OMG OMG I'm too excited to recap

Ahhhhhhhh!

I'm so sad my favourite night of the year is over! But I had a great time at the Bloor cinema, and won a prize and yelled out at someone to go fuck themselves!

I think I'm too overwhelmed to start my re-cap tonight, so I will save it for tomorrow morning when I can properly dissect everything that happened.

But, to give a few initial thoughts...

Best dressed goes to: Halle Berry and Stacy Keibler with honourable mentions to J Law, Jessica Chastain, Sally Field, and Naomi Watts.

Worst dressed: Jennifer Garner and Anne Hathaway. MAJOR FAIL.

Worst speech of the night: Anne Hathaway
Best speech of the night: Daniel Day Lewis

My most favourite win of the night: Ang Lee for Life of Pi which is in my opinion, the best film of the year! Each time they mentioned Life of Pi, I burst into tears! I cannot handle how beautiful and touching that movie was!

Most upsetting: that I only got 15 categories correct out of 24! By far the worst I've ever done on an Oscar pool (I'm sorry Andrea for leading you astray!!)

Some favourite moments:
-The family Von Trapp faux intro for Christopher Plummer
-everytime the little girl from Beasts of the Southern Wild was on screen
-the Kardashian joke Seth MacFarlane made
-Affleck thanking Canada

Worst moments:
-Seth McFarlane's women and gay jokes
-Catherine Zeta Zone's lip-sync
-the Jaws music playing people off
-anything involving KStew or Jack Nicholson

I thought Seth McFarlane did a pretty good job--he definitely exceeded my expectations which is great!

Okay, I need some time to reflect...until tomorrow!

What were your fave/least fave moments?

Naomi watts

This is what a beautiful woman in her 40s should look like!

Initial thoughts...

I've only seen a few outfits so far because I'm crazy with excitement.

I love Jen lawerences look in white Dior and Sally field in red.

Leah millers face is crazy!

Red carpet cats!

My favourite day of the year!

Can you even believe it? It is Oscar Sunday (aka my superbowl, Christmas, birthday all wrapped into one glorious day!)

I like to think about where I was watching the Oscars the past few years...

Last year, I hosted a soireé at my brothers house, red carpet and all:
              



















The year before, I was in New Zealand, where I bullied a restaurant owner in Auckland to let me sit there all day and watch the awards with control over the remote:

The year before, was back in Toronto, another Oscar soireé at my place in Roncesvalles, and everyone was required to pick a nominee cupcake to adopt!

                                       

And the year before (though I watched the Oscars in Ottawa) was my triumphant debut as a seat filler during Awards season at the Critics Choice Awards in LA. I hobnobbed with the Brange, stole one of their place cards, and snuck into a press photo with Ange and Anne. No big deal.

          

I will attempt to live-blog tonight from the Bloor cinema where I will be watching on the big screen with 700 other people! My brothers have already pre-warned me to calm down if people talk during the awards which I am choosing to believe will not happen b/c if it does, there's gonna be a throw-down.

I may not do a full live blog b/c:
1. I may get too involved in watching
2. I may get into a fight with people and have to be removed from the theatre
3. I may drink too much red wine and not be able to form interesting observations
4. all of the above!

But, don't you worry, the other A Mrk and I will be doing a full re-cap tomorrow!

So in honour of tonight, check out one of the best moments from over the years:

What are your fave moments from years past?

Oscar presenters...

Let's play which one of these doesn't belong...

Presenters:
Ben Affleck
Jennifer Aniston
Halle Berry
Sandra Bullock
Jessica Chastain
Michael Douglas
Robert Downey Jr.
Jean Dujardin
Chris Evans
Jane Fonda
Jamie Foxx
Jennifer Garner
Richard Gere
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (billed as a "special appearance")
Salma Hayek
Dustin Hoffman
Samuel L. Jackson
Norah Jones
Nicole Kidman
Queen Latifah
Jennifer Lawrence
Melissa McCarthy
Liam Neeson
Jack Nicholson
Christopher Plummer
Daniel Radcliffe (billed as a "special appearance")
Jeremy Renner
Paul Rudd
Mark Ruffalo
Octavia Spencer
Meryl Streep
Kristen Stewart
Channing Tatum (billed as a "special appearance")
Ted
Charlize Theron (billed as a "special appearance")
John Travolta
Mark Wahlberg
Kerry Washington
Reese Witherspoon
Renée Zellweger

Think about and then let's talk.

