Live-blogging the Oscar telecast
Mar 5, 2006, 07:37 PM | by Josh Wolk
Categories: Oscars 2006
Josh Wolk offered his insights live from L.A. on the Oscar telecast:
4:30 p.m. It’s on to ABC, where Billy Bush talks to Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, who seems to be doing a Christopher Walken impression. But as long as nobody asks him what he’s wearing, he could be doing Daffy Duck for all I care.
4:44 p.m. Oh, Chris Connelly. You asked Felicity Huffman who made her dress. If she starts talking like Christopher Walken, I won’t tolerate it this time.
4:46 p.m. The Desperate Housewives send taped encouragement, but they do it separately, Teri Hatcher and Nicollette Sherdian first, and then Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross. Felicity starts crying when she sees it, not because of the sentiment, but because she knows that this segregated thank-you will mean her possible Oscar win will be drowned out by deafening gossip about which of her four costars aren’t speaking.
4:47 p.m. Jake Gyllenhaal says he’s a little tired about questions about kissing a guy. His interviewer then rolls her eyes sympathetically… and then asks about his show-biz family, a question he’s been answering long before he made Brokeback Mountain.
4:49 p.m. Cynthia Garrett says that this year’s nominees proves that "America is ready to think." Considering she’s now on ABC, home of Wife Swap, her bosses better hope that’s not the case.
4:56 p.m. Billy talks to Sid Ganis, president of the Academy, who, when asked for his prediction, says it’s going to be "a great show." Is he really the best spokesman for a razzle-dazzle industry?
4:59 p.m. Some final fashion chatter from the ABC bunch; they
are breathless over the outfits, as am I… technically -- in that I am
letting out a series of deep, aggrieved sighs.
5:01 p.m. Graphic montage mixing great movie characters of the ages, and their computer generation makes it look like "Sims: Movie Nerds."
5:05 p.m. Very funny opening, with old hosts saying can’t do it; plus, Mel Gibson rediscovers his sense of humor, albeit in Mayan.
5:06 p.m. Bonus: Stewart makes it through the whole thing without doing his collar-tugging, "Oooh!" thing.
5:10 p.m. Tonight’s "night of glamour" better than last
year’s "night of 1,000 sweatpants." Cut to stone-faced Charlize Theron,
who will not have fashion mocked.
5:12 p.m. Charlize Theron has bow on her dress that is the size of a gift-wrapped Jonathan Lipnicki.
5:16 p.m. Stewart introduces Western clips to prove that
Westerns have always been gay, and all the footage is pretty suggestive
-- caressing guns and whatnot. But the effect is subtle, especially
compared to a bit on Conan last week where they interspersed
footage of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood that made them look like they
were having grunting sex.
5:20 p.m. George Clooney wins for Best Suporting Actor, and,
as usual, he is self-depreactaing, charming, and impossible to dislike.
Then he hails the Academy as a group he’s proud to be a part of, since
they’re ahead of its time in progressiveness. And just like that, Ann
Coulter stops swooning.
5:30 p.m. Ben Stiller gives best visual effects to King Kong
with a very funny bit with him thinking he’s invisible in a green
screen suit. And all I can think of is: Very funny, but as soon as he
hands off the Oscar, he’s just a guy wearing a green unitard slinking
off the stage.
5:32 p.m. Orchestral version of "I Walk the Line" played for
Reese Witherspoon’s entrance is what Johnny Cash would be hearing if he
went to hell.
5:35 p.m. Wallace & Gromit wins for animated feature film, and co-directors accept wearing silly bow ties. This what you think is a good idea when you spend a lot of time alone in a room huffing clay.
5:38 p.m. Dolly Parton sings song from Transamerica, wearing different wig than the one she walked the red carpet in. If she wins, she’ll accept wearing dreadlocks.
5:43 p.m. Nice zinger at the Baldwin brothers! It doesn’t matter how infrequently Stephen Baldwin works, he’ll always be working in the punchline industry.
5:46 p.m. When Martin McDonagh wins for best live action
short, the camera cuts to some woman in bleachers crying. Who is she?
Who is Martin McDonagh? What is his movie about? Was Steven Baldwin in
it?
5:49 p.m. Uh-oh. Animated characters are presenting. For the
audience, this must be like watching a precocious 6-year-old do a tap
dance at a family party. Not funny or entertaining, but everyone has to
be polite.
5:51 p.m. Jennifer Aniston always looks like she’s slightly
flinching, as if she's expecting someone to yell: "So what about Brad
and Angelina?" from the audience.
