Cinema Hype

I tried not to put off watching The Great Ziegfeld, the Best Picture for 1936. After all, I’d just gotten back my momentum after quitting and starting again hiatus, and I do love a musical with large, expensive song-and-dance numbers. But then Pauline Kael had to go and say mean things about it—”It goes on for a whopping three hours, but through some insane editing decision Fanny Brice is cut off in the middle of singing ‘My Man’…a lavish, tedious musical biography,” she said—and it languished by the DVD player for a few weeks before I finally summoned the strength to watch it.

Kael gets the salient points right: lavish, musical biography, three hours, Fanny Brice cut off mid-song. As for the “tedious” comment…maybe, but to be fair, nothing here is either more or less compelling than any other overlong biopic. If anything, The Great Ziegfeld (the story of Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, of The Ziegfeld Follies fame) is probably more the granddaddy of movies like Ali and The Aviator than anything else. Nothing really happens, per se, but then that’s sort of the problem with a lot of biopics: people with interesting lives don’t necessarily adhere to the kind of beginning-middle-end sequencing that we’re so used to. Aren’t all biopics at least a little boring?

Then there’s the catch-22 of the musical numbers. The Great Ziegfeld is three hours and six minutes long, and punctuated by examples of Ziegfeld’s famously extravagant musical numbers. By fast-forwarding, the impatient viewer can shorten the running time by twenty minutes, easy (by “musical numbers” we’re not talking “They’re Doing Choreography”; more like enormous, round parade floats rotating onstage). But fast-forwarding here is a little like munching on raisin bread and eating around the raisins. If you’re going to watch three hours of this guy’s life, shouldn’t the musical numbers sweeten the deal? I suppose it depends on the crowd and the crowd’s affinity for ladies singing under parasols. I’ll leave it up to you.

As for Kael and the Fanny Brice complaint, I’ve got to agree, and extend it to the supporting cast. William Powell doesn’t do much to distinguish himself here as Ziegfeld, but he’s surrounded by apparent geniuses doing what they do best. First, there’s Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz three years later, practically dancing holes in the stage; then there’s Luise Rainer, who won the award for Best Actress (and won again the next year), as Ziegfeld’s star-struck first wife. And finally there’s Brice, who’s like watching Gilda Radner’s grandmother, and who’s like a jolt of comic energy in the middle of all the languid chorus girls and their parasols. Fantastic.

With 82 years of hindsight since the 1936 Academy Awards, it’s fairly obvious that The Great Ziegfeld had to win Best Picture. It was MGM’s most expensive movie to date—production cost $2 million—and the investment paid off in terms of spectacle and later in terms of box office success. Maybe it wasn’t the best picture of the year (surely also-ran My Man Godfrey beats it for plot and dialogue?), but it sure was the biggest.

The Great Ziegfeld, Florenz Ziegfeld, 1936, Academy Awards, Project 501, William Powell, Luise Rainer, Ray Bolger, Fanny Brice

As I work my way through the annals of good movies and movies that seemed good at the time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Oscar for Best Picture. It can be a confusing category, especially viewed over time. There are patterns, certainly (so many war movies!), and then there are winners that buck the trends completely. Sometimes it’s hard to see where the Oscar voters are coming from. Not to get all philosophical, but what is “best,” exactly?

For many years, my writer-geek mind has aligned “best picture” with “best screenplay.” Because what is the backbone of a film if it isn’t story, character, and dialogue? It seems to me that an exceptional script should result in an exceptional film regardless of whose hands it ends up in.

But maybe, I’m thinking, the Best Picture Oscar is an award for execution rather than theory, and for collaboration rather than specialization: who made the best combination of script, director, cast, and equipment? This is why Best Picture winners tend to be on the epic side: Oscar voters are about aiming high and pulling things off, about wide-angle rather than extreme close-up. It’s also why, to pull an example from this year’s nominees, Juno never really stood a chance in the Best Picture race. Juno was well-written and well-acted, but it was so much less complex, production-wise, than any of the other nominees that it didn’t really deserve to win. (Excellent screenplays for the other nominees didn’t help, either.)

