Miscellaneous, etc.

7:04 - Just a little less than an hour to the ceremony, and I’m watching Ryan Seacrest awkwardly greet the people who seem hell-bent on passing him by on the Red Carpet.

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself, but it’s been a long time since I watched the Oscars, and even longer since I blogged anything live. Why not do it with something as consequence-free as the Oscars?

I’ve got my snacks, I’ve got my martinis, and I’m rearing to go.

God be with me.

7:09 - You know, I started calling people “man” again two years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio is totally biting my style by doing it. It’s my thing! It’s the thing that I do!

I bet he carries is backpack on one shoulder just like I do, too.

7:12 - Djimon Hounsou is just about as classy a dude as you can imagine. That he can even stay cool when Ryan Fucking Seacrest starts popping up all his embarrassing music video footage from Janet Jackson or Paula Adbul, well, that’s a tribute to his character.

When the topic of his underwear came up, he would have been perfectly within his rights to throw out his arms, shout, “It’s puncheeen tiiiiiiiime!” and killed someone. But did he? No. And that’s class.

7:16 - Speaking of class, Helen Mirren takes the time to studiously ignore Ryan Seacrest discussing his skivvies exactly twice before she was roped into her interview.

She admits to nicking her Union Jack, and is promptly shoved off the screen by footage of Celine Dion arriving on the red carpet. La Chantreuse looks as though her team of surgeons have worked for a week to restore her to her Titanic-era appearance, before she herself is shoved aside for footage of Daniel Craig getting out of a car.

Oh, the shifty cruelty of the red carpet show.

7:23 - We come back from commercial to a freeze-frame of Rachel Weisz as an example of women rocking the red carpet.

Damn right.

7:25 - Thanks, Spike Lee, for reminding us that it’s Black History Month. And thank you, director of the E! Red Carpet show, for cutting over to lily-white Kirsten Dunst for hilarious ironic balance.

7:26 - Time To Celine Dion’s French-Canadian Accent Emerging: Four seconds. “Hit’s verry ha-may-zing to be ‘ere!”

7:28 - Anne Hathaway is so gorgeous, and she seems totally pleasant and approachable. She reminds me of one of those women you meet and chat up, and wonder why you’re almost angry with by how bored you are by her a few minutes later.

7:31 - Alan Arkin is hilariously cranky and grumpy. I love it. I want to fly to California and high-five the man.

7:33 - Any time I see Forest Whittaker, all I can think of is him playing the less-competent giant alien guy in Battlefield Earth. Even if he wins the Oscar — indeed, especially if he wins — I’m still going to think of him that way, and wonder if he’s going to thank all the rat-brains in Hollywood.

7:36 - Ryan Seacrest rehearses for his career in the UN with his diplomatic question to Gwyneth Paltrow, “So, how long has it been since you won an Oscar? Eight years?”

7:37 - Aw, Beyonce is so cute, I– what the Jesus fuck is Nicole Kidman wearing? She looks like someone gave up on her dress, so they just tied it off on the shoulder and told her to run for it.

Also, every time I see Ryan Gosling, I think of Breaker High. See my comments above on Forest Whittaker and Battlefield Earth, only multiply it by the factor of a horrible Canadian sitcom.

7:40 - Props to Cate Blanchett for making me spit martini on my Thinkpad, here.

Seacrest: Isn’t it crazy here on the red carpet? So many people, and some I don’t even recognize.

Cate: … I’m Cate Blanchett.

Awesome.

7:46 - I choose to ignore Eddie Murphy, in favor of gazing in wonder at Kate Winslett. She’s totally likable, and I so enjoy the undercurrent of pure spite when she says things like:

“You don’t expect things like this to happen to the girl from the small-town who was told she’d only ever get parts as the fat girl.”

It’s even better that she can correct Seacrest about his pronounciation of Ricky Gervais’ name.

7:49 - I’d like to be paying attention to Queen Latifah right now, but all I can do is marvel at how Reese Witherspoon really, really looks like a used-up porn star.