5:52 p.m. Memoirs of a Geisha wins for Best Costume Design. Now it can be advertised as an "Oscar-winning movie," and still no one will see it.
5:52 p.m. And why do costume designers always show up in ugly
dresses? Are they daring people to criticize it? "You think this is
ugly? Really? Because my Oscar says it’s gorgeous."
5:58 p.m. Russell Crowe introduces montage of biopics. Notice
they don’t let him present, because that Oscar statue makes a hell of a
weapon.
6:01 p.m. Chronicles of Narnia wins for best makeup. Star Wars can’t even win in categories that don’t involve crappy writing and directing.
6:03 p.m. Rachel McAdams’ hair is the exact same color as her dress and as the Oscars behind her, and none of it is a color found in nature. Now that is a technical achievement.
6:07 p.m. Rachel Weisz wins for Best Supporting Actress, and the announcer cites her work in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. And even in her most shining moment, a little bit dies inside of her.
6:12 p.m. Morgan Freeman, rocking an ascot! Did the monocle break on his walk out to the stage?
6:17 p.m. Lauren Bacall has had chemistry with many costars. The TelePrompTer is not one of them.
6:19 p.m. The film-noir montage reminds us all of many great
movies. What it does not remind us of, however, is any reason why
they’re doing a film-noir montage.
6:20 p.m. Pimps are "an agent with a better hat." Oh, how
everyone laughs -- and then still hands over their 10 percent. Who’s
the joke on now?
6:23 p.m. Loved the Best Actress campaign-ad bit. Jon Stewart is doing a great job at using Daily Show political humor without being overtly political. And anything that pre-empts Bill O’Reilly from complaining is okay with me.
6:25 p.m. March of the Penguins wins best documentary, and the producers come onstage with stuffed penguins. Thank goodness a Holocaust documentary didn’t win this year, because nobody wants to see a 4-foot-tall stuffed Hitler.
6:27 p.m. For the performance of the nominated song from Crash, extras walk behind singer Bird York in front of burning cars. Better that than shouting racial epithets.
6:34 p.m. Wow, Sandra Bullock’s makeup job is not all that different from Will Ferrell’s.
6:36 p.m. Memoirs of a Geisha wins again, for art direction! Now there are two reasons you think you should see it -- but you still won’t.
6:39 p.m. People must have been warned about droning speeches, because no one’s been thanking agents, lawyer, and publicists, and the audience is the better for it. I’d thank the producers for making this rule, but that would ruin the point.
6:41 p.m. Now we’re getting a montage of political films. But why? I guess the reason for these greatest-hits collections is that tonight is Hollywood’s one night to remind everyone what good, talented, thoughtful people they are, and have been for years. And then on every other night they go back to making things like The Hills Have Eyes and Ultraviolet. Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson, the presenter of this montage, is working on... Snakes on a Plane. Where’s that montage?
6:43 p.m. Keira Knightley has been seated next to Jack Nicholson. (I'm just saying...)
6:47 p.m. Yitzhak Perlman solos through Best Score nominees. Will he be coming back out for "It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp"?
6:52 p.m. Brokeback Mountain wins for Best Score. Which means that all those online parodies that use the song are now Oscar winners, too. Congratulations, Brokeback to the Future!
6:54 p.m. Wow, I think I just saw Jake Gyllenhaal’s heart stop in the middle of his awful patter.
7:00 p.m. This whole evening is anti-DVD propaganda. Ironically, they are proving this by showing old movies that are only available on DVD.
7:04 p.m. Jon Stewart started the evening making jokes about Hollywood, but all with respect. But now, in hour 2, he seems to be losing his patience. Like with that joke about the montages. By the end of the evening, he’ll be calling Steven Spielberg a hack.
7:06 p.m. Meryl Streep seems to have antennae sticking out of the back of her dress. Who is controlling Meryl Streep?
7:12 p.m. The montage introducing Robert Altman’s honorary Oscar is a testament to how vital his work has continued to be -- unlike last year, when Sidney Lumet’s reel began with Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, and ended with Gloria, Guilty as Sin, and his new movie with Vin Diesel in a bad wig.
7:20 p.m. M. Night Shyamalan’s American Express ad airs, and it is a very successful ad for M. Night Shyamalan.
7:23 p.m. During "It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp," the singers are surrounded by dancing whores and pimps. Randy Newman nearly went this way for the Toy Story song, but cooler heads prevailed.
7:24 p.m. The singer has substituted "witches" for "bitches." As if that'll help. There was a group of people who protested the Harry Potter books because they didn’t like their kids learning about the occult. It just goes to show that you can never childproof the world enough.