I think this law-of-averages tendency makes a certain amount of sense—there’s something to be said for achieving ambitious goals, after all, and sometimes everything really does come together—but I also think it accounts for the number of head-scratchers on the past-winners list. After all, special effects age quickly. Acting styles go in and out of fashion (see: Clark Gable, shoutiness, Mutiny on the Bounty). Without any particular area of excellence, sometimes it’s hard to see what, exactly, seemed like such a good idea at the time. We end up honoring movies that are good, that sometimes speak to the times, but the great is the enemy of the good, and maybe a little more specialization wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. On the other hand, maybe that’s why we have categories for screenplays, acting, directing, and cinematography, and maybe the combination really is better than the sum of its parts.

I’m just saying: I think I get it now.

Oscars, Project 501, Academy Awards, Oscar winners, Mutiny on the Bounty, Clark Gable, Best Picture, Juno

When making an exciting but long-overdue comeback, is it best to sneak in the side door or to march up the front steps, flaunting one’s own late but eminent worth? We at CH are all for the latter—being occasionally late ourselves, not that we’d ever admit it—and so we say: Project 501 is back! It’s been a long vacation, but the chronological Oscar train is running once again, and so we’re starting up with the 1934 Best Picture winner, It Happened One Night. Like, now.

Feeling as I do about the current state of romantic comedies, my curmudgeonly little heart watched It Happened One Night and wondered why they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. In fact, I’ve decided that they do make ‘em like that anymore—or, in any case, they try. In fact, I’m testing the theory that all modern romantic comedies are the inheritance, or maybe imitators, of this one movie.

There are plenty of things in It Happened One Night that aren’t so common to the modern romantic comedy. Long, chatty scenes, for one thing. Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable spend a lot of time together, talking the whole time, and we’re there to see it all. No quick cuts here; just talk, talk, talk. These two are what the average therapist might call “verbal processors.” Indeed. There are also twin beds (how Pushing Daisies!), showing some leg to speed up the hitchhiking process, and—spoiler ahead—a total lack of kissing at the end, which generally doesn’t fly today.

But there are also lots of things that we see over and over again in romantic comedies generally, and maybe it’s a case of doing those things better rather than a case of doing them first—i.e. I’m not claiming these were new story elements, even in 1934—but it’s a little uncanny seeing a million other well-known and well-worn tropes played out in this one story. There’s the falling-asleep-on-the-other-person’s-shoulder bit, the pretend-marriage-to-distract-skeezy-stranger thing, and most importantly, the race to prevent a tragic misunderstanding and therefore save the relationship (Notting Hill, anyone?). Gable and Colbert are perfectly adorable—who knew pre-Rhett Butler misogyny Gable was so cute?—and they play all of these iconic scenes in such a way that imitation is inevitable. This may be the token romantic comedy, the Juno of its day, but it’s aged well and made its mark. Nicely done.

Next up: Mutiny on the Bounty! More Clark Gable!

It Happened One Night, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Notting Hill, Juno, Oscar winner, Best Picture, 1934, Project 501

Yep…those were the Oscars. Not to wish for the “ooh, heads are going to roll for that one” moments, or anything, but couldn’t Christine Lahti have, I don’t know, gotten stuck in the bathroom? Cher in a dominatrix costume? Dead-swan dress? Anything? This was a year of genuinely good movies and, apparently, even better behavior: not a glitch, not an embarrassing outfit, not a naked person in sight. Just Jon Stewart and his Gaydolf Titler joke.

If you didn’t actually feel like sitting through the three-and-a-half-hour ceremony, there were a few minor upsets, and by “upsets” I mean “circumstances in which CH’s predicted nominee did not win”: Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton, for example, and No Country for Old Men’s victory over There Will Be Blood, which was beginning to win prediction pools the way Barack Obama wins primaries. In the Best Song category–which actually, for once, featured songs that one might call best–Irish musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova gave the best acceptance-speech moment of the evening by being beside themselves with excitement and general adorability. Exactly how cute were they? Stewart invited Irglova back out to finish her speech when it was cut off by the music. You might say you’ve captured the heart of America when a man who gets paid to make fun of people tells the music to lay off and let you talk.

