The 79th Annual Academy Awards

[socketlevel]

These nominations are so lame that for the first time in many years I dont even give a shit about watching this or who wins... fuck the Oscars

Which means that almost every year you really care about watching it and who wins?

normally i'd agree, however these are some of the best american made films this year.  i find it funny how this year is the year you decide to say fuck the Oscars.  this is a pretty good year actually.  it's a relative comment cuz sure, the best pictures are never actually nominated.  and the shittiest of the 5 nominated usually wins, but come on... english patient...  titanic... Chicago... A beautiful Mind... Gladiator...  Dances with wolves...  every single picture nominated in the best picture category this year is better than any of these past winners.

it's not that i disagree with the sentiment, i just can't fathom that it took this crop of flicks to make you loose your faith in the already dead ceremony.  in fact, if anything (and this is stretching a bit i know) this years picks are a little refreshing to me.

little miss sunshine being nominated is a good thing for the awards.  classically epics only get the nod.  why can't a small scale comedy outshine an epic?  since when does scope of a project dictate quality?  this is exactly what hollywood wants, they want us to think the higher budget movies are "better" films.  that way no one else can compete, cuz no one has the cash flow to make the multi-hundred million dollar epics.  that's bullshit imo.  on that principle alone i hope sunshine wins.  david and goliath.

just think about how many times the superior smaller film got fucked in the bum (either in no nomination or loosing out on the statue) in the oscars - pulp fiction>forrest gump - Fargo>english patient - a simple plan>shakespear in love

and of course the famous year that i'm sure most of you agree with:

magnolia
being john malkovich   
The straight story            >     American Beauty
election

truth is i like forrest gump, shakespear and American beauty, but come on...

-sl-

[MacGuffin]

Morricone Says He Never Wanted an Oscar

Ennio Morricone hoped he would never get an Oscar.

The 78-year-old Italian composer, who will receive an honorary Academy Award later this month, said Thursday that getting five nominations and no awards would have been "something peculiar, something not to be forgotten almost better than an accidental Oscar."

"After five nominations I expected nothing, in fact I hoped I'd remain without an Oscar," he told reporters at the Foreign Press Association.

"I would have remained in the company of illustrious non-winners," Morricone said, singling out Stanley Kubrick and other greats who never won the coveted statuette.

"I see the Oscar as a little bit of a fluke even if those who win deserve it," he said.

"That doesn't mean that I'm not happy about it," he added. "I have received so many beautiful, incredible prizes, but there was a little hole. ... Maybe the Oscar fills the hole."

Morricone has composed more than 400 film scores, including the iconic theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and other spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone.

He had original score nominations for "Days of Heaven," "The Mission" "The Untouchables," "Bugsy" and "Malena."

Morricone will receive the honorary Oscar during the Feb. 25 awards ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Calif.

[Pubrick]

he should croak the night before, that would show em.

[MacGuffin]

Hey, couch critic...


Need a place to express your Oscar predictions? Want to goof on who gave the worst acceptance speech? Have a burning desire to discuss who has the best cleavage of the night?


Then join the like-minded individuals in the Xixax Chat on Oscar night - Sunday February 25th. Beginning with the red carpet arrivals and ending when the Academy screws up the Best Picture winner once again.

[polkablues]

Have a burning desire to discuss who has the best cleavage of the night?

It'll be a tossup between Salma Hayek and Monica Bellucci.  Scarlett Johanssen will try her best, but she's out of her league.

[Pubrick]

Scarlett Johanssen will try her best, but she's out of her league.

if the league is "40+" then yeah, i guess she is.

[polkablues]

Scarlett Johanssen will try her best, but she's out of her league.

if the league is "40+" then yeah, i guess she is.

Wait, inches or years?

[SiliasRuby]

"I would have remained in the company of illustrious non-winners," Morricone said, singling out Stanley Kubrick and other greats who never won the coveted statuette.

Didn't kubrick win one for special effects fo 2001 wth the special effects coordinator. Am I wrong, Mac, P, anyone?

[Kal]

Yep. He did win that one. Still, he probably felt it unfair to get that one but never win for Best Director, Picture or Writing (which he also deserved).

[mogwai]

Shakespeare film is Oscar turkey

Shakespeare in Love has been voted the most undeserving Oscar best film winner of all time.

