Oscar watch Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Forget about the nuances of cinematography, the precision requirements of editing, the challenges of costume design, and the dazzle of visual effects. All we really want from a movie is a great quote! I'm kidding, of course -- we want more than quotes -- but every screenwriter dreams that one of his lines will join the immortals ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"). What are the best candidates from this year's crop of Best Picture nominees?

There Will Be Blood surely must have the edge so far. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) explains the facts of life to Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) and utters the memorable rejoinder: "I... drink... your... milkshake!" The quote has already taken on a life of its own.

Juno has so many it's hard to choose. Paulie (Michael Cera) says, "I still have your underwear" and Juno (Ellen Page) replies, "I still have your virginity." I also like Juno's dad (J.K. Simmons): "Thanks for having me and my irresponsible child over to your house. "

Michael Clayton is epitomized by George Clooney's line as the titular attorney: "I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy!"

Atonement caught my attention when young Briony (Saoirse Ronan) confides in a friend: "What's the worst word you can possibly imagine?"

No Country for Old Men is more about atmosphere and landscape than dialogue, but it's hard to resist: "You can't stop what's coming," spoken by a weather-beaten yet wise Barry Corbin.

Now it's your turn. What are your favorite quotes from this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Picture?

Welcome to Cinematical's official liveblogging of the 79th Annual Academy Awards! Erik will be your host for the first hour; Monika will bat second and Kim will clean things up. Who will win? Who will lose? Who will get stuck in the bathroom? Let's find out ...

Catherine Deneuve is looking lovely, and she is joined by Ken Watanabe to present the funny talk, aka foreign language film. First, we get a history in these films, with a nice little montage. Chances of most of the viewing audience having not seen most, if not any of these films? Or, maybe not foreign film.. They left the stage. Instead, Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett, looking hotter than almost everyone on the planet, are presenting the award. I would be completely distracted if not for...

Best Foreign Language Film: The Lives of Others. I always, always pick the losers. I am happy beyond words that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck grabbed the prize, over other great films. However, the Academy are jerks for not letting him speak. It was a great film. Kudos to the Oscars for recognizing that!!

Best Visual Effects: Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest. Naomi Watts is looking more like her old self, lest bony. That makes me happy. And YES! Robert Downey Jr. is making fun of his drug days. How can you not love someone who makes lovely fun of their risque days? Pirates steals the top prize! It makes sense, and I still can't get over that wheel scene.

Best Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo Navarro. Gwyneth Paltrow is a great match tonight for cinematography. She's looking excellent. This is tough call, but Pan's gets another! Navarro gets music over his award speech, and I'm mourning the lack of Children of Men love.

These shadow people are amazing. The Little Miss Sunshine bus was damned impressive!

Jean Hersholt* Award: Sherry Lansing. Shoot from a low angle, it's Tom Cruise! He's presenting this award for Sherry Lansing -- the first female president of a major film studio (originally 20th Century Fox). The whole affair has that feel-good music and sound to it, but really, can't these creative people come up with other ways to give props to amazing people? The kitschy, cliche tone takes away from the person's achievements. Her acceptance speech is one hell of a well-written script. Could she have had Botox? Her face is quite, still for such an award.

Best Costume Design: Marie Antoinette. It's interesting that best costume design gets announced by two women in questionable frocks. But Meryl Streep's necklace might be worse, but she slipped into character seamlessly. We've got live-action examples of the outfits, it's a bit more interesting than the sketches they usually show...but not too much. I'm amused at watching these women for Prada try to out-act Streep. Marie Antoinette has nabbed the Best Costume award. Milena Canonero is looking very distinguished in her tux. Who was the last woman to actually wear a classic tux at awards

In case you didn't know, tomorrow night is the Oscars. One night of glorious, black-tie back-patting, followed by a couple days of chatter about who wore what and who didn't show upand who had the most god-awful hairstyle, and why this movie shouldn't have won that award. There are folks who are still bitching about Crash's win last year (and probably always will be), and no matter who wins the Best Picture this year, you can bet there will be moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth from various quarters.

Tomorrow night, we here at Cinematical will be live-blogging the Oscars for you, starting at 4PM PST/7PM EST with some chatter about the red carpet, and we'll stick it out until the last, endlessly dull acceptance speech. In the meantime, though, here's what other sites around and about the internet are blogging about in preparation for Hollywood's big night.

Lots of group hug Oscar action after the jump ...

Each year the Oscar nominees gather for a fabulous pre-awards luncheon and to bask in each other's glory. A Reuter's story reports such activities as Leonardo DiCaprio giving Abigail Breslin a high-five, Steven Spielberg (nominated for producing Letters from Iwo Jima) murmuring secretively with Peter O'Toole (a future movie project?), and everyone cheering for Martin Scorsese. At a press conference, some of the nominees -- also Academy members -- joked about the option of voting for themselves. Helen Mirren reportedly gave herself devil's horns with her fingers while discussing her vote, and Djimon Hounsou wondered aloud if anyone else present would be voting for him.

In all, it was the most popular Awards luncheon yet, with 140 nominees present. One sound mixer, Kevin O'Connell, holds the record for the most nominations, 19, without winning. This year he's nominated for Apocalypto. "I've saved all my acceptance speeches, all the ones I've written on the backs of napkins and programs," he told reporters. "They are all in a drawer at home. I have my thank-you written. If I win this year, I will thank my mother."