Other than that, though…the men wore black, with no lapel notches; the women wore column dresses with flowy hems; the Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor (no crazy Forest Whitaker action this year. What is this, the People’s Choice Awards?). Stewart made the best of a sketchy situation. All was as it should have been, probably.

Now. What’s next?

Oscars, Academy Awards, Tilda Swinton, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Day Lewis, Jon Stewart, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men

You know, in a tux? Jon Stewart looks downright tall.

Ah, the magic of film.

Oscars, Jon Stewart, Academy Awards

Today’s the day! It’s the Super Bowl of the cinematic year, that day upon which millions of Americans wake up with just a snatch of a song in their ears: the “Hollywood” song that nobody really knows the words to (”HOLL-ywood! La la la la la la la HOLL-ywood!” Just me? Really?). It is, finally, the awards show that we all love to watch and then pretend we don’t love to watch. And we at CH are READY. Bring it, Jon Stewart, with your snarkiness and your “Wow, I’m doing this again?” attitude.

We covered the actor/actress categories earlier, but far be it from CH staff to shirk our duties and leave the behind-the-scenes categories out. And so, our picks for Best Picture and other miscellaney:

Best Picture

Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Who we like: Atonement (….Surprise!)
Who will probably win: Some years, Atonement or No Country For Old Men would take this field without a hiccup. But there’s no betting against There Will Be Blood.

Best Animated Feature Film

Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf’s Up

Who we like: Persepolis, for being unlike anything else, ever.
Who will probably win: Ratatouille, for being all-around lovely. Really.

Best Directing

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Who we like: We *heart* the Coen brothers! (No Country for Old Men)
We will probably win: If anybody can beat Blood, it’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

That’s it. See you all after the red carpet!

Oscars, Academy Awards

Doesn’t it seem suitable that the Academy Awards are always on a Sunday? After all, this isn’t the Grammys, settling for any old weeknight broadcast; Oscar Sunday is like a high holy day of the cinematic year, complete with decorations, little gold statues, and special clothes. With the writers’ strike over, this year’s ceremony feels a little extra fancy, a little more exciting—not necessarily because the nominees are especially surprising or especially deserving (though maybe they are; there were some pretty good movies out in 2007), but because it’s happening at all.

Here at CHHQ, since we won’t actually be on the red carpet (clearly an oversight, but whatever; we’re forgiving) we’re just looking forward to the chance to put our feet up, eat some Cheetos, and pretend to critique the year’s best films (with righteous indignation as appropriate) while actually critiquing the clothes on our favorite celebrities. Sue us, okay? We’re only human. And it’s not like we haven’t given some thought to the nominees. This year, we’re splitting our prediction post into sections: people now; movies later. Here are the official CH bets for Sunday’s ceremony:

Best Actor in a Leading Role

George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Who we like: Let’s go with…Mortensen, for being a bit of a dark horse and for offering an excellent performance. Naked.
Who will probably win: Day-Lewis, with that intense-eye thing he does. Whatever. We’re still in a fight after Gangs of New York.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

Who we like: Marion Cotillard
Who will probably win: This is a tough one. Normally I’d go with Blanchett, but I think voters will save her for her other nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category. Linney and Christie don’t seem likely. Which leaves Cotillard and Page; Page might sneak in a win if the voters are feeling their indie oats, but otherwise it’s probably going to be Cotillard.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Who we like: Casey Affleck, because he has potential and because we love the title of his movie.
Who will probably win: Rough crowd, man. A vote against Hoffman seems risky, but we’re going to say Bardem.

Supporting Actress

Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There.
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Who we like: Saoirse Ronan, for being the perfect caught-up, guilty, oblivious Briony Tallis.
Who will probably win: Blanchett, because she’s there.

Coming soon: Thoughts and predictions on the non-casting categories! Keep your eyes peeled. (Ew.)