7:26 p.m. Holy frappe! "It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp" won! That is ducking unbelievable! I just about twit my pants.
7:27 p.m. When Jon Stewart made the joke that "it just got a little bit easier out here for a pimp," show director Louis Horvitz cut to Jamie Foxx. Didn’t we just see a montage praising Hollywood for being progressive?
7:29 p.m. Jennifer Garner is nearly topless. Jennifer Garner is also clearly breastfeeding her new baby. These observations are not related, but I’m just keeping you all up to date on Jennifer Garner.
7:30 p.m. There’s something ironic in the fact that the winning King Kong sound editor could barely get a word out.
7:34 p.m. Applause-o-Meter time: Who’s this year’s favorite dead celebrity?
7:35 p.m. Pat Morita takes an early lead… but here comes Vincent Schiavelli! Who didn’t love Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Oh, Sandra Dee! They should have shown John Fiedler on The Bob Newhart Show; he would have gotten more applause. Schiavellis’s still ahead. Chris Penn! Applause, but they were showing a thinner Chris Penn. A heavier Chris Penn might have been more recognizable.
7:36 p.m. Brock Peters making a good showing… and Shelley Winters takes the lead! But wait, down goes Winters for Anne Bancroft! Good show by Eddie Albert, but he’s no Bancroft. And not even Richard Pryor can beat Anne Bancroft! It’s Anne Bancroft!
7:37 p.m. But the biggest tragedy? Where was Don Knotts?
7:42 p.m. Tsotsi wins for Best Foreign Film! And the producer is sitting in the last row! So begins his long trek to the stage. But he makes the most of his 38 seconds, demanding that the camera show his actors. I’m sure in the control room they were saying, "Actors? That movie has actors? If it ain’t out of Hollywood, I just assume it’s a film strip."
7:44 p.m. Crash wins for Best Editing, and the winner accidentally walks away from the microphone. But it’s okay, they can just edit that out. (Ba dum-bum.)
7:51 p.m. Philip Seymour Hoffman wins Best Actor, but he does not bark like a dog as he told David Letterman he would have to if he ever won an Oscar, as part of a bet he made with childhood friends. Instead, he pays a touching tribute to his mother. Tribute, schmibute -- he's a friggin' welcher!
7:55 p.m. John Travolta appears to be wearing his favorite hair helmet.
7:57 p.m. Memoirs of a Geisha wins for best cinemotraphy. Wow, this really must have been the most gorgeous dull movie ever -- like a rambling history professor wearing a really pretty hat.
8:05 p.m. When Reese Witherspoon thanks her parents, the cameras start to zoom in on her husband, Ryan Philippe, assuming she’s going to thank him… but she doesn’t. She does finally give him lip service, but not as passionately as she did her parents. Mabye if he’d jumped out of his chair like he did at the Golden Globes, he’d have earned some bigger props.
8:12 p.m. The writers of Brokeback Mountain script wins again, and Diana Ossana looks like she’s been summoned to jury duty. Larry McMurtry, on the other hand, looks lke he’s just been summoned from a deep sleep. I can’t wait to see the fashion gurus take him to task for not getting dressed up, and I can’t wait for him not to give them the satisfaction of caring.
8:14 p.m. Torch up the cars again! Crash wins for best original screenplay.
8:19 p.m. Haggis’ cowriter, Bobby Moresco, steps up to the mike just as the music starts, and it’s sad to watch him still try to talk as the orchestra drowns him out… and then continue as even the spotlight dims. Someone oughta make a movie about how some people will keep trying to talk to an audience that can’t hear them… just to try to connect.
8:21 p.m. Ang Lee wins, and makes a "quit you" joke. Shouldn’t he have been the first guy to get sick of that joke?
8:23 p.m. Jack Nicholson: making the Academy Awards all about him since 1985.
8:27 p.m. Wow! Just as I was bemoaning the lack of surprises in this ceremony, Crash wins. Not that everyone wasn’t talking about this being a dark horse, but still, it looked like nothing would stop the Brokeback train. It’s exciting, but mostly because it wasn’t obvious. Now if Jon Stewart would come out at the end and tell everyone that he wouldn’t do this again if they asked him, that would end the evening on a doubly surprising note.
8:28 p.m. Uh-oh -- Paul Haggis’ producing partner Cathy Schulman is thanking financiers. We were so close to an evening without moneymen being thanked. I guess in the end, Oscar night wasn’t so surprising after all.
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