Welcome to our annual coverage of the Academy Awards ceremony, where each year the best of the cinematic year are rewarded for their work. It’s been a rather unique year that’s being looked at, 2006, and it’s been reflected in the nominees as this is maybe one of the better rounded field in some time. There are no apparent locks, as pundits have gone from a near unified approach to who will and won’t win to nearly every nominee being picked by a major publication to take home an Oscar.
As we sit through the red carpet coverage in anticipation, me and Michaelangelo can reflect upon 2006 as we wait for the coverage to start.
Michaelangelo McCullar: Jesus, This show is notorious for running long and their answer is start it 30 minutes later?
Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz: I guess the key to winning ratings is to annoy everybody by showing extended coverage of PEOPLE WALKING.
Mainly right now we’re watching red carpet coverage, as the requisite fluff interviews of some of the candidates are being conducted by extraneous ABC reporters. Cameron Diaz, Leonardo Dicaprio, Eddie Murphy and Will Smith have been interviewed so far.
Sawitz: At least they have a a clock letting you know how long.
McCullar: That’s nice of them.
Right now we’re getting more video packages and interviews with some of the nominees as well. Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu have interesting things to say about one another’s work. And Kate Winslet talks about her nude scene in Little Children.
Sawitz: So Mike, going into the ceremony what are your expectations?
McCullar: That the four front runners for the acting awards will sweep, that Ellen Degeneres will either be funny as hell or fall flat on her face, and that either Marty Scorsese wins or I’m the lead story on CNN for massacring the population of Dallas.
Sawitz: Where do you see an upset in the acting awards? I think maybe Alan Arkin or Mark Wahlberg might be able to pull it off.
McCullar: it’s possible, especially considering the rumor that a lot of people were annoyed with Eddie’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes and SAGs, but actually I think if there’s any upset it’ll be Peter O’Toole getting a Lifetime Achievement Award for Best Actor. And, though I’m loath to admit it, I think there’s a decent chance Clint wins Best Director, enough to make me 8 cups of coffee jittery.
And HERE WE GO, time to start the Oscars!
Sawitz: How so with Clint?
McCullar: If people aren’t ready to give the Best Director award to such a violent film, then Clint’s is the most logical pick. Especially since it would be a combo award, not just for Letters, but for the accomplishment of making Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers simultaneously.
Sawitz: But it’s a violent war film, though
McCullar: Yeah, but the Academy tends to overlook violence when it’s war related. Plus, let’s give the man his due. Letters is a hell of a movie.
And now we have the opening video packages. It’s focusing on those who haven’t won, as well as some of the nominees.
Sawitz: This video package isn’t funny.
McCullar: Well, it’s trainwreck funny.
The ceremony is starting now, as the spotlight is now on the nominees for the awards.
McCullar: MARTY!!!
And Ellen Degeneres is starting her opening remarks.
McCullar: Dear God, who dressed that chick?
Sawitz: A homeless man?
McCullar: I’m a straight man, and even my eyes are bleeding. A homeless man wouldn’t wear that. She looks like Tony Manero’s retarded love child.
Sawitz: I can’t top that. Just can’t.
Ellen is talking about the Oscars and about the nominees themselves. Mainly she’s talking about the concepts of winning and Oscar speeches, with the crowd giving her a fairly good response.
Sawitz: I hope she didn’t write her own speech. . .this is bad
McCullar: Well, we saw how they neutered Chris Rock when he hosted, so that may be just why they picked her. Can’t we just make Billy Crystal the host in perpetuity?
Sawitz:If they had any guts they’d go completely off the map and have someone like comedian Dane Cook or Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas host. There’d be some crazy stuff coming from them, for sure. And we have our first political shot of the night, as leftist Hollywood goes crazy for Al Gore.
Ellen puts the spotlight on a number of the nominees and briefly speaks about them.
McCullar: You knew it was coming. And screw Dane Cook. How he conned anyone into thinking he’s funny is beyond me.
Sawitz: They should pay Sacha Baron Cohen to dress up as Borat.
Ellen does a brief song and dance routine. Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman are out to present the Oscar for Art Direction.
And the winner is . . . Pan’s Labyrinth. The speech is up now.
McCullar: Beautiful film…maybe the best looking film I’ve seen in years.
Sawitz: It should have been up for Best Picture, to be honest, because if Babel can be there with so much so can this.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is up to present awards for Scientific and Technology awards.
McCullar: I’m torn on Maggie Gyllenhaal…hot or not?