7:55 - The E! red carpet credits are rolling, thank you God. Penelope Cruz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Helen Mirren, Beyonce and Nicole Kidman are the top five female fashion candidates… because… I don’t know why.

Speaking of Nicole, she’s never looked more eager to sprint from her Seacrest interview than I’ve seen her.

7:59 - Much as everyone loves her dress, why hasn’t anyone else noticed that Reese Witherspoon looks like she just took a quick shower and took off from the set of Dildo Debutantes 4?

Anyway, we’re signing off from the pre-show, and I’ve never been more excited about refreshing my martini.

8:02 - Aw, shit, what? I just finished watching the E! red carpet show so that I could turn on… the Oscar red carpet show?

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

I’m glad that Leonardo DiCaprio is excited that the Hollywood studio system is endorsing movies about controversial topics like blood diamonds, as though that’s special. Obviously someone forgot about a little movie called Die Another Day.

8:04 - Oh look! Lisa Ling is interviewing Nicole Kidman and her clone, Naomi Watts. They’re wearing primary colors, so you can totally tell them apart.

Also: Lisa Ling? Wasn’t she fired from The View for bribing someone for something? I suppose that qualifies her perfectly for the Oscars.

8:06 - I think I’m going to go ahead and declare Steve Carrell to be the new Steve Martin. He’s funny, looks good in a tux, brings color to award ceremonies, and he keeps being nominated for awards.

Congratulations, Steve Carrell — you’re Hollywood’s new pet comedian!

8:12 - Wait, what the hell? Penelope Cruz is nominated for an Oscar for something?

I’m so blown away that all I can do is read the helpful trivia on the bottom of the screen, including live-changing facts like, “Penelope is interested in being a photographer” and “Penelope has wanted to be an actress since she was 8.”

It’s everything I needed to know.

8:15 - If you’re Cameron Diaz and you’ve got an interviewer listing all the people, from all the projects you’ve done, that have been nominated for Oscars in your past… how do you keep from breaking down in tears knowing that you will never be among them?

If you’re Cameron Diaz, you say something like, “I’m just glad to be here supporting the community.”

Good job, Cameron: Keep the faith. This Oscar thing just might not make it if we don’t hang in there together.

8:18 - I love that Ryan Gosling’s mother laughed at his Snoop Dogg joke. I can just imagine she’s going to lean over to him later on and say, “Just what the hell did you say? I’ve been wiping your nose since The New Mickey Mouse Club. Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again!“

8:22 - Marky Mark Wahlberg is so kickass. That Entourage is based on his life, and that he’s nominated for an award for the first time, makes me bizarrely happy.

8:23 - I wish I could say that I can tell the difference between these three directors — it speaks to my ignorance that I can’t — except that I’m pretty sure it’s racist to call them The Three Amigos, and that one of them had something to do with Children of Men and should therefore win everything.

8:25 - Lisa Ling has shit for brains, Kate Winslett. You’d be entirely within your rights to totally deck her for asking about you being naked on camera — don’t let “extradition laws” or “assault charges” slow you down.

8:27 - You know what, I know people care about the fashions on these shows… but did we really need the detailed wrap-up? Are any of us actually able to keep track of who wore what, and how it looked, until we watch the slideshow on Yahoo tomorrow?

Wait. Don’t answer that. I was only being rhetorical.

8:30 - We open with a candid montage of people against a white background, talking about their nominations for an Oscar. Some of them are very human, and the funniest are the people we don’t know, as usual. It’s funny: The more familiar the faces, the less we trust the candor of what they’re doing on-screen.

8:35 - Hey, they do this at my company, too - make all the award nominees stand up and clap for each other. It’s supposed to make us feel less bitter and resentful towards each other.

It doesn’t work.

8:36 - Ellen’s out to do her monologue, completing her ascendance to America’s Most Acceptable Comedian.

