It’s Academy Awards night, and like all of you I’m on the red carpet being served mint juleps by beautiful slave girls. Wait no, that’s George Clooney. No, I’m at home on my couch watching in my underwear (sexy), and I’ll be keeping you updated on what happens tonight. This page will be updated live, with various rumblings about what’s happening, and then at the bottom you’ll find a listing of all the nominees which I’ll update with the winners as they’re announced. So if you’re here only to find out what won and want to skip on my blather, just click here for an auto-scroll to the bottom. In the meantime, here we go. Here’s what’s happening with the 80th Annual Academy Awards, right now!
7:30 Classic movie stars run through the streets! Delorean sighting! Terminator delivers the Oscars!
7:32 Jon Stewart is on stage, and looking confident. Opens with a writers strike joke. Why not?
7:36 Jon Stewart delivers the first Jew joke. Redeems himself with a Norbit joke. “Too often, the Academy ignores movies… that aren’t good.”
7:41 First award: Jennifer Garner presents Achievement in Costume Design. Elizabeth: The Golden Age wins! Corsets are always a big player in the costume category. Apparently they’re as hard to make as they are to wear. At least the speech was nice and short.
7:47 George Clooney sidles on stage to waste time by talking about the history of the Oscars. 80 years of Oscar… and the best they could come up with to start the ensuing montage is P. Diddy. My heart will go on… as long as Celine Dion stops singing soon. Ended with Chaplin though, and I guess that balances out the P. Diddy opening.
7:51 Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell to present animated features…. but only after Carell and Stewart trade shots. And the Oscar goes to… Ratatouille!!! Yes. It had to. There was no other option. What the hell was Surf’s Up doing nominated? Brad Bird accepts, and his speech is as genius as his movies are. Go Pixar!
7:56 Katherine Heigl walks out in red, fakes nervousness and humility, and presents the award for Achievement in Makeup. And the winner… is not Norbit for its racially insensitive makeup. Instead, its La Vie En Rose for it’s fantastic unibrows. I guess. Really, this was a bad batch of nominees. The Academy really botched this category right from the get-go.
7:59 Amy Adams performs “Working Song” from Enchanted. No big production number, just Amy on stage alone, in whatever, singing the song… and it’s brilliant. I love her. She’s a goddess.
8:07 Dwayne Johnson (you know him as The Rock) on stage to present the award for visual effects, and confesses that he thought the face melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark was real. And the winner is… a HUGE mistake. The award goes to The Golden Compass and it’s lame, unrealistic looking CGI animals instead of the Giant Freakin Robots of Transformers. What the hell were they thinking? It’s the first massive screw up of the night. I hope this is the evening’s low point. This sucks.
8:10 Cate Blanchett on stage to present Best Art Direction. And Sweeney Todd wins, for ripping off the Shell Beach scene from Dark City. At least it wasn’t The Golden Compass.
8:15 After a past winners montage in which we’re reminded of what a mistake it was to give Cuba Gooding Jr. an Oscar, Jennifer Hudson waddles out to present the first award anyone cares about: Best Performance By An Actor in a Supporting Role. And the Oscar goes to… Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men. He’s been the frontrunner all along, and he got it. I still say Josh Brolin was the best thing about No Country for Old Men, but Bardem was great. He deserves it.
8:23 Oscar’s salute to binoculars and periscopes? Stewart presents an example of what the awards might have been like if the strike hadn’t been solved. I know it’s a gag… but it was actually kind of cool. He follows it with An Oscar Salute to Bad Dreams. Pee Wee! Even better.
8:24 Keri Russell on stage to introduce the nominated song “Raise it Up” from August Rush, which she starred in. No, Russell doesn’t sing. The curtains pull back to reveal a choir, a kid, and a singer at a piano. I haven’t seen August Rush, but I get the feeling this is the sort of song that might be a lot better in context.
8:28 Academy Award nominee Owen Wilson. He doesn’t look at all suicidal, and he’s here to present the award for Best Live Action Short Film. I wonder if that’s why they chose him to present it? Everyone’s dying to see post-suicide attempt Owen, and putting him up there with this category is probably the only way they were going to get anyone to pay attention to it. Not that anyone cares, but Le Mozart des Pickpockets won. They really need to save some time and cut these awards for Shorts from the televised awards. We don’t need to see them.
8:31 The Jerry Seinfeld voiced animated bee Barry shows up on stage to introduce a montage of bee related scenes. Not exactly a great use of time guys. He presents the award for Best Animated Short Film, and the award goes to a stop-motion animated film version of Peter and the Wolf, a movie which I swear I saw in 1982. What the hell? It’s a good thing nobody cares about this category.
