Thursday, January 22, 2009

No love for Sex in the City?

Well the Oscar nominations came out today so I might as well end the week with a discussion on them. I’ll start with something that most people probably missed, which is who is receiving the honorary Oscar this year. Hold on to your large comical hats folks as this year’s winner of the honorary Oscar will be….

Jerry Lewis.

Yes, that Jerry Lewis. The Absent Minded Professor Jerry Lewis. The very popular in France Jerry Lewis. The less talented half of Martin and Lewis Jerry Lewis. Officially this is for his humanitarian work and you can’t really fault him getting an award for that. But somehow the fact that he is receiving and Oscar is a bit disconcerting.

(Best explanation as to why he is popular in France is this. On the surface Jerry Lewis appears to be the prototypical American. Athletic, handsome, completely self-confident. But when he opens his mouth he is a complete idiot. The French love this.)

On to the real nominations. If you need to bet your life savings on any category take Wall-E for best animated film. It could theoretically lose to Kung Fu Panda but only if the panda lobby offers a lot of bamboo to the voters.

Most surprising nomination: Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder. I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve the nomination and I am certainly a believer in the fact that comedies are always ignored at Oscar time. But I can barely get my head around the fact that Tropic Thunder pulled in an Oscar nomination. No film that featured Ben Stiller should ever be nominated for anything.

Welcome Back awards: Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei both were nominated for their work in The Wrestler (which I still haven’t seen but really want to. How can you not want to watch a film that features Necro Butcher breaking out the stapler.) Mickey Rourke looks and act the part of a broken down wrestler so well that it is scary. From every scene that I have seen he looks and acts like a wrestler and his in ring work has been praised by actual wrestlers. And Marisa Tomei apparently brings it. I’d like her to win just so she can be the most unlikely person to have two Oscars on her mantle.

Reason I’ll be watching the awards show: Amy Adams. I think that she is my new celebrity crush. Talented, amazingly beautiful and she actually seems to be a decent person.

Trivia that you probably do not know: This is Kate Winslet’s sixth Oscar nomination. The fact that she is two years younger than I am makes that fact slightly depressing. Still, she is one of my favorites and is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who actually looks like a real human being.

Surprise of the year: No Randy Newman song for best original song? Hell, they didn’t even nominate the Springsteen track from The Wrestler. Maybe they realized that they are not going to come close to what happened last year with Once so they’ll just decide to hand it to Peter Gabriel this time.

I’ll try to post something interesting over the weekend. Not sure if it will be another dating story or not. Either way, I’ll try to make it worth your while to stop by on the weekend.

1 comment:

Dennis Joyce said...

Tropic Thunder could have been really really good. The DVD I mistakenly bought had the directors cut and ended up being so long I thought it had ended, left the room for 20 minutes and it still was going on when I returned. RDJr's mumbly character was pretty decent and Ben Stiller was funny but the movie had the same problem all Kevin Smith movies have - NO EDITING! Not every scene filmed needs to make the final cut. However when the star is also the producer and director, they don't edit their movies. David Lean didn't feel the need to star in Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on The River Kwai. Marlon Brando didn't direct Godfather. George Lucas didn't, oh wait never mind.