“No-one can fill a seat like an American,” Ellen says. I do hope that marks the first tooth of hers we see.

8:40 - “It’s not that we don’t have time for long speeches, it’s that we don’t have time for boring speeches…” I wonder if we’re going to see the benefits of the new, exciting speech direction of the 2007 Oscars.

I liked the Gore joke. That got a rousing round of applause from everyone, deservedly.

Oh! And “Without blacks, Jews and gays there would be no Oscars… or anyone named Oscar.”

And then a musical number. *sigh* Things were going so well.

8:45 - Nicole Kidman, her giant bow, and Daniel Craig come out to present Art Direction. I think that Craig could probably make reading the take-out menu from a Pakistani restaurant seem intense.

And the winner is, Pan’s Labyrinth. Token Oscar #1 goes to the Mexican mafia.

8:48 - Maggie Gyllenhaal (I know I spelled that wrong) got stuck with the techno-nerds this year. I could feel every ounce of her passion as she says, “It was a wild night, and I was pleased to be one of the visual effects.”

Oh Christ, and did I just see a silhouette dance number thing? What the hell was that?

8:53 - Jack Black and Will Farrell’s duet on comedy at the Oscars is excellent.

“Mark Wahlberg! Where are you! I’m not gonna mess with you, you’re actually pretty bad-ass.”

And it’s a signal of wisdom that they’d pick the old school Brit actress to play along with their joke, because … well, of course she would.

Oh right, and Pan’s Labyrinth wins for make-up, too. Token Oscar #2.

8:59 - Oh, this is never disaster: Two kids are presenting an award together.

I will pay one hundred thousand million dollars for either of them to pee their pants on-stage. Instead, the girl saves the day from Will Smith’s kid fucking up, to remember announcing The Danish Poet as best animated short.

Oh! And he’s illiterate, too, so she has to jump in and announced West Bank Story as the winner for best live-action short, too.

Awesome. I hate the Smith family so much, for no reason at all.

9:06 - Our first Best Picture montage is for Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood’s other big Second World War movie this year. After two minutes of footage and his voice-over, I’m sobbing into my hands and begging for Will Smith’s kid to come back again.

9:08 - I bet there are really good American commercials on right now, aren’t there? Not shitty awful Delissio frozen pizza ads that I’ve seen a hundred times before?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

9:11 - We’re back finally, applauding the orchestra, and enjoying the Hollywood Sound Effects Choir.

I don’t think anyone gets it, because the audience is really not reacting. And frankly, they’re just happy when it’s over.

9:14 - Steve Carrell and Greg Kinnear present the sound editing award, and I think this might be the first time they actually take the time to show the physical process of it in the nominations. That’s kind of neat.

The winner is Letters from Iwo Jima, because it’s always easier to relate to machine guns than, say, calcified pirates attached to the hulls of ships.

Phew! They’re reading from boring lists. Glad the dynamic new energy of the Oscars is really keeping itself up.

9:17 - Jessica Biel looks like she could crush James McAvoy in her hands, and not lose an inch of her smile.

Also, he is really Scottish. I had no idea.

Dreamgirls wins the sound mixing award, which I guess makes sense. I’d probably be a little insulted if the musical lost to the war movie for sound, if I were part of that production.

Sorry, this isn’t too funny. I fell asleep as soon as I saw Jessica Biel, so I’m just making all of this up.

9:20 - Rachel Weisz! God damn. So lovely with her messy hair, her dark lipstick, and her pale, pale skin.

Tell me more about the supporting actor awards nominees, Rachel. Tell me slowly.

Djimon Hounsou should probably win this one, but who am I to disrupt Eddie Murphy’s ascendance to Hollywood royalty, huh?

The Oscar goes to Alan Arkin, though, and I dare anyone to argue with that one. “It’s hand-written, it’s short,” he says of his speech, and his Oscar sits on the floor while he thanks everyone.

If that isn’t Alan Arkin in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.