8:35 Alan Arkin on stage to present the award for Best Supporting Actress… after yet another needless montage to drag the ceremony out even longer. Ruby Dee’s entire American Gangster performance fits into the clip they show of her. Luckily, her 10 second performance doesn’t win. Instead, it goes to Tilda Swinton. Michael Clayton sucks, but if someone in it had to win something, she’s the one to give it to. The movie gives her nothing, and she makes something out of it. Will she thank her polyamorous family? No, but she does make fun of George Clooney’s Batman and Robin nipple costume.
8:44 Jessica Alba walks out looking very pregnant to talk about the awards she handed out to nerds off camera. They always pick some hot babe to host for them, as consolation for not getting their awards on television. It might have been nice however, had they picked a hot babe who wasn’t pregnant. Unless you’re into that. Some guys are.
8:46 Josh Brolin and James McAvoy paired up and dancing their way on stage to present the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Josh Brolin does a Jack Nicholson line, and promises to buy Jack a drink after by way of apology for botching it. And the winner is… No Country For Old Men! Yes! Let’s get this train rolling. Load up the Coens with statues. Best Picture is just around the corner. No Country For Old Men is the only legitimate Oscar contender this year. The more awards it gets the better.
8:49 The president of the Academy is on stage to bore everyone to death and waste our time. Apparently he thinks we need to know why they give out Oscars. Duh! So everyone can go to swanky parties afterward. Goddammit I thought it was obvious. Diablo Cody doesn’t dress up like that every night… well in her case maybe she does. But look at Jennifer Garner! She’s ready to shake it baby. Meanwhile, this whole “why do we hand out Oscars” presentation is long and awful. Die. Everyone involved with this die. That goes double for you John Travolta. We don’t care about your voting.
8:52 Miley Cyrus shows up on stage to introduce another nominated song from Enchanted. The song is “That’s How You Know”, and Kristen Chenoweth is there to perform it as part of a production number with bongos, Jamaicans, and people sitting around on benches for no apparent reason. Needs more Amy Adams. What, she can’t handle more than one song? Then they should have turned down the nomination.
9:01 Dame Judy Dench and Halle Berry are on stage… and they look a lot like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. Actually they are Seth Rogen on Jonah Hill (who believes of the two of them he looks most like Halley Berry). Genius. They present the award for Best Achievement in Sound Editing. And the award goes to… The Bourne Ultimatum. Hell yes. Everything about Bourne is perfect, but especially the sound. It’s mind-blowing. Tough category, but it’s well deserved.
9:05 Jonah and Seth stay on stage as Halle and Judy to present the nominees for Best Sound Mixing. This really needs to go to Bourne again. It’s basically the same bunch anyway, except with 3:10 to Yuma as the wild card. And the award goes to… The Bourne Ultimatum. Excellent.
9:09 Forest Whitaker to present the award for Best Actress, using a quote from Brando. I’m pretty sure he has no discernable sense of humor. The winner is… Marion Cotillard. Another win for a non-American. Interesting. Apparently America sucks when it comes to making movies. Marion thanks Angels, because apparently Angels didn’t like any of the other nominees. Maybe she meant the baseball team?
9:18 Colin Farrell slides on stage to introduce the moment I’ve been waiting for all night: the performance of “Falling Slowly” from Once. And this is where I stop updating for a minute to listen to the best song of the year. Back. That was beautiful, but they made a major mistake. They didn’t need an orchestra. That sort of defeats the whole point of the song. It’s still fantastic, but the orchestra was a mistake. Regardless, this is by far the best song in the group. It need to win. It’s the only award I care about this year.
9:24 Jack Nicholson on stage to introduce the longest montage of the night… clips from every Best Picture winner in history. We get it. Movies, they get awards. How long will this broadcast go on? Next?
9:27 Renee Zellweger to squint her way through the award for Best Film Editing. The Bourne Ultimatum wins! Bourne is really cleaning up on the technical awards. It’s just a shame the Academy discriminates against action movies, because if ever there was one that deserves Best Picture consideration this is it. But no serious awards for Bourne, just all the technical awards it can kung fu kick.
9:31 Nichole Kidman, star of the upcoming movie Untitled Nicole Kidman Project, gracefully makes her way on stage to present an Honorary Oscar to the great Robert Boyle. In a montage, Boyle talks about his work on great movies like North by Northwest and explains what the heck a production designer actually does. In his case, a production designer puts Carey Grant on the top of Mount Rushmore. The Birds, Cape Fear, The Shootist, Dragnet, he’s been a part of everything. Supported on one side by Nicole Kidman and on the other side by a model, the now very elderly Boyle hobbles on stage to accept his award, and received a standing ovation. Nicole Kidman is thanked for being hot, and Hitchcock is thanked for being, well, Hitch.
