Fans of the Oscar Blog be warned I didn’t stay up for the ceremony so there’s no toilet breaks or anecdotes about the Sky Coverage. Although I have watched a bit of the Sky Coverage on a streaming sight I haven’t watched that all the way through and this is based on just a recording of the ceremony that I found online. I just have to give a short credit to Stephanie Beecham who on the Sky Panel was hilariously frank from claiming that Penelope Cruz got her Oscar because she was pretty to almost saying that Heath Ledger shouldn’t win the Oscar. They’ll also be no red carpet malarkey, a shame I know but then again reading what Ryan Seacrest did to the Slumdog kids I didn’t really fancy watching it online. Anyway my blog this time will not be by time of me watching but by how far into the ceremony events occur.25 seconds in: Hugh Jackman enters to the new stage which has the host nearer to the audience then ever before the backdrop is more like that seen at the MTV Movie Awards and there is no giant movie screen or anything like that.
2 minutes 14 seconds in: After talking about people putting on accents to get nominations Jackman starts on his opening number in which he plays on the recession by doing a Billy Crystal-esque performance on all the Best Picture nominees with crudely designed sets and props.
4 minutes 41 seconds in: Hugh drags a bedazzled Anne Hathaway up on stage to sing in his tribute to Frost/Nixon however she has no idea what she’s doing. But hey it was all a set-up and she’s a pretty good singer to boot.7 minutes 56 seconds in: Jackman has finished his number with the words ‘I’m Wolverine’ its pretty entertaining and he put more effort in that recent hosts.
8 minutes 45 seconds in: Jackman sits on Frank Langella’s lap slightly disturbing.
9 minutes 30 seconds in: Jackman is contractually obliged to mention the Jolie-Pitts five times during the show, you think he’s joking but you can see it in Angelina’s eyes he’s really not.
10 minutes 34 seconds in: Jackman leaves the stage to introduce a montage of Best Supporting Actress winners.
12 minutes 21 seconds in: Post-montage former winners of said award – Eva Marie Saint, Whoopi Goldberg, Angelica Houston, Goldie Hawn and Tilda Swinton come out on stage. It seems that Oscar is bucking the trend of having last year’s supporting actor give the supporting actress award and vice versa by having these five women talk about a nominate performer each instead of showing clips which is a good idea in principal but let see how it goes.
14 minutes 38 seconds in: Its going well so far, Whoopi introduces Amy Adams’ tribute with the words its not easy being a nun, this Oscars gets extra points for a Sister Act reference.
17 minutes 8 seconds in: Penelope Cruz beats rightful winner Marissa Tomei to the Best Supporting Actress prize19 minutes 20 seconds in: I’m surprised Cruz wasn’t cut off by the orchestra going back over her life story watching The Oscars blah blah etc. She also thanked Pedro Almodovar which was a nice touch but everyone clapped it for some reason.
19 minutes 50 seconds in: Jackman talks about the concept behind tonight’s show its all about the process of making a movie and I’m guessing that the non-acting awards will be presented in this kind of fashion.
20 minutes 56 seconds in: A screenplay starts to appear as Tina Fey and Steve Martin announce themselves via the written word.
22 minutes in: Martin and Fey’s banter is possibly some of the funniest I’ve ever heard – movies start with a screenplay, or a great idea for the poster.
24 minutes 17 seconds in: Second prediction in a row wrong as Dustin Lance Black wins for Best Original Screenplay even though Milk is based on real events while the other four are all completely fictional, tonight it seems is all about the gays.
25 minutes 57 seconds in: Black waffles on about gay rights, please don’t lets have a night full of issues speeches, Sean Penn is crying, hopefully at least Mickey Rourke will win and we’ll have a bit of ludeness in a speech.
26 minutes 34 seconds in: Fey looks at Martin as they start their Adapted Screenplay nominees, he looks into her eyes and says ‘don’t fall in love with me’, hilarious.
28 minutes 40 seconds in: Simon Beaufoy rightfully wins for Slumdog Millionaire.
30 minutes 30 seconds in: Jennifer Anniston and Jack Black appear, they’re waffling on about animations and Black putting all his money on Pixar films to win after Dreamworks has paid him.31 minutes 30 seconds in: There’s a shot of Angelina Jolie trying to laugh at Aniston, painful.
31 minutes 47 seconds in: Throughout the night various genres will be put into a ‘2008 yearbook’ and first of his animation with a specially animated segment of Wall-E finding an Oscar he throws the Oscar away in favour of watching a video full of animated films of the year including Bolt and Kung Fu Panda.
34 minutes 30 seconds in: Wall-E wins best animated film, well what else really?
