And the Oscar Goes to…

Reptastic live blogs from the red carpet at the 80th Annual Academy Awards

Last night we at Reptastic blogged live from the Red Carpet (by red carpet we mean the blood-stained carpet in our Seattle apartment) to bring you all the goings-on of the 80th Academy Awards. It was a night with a few surprises and some superb cinema, heightened by the deft touch of Jon Stewart who showed an uncommon level of sincerity in his role as host. A lovely night, some lovely winners, let’s relive it:

5:31–“Welcome to the make-up sex.”
Master of ceremonies and political funnyman Jon Stewart takes the stage to start us off on this long, arduous journey which is the Academy Awards telecast. He instantly amuses by asserting the proceedings would provide an amorous end to the writers strike.

But with this being a Hollywood crowd obsessed with back-patting, some of Stewart’s best material actually receives scattered groans from the crowd, including the priceless line, “Even Norbit got a nomination this year which I think is great. Too often the Academy ignores movies that are not good.”

His monologue was decidedly short though, betraying the obvious time crunch for him to complete it in the short time since the writers strike. It could also be that the higher-ups at the Academy want to keep this sprawling mess of a show under 5-hours, let’s see if they’re successful.

5:42–“The First Oscar of the Evening”
Oh, Jennifer Garner your sharp comedic timing is astounding! No wonder they gave you the honor of presenting the prestigious “Best Costume Design” award. Is it just me, or does Miss Garner seem a whole helluvalot like the character she plays in Juno? I think that role wasn’t a great stretch for her.

Anyway, the Oscar goes to the 4-time nominee Alexandra Byrne for “Elizabeth the Golden Age”. A great honor for her and she offered an amazingly great, short, to the point speech. But one thought enters my mind drowning out all other thoughts in my head and that’s “wait, you’re being awarded for best costume design? look what the hell you’re wearing, maybe you should learn to dress yourself.” Anyway, congratulations to our first Oscar winner.

5:44–“Hello Gorgeous”
Babs Streisand fondly recalls her famous Oscar win before we go to the first commercial break of the telecast. We see a clip from the past when she came to the stage she stared longingly at her new award and simply said “hello, gorgeous.” And a generation of cross-dressing men were like putty in her hands. Truly a great Oscar moment.

5:49–“Let’s take a look back at 80 years of Oscar”

The oh-so dreamy George Clooney takes the stage back from the break to charm the pants off of us. Literally, I mean, my jeans are now balled up in the corner and I have no idea how it happened, that’s how charming Mr. Clooney is. He presents us a quick look back at the Academy Awards of yesteryear to let the crowd revel in the revelling of past Oscars. I may sound cynical or sarcastic right now, but in all sincerity, it was a great clip package with genuine moments and it was effectively brief. I’m sensing this is becoming a theme in this year’s Awards: effective, impactful, and brief. Well, brief, until somehow Kanye West bum-rushes the stage to say he should have won not only best actor but best actress as well, that’s how good he is. Oh Kanye, you arrogant fucking bastard.

5:52–“This isn’t the documentary category? Shit.”

Anne Hathaway and the always hilarious Steve Carrell (always doesn’t include Evan Almighty), join-up to present Best Documentary, or at least that’s what Steve believes he is doing, until Anne sets him straight that the films he’s describing aren’t searing indictments of restaurants or animal treatment, instead they’re animated features. In a moment not caught by the FCC or ABC Standards and Practices, Carrell let’s slip with an S-Bomb.

Carrell recovers from his sickening embarrassment at not understanding the films he was to present, while Hathaway reads the nominees. And the Oscar for best animated film goes to…Ratatouille! A charming film starring Patton Oswalt as a foodie rat who takes Paris by storm with his culinary expertise.

5:56 “I’m sorry I’m a bit nervous”

In the understatement of the century, Kathryn Heigl admits her nervousness as she appears on the verge of tears while she presents the award for Best Make-up. All I can think is “Please be Norbit! Please be Norbit!” But my hopes and dreams are dashed. I just really wanted to see one of the worst films ever get an Oscar, instead it goes to La Vie en Rose.

6:00–“Oh, we have professionals to do this”

Amy Adams performs the first Academy Award nominated song of the evening from the movie Enchanted. It’s a terrible song, but Amy Adams is quite cute, so I don’t mind it too much, I just mute it and make do.

