11:02 pm: E!'s footage begins Ryan Seacrest interviews the gorgeous and talented Jennifer Lawrence who I so want to win Best Actress but who so won't. Seacrest tries to quiz her on her future projects, she says her big break is coming soon, which beggars the question, does the film you're nomianted for an Oscar for not qualify as your big break?
11:04 pm: Up in the Sky Box now with E!'s Fashion Police which this year include Kelly Osbourne for some reason. I'm just not sure what qualifies Kelly to be a Fashion Police Officer but then she's really not been qualified to do anything she's turned her hand to up to this point so who know's she might be good at it? (Later on in the programme it turns out she can't identify dress fabrics, so it's not a great start)
11:13 pm: My future wife Mila Kunis just steps out of her car looking amazing as always
11:18 pm: A pre-recorded interview with James Franco and Anne Hathaway is aired, Franco disses Ricky Gervais, I like him already.
11:23 pm: There is a shot of Michelle Williams in her car unable to get out, maybe one of her fellow nominees has put her hex on her not to appear at the awards, my guess is Nicole Kidman.
11:25 pm: Haillee Steinfeld, another actress who should win but won't, is now being interviewed by Seacrest. Seacrest seems to have commandeered a blimp and is using it to write messages to tonights nominees as he directs Hailee's eyes to the message that says 'Good Luck' on the Goodyear Blimp.
11:33 pm: I really don't get Russell Brand, he marries one of the prettiest women in the world in Katy Perry and then brings his mum to the awards. I'm sure Mrs. Brand is a lovely lady but come on!!!
12:02 am: Not a lot is really happening, Kevin Spacey is wittering on about producing The Social Network and is generally trying to be witty and entertaining.
12:18 am: Helena Bonham Carter has arrived in a dress that is very reserved for her, she obviously didn't follow the Tilda Swinton rule, ridiculous dress = surprise win.
12:20 am: Ryan Seacrest is interviewing Hilary Swank about being a presenter, I'm guessing she's gutted that she was nominated for Conviction this year just like she wasn't nominated for Amelia the year before. Swank really shouldn't base her career on starring in films that she thinks will get her award nominations.
12:24 am: Back to the Fashion Police who have described Bonham Carter's dress as 'conservative' they obviously saw those pictures that Helena and Tim Burton took with the Camerons on New Years Day.
12:28 am: Hugh Jackman is now being interviewed saying that he loved The Social Network, The Fighter, 127 Hours and Inception because he wants to work with the directors of all of these films in the future. Obviously forgetting that he starred in The Prestige which was directed by Inception's Christopher Nolan.
12:33 am: Matthew Mcconaughey is being interviewed, this is possibly the closest he will ever get to an Oscar. My guess is that he's bought the weed for the losers to smoke when they get beaten by someone less deserving of the award.
12:37 am: Christian Bale is approaching the platform, I wonder what accent he will be doing tonight.
12:38 am: It seems he's plumped for Walford Market Trader I can just imagine him asking Billy Mitchell to mind the stall for him. But actually it does sound like the exact voice he used in The Prestige, I wonder if that's to remind Hugh Jackman that he was actually in that film.
12:51 am: Mark Wahlberg says that The Fighter will win two awards, he obviously knows that Melissa Leo and Christian Bale have got in the bag.
12:57 am: Natalie Portman and her baby bump are taking their sweet time getting down the Red Carpet as E!'s coverage finishes we've got the half-hour lul between this finishing and the ceremony starting.
1:28am: Finishing off the 30 minute ABC Pre-show we see a scene with the Oscar producer talking with the over-enthusiastic presenter. Just as the interview finishes Steven Spielberg turns up to mop the producer's brow. In my eyes that's rather extreme canvassing but it will no doubt see War Horse sweep the board next year.
