
Not just for men anymore (TM)
Hey America, it’s time for the Oscars!
I’ve been feeling unable to form complete and wonderful sentences lately. They’ve been turning out half-done and awful. We’re just going to plow through this Oscars ceremony and see if we can get something funny or poignant going. It’s an amazing night every year, right? Lots of glitter. But let’s try to keep the cynicism to a minimum, shall we? While it’s true that nearly every year they pick the wrong film as Best Picture, it’s really more about the spectacle than the statues. This year, I haven’t seen any of the Oscar contenders, so I’m fresh out of opinions on their relative merits. It should be terrific!
The pre-show is on now, and Nearly Ubiquitous Sherri Shepherd (NUSS), Former Model Kathy Ireland (FMKI), and some dude named Jess Cagle are on the Red Carpet being Flavor Flav-style hypemen for Hollywood and all of its wonderful stars. I fully expect a lot of wondering about who is wearing whom, as if we’re all going to go out and buy that designer’s dresses if we think that Kate Winslet looks hot. Which she does, but I’m still not going to buy that dress.
First notable phenomenon of the night: Maggie Gyllenhall is really tall. She towers over the other Best Supporting Actress nominees, but that won’t help her tonight when Mo’Nique of Flavor of Love Girls Charm School beats her. Tall Maggie’s stylish bro Jake is talking to FMKI about his upcoming movie Prince of Persia, and he assures her it’s incredible. She can’t wait for it, because she’s contractually obligated to not be able to wait for it. You know, it’s funny, Kathy Ireland has a super-annoying voice that she’s mitigating by speaking an octave lower than normal tonight. She must have hired a voice coach sometime between Alien From L.A. and now. After she talked to Jake they let her talk to Zac Efron, and she was really enthusiastic about his upcoming projects, too. Apparently he was in something besides High School Musical. Oddly, he was wearing a shirt. I don’t want to be too negative, but he’s useless.
Speaking of, imagine my concern when I saw that Miley Cyrus is in a real live movie with other real actors. Imagine it. I’m asking you to imagine the thoughts that went through my head when I saw the trailer for a Miley Cyrus movie, knowing full well that it will be a hit. Just like “Party in the U.S.A.” I wonder if the movie stars Jay-Z, too. It’s not that I’m against her personally, it’s that I’m befuddled by her continued success in the face of sucking. Oh, that all of us who suck at something could become that popular.
So this happens: FMKI is forced to pronounce “philanthropy” when she interviews a possibly drunk and definitely frisky Morgan Freeman about the bracelets he and his two(!) dates are wearing. I’d make a timely joke about his multiple dates, but one of them is his daughter. Kathy’s super-impressed by those gold bracelets, and the fact that they have something to do with Nelson Mandela. Morgan tried to explain it, but he wasn’t all that lucid.
Matthew Broderick has salt in with his pepper hair. Wasn’t expecting that. Don’t know what to make of it. Totally awesome that he’s not coloring it, though. He looks old. I am old. Ferris Bueller came out when? Over 20 years ago? This sort of revelation is going to keep happening, isn’t it?
Anyone out there going to see the movie with the Twilight vampire and the girl from LOST? What, you don’t have anything better to do? It’s a bizarre combination of two very passionate fan bases. I wonder how much overlap that ven diagram has. In any case, unless the smoke monster fights vampires, I’m not interested. If it does, I’m VERY interested, especially if smokey wins. They need one of those things on True Blood.
Kathy just interviewed the aforementioned Miley Cyrus, and read a script that requires her to tell that hick that she’s “mastered comedy.” I don’t even have a line for this. Am I the only person who realizes that Miley Cyrus is basically the daughter of Cleetus from The Simpsons? People keep giving her contracts in the entertainment business, and she keeps being successful. Please stop supporting her. You’ve probably ruined her life with excess already, but we might be able to save the next one if we stop this lunacy now. Think about Demi Lovato, people. She still has a chance.
NUSS told Jeff Bridges he looks “yummy” as his wife was standing there looking pissed off. He does look yummy, though, in a wolfman kind of way.
On cue, we see Taylor Lautner’s nose. Again, am I the only person who notices this? This child is a sex symbol, and his face looks like it’s melting a la the bad guys at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Neil Patrick Harris kicks off the ceremony with a dirty, dirty song about dropping soap. Dirty. In the audience, all of Hollywood looks old. It’s comforting, really. We are the established generation now. If we wanted to, we could destroy the young. Keep that in mind, Miley.
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are hosting together, and one of the people in the room with me correctly calls the first joke they do before they say it. They’re going very broad here, comedically speaking. Most of their jokes are too bad to mention here, but they bring up Hitler in a joke series about Meryl Streep, and that’s always appreciated. Steve also references The Jerk, and that makes me think of Freaks and Geeks.
Funny thing: Steve Martin’s joke about Hollywood being full of Jews. Really? I did not know this. Yes, I’m an alien who just arrived on earth. Just a stranger here.
Thankfully, that Waltz dude from Germany won for Best Supporting Actor, and not any of the other nominees. All of those roles except the Damon rugby player were extremely creepy, especially Stanley Tucci. Woody Harrellson should have been nominated for Zombieland, not The Messenger or whatever it was called. Hey, Zombieland was one of the three movies I saw this year, so I know what I’m talking about.