So....have you figured out the answer?

I was thinking about this very subject last night before the final list of presenters was released today for Sunday's show: why do people like JLo and Jennifer Aniston always get asked to present at the Oscars? They've never been nominated, never been in a nominated movie, and will never be nominated, so why are they among the likes of Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson?

We all know that Hollywood is a high school hierarchy--so why is JenA still so popular? I mean we could talk about the tabloid's favourite love triangle (Brange vs. Aniston) until we are blue in the face-but that doesn't explain why Aniston is invited this year--the Brange won't be attending as neither has a movie to support or promote*

Oscar viewership has been on the decline for a decade or 2, and every year, whoever the producer of the show is makes a conscious effort to make the show appeal to more young people--"let's make the Oscar's cool this year...let's have Kristen Stewart present so that all the Twihards will tune in!"

The producers' problem though is that inviting people like KStew and JLo and Aniston (and Channing Tatum and Chris Evans this year--what??) isn't going to get them significantly better ratings, despite these celeb's big fan bases. The Oscar's are too long and too boring and too serious and too self-indulgent for anyone under the age of 25 to watch (unless they are a die hard fan of Hollywood politics and/or fashion like I am). And don't get me wrong, I LOVE me some Oscars, but most people only tune in to the red carpet to see the dresses, and then probably watch only parts  of the awards while flipping channels and doing other things. Getting Jen Aniston to show up in a Marchesa gown with her faux badass fiancé and present best animated feature or some shit aint gonna change that!

Don't you think they should only get funny people and/or comedians present? Think of how good Tina Fey and Amy Poelher were at the Globes. It's always so brutal, the delivery of the scripted lines by actors, especially the ones that refuse to go to rehearsal (and you can always tell who they are). I think the only person I'm excited to see is Melissa McCarthy. Everyone else is so boring! Where are all the comedians? (Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Steve Martin etc)Those are always the best parts!

Anyway, who are you excited to see present?

*Remember when both Brad and Ang were nominated a few years back and the Oscar producer's had Aniston present an award with Jack Black while the Brange were in the first row? UH! That was gossip porn--if only they could have done a split screen! Check the video out here

Oscar Speeches 2.0

So, after reading that great article on Slate yesterday about Oscar speeches and blogging about it yesterday (and watching 2 plus hours worth of Oscar speeches on youtube last night), I've discovered I'm not the only one unreasonably obsessed with this topic. (Google news search "Oscar speeches" right now and see how many articles from legit news sites pop up).

The most interesting thing I've come across though, is that a grad student in the US is doing a major research project on this as it relates to the idea of gratitude. Check it out:

From Time magazine:

"Rebecca Rolfe, a Georgia Institute of Technology graduate student [is] conducting a research project on human gratitude and how it’s expressed. Gratitude is a hard thing to parse, both because it typically comes so swaddled in the crinoline of manners that all of the life is choked out of it, and because when it does emerge in its genuine form there is rarely a scientist around to see it."

Rolfe's Oscar speech/gratitude website has, in the words of Vulture, "every Oscar acceptance speech stat imaginable" represented in info-graphics, as well as an interactive tool that helps you create your own Oscar Acceptance speech depending on who you want to thank. 

Here is the speech the website generated for me:

"Oh my. Wow. It is such an honor to receive this. Such an honor. (clears throat) I would like to thank the Academy. I am so touched by the work of my amazing fellow nominees. The real-life character from this film is so inspiring and so courageous. We honor that voice with this film. Thanks to my director. Ma - I love you. Dad - I love you. I would like to dedicate this to our craft of filmmaking and the love of art. Thank you. Thank you very much."

Not bad eh? What would yours sound like? See for yourself here.

The site also told me that based on my selections, my speech would be most like (86%) Geoffrey Rush's 1996 acceptance speech for Best Actor for his performance in Shine.

And, I'll take it! Rush's speech is the perfect combo of gratitude and sentimentality, with a joke thrown in for good measure. And it's short!

He looks pretty good with that hair doesn't he?

One last thing...my brother Alex told me that he thought the best Oscar acceptance speech was Michael Caine's for Best Supporting Actor for the Cider House Rules. It's pretty great (and as a bonus, there is a one second clip of John Irving getting teary-eyed about the win which makes me irrationally happy!)

Go to the 1:54 mark to skip the hullabaloo.