1:32 am: The awards kick off with a parody of Inception in which Anne Hathaway and James Franco decide to invade Alec Baldwin's head to get hosting ideas. This is fairly ironic to fans of 30 Rock as Baldwin had a line the other week 'I don't sleep on planes, I'm afraid I might get incepted.'1:34 am: The parody finds Hathaway and Franco invade all the films, like Billy Crystal used to do, they go The Social Network, then The Fighter in which they try really bad Boston accents out and to True Grit where Franco tells Bridges 'I loved you in Tron'
1:35 am: Morgan Freeman appears as the narrator of the sequence, 'because I have a soothing voice' this is followed by parodies of The King's Speech and Black Swan. So nothing for Winter's Bone, The Kids are All Right, Toy Story 3 or Franco's 127 Hours.
1:36 am: The whole thing ends with a relevant Back to the Future skit in which Hathaway and Franco arrive at the ceremony in a DeLorean.1:40 am: Hathaway and Franco are mid-prattle, they're very nice but not particularly funny. Hathaway comes out with the line 'it used to be you get naked, you get nominated.' I must've missed her Oscar nomination for the classic movie that is Havoc.
1:41 am: Hathaway has some predictable banter with her mum, who is in the crowd, the various what are you wearing? gags both amuse and tire the audience in equal measure.
1:42 am: James Franco does the same thing but with his randy old grandma who seems to want to hit on Mark Wahlberg. Franco's nan gets the biggest ovation of the night so far, maybe the crowd are anxious to see some actual famous people.
1:43am: Tonight's pointless theme seems to be linking in films that have already won awards to certain categories the first one is Gone with the Wind followed closely by Titanic.
1:44 am: The award for Art Direction is oddly the evening's first and it goes to Alice in Wonderland, which is also a surprise win in this category. This is followed by the cinematography award which rightly goes to Inception's Wally Pfister although I thought this would be Roger Deakins' year for his work on True Grit.
1:52 am: Kirk Douglas comes on to present the Supporting Actress Award. He starts hitting on Anne Hathaway, I think Michael may have a new stepmom. As a sidenote there is no Christoph Waltz or Mo'Nique tonight, it used to be that last year's winners would present to this year's winners obviously Oscar has already forgot about both of them.1:56 am: Kirk Douglas keeps eating up the time and the crowd keep laughing at his 'crazy old man bit'
1:58 am: Melissa Leo wins for The Fighter, after hitting on Kirk she trips on her words and then said two years ago, when she was previously nominated and lost, Kate Winslet made it look so 'Fing, easy', my guess is that it won't be back to back Oscars for Leo.
2:02 am: The lovely Mila Kunis and the 'he was alright in Social Network' Justin Timberlake come on to present the animated features, Timberlake keeps telling Kunis he's Banksy, I still don't get why. The reminiscences of old films which have won this award starts again as the two are lit by a Shrek backdrop.
2:05 am: Animated Short goes to the Australian film The Lost Thing and not to the favourite Pixar's Day and Night however Pixar does get one as Toy Story 3 gets Animated Feature and I finally get a prediction right.
2:13 am: Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin give a nod to the dress code of the first academy awards by coming down in rather snappy white tuxedos.2:15 am: Aaron Sorkin gets the award for Adapted Screenplay and even though he does his ultra-fast Sorkin pace speech he is still getting played off. This annoys me somewhat as Kirk Douglas has obviously eaten through quite a lot of the time.
2:21 am: The King's Speech's scribe David Seidler gives a very personal, touching and classy speech about how he came to write the script that one him Best Original Screenplay.
2:26 am: Another of my predictions starts to come true as Anne Hathaway starts to do a rendition of 'On my Own' from Les Miserables changing the lyrics to insuinate that Hugh Jackman was going to duet with her, like she did with him two years ago, but instead opted out. Anne's a very good singer but the whole thing seems a little unnecessary.
2:28 am: New best mates (Dame) Helen Mirren and Russell Brand come out to present Best Foreign Language Feature. Their banter is funny enough however the biggest misstep here was getting Brand to read out the names of the nominated producers of each film, it was a little odd hearing his London dialect pronounce some of the more delicate French names. The Danish - In a Better World was the winner here.
2:33am: Reese Witherspoon comes out to present the Best Supporting Actor award, ever the pro she doesn't do any jokes or crazy and just gets on with her job.