9:25 - Ellen is working the crowd. Doesn’t she know Krusty’s advice, “Oy, this is always death?”

9:26 - Fuck. I was right, it’s a dance troupe. They’re interpreting things.

I shouldn’t be so crusty, though, because it’s a kind of clever shadow-puppetry idea. Now that the audience has had to deal with the sound effects choir, this feels downright normal and approachable by comparison.

9:29 - We come back with a montage about The Departed, which I sort of regret not seeing. I think I saw The Prestige instead, and I stand by that.

Oh wow, James Taylor and Randy Newman, singing the song from Cars? I think I just aged forty years by having the television on for this.

9:33 - I’m pretty sure I can’t tell any one Melissa Etheridge song from any other one. They all kind of follow the same pattern:

Slow, low-spoken lyrics in her lower register…

…big, raspy chorus that climbs in pitch…

…peaking declaration lyrics…

…back to that big raspy chorus, maybe with a bit more mustard behind it…

…and maybe some more low raspy lyrics, or an extended acoustic guitar with a slow version of the chorus.

By no small coincidence, Al Gore comes out with DiCaprio after the theme of his movie is sung.

9:36 - The Oscars are announced as “going green”, in that environmentally conscious practices have been fully integrated into the show. We’re urged to visit oscars.com, and then a pretty good gag of the orchestra playing out Gore just before he can declare a presidential run.

Not to be a cynical killjoy, but do those green practices extend to the gift bags, after-parties, food supplies and various perks for the visiting celebs? I do wonder.

9:42 - “Because the show is green, the Academy wants me to recycle some jokes from earlier in my career, so here goes…”

The irony is, that’s more or less the mission statement for every Oscar host since 1990.

Oh look, Cameron Diaz is presenting the Animated Feature Oscar, being only a single degree separated from being a cartoon character herself. Happy Feet wins, but at least they didn’t do the awful thing where a cartoon character accepts the award.

9:45 - Aw, Ben Affleck sobered up long enough to present a montage about writers. I assume this is in preparation for the screenwriting Oscar, but who knows — maybe Ben just needs the work. It is, but Affleck isn’t going to get to present it. He really did just need the work.

How excellent to hear Helen Mirren read the title of the Borat movie: That in itself is worth watching the whole thing. Children of Men had sure better win, though.

It’s The Departed for the win, however.

9:54 - Chris Connolly brings out the comedy Oscar abacus, and Tom Hanks unleashes the most sarcastic, “You bet Chris, more fun!” that I’ve ever heard. Sounds like everyone needs a commercial break.

9:59 - Ellen comes out wearing a baby harness for everyone who has no place to put their Oscars, which I fantasize was intra-commercial brilliance.

Meanwhile, The Devil Wears Prada ladies come out to present the Oscars for costume design, and Meryl Streep manages to make a lame comedy bit into something pretty funny, purely by merit of her facial expression.

Really they should just give her an Oscar every year, for something. It’s just the safe thing to do. And very possibly revoke one from Anne Hathaway every time she makes a lame joke — currently her owing balance is four hundred and fifty.

With the live models flailing around, the costume design Oscars officially have taken longer than the three previous ones put together… and now the producers of Marie Antoinette have some justification for saying their movie is an Academy Award winner.

And can someone explain to me how the fuck the costume designers are always wearing the ugliest shit when they get on stage? I’m sure this lady is a brilliant and talented worker, but she’s wearing a tuxedo tighter than anyone else in the crowd, and a black bow that looks like it was stolen from an inappropriate funeral gift.

10:05 - We’re going to do a humanitarian award for… someone. Sherri Lansing? I have no fucking idea… let’s see if the Tom Cruise-introduced montage can tell me who the hell it is.

And now, having watched the montage, I feel like a complete dickface for not knowing who she is. I am a shallow, rotten sample of humanity on the petri dish of the world. I apologize for borrowing oxygen from my betters. I feel nothing but shame for the– ewwww, her arms are really thin.