37 minutes in: Some Japanese film about cubes win Best Animated Short, This Way Up was robbed. The Japanese dude thanks his pencil and then does the Mr. Roboto lyric to please the crowd who are bored by his speech.
40 minutes 23 seconds in: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wins best Art Direction despite The Dark Knight having much better sets.
42 minutes 28 seconds in: Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker are still on stage I wonder if all the awards are going to be presented in twos this year. Anyway eventually after going on for too long about this theme, pre-production etc. The Duchess eventually wins Best Costumes well-deserved and its another British win.
45 minutes 40 seconds in: Parker and Craig are still on stage this time presenting Best Make-Up.
46 minutes 39 seconds in: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wins Best Make-Up, that’s was my pick but I was secretly routing for Hellboy 2.
47 minutes 16 seconds in: The winner Greg Gannom is fighting back the tears not realising that nobody really cares about the make-up awards and we all just want to see the main ones.
48 minutes in: A thousand teenage girls go crazy as Robert Pattison takes to the stage to present the next award.
48 minutes 49 seconds in: It seems that Pattison and Amanda Seyfried are introducing another of these ‘Yearbook’ Montages this time about romance on screen in 2008.
50 minutes 31 seconds in: They should stop playing Coldplay over this otherwise emotionally manipulative montage.
52 minutes 21 seconds in: Natalie Portman comes out with Ben Stiller to present the award for Best Cinematography, Stiller has a massive beard in tribute to Joaquin Phoenix this amuses practically everyone in the audience but poor old Portman has to carry on regardless. Missing out her comic cues because of all the laughs.53 minutes 48 seconds in: This is still quite amusing, Ben Stiller wants to ‘retire from being the funny guy’
55 minutes 36 seconds in: Another win for Slumdog as Anthony Dod Mantle rightfully picks up the award.
57 minutes 30 seconds in: Jessica Biel once again has the unenviable task of appearing at the boring technology awards and then reporting back to the people at the ‘Proper Oscars'
1 hour, 1 minute and 10 seconds in: The ‘Oscar Yearbook’ opens up this time for comedy as James Franco and Seth Rogen reprise their roles from The Pineapple Express to look at the comedy films of the year highlights include confusing The Love Guru for Slumdog Millionaire, laughing at The Reader and a tribute to Necro-Butcher in the Wrestler. Plus Franco getting amorous with Rogen when his scene kissing Sean Penn in Milk is shown.
1 hour 4 minutes and 2 seconds in: Cinematographer Yannis Kominsky appears in the scene clutching the two Oscars, they made me do it Mr. Spielberg hilarious!
1 hour 5 minutes and 54 seconds in: Kominsky, Rogan and Franco are now on the stage, Franco recognises that Kominsky is the first DP to ever present an award this is followed by the line, ‘Suck on that Andrew Dod Mantle’
1 hour 6 minutes and 48 seconds in: Franco mispronounces the German winner of best short film, Rogen laughs as all of Germany prepares to burn their copies of The Pineapple Express.
1 hour 7 minutes and 36 seconds in: Jackman appears wearing a suit in a tribute to the musicals as he starts singing Top Hat.
1 hour 8 minutes and 49 seconds in: To the tune of Hey Big Spender, Beyonce joins Jackman on stage for his musical montage.
1 hour 11 minutes in: Beyone and Jackman have now been joined by High School Musical starlets Efron and Hudgens as well as Mama Mia! Duo Dominic Cooper and Amanda Seyfried.1 hour 12 minutes in 2 seconds in: The ensembled dancers and singers now perform a very odd staccato drum version of Mama Mia!
1 hour 13 minutes 3 seconds in: The medley is over, Penelope Cruz doesn’t look impressed either that or she just burped.
1 hour 13 minutes 23 seconds in: As Efron goes to bow his top hat falls off, idiot.
1 hour 14 minutes 14 seconds in: We get a Best Supporting Actor winner montage.
1 hour 15 minutes 44 seconds in: The former Best Supporting Actors presenting this year are Alan Arkin, Joel Grey, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Kline and Christopher Walken.
1 hour 18 minutes in: Cuba Gooding Jr. comically slates Robert Downey Jrs’ performance in Tropic Thunder saying he stole all the roles for black men by blacking up. Hey stop complaining Cuba, Downey was never in Snow Dogs or The Fighting Temptations.
1 hour 18 minutes 55 seconds in: Christopher Walken bigs up Michael Shannon’s role in Revolutionary Road as if he’s writing him a love letter. Even though this is good for the man, no-one still knows who the hell he is.
1 hour 21 minutes 30 seconds in: Heath Ledger of course wins the award and the Ledger family give a touching tribute to their late member. With all the emotional baggage attached to it in can’t be forgotten that Ledger’s performance was truly great and he will be sorely missed.1 hour 23 minutes 30 seconds in: The Ledgers are ushered off after making a lot of the crowd cry. Extreme close-up by the camera-people didn’t help either.
