Oscar Night 2009

7:55 P.M.: And we are coming to you live from the entertainment wing of the Battling the Current Headquarters for wall to wall coverage of Oscar Night 2009. In order to meet the criteria as an Oscar reporter I am currently wearing a tuxedo t-shirt.

7:58 P.M.: Yeah, and I’m alone again. My Oscar parties are like my Super Bowl parties and my Election parties. I always end up with a lot of beer left over. In no way do I consider that a bad thing.

7:59 P.M.: The rules are the same as always. I am watching the ABC coverage of the Oscars and I will spend the night making snarky remarks about anything and everything. Expect a great deal of wrestling related material and at least one skank reference.

8:00 P.M.: Sweet! We start with a Tim Gunn sighting! Let’s make it work. And Kate Winslet is gorgeous as always. She is one of the few actresses who has a) talent and b) looks like an actual human being.

8:03 P.M.: Oh my God, Amy Adams is just amazing. She has so shot up my favorite actress list. Sarah Jessica Parker looks to be wearing a ballerina skirt while Matthew Broderick seems to be rocking a combover. Or at least a very intensive hair care regimen to make it look as though he actually has hair. You have to feel sorry for Matthew Broderick. You know how you hate hearing about Sex and the City? Imagine if you had to hear it from Sarah Jessica Parker every day of your life.

8:09 P.M.: So Valentino is missing either a first or a last name. Either that or besides being a fashion designer he is also a Brazilian soccer player.

8:11 P.M.: Mickey Rourke is in the house. Come on, answer the challenge from Chris Jericho. What are you, a coward? On the other hand, he is mourning the passing of his dog so I will give him a pass on not agreeing to a ladder match.

8:15 P.M.: Remind me why I am supposed to care about Miley Cyrus again? Did she like cure cancer recently? So far we have had two interviews with Disney stars which is a wonderful case of corporate synergy. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is completely unfair that Anne Hathaway can be that talented, beautiful and be named after Shakerspeare’s wife.

8:20 P.M.: Finally, the Price Waterhouse Coopers accountants get their moment on the red carpet. Why they are forced to wear a tuxedo is besides me. I’ve always wondered why they just don’t show up in jeans and t-shirts. It’s not like they have to do anything more difficult than carry a briefcase around.

8:23 P.M.: Oh what I would give for them to pan the scene at the Oscar bar and to see Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey Jr. just going to town at the end of the bar. That or just to see a group of people swigging Old Style and Pabst.

8:30 P.M.: We are going with a cold open and a supper club feel to the entire event. Your host is Hugh Jackman (or Huge Ackman as everyone seems to pronounce it) thus making him the first superhero to host the Oscars.

8:38 P.M.: Ok, ten points to Hugh Jackman (and a big assist to Anne Hathaway) for the opening number. That was a lot of fun. I never thought that I would get to see a barbed wire wrestling ring on stage at the Oscars.

8:41 P.M.: We get a Juliette Binoche sighting during the Best Supporting Actress retrospective. That means nothing to anyone other than me, who has the movie poster from the film Blue hanging in his dining room.

8:43 P.M.: Starting early with the big awards as we start with the Best Supporting Actress. We apparently are giving full descriptions of everyone’s performance as opposed to, say, showing a clip of it. If we do this for every award I am going to be here until two in the morning. Penelope Cruz wins it for the Woody Allen film in which she makes out with Scarlett Johannsen. Let that be a lesson to those who wish to win this award in the future.

8:51 P.M.: Hey Sprint still has enough cash to advertise! I’m…I’m…I’m rather surprised by that fact. I assumed they would just collapse without me there.

8:56 P.M.: This is different. Usually the original screenplay Oscar is later in the night. Given that this is the only Oscar I am still capable of winning I wish there would be a bit more gravitas given to it. Milk wins and again no real complaints on that one. Especially given that Wall-E barely has what can be called dialogue.

9:01 P.M.: Adapted Screenplay goes to Slumdog Millionaire. Expect to hear that a lot tonight. I was cheering for Benjamin Button just because I would have liked to have seen F. Scott Fitzgerald been thanked on stage.

9:07 P.M.: What a surprise, Wall-E wins for Best Animated Feature. I so thought this was Space Chimps year. You know it is a foregone conclusion when Jack Black jokes about the inevitability of it while presenting the award. And then we hand out the animated short film to some vague French film. I would have preferred the one about bathroom love.

9:10 P.M.: Did we just get a freaking Styx shout out? Ok, that may just have been the coolest thing ever.

9:19 P.M.: Daniel Craig looks like he can snap anyone’s neck at any time. Come on Daniel, Sarah Jessica Parker is standing right there! You know you want to do it.

9:31 P.M.: Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller. My most favorite and least favorite people on the planet. Well, at least Natalie looks pretty while I sit around and watch Ben try to be funny.

9:38 P.M.: Jessica Biel is wearing one of those vaguely half finished dresses. Jessica had the honor of being the hot young starlet who hosted the Sci Tech awards. Those are the Oscars for the geeks like me. I always find it horribly unfair that they bring out a starlet for just that one night. It is like, “This is the closest you are ever going to get to someone this fabulous so we are going to hold a contest to see who can get to touch her.”

9:45 P.M.: Necro Butcher makes the Oscar telecast! And people wonder why I’ve watched wrestling all these years. It’s not because of a case of delayed psychological development and the inability to become a mature adult. It’s because I am just so far ahead of the culture curve that I have to wait years for people to understand what I find cool.