6:07–“Do you smell what the Rock is presenting!”

That line above is my own reaction to seeing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson present the award for Best Visual Effects. The winner is…The Golden Compass, a film that admittedly I’ve never seen. Let’s just move on.

6:10–“Best Art Direction”

The awards just keep coming fast and furious as another technical award is presented and the winner for Best Art Direction is Sweeney Todd and the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

6:13–“Let’s give you an idea of the past winners of Best Supporting Actor”

Thus begins another clips package showing us all of the greats who’ve won best supporting actor. As they show some of the leading lights of film winning the award we prepare for another to be inducted into the illustrious group. This year boasts a brilliant crop of nominees: Casey Affleck, Javier Bardem, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Hal Holbrook, and Tom Wilkinson. Wilkinson seemed an absolute lock for this Award in the fall, but then came the transcendently brilliant performance of Javier Bardem as he played one of the greatest villains ever to appear on the silver screen. The Academy recognized this brilliance and rewarded him according with the Oscar. So far, Reptastic’s Oscar pool is looking mighty good.

6:23–“Thank god we didn’t have to show that”

Had the writer’s strike not been resolved, Jon Stewart informs us that the show would have been padded with more montages, such as the one he shows, “Oscar’s Tribute to Periscopes and Binoculars.” After seeing the clips package we’re reassured by Jon that thank god the writers came back so we didn’t have to watch such a thing. So true brother, a writerless world is not a world I want to occupy.

6:29–“To present Best Short Film, Owen Wilson”

I mean this when I say I’m glad we’re seeing Owen Wilson on the stage at the Academy Awards and not during the In Memoriam. We at Reptastic are big Owen Wilson fans, and we’re happy to see him well. The winner in the categoy is a Frenchman with limited English skills and it all becomes appallingly clear that with a few of these categories so far the Academy has selected winners whose native tongue is not English as a cynical attempt to keep acceptance speeches short. Well, it’s working, we’re just whisking through speeches at breakneck speed.

6:35–“This is a very encouraging thing”

In a lot less distinguished race than Best Supporting Actor, the Award for Best Supporting Actress goes to Tilda Swinton for her first-rate performance as the cold-hearted bitch of a lawyer in Michael Clayton. In an odd twist she credits the award to her agent and takes a funny jab at George Clooney asserting that he wears the nippled Batsuit under his other clothes when he works on films. A pleasantly funny remark which George took in stride and lightened up a usually stodgy broadcast; good on you, Tilda Swinton, you cheeky Brit.

6:45–“Technical Awards”

Jessica Alba trots out on stage to sex-up the normally boring recap of the Technical Awards which are presented at an earlier date. But it doesn’t work. Yawn.

6:47–“That was my Nicholson. I’m sorry Jack, that was a terrible impression, I’ll buy you a drink later”

I didn’t remember this until yesterday when I caught the movie on cable and was shocked to see that co-starring alongside Sean Astin, as the hunky, older brother in the movie Goonies was none other than No Country for Old Men’s Josh Brolin. Surprisingly, Brolin wasn’t nominated for best Actor this year, perhaps because of his Goonies ties, but he does get some stage time, presenting Best Adapted Screenplay. And it is an astonishingly strong group of nominees with No Country, There Will Be Blood, Away from Her, Atonement, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But there could only be one winner and that’s the Coen Brothers for the fantastic No Country For Old Men, adapted from the novel by legendary writer Cormac McCarthy.

7:03–“Dame Judy Dench and Halle Berry”

Not quite the Dame and Halle, we see Jonah Goldberg and Seth Rogen are forced to fill in for the lovely Oscar winners and argue over who gets to be Halle. Jonah asserts he so much more encompasses that Halle aura and we at Reptastic couldn’t agree more, after all, their boobs are roughly the same size. Johan and Seth cut out their bickering long enough to present the Bourne Ultimatum with two awards for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

7:13–“The first upset of the night”

Oscar surprises again as the winner for Best Actress goes not to Julie Christie or Ellen Page but to Marion Cotillard for her performance in La Vie en Rose, once again proving that for a beautiful woman to win an Oscar, they must slap on a bunch of makeup to make themselves look ugly. Hey, it worked for Charlize Theron, why not for Marion Cotillard. I don’t want to belittle her Oscar though, this is one film Reptastic hasn’t seen so we can’t truly pass judgement, we’re just glad Ellen Page didn’t win because her performance and film is the most overrated of the year.

