Live Oscar Blog

Hello and welcome to Oscar Night! The live blogging will start with the show but I wanted to check prior to the jump off. Please feel free to comment as much as and whenever you like. Enjoy folks!

7:52- 38 minutes to showtime.

8:25- 5 minutes to showtime.

8:27- 3 minutes to showtime. Chris Connelly seemed jacked to be walking around the Kodak. He's done pretty well for himself considering his modest start on MTV News. Now he is kissing ass on a red carpet. Way to go Chris.

8:30- The show opens with that movie guy's voice (you know, that guy) and a video montage of the nominees mocking the process. Clint lets us know that they were nominated for "Director, Picture, stuff like that", followed by the all the noms who have lost x number of times letting us know their thoughts. Jennifer Hudson is annoying. Forrest Whitake is awesome. Eddie Murphy is silent. Overall, a pretty decent start to show. Then the back patting begins by having all the noms stand up, cheering each other. Marty is grinning like a fool, gotta love his energy. Here comes Ellen...

8:36- ...And she is in a suit. I guess that first part was by Errol Morris. I thought it'd be later in the show. Now I'm alittle disappointed.

8:39- Ellen is stammering and making the audience laugh. Our room is pretty much silent. She makes it known that its the "most international Oscars ever" which I agree is worth mentioning. "Spain is representing" (Oy).

8:42- Poking fun at Abigal Breslin and Peter O' Toole. O' Toole looks like he's enjoying himself on his sixth nomination. We move onto Hudson (who still annoys me but deserves to win). She says something forgettable.

8:45- Speaking of keeping the speechs short, this whole opening monologue shtick should be cut down to like maximum of 5 minutes. A gospel choir just walked as I wrote that. Good god, lets get to Best Sound Editing.

8:47- First Category! Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig to present Best Art Direction. Both look very classy in their restrained outfits. I'm pulling for Pan's.

8:48- Pan's wins! Great film, hopefully the first of a number of wins tonight. A nice short speech.
Next Category with Maggie G. to tell about the Scientific and Technical Awards. No one outside of the industry knows a thing about this or cares. I think its kind of interesting.

8:51- Backlighting with some dancers who tumbled across the stage and formed the Oscar. The entire room just did a WTF.

8:55- Will Ferrell is singing about the Oscars with a huge fro. Guy's got a pretty good set of pipes. Here comes Jack Black! Their chemistry on the first 30 seconds is better than the entire chemistry betwene the entire cast of Crash. John C. Reilly is here too. They're bringing out the big guns! Lets go Carrell! Damn, not looking like it but thats the segment of the show. Hands down.

8:59- Best Makeup is (Let's go Pan's!)... The winner is Pan's! 2 for 2!

9:01- Will Smith's Kid and Abigal Breslin are out there being so cute. The crowd is eating it up. Best animated short is...The Danish Poet. Here comes the kids...Best Live Action Short: West Bank Story which is a musical set in the West Bank. Netflix, here I come.

9:08- Here comes Clint to highlight Letters From Iwo Jima. I love this man in a solidly man to man relationship. I would love to meet him and just sit down and talk about his life. Guy has seen a ton.

9:13- Nice commercial break. This is strenuous. Here comes the Hollywood Sound Effects Choir. They're creating sound effects with their voices. Reminds me of high school choir. Some solid clips behind them. Not a bad segment but no Ferrell/Black/Reilly.

9:16- Steve Carrell and Greg Kinnear here for Best Sound Editing. Good year for Bob Asman/Rob Murray. Letters from Iwo Jima wins.

9:19- James McAvoy and Jessica Biel for Best Sound Mixing. The winner is Dreamgirls. Seemed like an obvious choice seeing as its about "sound" as someone in the room pointed out. Don't know why I would have doubted it.

9:23- Rachel Weisz for Best Supporting Actor, one of the strongest categories of the night. Not a bad choice but I'm pulling for Haley. The winner is...Alan Arkin. The worst of the bunch. Great performance not worth a win in this category. Welcome to the Oscars. Solid speech from Arkin though. Made it almost worth while.

9:27- Ellen talks to Marty. If he doesn't win, I'm jumping out the window.

9:28- The dancers are back behind the sheet. What a waste of money. Just do clips of classic movies instead of this. Wait, they just turned into penguins. Keep 'em.

9:31- Clips from The Departed with Leo talking over them. What a movie this was. A crime classic.

9:32- James Taylor and Randy Newman to sing "Our Town". The sound is awful. Maybe if they worked on that instead of the dancers, we'd be in business. Oh wait, they turned into penguins. Get them to turn into the Tower of Babel and the rest of the show could be silent. I'm crossing my fingers. Melissa Etheridge now. This must be the medley portion of the show. Etheridge is wielding a bitching 12 string.