9:53 P.M.: I’m sorry but did I stumble onto the Tony Awards? I’m kind of lost as to the purpose of this tribute to musicals. What is worse is that now that I am on the East Coast this show is already going to be an hour longer than it has for the rest of my life. And this is looking like it is going to be a long show.

10:08 P.M.: In one of those certain moments, Heath Ledger wins Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight. Again, there are times in my life when I lose my snark and this is one of them. Though I will say can we add Mary Kate Olsen to the list headed by Courtney Love as people who have resulted in the loss of more art than the creation of it.

10:28 P.M.: Benjamin Button has won a surprising number of awards tonight. True, they have all been in technical categories but I had read a lot of predictions that had them winning zero awards even though it was the most nominated film of the year. It will be interesting to see if that turns into an upset on any of the big awards.

10:33 P.M.: John Mayer is in the crowd with Jennifer Aniston. You know, just if you are interested in whether they are still pretending to be dating or not.

10:35 P.M.: Here is one of the challenges of live blogging the Oscars. I feel as though I have to come up with something witty to say about the award for Best Editing. Except that it is physically impossible to come up with something witty to say about an award you don’t quite understand for a movie you haven’t seen yet. And since Will Smith just gave out the last four awards I haven’t even been able to make a joke about someone’s dress for the past fifteen minutes.

10:40 P.M.: In the Motherhood got its own TV show? Ok, back in a past life when I was doing marketing for a living I was pitched that idea and considered it dumb beyond belief. Admittedly, I was the complete opposite of the target market but I still didn’t get the purpose of having people send in real life stories to be made into short films. That has never worked no matter how many times they’ve tried.

10:44 P.M.: This year’s honorary Oscar goes to Jerry Lewis. I still have a hard time writing Oscar and Jerry Lewis in the same sentence. That is the problem with people my age. We only know of him as a parody of himself. I’m pretty certain that his style of comedy was ground breaking and if I watched it with clear eyes I would appreciate it. But I only can see it through the jokes that exist around it. But it is nice that he is honored for all of his humanitarian work. You really can’t doubt the good that he has done.

10:55 P.M.: You know, the song award just isn’t the same without Glen and Marketa. It takes all of the fun out of it. Or at least my rooting interest. Slumdog Millionaire wins both music awards which is pretty freaking amazing. Occasionally a non-English song will win but this is probably the first from a completely foreign style of music. There really is no western equivalent to Hindi music. I’ve gotten a bit of an ear for it and I like it but I can’t connect it to any of the music that I’ve listened to for my entire life.

11:11 P.M.: The annual dead person montage comes this time with a song by Queen Latifah. This still doesn’t change the fact that it is a competition to see who gets the biggest applause after they leave this world. A surprising amount of applause for Ricardo Montalban (Kahn!) and Stan Winston. Not surprisingly, Paul Newman gets the spot of honor at the end.

11:18 P.M.: Wow, that is a rather daring dress on Reese Witherspoon. It looked better from a distance than in close up. As does her eye makeup. That is the wonders of HD. I can find flaws in the look of a woman who is so beautiful she wouldn’t even take the effort to dismiss me if she saw me in public.

11:20 P.M.: Strange that we are doing director ahead of the acting awards but that has been the way this telecast has been. Danny Boyle wins for Slumdog, which is just running away with this thing. I’m going to give him props for referencing Tigger in his acceptance speech. This has been a rather odd little show. They set it up in a much less formal way than the typical Oscar telecast and I’m not sure if I like it or not. It definitely makes it interesting but we seem to get the rapid fire technical awards and less of a showing of what made the movies memorable to begin with.

11:24 P.M.: The other problem of course is that this just hasn’t been a high powered Oscar telecast. No big name films, very few big names up for awards, just a lot of low key moments.

11:26 P.M.: Best actress time and we finally explain why Sophia Loren has been in the crowd this entire time. She is flanked by Shirley Macclaine in a pantsuit for those of you who are wondering who is going to win all of the worst dressed awards tomorrow. (Also, these speeches about the nominees sound like a really bad prom court nomination ceremony. It is really sweet for the people in the theater but incredibly bizarre as a viewer sitting on his couch wrapped up in a nice blankie.) Kate Winslet finally gets her Oscar. It took them long enough to honor her.

11:37 P.M.: Best Actor time (and I thought it was Sir Anthony Hopkins along with Sir Ben Kingsley. Then again we had Seymour Philip Hoffman earlier tonight). Sean Penn beats out Mickey Rourke because the academy just does not understand the brilliant acting that is required to drive another human being through a table that is laced with barbed wire. This is a sham of a travesty of a mockery. I’ve stayed up this late and I don’t get a Mickey Rourke acceptance speech? Can I ask for a refund of my time? Or at least get a dance from Marisa Tomei just to make things even?

11:47 P.M.: And Steven Spielberg gets to send us home with Best Picture. Notice that Best Picture and Director don’t get the huge self aggrandizing speeches as the acting awards. Mainly because pictures can not talk and directors know better. And Slumdog Millionaire completes their big night. Let’s give the academy credit on this one. Talk about a film that has zero box office pull in this country. All you had was a director who was best known for a film about drug addicts a decade ago. Yet it gets the biggest award of the year. In a few years people might look back and wonder just how this film won it. I don’t think anyone will ever figure it out.

11:55 P.M.: And we close the night with images of this year’s films. In a perfect world next year’s Oscar will go to Transformers 2.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Frames “Dance the Devil…”
2) Cowboy Mouth “It Means Escape”
3) Howie Day “Live From…”
4) Victoria Williams “Loose”
5) The Subdudes “Miracle Mule”