Aside from the hijinks that reporters are allowed to see, we can only imagine what else goes on at such a luncheon. What does everyone eat? Do people ask Scorsese, Spielberg and Clint Eastwood for jobs? Does Ryan Gosling try to hit on Penelope Cruz? Does everyone try to hit on Penelope Cruz? Does Kate Winslet get jealous? Does Abigail Breslin have to sit at the kids' table? Does Jackie Earle Haley creep everyone out? Alas, so few of us will ever know the answers to these questions. Not invited to the luncheon this year were Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, David Lynch, Clive Owen, Bill Nighy, Sandra Bullock, Rian Johnson, Terry Zwigoff, Daniel Clowes and many other overlooked artists.

With this past week's blast of award fever -- namely the Producers' Guild and Actors' Guild awards -- Hollywood Oscar experts have narrowed down the top three categories, according to a recent Reuters report.

The Departed and Dreamgirls have become the front-runners for Best Picture, one coasting through on its genuine quality and fine work from everyone concerned, and the other riding a huge wave of carefully calculated -- and very effective -- hype. Little Miss Sunshine and Babel are the next two choices. Vying for the fifth spot, we have a tie between contenders like The Queen, United 93 and -- apparently -- Bobby (if they're going to nominate a Lindsay Lohan movie, why not A Prairie Home Companion instead?). The experts are hedging their bets until the Director's Guild announces its five nominees on Tuesday. (Clint Eastwood could sneak in with a Best Director nod for Letters from Iwo Jima, but probably not Best Picture.)

Best Actress is more securely locked up, according to one expert. The five hopefuls are Helen Mirren for The Queen, Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal, Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada, Penelope Cruz for Volver and Kate Winslet for Little Children. To date, Winslet has racked up four nominations and no wins (this will be her fifth), but Mirren has all the momentum. If you have a farm, I'd bet it on Mirren.

Experts are less sure about Best Actor. Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (really a supporting role), the marvellous Peter O'Toole for Venus and Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness appear to be front-runners. Leonardo DiCaprio is also a top contender, but experts are split over his performances in The Departed and Blood Diamond (not a hard choice -- one's a good movie, and the other isn't). The buzz has Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson sneaking in to nab the fifth slot.

All these speculations aside, the most burning question of all remains: How exactly does one get to be an Oscar expert?

During my thirty years as a movie watcher, my relationship with the Oscars has been through three distinct phases. The first, love and respect, involved passionate interest and rooting - in those days, when my picks didn't win I was befuddled, and would spend days talking to friends, sincerely trying to sort out the reasoning behind each disputed decision. When Dances with Wolves wiped the floor with Goodfellas, for example, I figured I must have missed something. What angle was I not getting that those wise members of the Academy had seen?

Eventually, though, I wised up and entered phased two: desperate hatred. The passion remained, but the respect was completely gone. During this period, I was actually thrilled when Forrest Gump won best picture, because it confirmed how stupid all of the voters were, and allowed me to triumphantly unload whatever projectiles were nearby at the television (eventually I armed myself with a hamper full of balled up socks - too many things were getting broken).

Apparently Jimmy Kimmel had a special post-Oscars show last night, probably in an effort to persuade the 14 viewers who were still awake after a really long riveting Oscar ceremony to stay tuned to ABC. Among Kimmel's guest was Quentin Tarantino who, since he obviously hasn't slept in three years, had no trouble staying up for the affair. Trapped in Kimmel's tan chair, the shy and retiring Tarantino rose to the occasion by naming his top four films of 2005, none of which nominated for best picture: Hustle & Flow, Domino, The Devil's Rejects and Sin City. Since he was "guest director" on Sin City, and because the manic nature of Domino owes more than a little to his influence, it's no surprise that Tarantino picked those two - but I'm still shocked at the fact that all the films are American and, apart from Devil's Rejects, reasonably mainstream. If Kimmel didn't tell him beforehand that the movies he chose had to be familiar to the TV audience, my faith in QT as a movie fan is slipping. (I mean, no K-horror? Nothing wildly obscure for his fans to run out and download?) Also, like Jette's brother, Tarantino felt that Mickey Rourke was stiffed by the Academy when he went un-nominated for his work as Marv in Sin City.

Look out: the Oscar Eats craze is sweeping the internet! In addition to the actor-specific dishes that Jette pointed to in her latest Group Hug, the folks at All Recipes have also jumped on the bandwagon, outdoing themselves with a complete evening of dishes in the name of each Best Picture nominee. The Brokeback Mountain menu, for example, is made up of Texas Cowboy Stew, Terry’s Texas Pinto Beans, The Humble Shepherd, and Top Secret Apple Pie (which, I'll tell you now, is a total ripoff - there's nothing secret about it at all). Hands down the best one, though, is the menu inspired by Capote. In addition to two different BBQ dishes and some buttermilk honey wheat bread, it includes two crucial offerings for your guests that even Capote himself would have understood: baby food and gum.

[via Slashfood]

Because the Academy apparently doesn't trust any of its members, they've sent each of the 150-odd Oscar nominees a short DVD called An Insider's Guide: What Nominees Need to Know with their invitations to Sunday's ceremony. The DVD - hosted by none other than the king of the Oscars (gag) himself, Tom Hanks - "is packed with a half-century of memorable Oscar moments, with examples of acceptances good, bad and ugly," and tells the nominees exactly how they need to go about the task of accepting, should their names be called at the big moment.

Is this a joke, or something? Do George Clooney, Ang Lee, and Reese Witherspoon really need Hanks (or anyone else) telling them to "show gratitude with style," and "maximize [their] moment"? Jesus, what a massive load of condescending crap! If someone makes a great speech, it's just not going to be because of Tom Hanks. And if a speech is going to suck? Man, an 8 minute DVD just isn't going to change a damn thing - it's not as if people who make fools of themselves go to the stage intending to do so.

But you never know, I guess. Hey, maybe if Philip Seymour Hoffman wins, he'll include Hanks in his barked thanks, and give all the credit for his doggy eloquence to this handy dandy DVD lesson!