10:11 - Ellen gets Stephen Spielberg to take a picture of Ellen and Clint Eastwood for MySpace, and then a re-shoot — “Make it more even on both sides? Thanks — before introducing Gwyneth Paltrow.

Wicked.

Somehow YouTube and cell phones are associated with cinematography, no doubt much to the delight of all the professional photographers in the crowd. Once again, Children of Men had really better walk away with this one…

…which, no doubt, means I’ve doomed it to be taken by Pan’s Labyrinth or The Departed or something.

Ha ha ha, that one guy’s name is “Wally Pfister”! That’s gold.

In other news, I need to shut the hell up. Pan’s Labyrinth wins again, and did I just hear the announcer use the words “Spy Kids”? Yes, I think I did.

10:16 - Those goddamn shadow puppet people scare me. They do. A lot, and deep inside.

10:20 - Naomi Watts (the attractive version of Nicole Kidman) and Robert Downey Jr. come out to present the visual effects awards, and R-Dub makes a crack about his own drug use. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men’s Chest pulls out the win, which is good because it’s probably all the award recognition they’re going to get this year.

Can I pause for the moment, while the visual effects guys ramble on, to express my unending love of the Pirates movies? You can talk all you like about diminishin returns of sequels, I’m still just as excited as hell about them.

10:23 - Aw, they’re letting foreign people present awards. And one of them is Ken Watanabe! That guy could samurai-slice my face with his raw wickedness.

Aw, and in the true tradition of foreign film, we’re going to have a non-linear, multi-language, incomprehensible montage of images from which we are intended to draw some greater meaning. You can get away with a bunch of 1-second cuts of great moments when your audience has some chance of recognizing them, but it’s a little more challenging when you have no idea what you’re looking at.

Hey, remember that one movie where the scene happened and the guys walked down the street in their suits?

… no.

10:29 - Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett — who I bet would produce super-children — come out to present a bunch of nominees and then Pan’s Labyrinth, which is obviously going to win.

…and promptly doesn’t, because The Lives of Others does instead. Leave it to a German to thank his department heads and distributors.

10:32 - I will officially shut up about the shadow puppet people, now… they did a Snakes on a Plane silhouette. You have to respect that.

10:34 - Leave it to George Clooney to come out on stage shouting, “Hey guys!” and make a joke about drinking backstage with Al Gore and Jack Nicholson.

Probably because he was.

Supporting Actress supposed to be a lock for Dream Girls, and wouldn’t you know it — Jennifer Hudson pulls it off. The American Idol reject makes big on the Oscars, and boy oh boy it’s going to be a weepy one.

“Definitely have to thank God, I guess, again,” is one of my favorite lines so far. That’s awesome.

10:41 - The only thing I can discern about Babel from its montage is that the camera moves around a lot, that there’re a lot of characters, and that I probably am glad I skipped it.

Eva Green, her eye make-up, and a Mexican dude come out to present the documentaries, and the audience get ready for Tragedy with a capital T. The Blood of Yingzou District takes the award, and the footage of children with snot and gore on their faces only makes me feel intense, seething remorse that I don’t avoid more documentaries.

10:44 - Seinfeld is here, to present his Seinfeldian take on winning awards… which is, oddly enough, nearly the same as the jokes that Ellen told during the opening monologue. And then he steals my joke about how documentaries are a total bummer.

Get original, Jerry!

Anyway, it’s exciting to see all of these movies that are going to lose to An Inconvenient Truth, so that the 3 seconds of footage they get on TV might get someone to accidentally rent one at Blockbuster some weekend.

So, Inconvenient Truth pulls it off, and Gore is a skilled enough old pro to get a simple message out and then leave the stage with grace.

10:50 - Clint Eastwood comes on and begins to ramble a bit about Morricone music, and having it play behind him in A Fistful of Dollars. Man, that really was good music. Spaghetti westerns had some of the best friggin’ music, they just make me want to shoot at someone.