9:42 Penelope Cruz on stage (without her sister to make out with), to present the award for Best Foreign Language film. Kazakstan has a movie in the running, and no it isn’t Borat. And the winner is…. The Austrian film Katy?. (correction, it’s The Counterfeiters which won. I knew Penelope’s accent was fraught with peril) At least I think it is. Here’s a tip: Don’t have someone who speaks English as a second language announcing the non-English name of a movie in a language that is also not her own. It’s a linguistic disaster.
9:44 The versatile and handsome Patrick Dempsey (apparently the Oscar announcer has a crush?) is on stage to introduce the last Oscar nominated song, “So Close” from Enchanted. Bonus: an Amy Adams impersonator dances with a fake prince. What the hell? They couldn’t get the real Amy to slowdance? Unfortunately, the guy singing sucks. This song had to have been better in the movie. Why does Oscar always screw up the Best Song performances? They even dropped the ball on “Falling Slowly”, and all they needed to do for that to work is let two people play their instruments and sing. The couple dancing is sort of a nice touch and all, but the rest… ugh.
9:49 John Travolta grabs one of the departing dancers from the Enchanted song, and dances her out to the podium with him to announce the winner for this year’s Best Song. Please give it to Once. Come on Once! Give it to “Falling Slowly”!!! And the winner is…. Once!!!!!!!!! Oh man, this makes the entire night worthwhile for me. What a great song. So deserved. Amazing music in this movie. I know almost no one has seen it, but get out there now and find it. “Falling Slowly” wins best song!!!!! But dammit, Oscar just screwed it up again! Glen Hansard got to say thanks, but they cut off Markéta Irglová before she could say anything or thank anyone. Great. Thanks Oscar. Another moment ruined. They spend all night pimping Best Song, and then when it’s awarded they don’t let the people who win say thanks. Smart. Very smart. At least we have time for more montages now.
9:57 Jon Stewart saves the day!!!! He let’s Markéta Irglová, who won for Best Song come out during one of his introductions to say thanks for her award. Hell yes Stewart. Well done, and a great speech from Maria. Thank you Jon Stewart. That was awesome. So classy. And that folks is why Jon Stewart is perfect for this gig.
9:58 Cameron Diaz on stage to give the award for Cinematography. And the winner is… There Will Be Blood! First win for Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece. Tough category, lot of deserving winners here but you can’t go wrong with Blood.
10:01 Hilary Swank on stage and somber to introduce this year’s In Memorium. They’ve extended it through January 31, 2008 instead of ust the usual single year, almost certainly so they could shoehorn in Heath Ledger. Let’s see. Here goes…. Jack Valenti. Not much applause. Lot of technical people in this montage. Writers, stuntmen, makeup artists, cinematographers, directors, even agents. Suzanne Pleshette gets big applause, as does Deborah Kerr. Huge applause for director Ingmar Bergman. Heath Ledger is the finale, but the applause doesn’t seem to last long. Odd. They really should have left him till next year. Meanwhile, no mention at all of Brad Renfro.
10:08 The beautiful, luminous Amy Adams on stage to present the award for Best Original Score. Let’s skip the rest of the awards and just look at her all night. The Oscar goes to… Atonement. Well I guess it had to win something. I’d have rather seen it go to Ratatouille though. Loved that score. Hopefully this is it for Atonement.
10:11 Tom Hanks, who is not nominated for anything tonight (and thus who Stewart contends has no business being here), is on stage to beat us down with Best Documentary Short Subject, and a bunch of clips from soldiers in Iraq presenting the award. All the nominees pretend to smile, even though they’re probably disappointed it’s not Tom Hanks announcing their movies. And the winner is… us because this award is done with and we can finally move on to something good. Also Freehold got a statue. Whatever Freehold is. Apparently the movie was about discrimination against gay couples, and the director is incredibly excited. I’m happy for her, and I’m sure the movie’s wonderful. I just don’t understand why we need to see this particular award, when so many other awards aren’t broadcast on television. Enough.
10:15 Tom Hanks stays on stage to give out a more significant award, for Best Documentary. Sicko deserves to win this, but it’s been basically overlooked by every other major award before this and it probably will be again. I hope not though. I’m rooting for it, but Hollywood seems to be SO over Moore. The alternative is another Iraq movie. No thanks. Come on Sicko! Get Michael Moore up on stage so he can humiliate himself! And the winner is… another lame movie about how much Iraq sucks. Taxi to the Dark Side wins. Why doesn’t anyone in the audience ever boo? Come on Jack, get a little drunker and let fly. If I were there, this would be my spot. Booo.