Sawitz: I’d go hot, but I’m a sucker for brunettes. She did get totally buck wild in Sherrybaby. So that might be influencing me somewhat.
Will Ferrell is back after the commercial back doing a song.
McCullar: With the white fro!
Sawitz: Ala Larry Bird in the 1970s, all he needs is the pencil moustache. Ah crap, here comes Jack Black to ruin it all.
Jack Black and John C Reilly join Ferrell on stage as part of the dance number. They initially talk about threatening nominees, and then Reilly talks about balancing comedy and drama.
McCullar: OK, now we’re riding off the rails.
The Oscar for Achievement in Makeup is now up.
And the winner is . . . Pan’s Labyrinth. The speech is up now.
Sawitz: Another big win, wow.
McCullar: Well, I kinda expect Pan’s to do well in these awards. It’s a rip it didn’t get a Best Picture nod.
Jayden Smith and Abigail Breslin are up, presenting for Best Animated Short Film.
Sawitz: Here comes the bathroom break segment of the first hour.
And the winner is . . . The Danish Poet. The speech is up now.
McCullar: Has anyone seen these flicks?
Sawitz: Probably not. No one ever does.
Jayden Smith and Abigail Breslin are presenting again, this time for Best Live Action Short Film.
Sawitz: Now I’ll give you my life savings if you’ve seen any of these.
And the winner is . . . The West Bank Story. The speech is up now.
McCullar: No, but West Bank Story looks like something I should check out
Sawitz: So instead of dance offs we get dueling suicide bombings? Man, that was in bad taste.
McCullar: I couldn’t come up with a witty rejoinder there. It was in funny bad taste.
A video package narrated by Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima is playing.
Sawitz: And Ellen with the first witty joke of the night.
And now there’s a “Sound of cinema” exhibition playing, featuring moments from Oscar-nominated films of the past.
Comment from former staffer Ken Hammond via e-mail: I have no idea what to think of this… but I’m pretty sure drugs would help.
Steve Carrell and Greg Kinnear are up to present the Best Sound Editing award, complete with requisite sound jokes.
And the winner is . . . . Letters from Iwo Jima. The speech is up, and finishes in 30 seconds.
James McAvoy and Jessica Beil are now up to present for Best Sound Mixing.
McCullar: Man, that guy’s got a brogue that would choke most people.
Sawitz: A what?
McCullar: A brogue, a Scottish accent. Scots have brogues. Irish have burrs.
And the winner is. . . Dreamgirls.
Rachel Weisz is up to present the Best Supporting Actor award.
Sawitz: This will be the first big sign of who will win Best Picture.
And the winner is . . . Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine. He’s up to give his speech.
Sawitz: And we have our first big upset of the night.
McCullar: Wow. . . . Guess the voters held a grudge from the Golden Globes, huh?
Sawitz: He was the glue to that film, though, and it kind of died without him. And they found the only clip in The Departed where Mark Wahlberg didn’t curse.
McCullar: What does this mean for Jennifer Hudson? Eddie was awesome in Dreamgirls, so this is a shock.
Ellen does brief interviews with Scorsese and Wahlberg in the aisles. She then introduces a dance number.
Sawitz: With Arkin’s win, what do you think of Little Miss Sunshine‘s chances at winning for Best Picture?
McCullar: That’ll be impossible to predict until Best Director. Arkin’s win was probably more from Eddie backlash than anything else.
Sawitz: You don’t think it was because people felt Arkin had the better performance?
A video package for The Departed is up.
Sawitz: This package makes me want to watch this movie again. Four times in the theater and it still was great.
James Taylor and Randy Newman are up to sing “Our Town” from Cars.
McCullar: Eddie won the Golden Globe and the SAG awards.
Sawitz: Its not a guarantee for an Oscar, though . . .Tom Cruise did the same thing in Magnolia and lost to Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules.
McCullar: But there was a lot of criticism that he was too smug in his acceptance speeches at both awards shows. And Cruise losing to Caine was a travesty.
Melissa Etheridge is up with her song from An Inconvenient Truth.
McCullar: The acting awards are voted on by everybody. So even though the actors thought Eddie was better, the overall Academy was able to give him a pimpslap.
Sawitz: Norbit backlash, maybe?
McCullar: No, Norbit hadn’t been out long enough to impact it. Everything I’d read leading up to this talked about how a lot of voters had problems with Eddie’s acceptance speeches at the awards shows.
Sawitz: Awards are political more than they are about performance, sometimes.
