77th Annual Academy Awards - Winners Listed on Page 10

[pete]

and brett ratner (so far).

[Myxo]

I hear the Oscars were down 2 million viewers from last year, and they're blaming it on the heartland.



Fucking red states..

[MacGuffin]

I hear the Oscars were down 2 million viewers from last year, and they're blaming it on the heartland.



Fucking red states..

Academy Awards TV Audience Down 2 Million

With comedian Chris Rock, the Academy Awards succeeded in its effort to find a younger audience but perhaps at the expense of the country as a whole.

A total of 41.5 million viewers tuned in Sunday to watch "Million Dollar Baby" take the Oscar for best picture. That's down 2 million from last year's show, which honored "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" according to Nielsen Media Research.

ABC undoubtedly hoped for better, after preliminary figures released earlier Monday from the top 56 markets were the strongest they were in five years.

The drop in total viewership was an indication that this year's Oscar ceremony was more popular in the big cities than rural areas, more so than an average Academy Awards, said Larry Hyams, vice president of audience analysis and research for ABC.

Oscar ratings were up from last year among viewers aged 18 to 34 a prime target for the advertisers who pay millions of dollars for time on what is traditionally the year's highest-rated program after the Super Bowl.

Hyams attributed the boost in young viewership to Rock.

"The academy made a concerted effort to go in a different direction and try to appeal to a younger audience with the Academy Awards, and it appears they have succeeded," he said.

It was the 12th time since 1990 that the Academy Awards drew an audience of between 40 and 46 million people, according to Nielsen. The peak during that stretch was the "Titanic" year of 1998 with 55.2 million, and the low point was 33 million in 2003, when "Chicago" won.

Rock said backstage after the Oscars that he hoped to do it again, although "who knows if they would want me again."

He attracted plenty of pre-Oscars publicity, including speculation about whether he would make jokes at the expense of President Bush (he did) or test ABC censors with curse words (he didn't).

"Put it this way, I don't curse in front of my mother," Rock said. "And my mother was front and center, you know, right in my view. So I could never curse in front of Rose Rock, so why would I do it on television?"

[SoNowThen]

its about which director did the best job

Ah, but that's the thing (and the reason for my tirade -- which, btw GT, was out of pleasure, in case it didn't come across), why/how did any of us ever buy into the pomposity of measuring who "best" directed something, and then give an award for it? Marty could set up a video camera, and talk into it for 10 minutes, and because he's the way he is, I would like it better than anything Eastwood ever did. In fact, Marty DID do that with that extra footage on the Last Temptation dvd. I have nothing per se against Clint Eastwood (both acting and directing, what I've seen I certainly haven't minded, and have sometimes liked quite a bit), but I've seen Unforgiven once, and watched the handicam footage from the Last Temptation set about 30 times.

It's not about one man vs another for me in regards to this, and whether or not someone really deserved it, cos MS has the appeal of a best friend for me -- if he does pretty much anything I'll get something out of it and praise the hell out of it -- it's about the stupidity of the event. If I was one of you guys who loved MDB, I'd be pissed off that the academy just cheapened it, and now sent out about 100 000 idiots who worship awards shows to watch it, and so the next time you go to check it out in the theatre you'll have to put up with these cretins making noise, and then when you go to work the next day you'll have to deal with them loving it or hating it for trite reasons that most likely aren't even their own.

Did I ever tell you about the time I hate people?  

[grand theft sparrow]

I hear the Oscars were down 2 million viewers from last year, and they're blaming it on the heartland.



Fucking red states..

It doesn't necessarily help viewership when the combined US box office gross of this year's 5 best picture nominees is $20 million short of last year's best picture winner's gross by Oscar night.

But then again, my girlfriend actually heard someone at her job complain Monday morning that they were "offended" by Chris Rock.

Fucking red states...

[pete]

I'm totally offended by his skin color.

[SHAFTR]

Now, you take two films that are interesting, well shot, well edited, well acted, engaging, but one has like 500% more people and locations and props and visual effects and dialogue then the other, who is the best director? I mean, Eastwood had himself and hilary swank in most of the scenes and no one else, I would estimate that at least 50% of the film took place in the gym. He took the easier route. Eastwood could not have done Aviator, but scorcese could have directed the crap out of MDB and it would have been way better and stylized. So, scorcese is the best director and he deserved the oscar.

It's silly that you think bigger is better.

[Recce]

its about which director did the best job

Ah, but that's the thing (and the reason for my tirade -- which, btw GT, was out of pleasure, in case it didn't come across), why/how did any of us ever buy into the pomposity of measuring who "best" directed something, and then give an award for it?