1 hour 23 minutes 45 seconds in: Another Yearbook montage this time on documentary, leading up to the Best Documentary Award.
1 hour 26 minutes in: Bill Mahr (whoever that is) comes to the stage to waffle on about not getting his documentary nominated before announcing the rightful winner to Man on Wire.
1 hour 28 minutes 51 seconds in: Phillipe Petit on which the film Man on Wire was based comes up on stage and claims to give the shortest Oscar acceptance speech ever saying just ‘Yes!’, but then carries on, he then does some magic.1 hour 29 minutes 19 seconds in: The crazy Frenchman is now balancing the Oscar on his chin, I think that’s an Oscar first.
1 hour 30 minutes 13 seconds in: The short documentary award goes to Smile Pinki, a film about an Indian girl with a cleft pallet. The filmmaker Megan Melhan gives quite a passionate speech about the art of film-making and the girl involved in the making of the film.
1 hour 32 minutes 16 seconds in: Jackman brings us into post-production introducing the Action Yearbook of films.
1 hour 34 minutes 35 seconds in: Will Smith appears from the floor where he was sweeping or maybe burning the script for Seven Pounds. He then goes onto ramble on about Visual Effects.
1 hour 36 minutes 9 seconds in: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button beats Iron Man and The Dark Knight to the Visual Effects award this could’ve gone to anyone of those three films. Four men win the award but only one of them is allowed to speak and thank his family which seems a bit mean.
1 hour 37 minutes 49 seconds in: Will Smith trips over his words and says Outsounding instead of outstanding. I have noticed something that there does seem to be a bit of a recession as each presenter seems to be presenting two of the smaller awards each just to make these people not seem as important as the real stars who get five presenters.
1 hour 38 minutes 33 seconds in: The Dark Knight wins Sound Editing the only people who are excited are those sitting around winner Richard King.
1 hour 39 minutes 50 seconds in: Big Willie is still here presenting his third award this time for sound mixing.1 hour 40 minutes 55 seconds in: Will Smith seems visibly excited to be presenting an award to someone to do with Slumdog Millionaire even if it is the Sound Mixer. And by the way conspicuous by his absence in this category is former 20 time nominee Kevin O’Connell I’m guessing his work on Hotel for Dogs didn’t sit well with the academy.
1 hour 43 minutes in: As Will Smith says they’ve still got him because Hugh is napping.
1 hour 44 minutes 26 seconds in: Slumdog Millionaire wins another one this time for Best Editing.
1 hour 46 minutes 5 seconds in: Oh God Eddie Murphy’s here I didn’t think they’d let him back after he stomped off halfway through two years ago after not winning Best Supporting Actor. I wonder if he had a fist-fight with Alan Arkin in the back.
1 hour 47 minutes 9 seconds in: Eddie Murphy is actually presenting a humanitarian award to comedian and yes humanitarian Jerry Lewis. The man responsible for the original and funnier Nutty Professor. I don’t know what’s going on though because they’re using Coldplay in a second montage this time about Lewis’ life.1 hour 49 minutes 10 seconds in: Jerry Lewis comes out to a standing ovation his speech is thankfully short unlike most of these old-timers who win special awards and then thank everyone.
1 hour 51 minutes in : Finally Jackman is back and he introduces a medley of Oscar nominated score performed by the orchestra.
1 hour 55 minutes 10 seconds in: The odd pairing of a newly quaffed Zak Effron and a remarkably dressed Alicia Keys present the Best Score Award to Slumdog Millionaire.
1 hour 57 minutes 5 seconds in: Effron and Keys now present the infamous Best Song nominee montage that famously Peter Gabriel snubbed because he didn’t want to cut his song down obviously the action montage was more important.1 hour 58 minute 18 seconds in: No Peter Gabriel but in his place John Legend, who is a bit of a sell-out really.
2 hours 1 minute 3 seconds in: The juxtaposition between John Legend singing the Wall-E song which worked quite well and the Slumdog songs doesn’t seem to fit. And also notable by her absence is M.I.A. who was obviously too pregnant to sing.
2 hours 2 minutes 20 seconds in: A.R. Rachman knocks up two awards in a row winning original song for Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire.
2 hours 4 minutes 20 seconds in: Liam Neeson appears with Frieda Pinto to present Best Foreign Language Film, so they’ll let Frieda up but Dev won’t present an award because he was in Skins.
2 hours 5 minutes 18 seconds in: One of the surprises of the night as the Japanese film Departures trumps both the favourite Waltz with Bashir and the Sundance Winner The Class.
