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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!

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