2:35 am: Another prediction come true as Christian Bale wins for The Fighter, he doesn't have a lot to say because Melissa Leo has stolen all of his profanities and as he mentions he isn't going to drop the 'F-Bomb' like she did. However there is a good bit in his speech where he thanks the real Dick Eklund and plugs Dick's website as he know trains young people to box, and you know, stay off the crack and that.2:41 am: Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman come on and are seemingly giving an 'Introduction to Film Studies' lesson in which they harp on about sound and vision and what makes a film. But in fact they are out to present Best Original Score.
2:42 am: John Williams gets another pay check as a collection of his scores are played in this overlong pre-amble.2:44 am: After what seems like forever the Score award is finally presented to Trent Reznor of all people which is actually quite deserved his Social Network piece actually does stick in your head. And well done to Atticuss Ross who won the award with him another Brit win.
2:48 am: With all the films featuring lesbian love scenes - Black Swan, Kids Are All Right etc. Its interesting that the only lesbian kiss of the evening was between one of the winning sound mixers from Inception and her wife.
2:52 am: More for Inception as Richard King wins Sound Editing
2:54 am: It seems that Marissa Tomei was the token pretty actress chosen to go to the dreaded sci-tech awards because the nerds there never get to see a real woman for 364 days of the year.
2:57 am: Best Make-Up was an odd category as two of the nominees - Barney's Version and The Way Back, didn't really seem to have used that much make-up so the only logical winner was Rick Baker for The Wolfman who has won this award about a million times before.
3:00 am: We are rushing through the awards as Coleen Atwood wins for Best Costume Design. This know means that Alice in Wonderland has more awards than The King's Speech and the same amount as The Social Network.
3:01 am: Atwood is wittering on, reading off cards and doesn't care when the 'you're going on too long love' music starts playing.
3:03 am: We get another montage, this time of people saying what their favourite Best Original Song Winner has been. Obama comes on to tell us that his is 'As Time Goes by' from Casablanca, methinks he should be trying to quash the problems in Libya rather than appear on the Oscars.3:04 am: Kevin Spacey appears to introduce the first two songs. He does a little sing-song himself and displays more charisma than either of our two hosts. We then have Randy Newman who performs the ace song from Toy Story 3 - We Belong Together.
3:05 am: Mandy Moore and the guy who plays Chuck sing their number from Tangled. Moore looks fine but Chuck looks very uncomfortable, maybe he's on one of his covert missions?
3:13 am: We quickly go through Best Documentary Short and Best Original Short the latter of which goes to the only American entry - God of Love. Me smells fix.
3:18 am: An odd supposed comic sequence in which several films, including Harry Potter and Twilight, have their spoken lines auto-tuned to sound like the characters are singing. This is entertaining for about 10 seconds but then becomes increasingly annoying.
3:22 am: Best Documentary Feature goes to Inside Job. There is a rather pot-kettle moment when all the multi-millonaire movie executives and film stars applaud the director when he mentions that none of the bankers or financial advisers have gone to jail yet since the recession. I personally thought that Restrepo would win this and then the movie industry could show their support for the troops.
3:27 am: Billy Crystal comes on to talk about old Oscar hosts and shows a hologram of Bob Hope. Crystal gets more laughs than Hathaway and Franco have all night. Does that mean Crystal will host next year? or maybe it will just be the Hope hologram.
3:32 am: Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. come on the stage to present Best Visual Effects, I have expect Chris Rock to appear at this point and ask Law who he is.3:33 am: Law makes a joke about Downey Jr.'s past, so when Ricky Gervais did it was considered horrible and slanderous but when his buddy does it, its totally acceptable.
3:34 am: Inception wins its fourth award and this sees an Oscar go to a local Staffordshire lad, well done son.
3:36 am: The Social Network wins for editing. Even though this was my prediction I still feel this was an odd choice and it should've gone to either Black Swan or 127 Hours.
3:42 am: We get the other two nominees for Best Song first Florence and the Machine, filling in for Dido and A.R. Rahman and then Gwyneth Paltrow of all people!
3:47 am: Randy Newman rightfully wins this award. Newman has been nominated about 20 times in the past but only won once for Monsters Inc. His speech is one of the funniest of the night but for all the wrong reasons.