Academy Awards, Oscars, Oscar nominees

Looks like 2007 wasn’t such a great anti-war-movie year, after all.

The Academy Award nominations came out today, and in a year studded with dramas about war in Iraq, the Best Picture field contains one war movie and two films taking place in the desert, but neither is about war in the desert. Go figure.

No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood—which, at least they’re being honest with the title, right?—are at the top of the nominations list, with eight nominations each. Atonement and Michael Clayton, which nobody saw despite Intern George, got seven each, and Juno, which teaches us that movies can be funny and actually win awards, got four.

This year’s Best Actor and Best Actress categories are eye-rollingly predictable—it’s pretty obvious that people nominate Cate Blanchett just for getting up in the morning, which somehow becomes less charming every year, though I guess it’s not her fault—but the Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress fields should give us something to argue about for awhile. Javier Bardem vs. Philip Seymour Hoffman! It’s a character-actor rumble! And might Saoirse Ronan actually win for her spot-on performance in Atonement? One hopes, but again, there’s the Blanchett factor.

The ceremony—assuming it happens, of course, and that Jon Stewart doesn’t have to suffer through some horribly awkward press conference—is February 24, and CH will be blogging along. Come! Join us! We love company! And we’ll be even happier if our favorites win. In the mean time, expect plenty of Oscar gabbery.

Oscars, Academy Awards, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Atonement, Cate Blanchett

I couldn’t do it, you guys. It was all just a shadow of its former self: no red carpet, no “this is like the Oscars only way less stuffy” comments, no Joan and Melissa Rivers asking inappropriate and possibly drunken questions on the red carpet. Just Mary Hart, a TelePrompter, and imaginary tumbleweeds drifting by in the background. I wanted to watch the announcement of the Golden Globe winners, but I couldn’t. The lack of sequins and organza was just too depressing.

A look through the nomination list—the actual awards—is actually pretty heartening: there were some Good Things (TM Martha) going on in 2007, on the big screen and the small. Atonement; Julie Christie (winning the most cliched field out of the bunch); Daniel Day-Lewis; Johnny Depp; Cate Blanchett; Sweeney Todd; No Country for Old Men; Ratatouille. Most of the winners aren’t that surprising (Blanchett wins, I think, just for existing at all), but they aren’t usually the only obvious choice, either. Who’s going to tell the
Coen brothers they don’t deserve a screenwriting award? Come on.

And so I say: three cheers for awards, for giving credit where credit is due, and for giving a few people recognition for a job they’re currently not allowed to do at a ceremony they can’t write for. Next year let’s let those writers get up onstage in their not-as-glamorous outfits (writers always look so bewildered at these things) and take a real bow, shall we? You can even invite Mary Hart if it’ll make you feel better.

Golden Globe Awards, Golden Globes, HPFA, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd, Atonement, Julie Christie, Coen brothers, No Country for Old Men, Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Ratatouille, Mary Hart

This just in from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Hello! Hola! Bonjour! Konichiwa! Merhaba! We realize that the winter solstice holidays have yet to arrive and that the real awards-film race is really a January affair. But we are the Hollywood foreign press! We interpret the goings and comings of the Hollywoodites for the benefit of the avid reading public back home! Or we cover the affairs of Vancouver (the Hollywood of the north) and Riga (the Hollywood of the Baltics) for the avid reading public in the Hollywood hills! You decide!

But…continuing on. We know that you, the American public, have not yet feasted from the table of fine filmic fare slated for the winter of 2008, and we are sympathetic to your plight. But we feel compelled to remind you: WE HAVE, thanks to the joy of early press screenings! NYAH, NYAH, NYAH. For the likes of our scritch-scratching pens and clip-clapping typewriters, no press junket is too exclusive, no screening too far ahead of the release date. For the rest of you, well…sorry. We have heard the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin’s Charlie Wilson’s War screenplay with our own ears. We have experienced Johnny Depp’s singing voice–like a waterfall of honey flowing over a cliff of diamonds–in stereo! And yes, we have witnessed the glory of your all-time favorite comic actors collaborating on Juno. We have, and you’ll just have to wait until it comes to the local cineplex. HA! (Not to rub it in your face, or anything. It’s just that we have to report to all the folks back home. You understand.)