The romantic comedy, which won seven Oscars in 1999 - including best actress for Gwyneth Paltrow - was voted top Oscar turkey in a poll by MSN Movies.

It was was followed by the 2002 musical Chicago, and the 1997 epic Titanic.

Golden oldie Top Hat was voted the film most deserving of a best picture win, despite it losing out to Mutiny on the Bounty in 1936.

Paltrow was also voted the actress least deserving of her award for Shakespeare in Love, just ahead of Halle Berry's turn in dark romantic drama Monster's Ball.

Berry's over-emotional speech following her 2002 win - during which she referred to herself as the "vessel through which this blessing might flow" - also earned her the worst speech award.

She was followed by James Cameron, who jumped in the air shouting "I'm the King of the World!", following a minute's silence for those who died on the Titanic.

Jack Palance was voted most unworthy of best actor or best supporting actor glory, after picking up the Oscar for his supporting performance in 1991 Western movie City Slickers.

On the red carpet, Bjork's swan dress, which she wore in 2001, was voted the worst Oscar outfit by 29 per cent of people, while Paltrow was also lambasted for her 2002 black gown.

MSN Entertainment Editor Mike Lok said: "We wanted to give the public their chance to participate in the Oscars and it's clear that if viewers had a vote, the results would be entirely different.

"Dreadful dresses and sensationalist speeches really are the talking point after the awards and we're looking forward to another entertaining ceremony this week."

[MacGuffin]

Oscar Predictions, anyone? Will Scorsese finally take it home?

[Fernando]

I kind of wish he deosn't, although I loved The Departed, lately every year it's always labeled as Martin's year so who knows.

I wish Guillermo del Toro takes something, writing would be unbelievable because he created such a wonderful world of fantasy within a harsh reality, not that the fantasy world wasn't harsh, it was brutal but so magical at the same time, if he doesn't win anything I hope one of the other categories that Pan's has does.

[mogwai]

Oscar Predictions, anyone? Will Scorsese finally take it home?

i really hope so because he's been nominated 134 times by now. but i'm afraid clint eastwood will steal another one.

the only oscar marty will win is a free honorary one.

[Kal]

imagine the voting moment for members of the academy... u have the ballot and u look at clint eastwood and marty... would have to be a fucking not to give scorsese what he deserves and vote AGAIN for clint eastwood who made 2 decent films in auto pilot in the same fucking year

[MacGuffin]

Morris cuts it close with his Oscar docu
By Anne Thompson; Hollywood Reporter

Errol Morris has a problem. It's Wednesday, and he has to complete a four-minute short film in time for it to air on Sunday's Oscar broadcast.

The Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker ("The Fog of War") has a rough cut about five minutes long, comprising 110 short clips of interviews he did around Feb. 5 with this year's Oscar nominees. His problem is, he conducted 20 more interviews Tuesday that he has to add to the film. "I talked to Martin Scorsese for 20 minutes," he says. And he still has to add John Kusiak's score, mix sound and do a final color correction by Saturday night lest Oscar telecast producer Laura Ziskin have one more thing to worry about Sunday.

"Originally when Laura suggested the whole project, we asked if it was even possible. The compression of time between the (Jan. 23) announcement and the (Feb. 25) awards makes it difficult," Morris says.

But if anyone can pull off this feat, it's Morris. A consummate interviewer and journalist, he also is a master of the shortest form there is, the 30-second commercial. (He has done tons of them, from beer and bacon to cars and Democratic campaign spots.) He knows how to work short.

And Morris, who looks and sounds like a rumpled professor from the college town where he lives, Cambridge, Mass., has done a similar Oscar film before. In 2002 he interviewed about 100 people, from folks on the street to Susan Sontag and William Wegman, for the charming "Academy Awards Movie," and collected about 24 hours of material. (The movie is viewable at www.errolmorris.com.) The Oscar night running time: four minutes and 15 seconds.

"Movies are an escape," former California governor (and now state attorney general) Jerry Brown says in one of the dozens of interviews shot with Morris' patented interviewing device dubbed "the Interrotron." The contraption uses mirrors to reflect the director's face behind the camera, some distance away, to his subjects looking straight into the camera. This gives them an engaged intimacy that they wouldn't otherwise have. The director jostles and cajoles answers from them.

