Oscar Talk

I only got to see half an hour of the show before I had to go to work, so there won't be a lot of discussion about the show itself.

First up, some fashion talk.

Every article I read about Oscar fashion this year has Jessica Alba listed as one of the best dressed but I just don't get it.

Jessica is without a doubt one of the most attractive people on the planet, but that dress does absolutely nothing for her. Granted it isn't nearly as bad as this disaster:

How do designers talk beautiful women into wearing ugly ugly clothes? How do designers stay in business when they make crap that looks like that?

My Best dressed award goes to these guys, they really know how to rock a tux:

Ok on to some awards. I'll start where they started on the show, Best Supporting Actor. I saw exactly none of the movies these actors were featured in. George Clooney won, but in my opinion there should be a law that he can never win any acting award as long as there are still copies of Batman and Robin in existence. This category gave us our first indication as to how well the hype machine behind Brokeback Mountain will do.

On to Best Supporting Actress, not only did I not see any of these movies, I hadn't even heard of 2 of them before the nominations came out. Rachel Weisz won for The Constant Gardener, which I assumed was some sort of chick flick about raising flowers but is apparently a story of big business, greed and corruption, geez I have no idea why no one went and saw it with that crappy title. I'm sure Rachel was excellent in it. Brokeback loses again, it's not looking good for Ennis and Jack.

Let's break up the tedium by tossing in an interesting category. Best Documentary went to March of the Penguins, a movie I've raved about in a previous post. If you haven't seen it, you should. Those little penguins are so cute, I want a pet penguin.

Animated Movie of the Year went to Wallace & Gromit. Any year Nick Park is nominated they should just skip the voting and give him the award, his work is visionary, engrossing and always entertaining. Oh and memo to the academy, please stop nominating crappy Anime movies for awards, it only encourages the Japanese to ship another boatload of the crap over here.

As per usual the technical awards went to the movies that the average person had actually seen. King Kong won multiple awards while the viewers at home either took a bathroom break or wondered aloud what the difference was between Achievement in Sound and Achievement in Sound Editing.

On we go to Best Actress, shockingly I have not seen any of these movies either (I honestly do watch a ton of movies, apparently nothing good though). The award went to Reese Witherspoon, who is without a doubt the greatest actress working today, she has managed to convince directors and casting agents the world over that she deserves 20+ million dollar paydays. If that act doesn't deserve an award I don't know what does.

Best Actor went to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, in a movie I also haven't seen. I have seen him in several other movies however and he's always amazing. I wonder if Terrence Howard even bothered to write an acceptance speech. Still no love for the poofter cowboy flick.

Best director went to Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain, I had actually seen one movie in this category, Steven Spielberg's Munich, a superbly crafted tale examining the cyclical violence in the middle east and why it will never end. Of course it's no tale of forbidden love on the Ponderosa....

And that brings us to Best Picture of the Year, which was won by Brokeback Mountain...Oh wait, it didn't win? I thought it couldn't lose? Some movie I haven't seen by Canadian writer/director Paul Haggis won? Cool, I'll have to watch that this weekend.