As for Michael Clayton…yeah, we didn’t see that either.

For a full list of the nominations (and don’t worry; you haven’t heard the last of CH Golden Globe chatter), see here.

If you can’t wait, see here.

Golden Globes, Golden Globe nominations, HFPA, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Aaron Sorkin, Charlie Wilson’s War, Sweeney Todd, Johnny Depp, Juno, Michael Clayton, George Clooney

When it all comes to an end, when I’ve finished Project 501 and have to find some other quixotically obsessive pop-culture quest (Academy Award winners, in chronological order, by Best Supporting Actress!), I believe I know what my final words will be: “Thank goodness for the library.” What would we do without that repository of ancient VHS tapes, the last bastion of the Netflix-free world? I know I wouldn’t have finished the Project. Not even close. I would have been stuck: stuck in 1933, on a movie that doesn’t exist on DVD and probably doesn’t spur many video-tape sales, either.

It’s a sad thing. But anyway.

Cavalcade is a fine film. It’s sensitive, in an epic sort of way. Diana Wynyard is lovely and sympathetic as the requisite long-suffering maternal figure. There are lives and loves lost, wars fought, hardships overcome. The screenplay, based on a Noel Coward play, moves along without being glib. One scene–which I won’t describe on the off chance that somebody is actually going to rent the Oakland Public Library’s one VHS copy–has one of the finest plot-point reveals I’ve seen on film. There is much to enjoy about Cavalcade.

There are just two minor setbacks: first, “epic” does not necessarily equal “memorable.” Cavalcade is about real events, and it was probably a truly moving film in its day. Unfortunately, so many other 20th-century films have done “epic” so much better that it’s not so surprising that Cavalcade would get lost in the shuffle. It’s kind of too bad, but it’s also not quite striking enough of a film to have made its mark.

Second, it’s one thing to make a film about Change and the Decline of Society in the 20th century. It’s something entirely different to make that film in 1933. The temptation is to tap this movie on the shoulder and say, very politely, “Um, you missed a few things.” And of course nobody could know about World War II or the other myriad things that went on in the other 67 years before the millennium, but you’ve got to admit that, mathematically, 1933 was unlikely to be the high point of the century, excitement-wise. Basically, it’s dated. Sweet, but dated.

Next up: It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Cavalcade, Academy Awards, Best Picture, Project 501, Noel Coward

Watching Oscar winners is an epic proposition in both senses of the term–the watching of eighty major films is time-consuming, certainly, but I’m talking about the kind of film that tends to win Best Picture. The Academy voters definitely skew towards the Achievement film: they like the big, the expensive, the elaborate, and the heavily-costumed. Surprisingly, then, Grand Hotel, the Best Picture winner in 1932, must have had a large casting budget and not much else: the film stars Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and both Lionel and John Barrymore, but takes place in an enclosed location (the aforementioned Grand Hotel) with more or less nothing in terms of effects or architectural shots. (Does this make it the Studio 60 of Oscar winners?) The absence of bells and whistles makes Grand Hotel stand out in the Best Picture roll call, but it doesn’t lessen the quality of the movie–by virtue of quality writing and a creme-de-la-creme cast, the film is definitely worth watching.

William A. Drake’s adaptation of the German novel Menschen im Hotel has that mid-century American feeling that so few modern films have: light and efficient, even in the face of heavy character development and impending tragedy. The film tells a sort of ring-shaped story about the beautiful people staying at Berlin’s swankiest hotel in the 1930s, where, we’re told, “nothing ever happens.” There’s a terminally ill man discovering life in the shadow of death, a temperamental ballerina, a beautiful and street-smart stenographer, her bullish boss, and the axle turning the wheel, a cash-strapped baron–nobody really seems to leave, and we get the sense that these characters are as interchangeable as the new Ford motor parts, but nothing here is boring. Everybody is connected, everybody has needs–some of which remain tragically unmet–and everybody stands to lose something important. In short, there’s not much action, but there’s plenty going on.

