And the Academy Award goes to...

Aah, the Oscars...

we usually try to see as many of the nominated films as we can before the awards show, but this year, we only managed to see 4 of the 9 Best Picture nominees: Argo  Les Misérables, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook.

We had literally just seen Argo before watching the Oscars. I had wanted to see the film when it first came out, so barely seeing it in time for the show (well, technically we didn't) demonstrates the tone for our watching movies this past year. Waking up after being half asleep for about an hour, I said we should watch it now. It was 7pm, and the Oscars start at 8:30pm. With Argo being a 2-hour movie, we had to watch the Oscars not in real time, which was fine since we ended up only being behind the end of the show by about 15 mins (fast forwarding through commercials and after watching a minute or so of some performances -- we did watch the whole tribute to musicals (Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, Jennifer Hudson for Dream Girls, and the entire cast of Les Mis) and Adele's performance of Skyfall. Seth MacFarlane was classy and hilarious with his opener with William Shatner.

One of our ha-ha moments was during the Visual Effects category in which we had seen all but one of the films (Life of Pi) but funnily enough, we both ended up choosing it to win and was the one that won.

The biggest surprise for me was learning that Shawn Christensen of stellastarr* had become a filmmaker winning for Best Live Action Short for his film Curfew in which he directed, wrote and acted.

Congrats to all winners and nominees!  Until next year...

Cosmo pile o crap

Okay, so a number of bad decisions were made today:

- the inability to get more than 2 hours of sleep (I guess this wasn't much of a decision, unless you count my not going to bed sooner -- went to bed around 12:30ish, woke up around 2:20ish and couldn't fall back asleep, got up to go to the gym at 5am, followed by shooting the sunrise and then heading into the city for a conference)

- deciding to go to a movie after the conference

- deciding not to go to see Amazing Spiderman 3D at 8:15pm

- deciding to go see Cosmopolis at 7:20pm

This was one of the worst movies I've seen in a very long time.  I tried to stay awake, but in all honesty,  when I did, all I heard was a bunch of noisy chatter delivered in an utmost annoying fashion -- there was absolutely no connection to the characters nor could I find a reason to even want to.  I found Pattinson at times delivering lines like he was Christopher Walken.

If they were trying to send a message or say something profound, it went completely over my head, as I was probably asleep for about half of the film.  Even so, the dialogue I did hear sounded like meaningless dribble.

I did manage to stay awake during Paul Giamatti's scenes -- which were great simply because it's Paul Giamatti, and being an antagonist, there was at least some motivation behind his character.

If I was in the right mindset, I would have walked out the theater, as one couple did, and it would have been the first time I ever did.

Utter waste of time -- at least we used passes instead of paying a ghastly $28

Oscar 2009 Results

It seemed like the format this year would lend itself to an overall shorter program, but it still took us past midnight - hard to tell with DVR. I liked the changes they made, such as past winners presenting their category, although the speeches could have been shorter, and one set of presenters presenting similar award categories, which they've had in the past, but it seemed to flow better this year. Also, clips of the past year's films based on genre was a nice touch - James Franco and Seth Rogen's "Comedies" was a definite highlight. Hugh Jackman was a natural - perfect energy, good fun and funny opening (loved his cracking up with his robotic The Reader bit). Well done.

Best Dressed: Natalie Portman
Worst Dressed: Tilda Swinton, Whoopi Goldberg

Most Spontaneous Moment: Philippe Petit onstage, balancing the Oscar on his chin
Most Gratifying Spontaneous Moment: Kate Winslet's dad whistling so she could find him in the audience
"Grab a Hanky" Moment: Heath Ledger's family accepting his award.
Most Irksome Moment: Wide shot of Queen Latifah and the stage during "In Memoriam", resulting in the inability to read people's names.
"Did You See That" Moment: Jennifer Aniston smiling at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the front row, while presenting the Best Animation awards with Jack Black.

Oscar Night - February 27, 2005

By this time each year, we manage to see most of the films nominated in the big categories, but we regret that we never did get a chance to see Ray before the show. We will see it eventually. We also missed an opportunity to watch some of the nominees of the Documentary Short category last week, but in a few weeks from now, we'll get a chance to see seven of the ten nominated Short Films, both Animated and Live Action - just can't wait! (although it would have been nice to see them before the Oscars)

In our annual quest to predict the most winners, this year we added a little spice by joining an online contest through Oscar.com, hoping to win an entertainment system, even with the HDTV we already own.

But alas, out of 24 categories these are the results:

Ruby - 18 correct
Brian - 13 correct

So, there's no chance of us winning. Last time I checked, someone had 21 correct. Que sera sera...

Chris Rock was so brutally comedic in the opening, it was hard not to cringe...but it made for great entertainment. And what changes they made to the show!? They could consider starting it earlier, like 7:30pm EST if they're so worried about the length. Having to go up on stage and seeing the film community give you recognition is such a once in a lifetime chance, it's such a shame that some of the categories didn't get to experience it.

On a lighter note, we wanted to give a special thanks to cousin Eric for thinking of us and sending us our own supply of Oscar cookies for the show...YUM YUM!