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Knoxsville gets the pre-Oscars shakes
Good to know I'm not the only one in LA feeling a little red-eyed before the
Oscars. I bumped into Johnny Knoxville, of Jackass fame, at the
Starbucks on Gower Street in Hollywood this morning. He ordered a triple
espresso, and then, when that failed to do the trick, went for a
double-cappuccino chaser. Alas, this also wasn't enough to stop the
early-morning shakes, so he grabbed a $600 espresso machine from the shelf
by the coffee bar, loaded up with a few bags of coffee beans, and walked off
with the lot, to the astonishment of the Starbucks employees and those in
line behind him. But I understand, I really do. This is going to be a long
night, and we need all the energy we can get. Standby for dispatches from
the red carpet.
Travolta fails to go green
I thought Hollywood stars were supposed to flaunt their green credentials at
the Oscars. Instead, John Travolta has been boasting to Joan Rivers on the
red carpet about his new house, which features its own airport for his
private jet. Rivers tried to get a laugh by asking how Travolta managed to
get the smell of jet fuel out of the living room. Travolta's wife, Kelly
Preston, didn't flinch. "Oh, the plane is only ever there for a few
minutes..." she countered. Travolta, perhaps sensing that Rivers was
taking the Mickey out of his outlandish celebrity lifestyle, added: "The
airport was there before we bought the place." Asked if he ever had to
pinch himself when he woke up in the morning, Travolta responded: "I
have an expression. I'm too blessed to be stressed." Clearly, the list
of things about which John Travolta is not stressed includes global warming.
Perhaps Al Gore can have a word with him later.
Big question of the night: is Her Majesty watching?
I like to think that somewhere in a room in Buckingham Palace, a certain
Important Couple are tucked up in a gold-leafed four poster bed, reading The
Times's Oscar blog and channel surfing on mute before the Oscars
ceremony begins. Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol, and the Man of
the Red Carpet for the E! showbiz TV channel, has obviously been thinking
the exact same thing. He asked Dame Helen Mirren, up for the Best Actress
gong for her portrayal of The Queen, if Her Majesty herself had seen the
film, and if she was rooting for her subjects this evening. "We never
hear officially," said Mirren. "But I can't imagine The Queen
hasn't seen it." If Her Majesty is watching (or reading), we naturally
offer her the Best of British.
Gwyneth gets dress right, accent wrong
My wife, Lucie, has just nominated Gwyneth Paltrow for Best Dressed of the
evening. Unfortunately my fashion adjectives aren't quite up to scratch, but
the words 'salmon', '1940s' and 'pleated chiffon' have been mentioned. But
what's up with Gwyneth's accent? She's started to speak Ameriglish, like
Madonna. Other fashion bulletins from Lucie: "It's not about the
dresses this year, it's about the jewellery, all about the bling." Some
of the jewellery actually appears to be built into the dresses. Meanwhile,
Celine Dion is going in circles around the red carpet, like a 747 in a
holding pattern above LAX. Celine is still circling.
Kidman goes loopy
Opinion is split in The Times's Oscar viewing room on Nicole Kidman's
bright red dress, which features a huge red bow on the back. It looks as
though you could hang her on the back of your bathroom door. My personal
opinion is that we might have the first genuine fashion disaster of the
evening. My wife, and the girls in the room, disagree. "Nicole can pull
anything off," protests Lucie. "It's high fashion." All I can
say is this: the dress was so distressingly bright my TV actually went fuzzy
for a while.
Nerves jangle, Diaz goes electric
So, only 15 minutes to go. I'm feeling strangely nervous - blog anxiety,
probably. I can only imagine how nervous this year's host Ellen DeGeneres
must be feeling. Nevertheless, the bar was set pretty low last year by Jon
Stewart, host of the satirical Daily Show, who proved to be way too
snide and New York for such a back-slapping LA lovefest. The host to beat,
in the opinion of The Times's Oscar viewing room, remains Billy
Crystal.
Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman now has some competition in the fashion catastrophe
department, in the form of Cameron Diaz's insane hair. It looks like she
just plugged herself into the LA grid. I think she might have been out on
the town with Jonny Knoxville last night. Shouldn't Diaz being trying to
make her former boyfriend Justin Timberlake jealous? This certainly appears
to be the strategy of Reese Witherspoon - recently split from her husband
Ryan Phillippe - whose outfit is going down almost as well as Gwyneth's with
the red carpet fashionistas. Incidentally, one of these fashionistas just
compared Nicole Kidman to Mount Everest. At last, Celine appears to have
gone inside the Kodak Theatre.
Ellen deploys first joke, at the expense of the Brits
Ellen comes on stage wearing what can only be described as a burgundy crushed
velvet suit, with a white shirt and white brothel-creeper shoes. She looks
great. "There's a lot of Brits here," observes Ellen. "Would
I say too many? Not here. At home in my pajamas with half a box of
Chardonnay in me, who knows what I could say."