9:37-Leo and Al Gore. What a lineup for the Liberals. The show has gone "green". Thank goodness. Leo is spurring on Gore to announce his presidency. Gore is playing along and is here to take this opportunity to...be drowned out by the orchestra. O' Toole and Gore were loving it. Hilarity reigns...

9:44- And we're back. Jack is bald. What happened there? It better be for a role or something and not be Chemo. We can't lose Jack yet. Still too valuable to the industry.

Cameron Diaz is coming out to present Best Animated Feature. This seems like a shoe-in for Cars. We'll see. By the way, Diaz has gone downhill since The Mask. Anyway... NOT Cars! Wow, Pixar gets nothing. Very surprising there.

9:48- Nancy Meyers is here with a retrospective on screenwriting with all the expected clips. Sunset Blvd, The Philadelphia Story, Ed Wood, Shakespeare in Love, Misery, The Hours, numerous Woody Allen, Adaptation, The Shining, Get Shorty, More Sunset Blvd. As Good As It gets. Then shot of Jack writing in the audience. Good montage.

9:51- Helen Mirren and Tom Hanks here to present Best Adapted Screenplay. Borat's only choice. The winner is...William Monahan for The Departed. No surprise there. Won WGA, won this and gets cut off by the music. I'll tell ya, Tom Hanks seems to get that the Oscars are so overblown. He seems like one of the most down to earth superstars around.

9:58- The Wes Anderson AmEx commercial is on. I love this thing.

10:00- We've hit the hour left mark. Not a bad show so far. I'm really pulling for Marty.

10:01- Ellen is back with more antics with an Oscar carrier. Best Costume Design coming up from Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt. The winner (righfully so) is Marie Antoinette.

10:08- Cruise is out to give away the Humanitarian Award to Sherry Lansing. Made a lot of good movies at Paramount and did alot of good stuff. Way to be Sherry!

10:12- More antics with Clint. Clint just called Ellen darling. What a classy dude. I love 'em. No script for Clint, he's upset. Marty is lovin in. Spielbegr is going to take a pic of Clint and Ellen for her MySpace page. Clint's date is all about Ellen. Laughing her ass off. Here comes the always radiant Gwenyth Paltrow. She seems a real classical beauty. For Best Cinematography. Should be Children of Men or The Black Dahlia. The Prestige explanation was great. The winner is... Pan's Labyrinth. It's cleaning up, go see it.

10:18- The dancers are back for Little Miss Sunshine. Not as impressive as the penguins or the Oscar but still pretty cool. Still voting for keepin' 'em.

10:21- This live writing is tough. I'm exhausted.

10:22- Robert Downey Jr. and Naomi Watts. Good couple of actors. Great jab out of Downey at himself. I really like him. Best Visual Effects goes to...Pirates of the Carribbean. What a dumb win, what a dumb comment by the announcer about wanting to be a doctor.

10:25- Ken Watanabe and some women who's last name I can't spell is here to do something. Whats her face just mispronous Fellini's name. Give it over to Ken. By the way, he was phenomenal in Letters From Iwo Jima. Clips from Foreign Films. This could be good. Rashomon, Crouching Tiger, Z, La Strada, All About My Mother, Discreet Charm, Fanny and Alexander, The Bicycle Thief, 8 1/2, Cinema Paradiso, Black Orpheus, Amarcord, Nights of Cabria, Life is Beautiful, The Shope on Main Street. Wow, that killed. Such a awesome collection.

Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett here for Best Foreign Film. A good collection, I would really like to see The Lives of Others. Speaking of which, it just won. I'm going this week.

10:35- Dancers are back with Ellen and she just got eaten and then they made the logo from Snakes on a Plane. Wow, that was sweet.

10:35- George Clooney is here and he kills with a joke about drinking with Gore and how he wont be running for President. Coolest man on Earth (Clooney, not Gore). Best Supporting Actress nominees. Blanchett was really good in Notes on a Scandal, by far and away the best part of the movie. This seems like a formality. Hudson is a shoe-in. The winner is...Jennifer Hudson. Absolutely no surprise and definitely deserved. One of the most magnetic debut performances of all time. Seems actually moved. I'll retract my statement from earlier. Seems sincere where I thought she was a hot shot. Go Jen Go.

10:42- Another commercial break. I gotta use the bathroom. This is a struggle.

10:42- Clips from Babel with Inarritu, Blanchett talking over it. Just finished watching this again and its wonderful. I can understand why its divisive but I think its genius. Tremendous filmmaking.

10:43- Eva Green and Gael Garcia Bernal coming out. Bernal is awesome, up there with Clooney as one of the coolest on the planet. Here we go with Best Short Documentary. The Oscar goes to The Blood of Yingzhou District.