Leonardo DiCaprio and failed Presidential candidate Al Gore. DiCaprio eggs on Gore for an “announcement,” then goes on about the so-called “climate crisis.” They then announce that the awards ceremony has gone “green.”
Sawitz: Maybe if Al Gore didn’t fly in a private jet to the awards, or in promoting his bad movie, I’d take him seriously.
McCullar: Yeah, and how many of these people rode to the show in electric limos?
Sawitz: They just want to talk the talk. . .when one of these millionaires gives up their dozen cars and large estates I might listen. Hell, I’ll settle for one of them in a Saturn.
Ellen is back to riff on the “green” them by recycling some jokes from earlier in her career. Cameron Diaz is now up to present the award for Best Animated Film.
And the winner is . . . . Happy Feet
Sawitz: Kennedy just had a heart attack
McCullar: HA!
Ben Affleck is up now, ostensibly to present a video package about how writers have been presented in the movies.
Sawitz: Whats with all the video packages? If they took 2/3 of them out, the whole blooming thing would be like 20 minutes.
McCullar: Gotta justify their ad rates.
Tom Hanks and Helen Mirren are up to present Best Adapted Screenplay.
Sawitz: Helen’s a good looking older lady, I have to admit. Her and Diane Keaton are still hot and their both quite a bit older than I.
McCullar: Man, can they not find better joke writers?
And the winner is . . . . The Departed
McCullar: WOO!!!
Sawitz: Monaghan took a great script and made into a fabulous, epic crime film. Good call.
McCullar: Of course, if Marty’s getting the shaft, then this would be the logical award for The Departed to win.
And we are officially at the halfway point of the three hour Oscar broadcast. Ellen has a baby carrier for an Oscar trophy. Up to present for Best Costume Design are Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway.
McCullar: Can they stop with the bad comedy?
Sawitz: Probably not.
McCullar: Oh, come on, how hard is it to come up with costumes from 10 YEARS AGO?!?
Sawitz: It is 1997, after all. That’s 10 years ago, which is a real long time ago. Cut them slack, ha.
And the winner is . . . Marie Antoinette
McCullar: Wow…can someone give the costume chick who won some lessons in how to dress yourself?
Sawitz: That’s a chick?
Tom Cruise is up to introduce a Lifetime Achievement Oscar to Sherry Lansing. There’s a video package devoted to her career as a director, producer, studio head and focuses briefly on her non-profit work as well. She gives a speech as well, thanking her family and the Academy. Ellen is back, interviewing Clint Eastwood in the aisles. She eventually gets Steven Spielberg to take a picture of the two of them for her “Myspace” page.
McCullar: God, kill me now.
Gwyneth Paltrow is up to present the Academy Award for Cinematography.
McCullar: Gwyn’s so tainted for me now.
Sawitz: It’s the hair, isn’t it?
And the winner is . . . Pan’s Labyrinth. The speech is up now.
Naomi Watts and Robert Downey Jr. are up to present the Academy Award for Achievement in Visual Effects.
And the winner is . . . . . Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The speech is up now.
McCullar: Meh . . . the second POTC has faded in my mind ever since I saw it.
Sawitz: I know . . . I saw the first one three times in the theater. This one, once.
Ken Watanabe and Catherine Deneuve are up to present a retrospective on foreign language films in the Academy, complete with a video package.
Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett hit the podium to announce the winner for Best Foreign Language Film.
Sawitz: If Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t win it’ll be one of the bigger upsets of the night.
And the winner is . . . The Lives of Others. The speech is up now.
McCullar: Oh, what the heck?
Sawitz: My thoughts exactly.
Ellen is up for more of her wacky shenanigans, this time doing some shadow puppets behind a lit screen. Several gymnasts help her recreate the Snakes on a Plane symbol.
George Clooney is out and quickly makes a joke about Jack Nicholson and Al Gore drinking backstage with him. He’s also there to present the award for Best Supporting Actress.
McCullar: You know, I didn’t much care for Babel, but both women deserved to be nominated
Sawitz: No they didn’t, it was a pedestrian film with pedestrian performances from everyone but Brad Pitt. It’s the homeless man’s Traffic.
And the winner is . . . Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls.
After a commercial break, a video package for Babel is on display. Gael Garcia Bernal is up to help present Best Documentary Short Subject.
And the winner is . . . . The Blood of Yingzhou District
Jerry Seinfeld is on stage now, to present the award for Best Documentary. Seinfeld riffs on theater commercials and picking up garbage.
Sawitz: Ah crap, here comes the Al Gore lovefest.