Christ, every year Eastwood doesn’t wear his glasses, and every year he fucks up the introduction to something, or someone. Mercifully, the montage for Morricone is pre-recorded, and even though it’s a sort of weird, tamed-down grocery-store version of his music, at least it’s recognition.

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Celine Dion?

This is a test, isn’t it? This is to see if I can make it through this whole broadcast without changing the channel, isn’t it? This is a challenge to my fortitude as a weblog writer, a confrontation of my values against my patience as a human, a measure of whether I can tell apart Celine’s rendition of this song against any other one that she’s ever performed, isn’t it?

Wow, that’s a really, totally awesome face she’s making when she sings “Youuuuuuuuuuuu.” It’s like someone grabbed her asshole and twisted. That was worth it all by itself.

Ennio’s speech isn’t going to be in English, and I bet it’s still going to take a long fucking time. The only thing longer than a long-winded speech is one that’s done in two languages, one after the other, in segments, as the clock passes 11.

All this for a lifetime achievement award for music. So very much left to cover.

11:06 - Hugh Jackman and Penelope Cruz are here to present the award for musical score, which is about 50% appropriate. I know that Jackman’s a fairly accomplished stage performer and singer, and Cruz… probably… can operate a CD player if she tries really hard.

Babel wins for its musical score, so I’m sure that everyone’s going to go home feeling a sense of accomplishment for the recognition that their peerha ha ha ha haha, sorry, I couldn’t get that one out with a straight face… the musical score award is about as close to a pat on the head as the Oscars can give a movie, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

11:10 - Right on, they accelerated what the Academy does into a film compressed down to 60 seconds.

And it’s still a minute of my life I’m never going to get back.

11:11 - Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are out to do the Original Screenplay awards, and — God help me — read from them. I can’t wait to see the emotional weight, power and intricacy that these two acting powerhouses will strip from the script outtakes they’re given.

…mmmmwhat? Sorry? Oh! OH! The Oscar goes to Little Miss Sunshine? Sorry, I drifted off there for a second.

11:15 - If the freaky silhouette number for The Devil Wears Prada isn’t just Anne Hathaway’s profile, then they’ve fucked it up.

Oh hi, Chris! How do you feel about the fact that, when people see you, they immediately get up to pee, heat up their coffee, or get their briefcases ready for work tomorrow? Chris? Why– why are you crying, Chris? Don’t worry, we all have important jobs to do here on the Oscar broadcast.

11:20 - Jennifer Lopez is introduced as an “excellent reason for hi-definition television”, possibly because the Oscar stage announcer has a fetish for visible plastic surgery scars, I don’t know.

The cast of Dream Girls is out to perform whatever the hell songs they’re nominated for. I could have sworn there were three women in the movie, but then again, that’s based on the three commercials I saw for it. For all I know, one of them was Eddie Murphy in drag, disguised to hide himself from the magical genie he accidentally released as part of a hilarious mishap in an antique store.

Oh hey, there’s the third actress.

Oh hey, there’s another song in the medley.

Oh hey, this sure does just keep going and going, huh?

…and the winner for best song… Pan’s Labyrinth!

Naw, but wouldn’t that be great?

11:28 - Queen Latifah and John Travolta are out to give away the Original Song trophy, read off the nominees (75% of which are for Dream Girls) and holy shit, Melissa Etheridge wins.

Awesome. How much do I love the insane upset?

In other news, if Melissa Etheridge could fellate a man, it would apparently be Al Gore. As a matter of fact, I think old Al has had the head of the entire audience in his lap since he got there and again — good for him. There are plenty of ways to win at politics, The Bush Family, so take note: Guess who’s going to be more fondly remembered in the history books, at this pace?

11:34 - Little Miss Sunshine’s montage comes up last on the Best Picture parade, and it’s probably as close to the Best Picture Oscar as it’ll ever get. More’s the pity.