3:53 am: Celine Dion comes out to sing 'Smile' over the lovely clips of dead people. This is just what I want to watch at this time in the morning. But at least she didn't sing my 'Heart Will Go On' over many old film stars who died of heart attacks.
3:54 am: Mario Monicelli, the Italian director who died after jumping through his hospital window is shown, maybe Celine should've sung 'Jump' by Van Halen or a variation of The Beatles' 'She Came in through the Bathroom Window' 'He Jumped out through the Hospital Window'.3:56 am: I'm sure being sung over by Celine Dion is just how Dennis Hopper would've like to have been remembered.
4:03 am: Tom Hooper beats David Fincher to the Best Director award which is basically a spoiler for The King's Speech winning Best Picture as well. Hooper's speech is very gracious as he thanks his mum for discovering the play in the first place. This speech sees Hooper's mum trend on Twitter for a while.
4:08 am: There is a video presentation of The Governer's Ball in which legends of the film industry are honoured. This year includes Francis Ford Coppola and Eli Wallach. I remember when these legends used to get to deliver speeches on the night instead of just attending an event that gets shown here. I'm sure speeches from Coppola and especially Wallach would've been more entertaining than some of the stuff that has been shown tonight.
4:15 am: Jeff Bridges gives a little introduction to each clip of the Best Actress nominees. During his little pre-amble about Natalie Portman he says that she has always shown a love for the craft of film-making I must've missed that love in films such as Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, My Blueberry Nights and No Strings Attached.
4:18 am: Portman starts showing off listing all the directors she's worked with - Luc Besson, Mike Nichols etc.
4:20 am: I think what would liven up the event is if Portman starts seeing her face on different members of the audience and starts stabbing them one by one. My suggestion - start with Russell Brand.
4:21 am: Sick bags at the ready as Portman thanks fiancee for giving her her greatest role to date.
4:22 am: Sandra Bullock seems notably upset that Jeff Bridges is a back to back nominee this year and she isn't maybe that's because she hasn't made any films since The Blind Side.4:23 am: There's a shot of Colin Firth after his clip from The King's Speech has been shown, seen behind Firth is Harvey Weinstein who is laughing as he realises that all his politicing and campaigining has paid off and that he is laughing all the way to the bank.
4:25 am: Firth wins gives gracious speech but I preferred his BAFTA acceptance as it had a bit more humour to it.
4:34 am: Next year's Best Director winner Steven Spielberg comes on to present Best Picture
4:37 am: As had been thought The King's Speech did win Best Picture. The producers thank Hooper, Seidler and the cast but only mention Firth, Rush and Bonham Carter I'm upset that former Neighbours star Guy Pearce doesn't get a credit for his portrayal of Edward VIII. Fun Fact: Pearce has appeared in back to back Best Picture winners as he was in the start of last year's winner The Hurt Locker he is the first actor to do this since Russell Crowe in 2001.
4:41 am: All tonight's winners return to the stage, some of them sing along others stand there akwardly and I wonder if Melissa Leo has been teaching them the F Word backstage.
4:44 am: The ceremony comes to an end.
After the awards I feel really deflated and wonder why. Hathaway was charming enough but Franco didn't really add anything but this may be because he was also nominated and I think it was hard to host as a nominee also. I mainly feel that the ceremony was underwhelming as there was no real surprises save maybe Tom Hooper's victory over David Fincher. There also didn't seem to be many comic sequences and celebrations of former winners and the comic sequences that were present fell flat. There were some nice classy speeches mainly from the Brits but also from Aaron Sorkin and Randy Newman and I did enjoy Leo's F Bomb and Kirk Douglas in general. But I felt the school kids coming on at the end was just a little wrong and disturbing.
From what happened tonight I feel next year we need the comedians back - Billy Crystal did a good showing and I think that may have been an audition for next year's ceremony I do miss his songs. I also think we should go back to having the Best Picture nominees mentioned throughout the night this would stop the spoilerish montage of all ten that we had at the end of the night. Overall a rather slapdash affair and if Franco and Hathaway indeed tried to incept some hosting tips from Baldwin's mind then they didn't really do a very good job. Oh well here's to the Oscars in 2012 where I reckon it will be a battle between Spielberg's War Horse and Eastwood's J. Edgar.