McCullar: Man, can’t they get Seinfeld to host this shindig?
Sawitz: He’s probably not relevant enough.
McCullar: This is the funniest thing all night.
And the winner is . . . An Inconvenient Truth.
Sawitz: Now there’s a surprise.
McCullar: I am in shock. Shock I tell you. What an upset, because I really thought My Country, My Country had this on lockdown.
Clint Eastwood is on stage, on stage to an orchestral performance of the theme from A Fistful of Dollars.
McCullar: Now there’s a man’s man.
Sawitz: We’re not worthy.
He’s out to present an Honorary Oscar to Ennio Morricone for his work with some of his music work. Celine Dion is about after the video package to perform “I Knew I Loved You.”
Morricone gives a speech, translated by Eastwood from Italian to English. Penelope Cruz and Hugh Jackman are up to present for Best Original Score.
And the winner is . . . Babel. There’s also a 60 second presentation on what the Academy does by its President, Sid Ganis. Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, to the theme of the Spiderman to present Best Original Screenplay. And the winner is . . . . Little Miss Sunshine.
Sawitz: And it just got more interesting.
McCullar: Well, wasn’t it the favorite?
Sawitz: I thought that was Pan’s Labyrinth.
McCullar: I don’t know. The category was a tossup, to be honest.
Gymnasts behind a lit screen move to look like the shoe from The Devil Wears Prada. After an extended commercial break, Jennifer Lopez is on stage to introduce Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson and Jennifer Hudson to sing the songs from Dreamgirls. John Travolta and Queen Latifah are up next, this time to announce the winner of Best Original Song.
And the winner is . . . “I need to wake up” by Melissa Etheridge from An Inconvenient Truth
Sawitz: I called it.
McCullar: How do you have three nominations and lose?
Sawitz: Because you have the Al Gore juggernaut bowling over Hollywood. He can carry a part of L.A, but he can’t carry Tennessee.
McCullar: This makes me yearn for the Three Six Mafia.
After a quick commercial break, we’re back with a video package for Little Miss Sunshine. Will Smith is up to present the video package from Michael Mann, as he present Americana through its movies. Very interesting selection of movies picked by Mann, with some iconic moments of the great movies of our time. Kate Winslet follows the video package with the award for Best Film Editing.
And the winner is . . . .The Departed. Jodie Foster is up next, this time to present a video package for everyone who has died in the past year.
McCullar: Who’s going to come up last?
Sawitz: Anna Nicole Smith, you watch.
McCullar: She died too late.
Ellen is back with some witty remarks about the length of the show. There are only four categories left right now: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is out to present the award for Best Actress.
Sawitz: Is there some sort of rule that Judi Dench gets a nomination every year?
McCullar: She’s a Dame and a Brit…it’s in their contracts.
And the winner is . . . Helen Mirren, The Queen
McCullar: Shock, I say.
Sawitz: I know, never saw it coming.
Up next is a gymnastics demonstration that leads into a gun to symbolize The Departed. Cut to a commercial break, and we come back with Reese Witherspoon presenting the Oscar for Best Actor.
And the winner is . . . . Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.
Sawitz: That’s almost an upset, as everyone had Peter O’Toole walking away with it.
McCullar: Maybe that’s why Eddie didn’t win…the world wasn’t ready for three Black Oscar winners in one night.
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Spielberg are up to present for Best Director. The three exchange some witty banter about winning Oscars for the category.
And the winner is . . . . Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Sawitz: This is so nice to see. Marty stops pandering to the Academy, makes a genre film, and gets the Oscar long overdue.
McCullar: This is long overdue. I just will get very angry if the orchestra cuts him off.
One award remains, and that’s for Best Picture. A video package for The Queen shows, and then Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson come on stage to present the final award.
And the winner is . . . . The Departed
Sawitz: Very nice.
McCullar: Man, I half thought they’d feel like giving Marty his Oscar was enough.
Sawitz: This is a great feather in his cap. . .now he can continue to make great movies. It’s a great way to finish out the night. Any final words?
McCullar: What can I say? I mean, my all time favorite director finally got his just due. I mean, he was the Dan Marino of directors, but now he’s John Elway. And no one can say the flick didn’t deserve it.
Sawitz: This was a rewarding show indeed. Scorsese won for something that deserved the win, the show was pretty entertaining and only went 18 minutes over.
On behalf of the Popcorn Junkies staff, Mike and I would like to thank both people who followed us all night. It was a pleasure and we’ll look forward to covering next year’s awards.