And then there’s the cast. Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford were the same age–both born in 1905. So how is it that Garbo comes across as the patron saint of the 20s melodrama, while Crawford feels like the most modern of modern girls? Perhaps it’s the roles they play–Garbo is a depressed, smitten ballerina, and Crawford a sarcastic, pragmatic working girl (not in that sense; she’s the stenographer). Either way, Crawford practically pops off the screen, while Garbo just threatens to faint at any moment. The comparison is striking, and an interesting insight into women of the 1930s–we’ve got old-world vs. new century living in the same hotel. There’s also John Barrymore as the aging, impoverished baron-turned-cat-burglar, and his performance is not to be missed (though, it should be noted, none of the cast were nominated for performance Oscars for this film). He’s believable in both parts of his role–the debonair man-about-town and his desperate, ashamed private self (and also bears a striking resemblance to his famous granddaughter, who is very modern in her own right).

The upshot: A small but thoughtful and very watchable film. Definitely worth a rent.

Next up: Cavalcade (1933); It Happened One Night (1934)

Project 501, Oscar winners, Grand Hotel, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, classic film

I think we all know the feeling. (Or, well, maybe it’s just me.) You’re sitting in the movie theater, and suddenly it hits you. “I know what’s going on here,” you say to the casting director in your head (just me, again?). “You wanted Brad Pitt for that role, didn’t you? And he turned you down. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” And there you are, watching, I don’t know, Hayden Christensen instead, and you’re pretty sure you’re not the only one missing Pitt.

It happens all the time–there are only a certain number of truly talented and/or truly famous actors out there, and they can’t all be in all of the movies all of the time. Famous people are busy and expensive, and studio execs like having their schedules and their budgets, and so we get Lara Flynn Boyle instead of Nicole Kidman. It happens.

Sometimes the substitution works out. We’re told that the role of Frank in Little Miss Sunshine, for example, was originally written with Bill Murray in mind. But can we really see Murray plugging along in the back of that van in the first place? Little Miss Sunshine would suddenly have become “that Bill Murray movie” instead of the real ensemble piece it was destined to become. Steve Carell turned out to be a heartbreaking and far less hackneyed choice. Kudos to the scheduling issues!

Much of the time, though, it’s just not the same, even if they try to get us not to notice. We at CH like to call these the Poor Man’s Awards:

Aidan Quinn, poor man’s Gabriel Byrne
Joey Lauren Adams, poor man’s Renee Zellweger*
Ellen Pompeo, poor man’s Renee Zellweger*
Jon Voight, poor man’s Nick Nolte
Jon Voight, poor man’s Christopher Walken
Edward Burns, poor man’s Edward Norton
Monica Potter, poor man’s Julia Roberts
Dermot Mulroney, poor man’s Patrick Dempsey
Eva Mendes, poor man’s Salma Hayek
Kathy Baker, poor man’s Sally Field
Stephen Baldwin, poor man’s Alec Baldwin
Billy Baldwin, poor man’s Stephen Baldwin
Elizabeth Banks, poor man’s Rachel McAdams

Now, we’re not saying that the “poor man’s” side of the list is bad, necessarily. Some of these people are fine actors with fine careers in their own rights (others…really are that bad, and we’re sort of sorry for pointing it out). It’s just that they’re less expensive, less busy, and less recognizable than the “rich man’s” side of the list. And sometimes, well, it shows.

So, readers, let’s hear it: who are your favorite or un-favorite B-list substitutes?

*We see that being Renee Zellweger’s less-expensive stand-in must have its perks, but two of them? Come on, Adams. You’re the Amy they’re Chasing! YOU CAN DO BETTER. Pompeo, well, we’re not so sure.

awards, actors

Cormac McCarthy has made it. Finally! Success! A reputation for harsh, beautiful writing about the American West! Cash money! Now, I hear what you’re saying. Sure, he’s already won a Guggenheim and a MacArthur grant. Oprah loves him. And yes, I suppose he did win the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction yesterday, and I’m sure that was a very touching moment for him. But I think we all know the real high point of McCarthy’s career: the day he received an IMDB entry of his very own.