I'll admit, it is kind of weird to give a best directing award that doesn't necessarily reflect the best picture award (granted, more often then not it does, but...). If your film was the best, it would seem that you are the best director. But, we all know that's not how they do it, which is why I still say Scorcese should have gotten it. If they don't always give it to the best picture director, then they must take into consideration how ambitious a project is and how well it was pulled off despite the enormous  obstacles that needed to be overcome. It just seems to me that the oscars are inconsistent in the guidelines they use to judge films, which, in all probability, is just a ploy to maintain a certain suspense. If they really judged it the same way every year, people would be able to figure out what will win easily. They do it for the audience at home, which is not cool, cause Scorcese keeps getting fucked cause of it (sure, its paranoid, but thats my rationalization).

[grand theft sparrow]

It's funny... this is the exact opposite of last year's argument.

Keep going until about page 10.

[Alethia]

i read in the paper that Marty's 0 for 5 puts him in a club with two other directors:

Alfred Hitchcock & Robert Altman

not bad, eh?

he was in their club anyways.

[MacGuffin]

A Tone-Deaf Oscar Snubbed the Best Song Winner
COMMENTARY By Paulo Prada, a Colombian American; a freelance writer based in Rio de Janeiro.

When Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek took the stage at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night, most viewers — once they had taken in the merits of the stars' slinky dresses and their physical attributes — grasped the obvious: The Spanish and Mexican actresses were there to give the show a touch of Latin flair.

Indeed, one of Hayek's chief responsibilities was to introduce Jorge Drexler's "Al Otro Lado del Rio," the haunting song from the Spanish-language film "The Motorcycle Diaries." It was the first song in Spanish ever to receive an Oscar nomination for best original song.

But what followed was a travesty. Apparently, the show's producers deemed Drexler, a respected Uruguayan songwriter, too much of a nobody to sing his own song live. Instead, they asked two famous Latinos — Latinos, that is, with a substantial base of white, mainstream fans — to perform it in his place. Never mind that the singer they chose, Antonio Banderas, isn't really known as a singer. Or that his accompanist, Carlos Santana, is better suited to performing the wailing power-pop of his recent career than the subtle, acoustic dynamics that made the song poignant.

Gil Cates, the show's producer, presumably approved Santana and Banderas as safe, viewer-friendly crossover alternatives capable of lending further glow to the show's marquee. Ratings, after all, reign at a time when the public suffers from awards fatigue.

But by inserting two token Latino stars in place of the artist who wrote the music (and who sang it in the film), Cates insulted the song, the songwriter and the multicultural ideal the academy supposedly sought to toast. By presenting a makeshift, middle-of-the-road substitute, the ceremony belittled the very value of the song it was honoring.

Santana and Banderas, Mexican and Spanish by birth, struggled to perform a song whose roots lie in the slow, pulsating rhythms of folk music from southern South America. Imagine a Scotsman trying to wrap his brogue around hip-hop from Brooklyn or South Los Angeles.

Not surprisingly, Latin American media have been all over the story for a week. They noted that Hayek introduced the song only because Gael Garcia Bernal, the Mexican star of "The Motorcycle Diaries," backed out of the ceremony in protest. The film's Brazilian director, Walter Salles, last week issued a statement calling the exclusion "unethical," "disrespectful to the author" and "ignorant of the cultural diversity that exists in Latin America."

And Drexler himself told Clarin, an Argentine daily, that some of the singers suggested by producers filled him with "literal dread because they have no connection to what I do." Among them, shockingly, was teeny-bopper icon Enrique Iglesias. What were these people thinking?

The hubbub is not about envy, egos or camera time: It's about the inability of the ceremony's producers to see beyond their broad-brush perception of ethnic difference.

When Drexler finally climbed onstage to accept the Oscar — cameras earlier showed him cringing in his seat throughout the rendition — he was defiant but noble. He sang a capella lines from his song and then muttered "gracias" and "thank you."

Sure, the trophy means something. But in their scramble for blockbuster appeal, the producers undermined the academy's recognition of his work and, by extension, the worth of the Oscar itself.

[GoneSavage]

Good find, Mac.  That certainly was a "what the fuck?" moment on the broadcast.

[SHAFTR]

Weren't the counting crows the only band/artist with a nomination to actually perform?

Reason I say this, my friend told me that Beyonce's french was off in the first song.

[Gamblour.]

Weren't the counting crows the only band/artist with a nomination to actually perform?

Reason I say this, my friend told me that Beyonce's french was off in the first song.

Yes, my friend speaks French and she was freaking out. I was like "What's the big deal" and she said it was the most horrendous pronunciation she's ever heard.