2 hours 5 minutes 40 seconds in: Its hard not to notice that these two guys look like Hiro and Ando from Heroes, they’re both very very happy.
2 hours 6 minutes 38 seconds in: Queen Latifah comes out to introduce the in memorium section.
2 hours 7 minutes 2 seconds in: What’s she doing? She’s singing over the montage of dead actors. Can’t we just mourn in silence like normal?
2 hours 13 minutes 40 seconds in: Why can’t the directors get five different former winners of their award to present them with it. But I’m guess none of the men are complaining as the winner will get to kiss Reese Witherspoon.
2 hours 15 minutes 25 seconds in: Yes good old Danny Boyle, another one for the Brits lets hope he’s not bought his son along again.2 hours 15 minutes 48 seconds in: Danny Boyle does something for his kids though and receives the award in the style of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, the Americans give this only a slight titter.
2 hours 17 minutes 40 seconds in: Best Actress montage so the award is on its way.
2 hours 19 minutes 13 seconds in: The five presenting the actress award are Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard, Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry and Nicole Kidman.
2 hours 20 minutes 51 seconds in: As Cotillard bigs up Winslet in The Reader it is clear that most of the audience has forgotten who she is since last year.
2 hours 23 minutes 13 seconds in: God, Sophia Loren’s weird isn’t she, she seems to be constantly putting one arm on her hip as if she’s doing an I’m a Little Teapot routine.
2 hours 25 minutes in: Kate Winslet predictably wins for The Reader, hugging Sam Mendes and then hugging all the actresses up on the stage which takes at least a minute.
2 hours 26 minutes 38 seconds in: Oh God Winslet’s welling up is she going to cry?2 hours 26 minutes 45 seconds in: Kate Winslet’s dad whistles at her probably the oddest moment of the night.
2 hours 28 minutes 2 seconds in: Winslet is now dedicating her award to Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella she still hasn’t cried yet come on Kate!
2 hours 28 minutes 45 seconds in: Hey at least that speech was better than either of the ones at The Golden Globes, we’re cracking straight on now with a Best Actor Montage.
2 hours 30 minutes 22 seconds in: The Best Actor Presenters are De Niro, (Sir) Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Adrian Brody and Michael Douglas.
2 hours 30 minutes 43 seconds in: There is a sense among the five actors now of who’s going to do mine? Especially in the eyes of Brad Pitt. The fourth in a row of Actors/Actresses and its starting to ware a bit now but at least it’s a bit different.
2 hours 36 minutes 2 seconds in: Sean Penn beats rightful winner and as Kingsley called him ‘returning champ’ Mickey Rourke. Penn was okay in Milk, but Rourke was on a different level I think its just mainly politics that prevented him from winning the Oscar.2 hours 37 minutes 12 seconds in: Penn is even not being his usual typical serious self and is cracking a few jokes. But why if he didn’t think he was going to win does have a speech prepared?
2 hours 40 minutes 15 seconds in: Hey Jackman’s back haven’t seen him for ages, as a host he’s been a lot less present than previous hosts who are mainly comedians. Anyway last award of the night and here’s Stephen Spielberg.
2 hours 40 minutes 55 seconds in: As they’ve been doing all night they try and put the nominees in contrast with nominees past therefore they try and link in other films with this year’s Best Picture nominees from the easy Frost/Nixon with Apocalypse Now and All the Presidents Men to the tricky Milk with Braveheart and Network.
2 hours 45 minutes 40 seconds in: The rightful winner of Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire wins the award.
2 hours 46 minutes 23 seconds in: The cast and crew of Slumdog storm the stage even the little kids which is really nice.2 hour 48 minutes 45 seconds in: Jackman bigs up the movies that may be Oscar winners next year and closes the show.
So that was it the 2009 Oscars and it was another year that the Americans did quite poorly in, only one of the four acting Oscars went to an American (Penn) the rest to a Mexican, an Australian and a Brit. The biggest winner was a British film set in India and there were also awards for the Brits in Best Documentary and Best Costume while America triumphed in some of the smaller awards and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The show itself was more vibrant than in recent years but it felt a bit rushed at times having presenters present multiple awards (Will Smith presented four by himself). While the show’s real host Jackman as I’ve mentioned before had a lot less screentime. When he was on screen Jackman was charming and effervescent starring in two big musical numbers which were too of the highlights of the show. Others including The Pineapple Express short, Ben Stiller as Joaquin Phoenix and Tina Fey and Steve Martin’s great one-liners.
The acting awards presented by five former winners seemed like a bit of a chore and although good at first quickly became dull although it was nice to see that actors enjoy films too. Overall I would say it was different from last year but not necessarily any more entertaining just a bit of fun.
