honorary Oscar from the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The honor will be presented to him Feb. 25 at the 79th Annual Academy Awards "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music."

Morricone has been nominated five times for best original score -- for "Days of Heaven" (1978), "The Mission" (1986), "The Untouchables" (1987), "Bugsy" (1991) and "Malena" (2000) -- but has never taken home an Oscar.

He is best known for his work on such Italian films as Sergio Leone's spaghetti Western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and the epic gangster tale "Once Upon a Time in America" as well as Giuseppe Tornatore's nostalgic "Cinema Paradiso." Morricone also has composed scores for such films as "Bulworth," "In the Line of Fire," "La Cage Aux Folles" and "Two Mules for Sister Sara." His current project is Tornatore's "Leningrad," which is scheduled for a 2008 release.

"The board was responding not just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr. Morricone has produced but to the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces," Academy president Sid Ganis said.

Born in Rome, Morricone was hired by Leone in 1964 and began a long collaboration with the director.

[MacGuffin]

Oscar Poster a Font of Famous Film Lines

The new Oscar poster was unfurled Tuesday, and there are lines everywhere. Famous lines from 70 years of famous films.

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!", "I'm the king of the world!", "I'm ready for my close-up" and "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" are among the quotes that share space with an image of the Oscar statuette on the 79th Annual Academy Awards poster.

"What we have is a failure to communicate," joked Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who told Associated Press Television that the idea of movie lines stood out among the dozens of potential Oscar-poster concepts for this year's version.

"We saw it in rough (form) and thought, `There's an idea.' ... `Yes, the force is strong with this one'."

At first the designers were only going to use lines from Oscar winners, Ganis explained, "and then they broadened the field to Oscar nominees." All but one of the lines were gleaned from films that received an Academy Award nomination for best picture, writing or both from 1936-2005.

"And, of course, we had to include what is probably the most quoted movie line, `I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse,'" Ganis said of the famous "Godfather" comment.

The concept and design for the poster were created for the academy by the Los Angeles ad agency TBWA-Chiat-Day.

Photographer Albert Watson shot the Oscar statuette. The poster employs a black canvas, with the quotes in gold metallic each in a typeface in the spirit of the film from which it came.

The academy planned to send out the posters to the surviving writers of the lines. "It's a great way to say thank you," Ganis said, adding he was going to write each of the scribes a personal note.

Some 65,000 of the posters will be distributed worldwide. They're also available for purchase via the academy's Web site.

Nominations for the 79th Annual Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 23, with the Oscar ceremony set for Feb. 25.

[modage]

At first the designers were only going to use lines from Oscar winners, Ganis explained, "and then they broadened the field to Oscar nominees [when the designers realized how often the Academy had been wrong]." All but one of the lines were gleaned from films that received an Academy Award nomination for best picture, writing or both from 1936-2005.

The academy planned to send out the posters to the surviving writers of the lines. "It's a great way to say thank you [instead of actually paying them]," Ganis said, adding he was going to write each of the scribes a personal note.

wow, i guess lord of the rings really had no memorable lines if the best they could come up with is "FRODO!"  cool poster though.

[Kal]

was your edit supposed to be a 'subliminal' message or u wanted to see who actually pays attention to you? 

[hedwig]

was your edit supposed to be a 'subliminal' message or u wanted to see who actually pays attention to you?

he was [obviously] commenting on the original quotes by putting his "edit" in bold and brackets.

and "FRODO!" kills the poster.

[Kal]

i didnt understand a word of what u said...

are you saying frank mackey is wrong? 

[hedwig]

hahah fuck, i didn't even see that. well now i guess my blunder will draw attention to it. 

[ASmith]

Two Tom Cruise movies on there, and both with quotes from him.  This poster is Scientologist propaganda.

[Kal]

lol good job mod... even i say something and people still dont realize... good work

that being said, i like the poster... something different from their typical thing

[Pubrick]

with a dash of HTTT.

and FRODO is FUCKING embarrassing.

[Chest Rockwell]

I find "FRODO!" a little weird, since even the AFI listed "My precious" among their top 100.

[MacGuffin]

*space filler*