Will Smith comes out, apparently healed from the shame of his son’s earlier lameness, to introduce another montage. This time we’re looking at America through the lens of our movies, apparently part of the diversity celebration.

11:40 - Kate Winslett is next (god I love her), to give the least understood Oscar outside the actual industry: Film editing. It’s awfully difficult to articulate what these people do, but you know it’s important because they give it away at the end of the show… unlike, say, costume design or supporting actor.

The Departed gets it — should I be excited? Is that a good thing? Will this speech take long? — and everyone seems fairly keen on the whole thing. Thelma Schoonmaker looks like everyone’s dream grandmother, shot through the lens of Hollywood and possibly a girlfriend of Santa Claus at some point.

11:44 - Oh hey, Jodie Foster! Where’s she been hiding, I wonder?

Evidently at a gravesite, because what else is more sensitive to someone who’s suffered a recent loss than to give them the duty of introducing the annual death roll?

Happily, one of the most humbling moments in any Hollywood career is one that nobody actually has to see: When their few seconds of footage rolls by, and nobody fucking claps for it.

I wrote fifteen movies! I was in the industry for decades! For the love of God, clapping burns calories! Have some mercy in your– damn you people. Damn you all!

11:51 - Okay, so, Phillip Seymour Hoffman rolled out of the back of his limousine, coughed up four cigarette butts, took a long pull on his bottle of rye, and staggered out to present the award for best actress.

And he still looks less stilted than Tom Cruise did.

Helen Mirren wins for The Queen, much to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Because she’s hilarious, she brings with her on-stage her purse in one hand, and her earring in the other. I wonder what it is about Brit actresses that makes them classy enough to remember to acclaim their fellow nominees, and Mirren in particular for thanking the woman she portrayed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Queen.”

Right on.

After the freaky shadow-people form a gun, Chris is back to make a horrible joke about office pools and remind us about the number of god damned awards left to give out.

Tired.

So, so tired.

12:00 - Ellen has a vacuum out under the front row, introducing tired-out-porn-star-looking Reese Witherspoon. I suggest her new name should be… April Sunrise. Or… Brooke Jordan.

She’s introducing the nominees for Best Actor, and all I can think is that her new name should be Nikita Dawn. Or Jenny Angel.

Forest Whittaker pulls out the win, which is awesome. I shouldn’t rag on him for Species, or for Battlefield Earth, or Phone Booth, because he’s being classy and he looks like he’s earned it.

12:07 - It’s always funny when people rag on George Lucas for never having won an Oscar, but who cares about that, because:

Scorsese for the win!

How awesome is that? I’m not even sure that the The Departed is really that Oscar-worthy, but lord knows that Scorsese is. I’d be one of those people in the elevators or the doctor’s office telling him he should win, and now he finally has.

12:12 - The Queen is the last of the best picture nominees on offer, I think, and it’s one of the few montages that actually makes me want to see the film in question.

Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are giving away Best Picture, and I’m reminded again and again why if I found myself in a runaway cement truck I would probably find myself aiming it at Diane Keaton’s house.

Quit nodding and thumbs-upping me, Diane. Just, stop.

The Departed pulls off Best Picture on top of everything else, so now we get to listen to the producer talk. There are lots of types of speeches out there, and this is sort of the lawn-sprinkler approach — the speaker stands at the microphone, extends an arm, and just systematically washes everyone in the crowd with praise.

Ellen doesn’t even have the chance for a closing joke, they’re so far behind schedule, and so with some popping noises and flying glitter, we’re through it.

Thanks to all of you for sticking through this with me. Congratulations to Al Gore, who no doubt ensured that the glitter is made from recycled Coca-Cola cans, and who apparently has ascended to Bhudda-level spiritual leadership; and congrats too to Will Smith, who once again got snubbed, and whose kid completely shit the bed in his one chance to be Hollywood’s next adorable little tyke.

I can’t wait until next year, and how much more interesting it might be if I’d seen even one of the movies nominated.

Until 2008!