7:18–“Colin Farrell slip-slides into our hearts”

As Colin walks to the podium he nearly takes a dive slipping on an inexplicable puddle by on the stage; perhaps someone needs to clean that up or perhaps Mr Farrell needs to get back into rehab. More importantly Farrell introduces the fourth nominated song of the evening–and in Reptastic’s opinion the best–Falling Slowly by Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard from the film Once.

7:31–“The star of the untitled 2010 Nicole Kidman project, Nicole Kidman”

After watching the Bourne Ultimatum receive a third Oscar, 98 year old Robert Boyle is presented with the Honorary Oscar. He may be 98, but looks a spry 98 and his honor is very deserved, being the point man for many of Alfred Hitchcock’s great films as his production art director.

7:49–“Falling Slowly”

After listening to a third song from the movie Enchanted, we finally get the announcement for the winner of Best Original Song, and thankfully the winner is Marketa and Glen who were truly overcome by emotion at their victory. So far this is Reptastic’s favorite moment of the night’s ceremony; it’s a touching thing to see two young outsiders win this award after making one of the best movies we’ve seen in the past year and the recording one of the most heartwarming, beautiful songs. After the break, Jon Stewart lets Marketa, who was cut off by the music during her remarks, come back on the stage to finish her remarks and we’re glad he let her as she made a moving speech about hope and daring to dream.

7:55–“In Memoriam”

There Will Be Blood wins for Best Cinemetography which oddly is a fitting segue into this year’s “In Memoriam.” This segment is a morbidly fascinating display in appreciation of those in the Academy who have passed this year. It’s always interesting to see who receives the most applause as the go through the assorted collection of actors, directors, editors, make-up artists and more. Heath Ledger was obviously the most heartbreaking of the “In Memoriam” segment as he was the last name flashed on the screen.

8:06–“Best Original Score”

This category should be totally disregarded this year because Jonny Greenwood was inexplicably not nominated for his score for of There Will Be Blood which featured one of the most original and innovative scores of the past 10 years.

8:26–“I think I’m sane and everyone else is crazy”

That was Reptastic’s reaction when Diablo Cody won for Best Original Screenplay for Juno. Michael Clayton was a far superior film and much better written. Juno is the most overrated film of the year and if you want to see Reptastic’s full opinion on the matter you can read our original review here.

8:30–“And now the most inevitable moment of the evening”

Daniel Day Lewis is simply one of the finest actors of his generation and his performance as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood is one of the most intense, engaging roles we may ever see. Despite George Clooney’s extraordinary turn as Michael Clayton, he simply stood no chance to the gale force wind that swept through the Academy this year which was Daniel Plainview, so it was no surprise to see Lewis collect the Oscar for Best Actor.

8:41–“Academy Award-Winner Martin Scorcese”

Martin has still got to be getting used to hearing himself called an Academy Award Winner. Sure, he probably can’t believe that he won for the sub-par work that was The Departed, but we all know it was a lifetime achievement award because Martin should have won a statue well before that night just one year ago. This year it’s Martin’s honor to present the Oscar to the director who will join this exclusive fraternity. In Reptastic’s heart of hearts, despite how much we love No Country for Old Men, we hoped with all hope that the Academy would honor PT Anderson for There Will Be Blood, because by god, he deserves some sort of formal recognition for his sprawling, searing epic. However, Joel and Ethan Coen pick up another award for No Country for Old Men and you really can’t argue that they don’t deserve it.

8:45–“The Coup de grace”

As the final award of the night approached a lot of the drama had gone out of the telecast. With both the writing and directing honors going to the Coen brothers, it seemed inevitable that they would also pick up the honor for best film. A few moments later our suspicions are confirmed as No Country For Old Men takes it’s fourth Award of the night winning Picture of the Year, which is an especially high honor as 2007 was the finest year in cinema since the landmark movies of 1999. You can read Reptastic’s review of No Country here.

And this concludes the 80th Academy Awards, where in all truth, for the most part the Academy got it absolutely right except for the notable exception of honoring Juno. Goodnight from Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, this has been your official Reptastic Academy Awards blog.