10:23 Mercedes commercial with creepy Germans. I think they want to put me in a death camp.
10:24 Indiana Jones!!! Harrison Ford is on stage to tell me that movies are made of pictures. Thanks Harrison, I had no idea. I’ll watch it with my eyes open next time. The award is Best Original Screenplay, and we all know who’s going to win this right? It has to be Diablo Cody, she’s the flavor of the month for at least another week. Though anybody who can make a good screenplay out of a guy who dates a blowup doll ought to get some consideration. Could Lars and the Real Girl upset? And the winner is… Diablo Cody for Juno. No surprise. Cody heads up to the mic dressed like Jungle Jane. That girl loves animal prints. I have mixed feelings about Juno, but it’s hard not to like Diablo Cody. Sweet speech, great way to thank her family for “loving me exactly as I am.” Good for her. Can we trade parents? At least it wasn’t The Savages.
10:30 Helen Mirren to present the award for Best Actor. Hopefully this makes more sense than her acceptance speech last year. Hail to the Queen. According to Helen Mirren, to be Best Actor, it takes cahones. Yes, testicles are sort of a prerequisite. Daniel Day Lewis is the favorite here, it’ll be a shock if anyone else wins, especially Clooney with his stare blankly at the camera and look handsome approach to acting in Michael Clayton. Johnny Depp looks embarrassed to be nominated, and up against DDL he should be. Viggo is basically nominated for fighting naked. He probably deserves a nomination for that, but not a win. Tommy Lee Jones isn’t a real contender. And the winner is… Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood! Perfect. Now let’s finish this night off by giving everything else to No Country For Old Men. Daniel Day Lewis thanks his son HW Planview, a fictional character from his movie. Hell yeah!
10:40 Jack Lemon and Walter Mathau are on the video screen talking about directors. Some are short, and some are tall. It’s the Best Director montage! I’ve had it with all these montages, but it was great to see Lemon and Mathau up there together again for one last time.
10:41 The great Martin Scorsese to pass the torch. He’ll present the award for Best Director, after finally winning last year in what was basically a pity award. The guy ought to have had an even half-dozen of them by now. This category should belong to the Coens, though PT Anders could slip in. Anyone else would be a travesty. And the Oscar goes to… Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men! It’s their second time on stage tonight, and the Coen brothers are running out of things to say. Joel goes for the “when we were kids” anecdote.
10:45 Denzel Washington to hand out Best Picture, and he’s not wasting any time. He’s blowing through the nominees. I guess he has a party to get to. Or maybe he’s pissed off that American Gangster isn’t nominated. So the night ends here, and we call go to bed. And the Oscar goes to… No Country for Old Men! The Coens never even left the stage. They’re standing on the wings, and they’re right back up to the podium. There were only two movies in this group of nominees that were ever legitimate contenders, and this was the strongest of the two of them. The Coens are back baby. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
10:46 Well I’ve had it. Another Academy Awards is over. Stewart was good, the montages were interminable, the awards for Shorts were as always unnecessary, but we got through it together. Best moment of the night? I’m going with Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen as Halle Berry. Priceless. Thanks for reading and chatting and being here with us. Stick around on Cinema Blend.
Oscar results updated live. Nominees are below, as the winner in each category is announced, it will be highlighted in red.
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Daniel Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Tommy Lee Jones - In the Valley of Elah
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem - No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook - Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson - Michael Clayton
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Cate Blanchett - Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie - Away From Her
Marion Cotillard - La Vie En Rose
Laura Linney - The Savages
Ellen Page- Juno
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Cate Blanchett - I’m Not There
Ruby Dee - American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan - Atonement
Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton - Michael Clayton
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Surf’s Up
Persepolis
Ratatouille
DIRECTING
Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen - No Country For Old Men
Tony Gilroy - Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman - Juno
Julian Schnabel - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Atonement
Away from Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Juno
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
The Savages
MUSIC (SCORE)
Atonement
The Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
MUSIC (SONG)
"Falling Slowly" - Once
"Happy Working Song" - Enchanted
"Raise it Up" - August Rush
"So Close" - Enchanted
"That’s How You Know " - Enchanted
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
No End in Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Freeheld
La Corona (The Crown)
Salim Baba
Sari’s Mother
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
At Night
Il Supplente (The Substitute)
Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Tanghi Argentini
The Tonto Woman
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Beaufort
The Counterfeiters
Katy?
Mongol
12
ART DIRECTION
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
COSTUME DESIGN
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie en Rose
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
FILM EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
MAKEUP
La Vie en Rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
SOUND EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Transformers
SOUND MIXING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Transformers
VISUAL EFFECTS
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Transformers