The show opened with what appeared to be an homage to the Apple Mac adverts,
with a montage of movie-star talking heads against a white background. Since
then we've had a gospel choir ("I would not like to follow that,"
quipped Ellen), and now the camera keeps focusing on Peter O'Toole. He looks
about eight-thousand years old.
The first Oscar of the night has gone to Pan's Labyrinth for Art Direction.
Full-marks to Ellen so far. Lots of laughs here.
Pan's Labryinth takes an early double, show drags
I suspected that everything was going a little too well, especially when
Ellen's hilarious opening monologue was followed with a brilliant ensemble
performance by John C. Reilly, Jack Black and Will Ferrell. "Helen
Mirren and an Oscar are coming home with me," went the comics' chorus.
But then Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin, 11, and Will Smith's
son Jaden Smith, 8, took the stage to hand out the gongs for Best Short
Film, Live Action, and Best Short Film, Animated. Jaden fluffed his lines,
the speeches were dull, and all the earlier momentum seemed to be lost. West
Bank Story won the Live Action category, The Danish Poet took the
Animated gong. Meanwhile, Pan's Labyrinth has just won Best
Achievement in Makeup, to add to its earlier award for Best Art Direction.
This movie is going to do very well tonight. Now there's a very strange
performance going on by a group of sound-effects singers.
Carell gets laugh, more boring awards
Everyone has just woken up thanks to Steve Carell. "Sound editing is very
much like sex," he says. "It’s usually done alone, late at night,
surrounded by electronic gadgets.” The award goes for Best Achievement in
Sound Editing goes to Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. The
Best Achievement in Sound goes to Dreamgirls. The producers are
virtually pushing winners off the stage if their speeches drag on.
Alan Arkin wins, cries
The first big award of the evening, best supporting actor, has gone to Alan
Arkin, for his great performance as the sleazy granddad in Little Miss
Sunshine. Like everyone else this evening, he puts his Oscar on the
floor to read his speech from notes. Isn't this a bit weird? Aren't
professional actors capable of remembering their lines? I feel as though
they ought to hug it, or something. The producers at ABC clearly share my
concern, because we just got a lingering shot of the golden statue at
Arkin's feet. Meanwhile, Arkin's speech lacked all the wit that made his
performance in Little Miss Sunshine so good (“I cannot work at all
unless I feel a spirit of unity around me"), but it was heartfelt, and
he choked up when he mentioned his family. Aww. Little Miss Sunshine was
great. Here in The Times's Oscar viewing room, we hope it does well. Oh no.
Randy Newman is now performing some awful schlocky ballad from Cars. Bring
back Ellen!
Seinfeld caught giving unofficial Oscars verdict
It was a moment straight from, well, Seinfeld. Al Gore was on stage,
congratulating Leo DiCaprio for being an eco-warrior, when the camera panned
to the audience - and settled unfortunately on the comedian Jerry Seinfeld,
who was in the middle of an epic yawn. When Jerry noticed the camera, he
opted for the tried-and-tested strategy of trying disguise the yawn as a
sniffle. Huge laughs here in the Oscars-viewing room. Reminded me of the Seinfeld
episode in which Jerry is caught snogging his girlfriend during Schindler's
List. If only George and Elaine were still around to analyse. Happy
Feet has just won best animated film.
No high-five. Borat loses to Departed
Poor Borat. The curse of comedy has struck the Oscars once again (the last
comedy to win best picture was Woody Allen's Annie Hall, 30 years
ago), and the best adpated screenplay award has just gone to The Departed,
knocking everyone's favourite Kazakh TV reporter and Britain's Sacha Baron
Cohen from the race. Still, it was a pleasure just to hear Helen Mirren read
out the phrase "cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious
nation of Kazakhstan," when announcing the nominees. Incidentally,
Mirren looks as though she's having a blast this evening. I'll be amazed if
she doesn't win Best Actress.
Ellen is now making a joke about winners putting their gongs on the floor. She
comes on stage wearing a baby sling carrier, with an Oscar in the front. If
this was unplanned, it's genius. Marie Antoinette, one of my least
favourite films of the year, just won for best costume. Milena Canonero
collected the gong. Audience update: Jack Nicholson looks terrifying with no
hair.
Germany wins, but not on penalties
Not your average Oscars moment, this: an emotional German takes the stage. The
wonderfully-named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has just collected the
best foreign language film Oscar for The Lives of Others, in a
surprise victory over Pan's Labyrinth. Meanwhile, in other
categories, Pan's Labyrinth has won best cinematography, and Pirates
of the Caribbean II (another big disappointment for me) has just taken
the Oscar for best visual effects. Helen Mirren must be feeling a bit
nervous now. The moment of truth approaches. Ellen's links are really
keeping the show alive at the moment. She just handed a screenplay to Martin
Scorsese, and then asked to get her picture taken with Clint Eastwood for
MySpace.
American Oscar: Hudson wins!
