From Pajamas Media:
Does anybody care what Nicole Kidman is wearing (or not)? Does anybody care how many times Jon Stewart disses Dick Cheney? Does anybody care who even wins the Academy Awards anymore?
Yes, we all care – even if we say we don’t… It’s the Oscars, after all!
Well, I don’t care, to be honest with you—but that won’t keep me from liveblogging the festivities as part of PJ Blogjam, starting at 8 EST, five p.m. PST. Joining me will be The Manolo, two Gay Patriots, Andrew Leigh and Roger Simon.
Of course, it’s quite possible I won’t be watching the thing—I have better things to do, frankly—but that won’t keep me from commenting. Or maybe I’ll just invite Judd Nelson over and let him comment for me. He still harbors quite a lot of bitterness over not being nominated Best Supporting Actor for his work in New Jack City, and boy, does it ever show…
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James Wolcott comments. Unfortunately for him, he ventures beyond “Best Ascot Worn by a Morgan Freeman”—thus dipping his pedicured toes into observational waters far too deep for so delicate and flaccid-skinned a creature—and winds up sounding the accordian-joweled ass he is.
Which is rather surprising, I must say, because one would think he was absolutely made for the part of offering smarmy commentary on meaningless events in the practiced, off-handed manner of a self-styled pop-culture wag.
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update: Another lefty whose ignorance of context refuses to keep him from commenting on my “rightwing radicalism”. Seriously. These people are parodies of themselves. And sadly, they’re not even good ones.
I’ll have to real all about it next week in my wife’s People Magazine. Man would I like to have all the money back she’s wasted on that shitrag over the years. I could buy multiple cases of Crown Royal……which is NOT a waste of money by the way…….I don’t care what she says.
I don’t remember a year I have been more disinterested in the Oscars.
Maybe I’ll check the PJ Media stuff from time to time tonight, but I won’t add to the ratings of show that gives new meaning to ‘moral equivalency’.
If Star Jones reaches out and squeezes Michael Moore’s breast, I’d very much appreciate your not linking that.
That is all.
Here’s how much I care: I didn’t even know they were on tonight until I read this.
I do!
You think Judd is still angry?
Watch the Oscars? I’d rather watch this.
In fact, I think I will! Hmmmm, Monica Bellucci…
Actually, no we don’t all care. Just which chirpy twit at PJ thought that one up? That alone should be enough to disqualify that person’s opinions from ever being taken seriously again. And remind me again, what exactly is PJ Media for?
TW = made. I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the Academy awards even in you made me watch them.
I’ve been a teetotler too long,. I thought instantly of Royal Crown.
There is something appealingly palindromatic about it: Royal Crown with Crown Royal.
The deep thoughts only the Oscars can generate:
If two gay actors had played in Brokeback Mountain, would their performance be as lauded as Heath’s and Jake’s have been?
Maybee,
You mean … you don’t know ?!?
Between Bareback Mountain and TrannyAmerica, I don’t envy you having to watch tonite’s big dance number…
I’m going to spend the night watching Amadeus. A “best film” which actually was.
Don’t care about the Oscars, but went over for a look-see. The running narrative is pretty damn funny.
You are not watching the Oscars at all, are you Raoul?
Anyone else notice the sparse, and short lived, applause at the nomination of “Narnia” for best make-up, then the sound of jaws dropping accompanied by lightly polite applause when it actually won?
Interesting. Last year, I actually wanted to see the Best Picture nominees.
Charlie: You are sober: you can now stop telling the rest of us about your saintliness. We’d rather drink crowan Royal and forget. So, shut up. Best, Festus
Hmmm.
Wake me up if someone gropes Scarlett Johansson again.
Dolly wuz robbed.
BTW – those lips. nightmare material.
Oh, and as a pimp. Not so hard.
Keep it real yo.
Whoa Jeff, you’re both Judd and Peter? Slap me upside the head with an Armadillo…
I double-dipped, yeah. Which wasn’t easy, because the way the system works, I had to use separate computers for each.
Judd got to use the Mac. Peter, he’s old school. He stuck to the PC laptop.
Yeah you’re right, that laptop action he got in “Easy Rider” used to be PC—stick to what you know, so to speak
Wasn’t Wolcott once arrested for trying to corner the “smarm” market?
Oh, no—my mistake. The “arrogant prick” market, though… well, that’s a different story.
The raucous hip-hop tune “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from “Hustle & Flow,” whose expletive-laden lyrics had to be toned down for performance at the Oscars, won the prize for best song. The song was written by the rap group Three 6 Mafia, aka Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard.
Featuring dancers dressed as hookers and pimps gyrating on stage, the song’s performance stood in sharp contrast to the other nominated tunes and the general stateliness of the Oscars.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060306/ap_on_en_mo/oscars
Yawn. So… who has time for this trash?
The word is shepherd, people who herd sheep are called shepherds.
No, I didn’t watch them. Haven’t ever really watched them. Instead I fired up Baldur’s Gate for a couple of hours and went to bed early.
A thought for the Oscar folks- stop getting comedians to do your show. Jon Stewart didn’t work, Chris Rock didn’t work…Carlos Mencia isn’t funny and wouldn’t work.
When awards-show consensus thinks that Bruce Velanche is the pinnacle of comedy (he’s fat and has a funny beard…get it?!), you’ve already set the precident for funny comedians to be not funny. Stewart telling the same lame joke about how long the show runs is just as unfunny as when Billy Crystal did it. The audience can’t tell if Chris Rock is serious or not when he tells them they’re all over-important bastards, so as opposed to laughing Sean Penn makes a tool of himself.