10:49- Jerry Seinfeld comes out and does his shtick and it never gets old. Then goes onto to introduce the nominees as five really "despressing" movies. I'm excited for Bee Movie. Should be interesting. The winner is... a shocker, An Inconvenient Truth.

10:58- Putting the finishing touches on the tribute to Ennio Morricone, one of the best composers (may be my personal favorite) of all time. Truely a musical visionary. They just left off Once Upon A Time in the West and The Battle of Algiers off of his list of movies. What the hell, those are two of his best. I guess you can't represent all 400. Well deserved. No way the guy can have an acceptance speech, he can't speak english but here he comes. Its in Italian so even Clint is standing there in confusion. Oh Wait! Clint speaks Italian! Kind of. What a guy. Ennio is cool, Clint is cooler. A great segment.

11:03- Apparently this isn't ending at 11:00. Still got like 5-6 categories to go. Ennio is still going and Quincy Jones was just shown nodding off.

11:08- P. Cruz and H. Jackman are here to weigh in on Best Original Score. Everything but Notes on a Scandal belongs. Can't complain unless its Glass. Babel wins.

11:11- Speech from Sid Ganis. Next.

11:14- Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire are here for Best Original Screenplay. I can't wait to see Pan's again. The winner is...Little Miss Sunshine. WGA nailed it. Two for Two.

11:18- The dancers are back. Eh, Make a shoe for the Devil Wears Prada. Let's keep it moving.

11:21- Commercial.

11:22- J.Lo is on the stage and is apparently a reason for HDTV. I dont know. Here comes a Dreamgirls medley. Should be good. Hudson is truly mesmerizing in this role. Tailored for her. Beyonce is on the case. The music in Dreamgirls was so so good. Its a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed but knew could be better. Can't blame any of the actors though. Really special performances. Here comes "Listen", Beyonce's show stopper. She is quite the talent. Has handled herself prefectly in her career and has no where to go but up. One of the better pop stars of today. I'll be excited to sit down again and watch it on its own terms, knowing fully what to expect. Here comes the gospel choir and its working. The music is tailored to be sung to the rafters. Cate Blanchett was just shown looking disinterested. Bill Condon is loving it. Good performance. Going into the last half hour.

11:30- Queen Latifah and John Travolta here for Best Original Song. Etheridge for her song from An Inconvenient Truth. The Academy must like the 12 string.

11:36- Clips of Little Miss Sunshine with clips of Steve Carrell. Still am unimpressed.

11:37- Will Smith coming out to give out something. Nevermind Michael Mann is doing clips. Sign me up! Clips about the American identity confronting race, religion, gender, TV, violence, the movies themselves, war, heroism, presidency. Decent montage. Mann could have gotten more out of that. Slightly disappointing.

11:42- Here is Kate Winslet to give Best Editing. She's awesome, best actress going. One of the people in our room just said being a film editor would be a fun job. I agree, difficult but worthwhile. The winner is... Thelma Schoonmaker for The Departed.

11:46- In Memorium, always touching.

11:51- Down to the wire, five awards to go. Let's go Marty!

11:54-Ellen updates that we still have several awards to give out. Thanks for the update, shut your mouth, get to the awards. PS Hoffman is coming out for Best Actress. P. Cruz is radient. Judi Dench is MIA (Ellen said it was because she's getting a boob job). Helen Mirren will win. Meryl Streep was great but has won enough, next. Kate Winslet needs to win one of these times.

Helen Mirren wins. Very elegant, very tasteful, very British. She ends by holding up her trophy and saying "I give you the Queen". Odd.

11:59- We just had more dancers behind the sheet, made a gun and somehow shot something. I hope it wasn't a head. Chris Connelly is shown once again walking backstage recapping the show. Is this necessary at 12:00?

12:02- Ellen is vaccumming. I'm not kidding. Get on with it.

12:04-Reese Witherspoon to give Best Actor. Looking for Forrest Whitaker here and it is...Mr. Whitaker. Seems like a great guy, well deserving. Should be a good speech.

12:05- And it was, seems geniunely moved. I really like him and am glad to see he has gotten his due. Was not the basic thank you but a speech from the heart. Congrats Forrest, enjoy it. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

12:09- Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg are here for Best Director. I'm geniunely nervous. Come on Marty. MARTY WINS! Standing ovation. Should be an awesome. The crowd is going nuts. We're watching history. He gets the monkey off the back. Marty looks and sounds like he is going hyper-ventilate. The audience looks legitimately happy for Marty.

12:16- Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are out for Best Picture. The Departed takes it. Decent show, good awards. Marty's win makes it all worthwhile. I'll be back tomorrow to wrap it all up. Now, I'm going to bed. Hope you enjoyed the 2007 Oscars, good night!