From a small church in Chicago to the Kodak Theatre on Oscars night, Jennifer
Hudson's story is pure Hollywood. You could tell that the audience was
rooting for her in the best supporting actress category, and now she's won -
giving American Idol its first Academy Award to go with Kelly
Clarkson's Grammy. Hudson almost ruined it by doing a Gwyneth, and then
compounding the damage with excessive God-thanking. "I have to just
take this moment in," she said. "I cannot believe this, what God
can do. I didn't think I was going to won." In the end, however, she
saved it the old-fashioned way, with a tribute to her grandmother. "If
only my grandmother was here to see me now, she was my biggest inspiration
for everything, she was a singer, she had the passion for it, but she didn't
have the chance." She went on to thank her director, the rest of the
cast, God, the Academy, and everyone else, for "helping me keep the
faith, even when I didn't believe".
Seinfeld on stage, now doing a routine about littering at the cinema. Nothing
could beat the comedy of the yawn, however.
A convenient Oscar for Gore
Jokes about Al Gore announcing his candidacy for the 2008 presidential
election were wearing a bit thin by the time the category of best
documentary came up. Still, Gore had no option but to make light of the
elephant in the Kodak Theatre, especially given that many Americans will be
horribly turned off by the prospect of a Democratic politician using the
liberal lovefest of the Academy Awards to launch a presidential campaign. It
came as no surprise, of course, when Gore's global warming documentary An
Inconvenient Truth took the gong, and Gore handled it well. The same
couldn't be said of the director Davis Guggenheim, who said he was inspired
by his father, who told him to "make great films". Did I hear this
right? Did he basically congratulate himself for making a great film? Urgh.
Gore wisely calmed things down. "People all over the world, we need to
solve the climate crisis," he said. "It’s not a political issue,
it’s a moral issue, with the possible exception of the will to act. But the
will to act is a renewable resource. It's time to renew it."
Celine has come in to land! She's now singing. An entire room dives for the
'mute' button.
More awards... Babel just won best score. I'm saving my rant on Babel
in case it wins best picture.
Sunshine wins, Hudson wobbles, Gore blushes (again)
A fully deserved win in the best original screenplay category for Little
Miss Sunshine. Michael Arndt, who quit his job as Matthew Broderick's
assistant to write the movie, also gave the best speech of the night, or
perhaps we were just relieved that he didn't do a Guggenheim. "When I
was a kid, my family drove 600 miles in a VW bus with a broken clutch,"
said Arndt. "It ended up being one of the funniest things we ever did
together. So, to my brothers, to my mom who's here tonight, and to my dad,
who is with us in spriit, this is for you, thank you."
Now J-Lo is on stage. The announcer declares that J-Lo is a good reason to get
high-definition TV. Is he supposed to make remarks like that? Big laugh,
anyway.
Now Jennifer Hudson is performing, and looks as though she's coming pretty
close to a Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunction. Beyonce is also now
singing. I wonder if she's feeling miffed about Hudson stealing all the
glory for Dreamgirls.
The best music Oscar goes to Melissa Etheridge for An Inconvenient Truth.
Gore-worship follows. Says Etheridge: "I have to thank Al Gore for
inspiring me, showing that caring about the Earth is not Republican or
Democrat, is not red or blue, that we are all green, this is our job now, we
can become the greatest generation, the generation that woke up and did
something and changed."
The Queen reigns in Hollywood
A surprisingly chilly response to Helen Mirren acceptance speech, after
winning the Oscar for Best Actress, beating her fellow Brits Dame Judi Dench
and Kate Winslet. Said Mirren: "Now, you know, for 50 years and more,
Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty, and her
hairstyle. She's had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her
head, her handbag on her arm, and she's weathered many, many storms. I
salute her courage and her consistency. And I thank her, because without her
I would most certainly not be here. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The
Queen." The Americans seemed to be feel a bit weird about being asked
to salute the British monarch. Audible sneers from the Americans here in The
Times's Oscars viewing room. Wonder why.
Whitaker takes Best Actor
Ironic that Forest Whitaker wins Best Actor and a) needs to read his speech
from notes and b) delivers the second most awful speech of the night, after
Davis Guggenheim. I quote: "It is possible, for a kid from East Texas,
raised in South Central LA, who believes in dreams, who commits to them,
touches them... when I first started acting, it was because of my desire to
connect with everything, the light that burns in all of us." Urgh. Now
God is being dragged into it. All a bit too pompous for our tastes here in
the viewing room.
Now for Best Director...
Scorsese, Hollywood's goodfella, finally goes gold. Twice
A huge night for Martin Scorsese and for Graham King, the British producer of The
Departed. Scorsese wins Best Director - for the first time in his
40-year career - and The Departed wins Best Picture. Here in the
viewing room, we cannot disagree with these choices. Scorsese was presented
with his gong by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.
What a great night. Overall, this year's ceremony worked very well, and I'm
sure Ellen will be back. Meanwhile, I have to rush off now to West
Hollywood, to sample the post-Oscars parties. Check T2 on Tuesday for
details. Goodnight!