"Is that all?" he yells at Brown.

"That's a lot!" Brown fires back.

Morris still dines out on the day that he had to play traffic cop when Walter Cronkite, Al Sharpton, Iggy Pop, Donald Trump and Mikhail Gorbachev all piled up at a New York studio. Then there's the gem about how the White House staff wrote their own questions and answers for first lady Laura Bush after Morris refused to provide them with a list of his questions before the interview. "Is your favorite movie really 'The Wizard of Oz'?" he asked her. "No," she replied. "My favorite movie is 'Giant.' When I was a little girl I had to stand in line to be cast as an extra."

Ziskin tapped Morris for the 2002 "Academy Awards Movie" because she was impressed with his work on a post-Sept. 11 commercial for United Airlines. This time, Ziskin asked all the nominees to fill out a questionnaire (which she will use on the show and make available at Oscars.com). But Morris didn't use them.

"I never prepare a list of questions, ever," he says. "I try not to think about it. I have been known occasionally to go to the movies. You could look at this as my own personal way to meet all the nominees. It was enjoyable, actually."

What was not enjoyable was trying to fit all 130 subjects into four minutes in a way that makes sense. (On the last film, Morris caught hell from some of the luminaries he left out, like U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky.) Morris says Ziskin gave him a much tougher task this go-round. She wanted him to try to interview as many of this year's nominees as he could.

"It's a little moment when everybody gets seen," Ziskin says. "We can't do 'up close and personal' on 177 people. Except for the movie stars who get just four awards, I equate this to a sporting event like the Olympics where you're meeting people in the individual events for the first time with an unknown outcome. In a moment, Errol can capture the essence of somebody. By seeing the people in various ways the audience can be invested."

Morris didn't know who his potential subjects were until nominations morning Jan. 23. And because they were scattered all over the globe, he had to get to most of them around the Academy Nominees luncheon Feb. 5. More of them showed up for the first three sessions that week at a soundstage provided by 20th Century Fox than anyone expected, from Alfonso Cuaron and Penelope Cruz to Peter O'Toole and Abigail Breslin.

"One hundred and thirty nominees -- that in itself is a somewhat daunting task," Morris says. "It's the iron-man interview competition -- 130 in four days."

Morris had to wedge this little assignment in between shooting his full-length documentary on Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. One day he did grilled a subject for the documentary on one stage and ran back to the Fox lot to interrogate more Oscar nominees. Quite a contrast.

What made it even trickier to shape was Morris' demand that the movie have something significant to impart.

"It has to say something, be about something, and not be a jumble of images," he says. "Not everyone gets the same amount of time. I like to think I am giving the Academy a human face, who these people really are underneath all the glitz and glamour and marketing, that anyone can identify with and like. If I've done that, that's a job well done."

The first unifying principle for Morris, obviously, was that all his subjects are Oscar nominees. He also couldn't ignore their global diversity.

"A large number of films were made outside the studio system or made by foreign directors," he says. "It was unavoidable, how many Spanish-speaking films were nominated: directors, composers, actresses. And how many English writers and directors. You become aware, it's overwhelming, how many categories there are for sound. But I know that location recording, mixing and sound effects are important in movies."

He also gets into issues of thanking people in a painfully short amount of time. "Nominees are always wanting to thank people, and feeling guilt about not thanking people," he says. "That's part of what the Oscars are about."

O'Toole, who frames the short, "has a fabulous story to tell," Morris says. When he asked the veteran actor how many times he had been nominated, O'Toole replied, eight.

"Why didn't you win for 'Lawrence of Arabia'?"

"Because someone else did," O'Toole answers.

Morris hopes that the longer interview footage will somehow get seen. He was especially pleased with what he got from O'Toole, Scorsese and Eddie Murphy.

"They were pretty wonderful," he says. "I hope this will see some life after the fact."

One nominee Morris is sorry he did not get to meet is Sacha Baron Cohen, who was happy to film upon his arrival in town -- on Thursday. But adding him at the last minute turned out to be "too difficult," Morris says. By noon Thursday, Morris had his final cut: four minutes, 40 seconds.

"I'm very pleased," he says. "No one is left on the cutting-room floor."