Instead, get someone generally unfunny. They’ll still tell the same jokes you want told- everyone will just feel better because nobody has high comedic expectations of, say, William H. Macy or Matt Damon or whoever. It’s like letting your 4 year old nephew beat you in basketball…
tw: police as in, the Police rocked pretty hard back in the day.
Another thought for the Oscar folks: Just…Stop.
Nobody cares. NOBODY.
These people are completely out of touch. You’ve got a documentary about Penguins doing a better box office than the idiotic films nominated. A lesson here maybe?
Another thought for Hollywood: There’s a really, really BIG country outside of LA and NY. Maybe you should visit it sometime.
Oscars? Feh.
I did my taxes last night. And it was STILL less painful than watching the Oscars would have been.
TV (Harry)
tw: radio. Better than the movies nowadays, and radio ain’t so good anymore, either.
You all were great. I read it after watching the never ending Oscars and laughed out loud again and again. Just brilliant.
Dolly WAS robbed. That was the only nomination that I cared about all night. She has more class and grace in one manicured fingertip, than the rest of the people in that room combined. (Although I do have to say that Salma Hayek looked stunning.)
All of my posts on the group blog of the Oscars were censored. Probably by Raoul.
Art direction? Sound? Make-up??
Shouldn’t these “awards” be handed out at, say, a quick lunchtime meeting at a Denny’s in the Valley or something?
Best Pic, Best Actors, Supporting. That’s all ANYBODY gives a crap about, folks.
Wake up and smell the fucking coffee.
Oscars!? Oscars!?
How about something new? Like the “Rosco-es”?
Little statues like snub-nosed detective-type shooters handed out by people in trench coats?
Or the “Bosco-es”? Gold plated jars of chocolate syrup that you stir into milk and not only tastes good but is good for you!
Might actually watch it.
File that under the “Stuff I’m stealing from Jeff Goldstein for future use”.
Oh yeah baby – that Wolcott, he knows from funny! Love the Ocelots, too.
Sigh. Yet another reason to hope the Upper West Side falls into a river.
Elisha — I’m not sober. I’m just Choctaw. When I drink I fall down.
Not in Colorado they’re not.
And “sheepherders” usually has some adjectives attached.
Either Wolcott missed Clooney’s Man of Wood performances in Out of Sight and The Peacemaker and especially Batman and Robin and One Fine Day and Ocean’s Eleven and…well, you get the picture, or he’s a complete dimwit. Or both, maybe. Clooney’s not even the third best Batman. At best, he’s tied for last with Adam West.
If I were Nicholson I’d be pissed at the comparison. Clooney may not be completely devoid of accomplishment (Three Kings and Brother Where Art Thou?) but comparing him to Nicholson at this point is definitely not justifiable.
Do they care enough to hold shift down? or do they go lazy and press caps-lock?
Believe it or not, they call them “sheepherders” in Colorado. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way they do it in the San Luis Valley.
DC area liberal blogger Oliver Willis has
an obsessiona thing for Jessica Alba. When I went downstarir yesterday evening to get a Mountain Dewâ„¢, the lovely Miss Alba was on E! network’s red carpet show.I decided that I’m rag Mr Willis about it, but, lo and behold, his entire site was down! I was guessing that he was so taken by Miss Alba and her golden dress that he spilled some sort of fluid (I’ll presume that it was coffee) all over his computer!
Typically they only care enough to ignore idiots.
But obviously not always.
Ok, I’ve got to back off this one. As bad as the script writing was, it’s impossible to tell how much of Adam West’s badness is due to bad writing and how much to bad acting. Still, I ought to give Clooney the benefit of a doubt and say that it’s possible that he’s got a claim to being the fourth best Batman.
TW: Maybe.
Adam West was awesome as Batman. You better recognize.
I’d say that he was better than Clooney, and even Val Kilmer, and this is why. It was obvious that West’s Batman – despite all its clear stupidity – was deliberately cheesy, whereas Clooney’s (and to a lesser extent, Kilmer’s) was similarly awful but you didn’t know for sure whether it was supposed to be as stupid/cheesy as it was.
So either Clooney and Kilmer failed at being as cheesily genius as West, or they failed at being as dark/serious/awesome (by which I mean totally sweet) as Keaton or Bale.
I think we’d all be better served to pretend that Batman and Robin never happened, like we do with Rocky V and The Next Karate Kid.
I’ll defend Adam West: his performance helped the Batman TV show look like cheesy camp, while Clooney’s performance did not help Batman and Robin look like a fun adventure movie.
Of course, a lot went wrong with Batman and Robin, and it’s not at all obvious how much of this needs to be lain in the lap of the director, writer, or Clooney.
But if you’re going to judge a performance, you need to take the intent into consideration.
It was National Treasure on Starz for me. I’ll take cornball escapism over a bejeweled circle jerk anytime. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I admit it. I love the Oscars. I enjoyed this year’s broadcast, John Stewart was very funny, I thought George Clooney’s speech was thoughtful and appropriate, all the women I was with teared up at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s speech, and I loved Crash.
The dance numbers were among the most ridiculously over-obvious things I’ve seen.
How could the Academy ignore Noah Wylie in The Librarian ?