According to the Database on High, only one of McCarthy’s eleven novels and two plays has been adapted to film so far: 2000’s All the Pretty Horses, starring Matt Damon and improbably directed by Billy Bob Thornton. But that’s about to change–Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men (directed by the Coen brothers!) are slated for the big screen in the next two years.

Yes, McCarthy’s time has come: his time for fame, fortune, and worldwide readership. Now if only he could get a picture on his profile.

As promised, Watch Along with Cinema Hype!

So, we should be getting to the pony just about….now. Or is it one-armed push-ups? I can never remember. Or, well, we could just do the love child InStyle Magazine’s coverage of the Independent Spirit Awards and a Mac commercial. That could work, too.

What, you’re going to tell Ellen she can’t have a gospel choir if she wants it? She’s Ellen. She’s nice. It’s like telling Shirley Temple she can’t have a lollipop.

Say what you will about a musical number with Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly; it sure beats Ben Stiller in an invisibility suit.

West Bank Story. Heh. Now I want to meet that guy.

Why am I doing this gig when, clearly, my life’s work is to be a member of a sound-effects choir? If only I could whistle.

The Academy has finally found the key to making Americans tune in for the sound-mixing awards: let a Scottish man read the names. James McAvoy is practically reciting the phone book, and we don’t even care. It’s like James Bond cavorting on the moors up there. Good call, guys.

Djimon Hounsou, you are very handsome, but you are neither blind nor Jack Nicholson and therefore must leave your sunglasses at the door. Capisce?

I like you, Al Gore, but…did you, by any chance, leave the hanger in your tux jacket? Someone should probably have said something to you before you left the house, no?

“Coming up, more Ellen…” Well, I hope so. Did she wander over to the Hooters across Hollywood Boulevard, or something?

Did…did my Congressman just win an academy award? Such a renaissance man! All this time I thought he was just representing the children of America to the House of Representatives, when really he was out shopping for that scarf.

I just figured out what Ellen looks like in those pants! She’s a marching-band director! Knees up! March in time! Will someone give that woman a baton?

“Literally eye candy?” Are you sure? Because that’s got to hurt.

How can we Americans claim to have legitimate cinema when, clearly, film reached its peak in Italy in the 1960s? We’re all sliding down a big, steep hill of suck now, and it makes me sad. Let’s all just wear cute skirts and ride around on bikes, okay?

Oh, George.

There’s a reason Beyonce isn’t up on that stage: if she could act, she’d look a little less pissy about Jennifer Hudson right now.

Davis Guggenheim totally just forgot his wife’s (Elisabeth Shue’s) name on national television. Someone’s sleeping on the Barcalounger tonight, dude.

Ennio Marconi on Celine Dion (translated from the Italian): “I forgot to buy bread and toilet paper at the grocery store yesterday. Crap.”

What? We’re supposed to get HD TV because of J-Lo? So we can watch the video for “Jenny From the Block”? With a really clear picture?

Aww, Bruno Kirby died. I forgot about that. “Pesto is the quiche of the eighties,” indeed.

Helen Mirren, The Queen. Shock! I was betting on Penelope Cruz, you know?

Also, if I ever accept any kind of major award, I want to take speechwriting classes from Mirren. She makes me want to sit in her kitchen and make witty but self-deprecating conversation while drinking good English tea.

…and then there’s Peter O’Toole, who somehow makes “legendary actor” look mysteriously like “skeeze.” Thanks, man.

So, The Departed. Really? That’s…are we sure? Huh. Okay. I think I’m still getting over residual Gangs of New York bitterness. But….well, sure. I’ll add it to the list.

That’s the end? Because I could really go on for another six hours. Really. My butt’s not getting any flatter. I’m in the zone. Come on, you’re quitting already? Pansies.

Oscars, Academy Awards, commentary