Meet Otis the Oscar Cat, Movieline's resident feline awards prognosticator. Like the majority of Academy members, he's white, male, and owns a black tie; his tastes tend toward the traditional, although he'll bite at the occasional tasty treat. To get an inside line on Sunday's Best Picture winner, we consulted Otis for his Oscar picks -- will the Academy Award go to The Artist, starring that rascally pup Uggie? Or perhaps War Horse, by a nose?
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The Academy Awards telecast stopped being a one-screen experience years ago. An Oscar viewing party is all well and good, but with a computer or phone nearby, a virtual theater full of people will enhance the experience from the first red-carpet arrivals to the music playing over the Best Picture winner’s speech. Yes, your friends are witty and can also fetch you a beer, but the best jokes about the winners, losers and everything in between are on Twitter. Some professionals make watching the Oscars simply worth the hours (and hours) spent. Doug Benson is one of them.
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I have neither this decal nor a car to which I could apply it, but the genius of this backlash to the Artist backlash makes me desire both. [The Hot Blog]
As the big night fast approaches, it’s time for another of Movieline’s virtual awards roundtables. Our Oscar nominees this time are up for Best Costume Design. They are (in alphabetical order):
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It's been known to galvanize everybody from the upper echelons of Academy leadership to the vexed likes of Corey Feldman. But regardless of the politics and passions, it's ultimately the all-too-rare equalizer for folks looking to play the odds at any Oscar party: The In Memoriam montage.
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Drive sound editor Lon Bender, up for the Oscar against The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and War Horse, on director Nicolas Refn's unusual sound requests: “In the sound world, there often is a propensity to want, at least for things like car chases, guns or weapons, to use sounds of the real weapons or the real cars. But when I went to Nic to talk about car engines and the specificity of the kind of cars they were, he said, ‘I don’t even have a driver’s license and I’ve never driven a car. I don’t care what they sound like! They just have to sound exciting.’” [NYT]
In the grand tradition of the late, great Robert Opel: "It's long been rumored that Opel’s streak across the screen was not necessarily a unilateral act of transgression by Opel, and that he may have had a co-conspirator or two. The facts that he gained access to the backstage area in order to stage the streaking, and that he was given a post-show press conference, give rise to the suspicion that the event was set-up by the producers of the broadcast, maybe to give the long-venerated institution a little jolt." [The Awl]
Another Oscars promo video, another vain attempt to show some personality and pep by the Academy; this time around the Oscars have tapped Mike Myers to do an uppity butler type straight out of the discards of the Austin Powers supporting character brainstorming boards, who teaches Oscar winner Kevin Kline the proper way to hold his statuette. If this kind of humor tickles you silly and makes you set your TV calendar for Sunday, then hold on to your pants and chill a few cans of Ensure!
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The Academy Awards are not a contest, the humble nominees might demur, taking the high road through the gory scrum that is awards season. But do you really think, say, Glenn Close wouldn’t cut a bitch for an Oscar? Alas, the odds are against her, literally; online books have her at as much as 100:1 odds to win her first statuette for Albert Nobbs. Take a peek at how the internet’s enterprising bookies have handicapped the 84th Academy Award nominees and adjust your bets accordingly.
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Everybody knows that George Clooney broke out on The Facts of Life in the mid-'80s. But in the quarter-century before the once and possibly future Oscar-winner and all-around Hollywood royal's media profile encompassed morning-show house tours and magazine covers from Esquire to Vanity Fair, where was the 25-year-old Clooney developing his public persona? Where else? Tiger Beat!
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Academy Awards ballots are due today at 5 p.m. PT, and procrastinators in the actors' branch might do well to take note: One of your eldest peers has an upset or two in mind.
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The latest in a series: "The Oscars have become the golden fig leaves that the industry wears to pretend it’s as committed to being in the quality business as it was in the past." [NYT]
Noooooooooooooo: "But get this — there's another MIA actor that's getting far more attention for the fact that he'll be missing the ceremony this year. In fact, our source says it's who most inquiries are about these days: The Artist's Uggie. Yep, our sources confirm the pooch is out for the grand ceremony. And that breaks our hearts! Heck, the dog probably is more deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination that Jonah Hill, but that's just our humble opinion." Preach it, boys, preach it. [E!]
New to the distribution arena, Alamo Drafthouse co-founder Tim League became enamored of a small Belgian crime drama called Bullhead at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Less than a year later, he and his Drafthouse Films operation have an Oscar contender on their hands. Not too shabby for a company younger than the Obama administration.
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"I hated this so much. It also has a very good shot of winning." [The Awl]