I don’t know much about Hollywood, but I know that if The Blind Side wins Best Picture, that town will burn to the ground by the hands of the cultural elite. Nancy Pelosi and Bill Ayers will be first in line. They hate all that normal heartwarming crap. They want Hindu-Communist allegories like Avatar or films that veterans hate like The Hurt Locker. Mostly, they just hate movies where white people and black people succeed without liberalism. In a nutshell, this is why the Oscars is ruined like cheese that’s been sitting on the counter too long.
Animated film is next, and after a cutesy intro to all the films, Up! wins, to nobody’s surprise. Up! is about a balloon that has wacky adventures, I think. The only one of the animated nominees I saw is the last half of Coraline. I need to see that Fantastic Mr. Fox thing. It looks so cool.
Miley Cyrus misspeaks, and the angels cry. Yes, I borrowed that line from The Lonely Island, and it doesn’t have any sort of point, but forget her. Please? I’m sure Oscar ratings will be way up this year solely because of her teenage fake-casual twang. I’ve figured it out: Billy Ray made a deal with the Devil. It’s the only thing that explains all of it – from “Achy Breaky Heart” to “Miley at the Oscars” and everything in between. Either that, or I’m in purgatory.
If I ever do a Playboy spread, one of my turn-offs is going to be giant gaudy rings. I want to see your hands, not a giant rock. Don’t they bother you, girl in that commercial?
INTERMISSION – I need to eat something. Also, the Oscars are kind of boring, don’t you think?
Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey are doing a great bit about actor-writer rivalry, picking up where Ricky Gervais left off at the Golden Globes. I’ll leave you with that for a while as I munch.
While I was gone, the stupid short films that nobody saw this year competed against each other for like 20 awards that nobody cared about. The high point was the speech from the winners in the Short Documentary category, where an insane and very unpleasant older lady pushed a nice gay man (the filmmaker, I think) out of the way and tried to use the Oscar mic to make some point about this documentary that nobody has seen. The subject of the film was smiling away in the audience, and I was wondering why we were hearing from the pushy unpleasant lady instead of her or the nice gay man. They never even explained who this woman was, she just pushed him out of the way and charged him with sexism for not letting her talk first. It was great.
I need to see: District Nine. Up. Up in the Air. That Precious movie, even though it stars Mo’Nique. The writer just won for adapted screenplay, and gave the best Oscar speech ever. He was so affected by it he could barely talk, and he ended up just thanking a few family members and, then, everyone. I might not be able to take that much Mo’Nique in one sitting, though.
Supporting Actress!! You know, I’m against the entire concept of Nine. After Fellini made 8 ½, did he really need somebody to come around 40 years later and add to it? Also, it looks just terrible and racked with male guilt. In other news, Maggie Gyllenhall is still a tall drink of water, and she loves Jeff Bridges. Mo’Nique is still the Ambassador of Seriousness and Positivity, and she predictably wins. She thanks her lawyer, BET, Oprah, Tyler Perry, and the Academy for not choosing a white woman. She phrased it differently, but that’s what she meant. And I’m serious – those are the only people she thanked, besides her husband. Ugh.
Goods: Ben Stiller in Avatar makeup and the touching John Hughes tribute. Bads: An Education. I realize the movie was made for people who aren’t me, but that won’t stop me from being annoyed by it. Watch – it’ll pull an insane upset and win. Wouldn’t be the first time. Shakespeare in Love, anybody? Heck, it’s not like Avatar, the favorite, is a Godfather-level masterpiece. Can we pretend for a while that any of these ten (10!) nominated films can win? Can we exist for a second in that world? No? I’m going away until the real awards are given out. This show is a sham.
Yay! Sandra Bullock won! She seems really nice, and her tattooed extreme husband is crying. They love each other.
Hurt Locker wins, director and picture. Take that, Hindu Communism. Did you notice Babs Streisand mouth “It’s about time” when that Bigelow chick won Best Director? The lesson here is simple: Some people think life should be politicized, rather than bemoan the fact that it is. There’s a subtle difference there. You could argue that as a white male, the only reason I don’t want life to be politicized is that I’ve already gotten everything I want, politically speaking. I am of the Ruling Class or whatever, and see all such politicization as a threat to my power. It’s this (false) assumption about me and my ideals that has turned you into the kind of person that mouths “It’s about time” when a woman wins Best Director at the Oscars, thereby insulting everyone there who isn’t a woman. Congratulations, Barbara – you’re a full-blown arrogant buttmunch.
The problem is that life – and society — goes on whether we like it or not. That kind of naked inconsiderate “f-you” feminism would have made sense in 1980, but this is thirty years later. These days, a woman winning Best Director really is no big deal, even if it has never happened before. It’s a Little Deal. There’s a black man in the White House now. The younger you are, the more that you understand that you don’t have to turn yourself into a political construct anymore. It’s ok to just be a woman who directs a great movie and wins awards. You’ve come a long way, baby. Enjoy it.
And it’s not like she deserved it for directing Point Break, either. If anything, she should be doing penance for that.




