• Pre-show highlight so far: when John Burke of E! News began a segment by forgetting to hold his microphone!
• Hey Molly Mayok, it’s Bill
Murray not “Mary”. Notice the “
ur”?
• For the love of God, E!, stop saying “bling”. It’s too stupid a word to have lasted this long. And Leon Hall’s eyebrows are creeping me out. It’s like he’s wearing Adam West’s old Batman mask.
[2:43 PM] •
4:44 PM: E! fun fact: people began to take notice of Nicole Kidman even before she split with Tom Cruise. Wow. Really.
•
5:47 PM: Gone for about forty minutes on dinner break. Did I miss anything?
•
6:15 PM: interesting point. Tom O’Neil points out that ABC’s decision to move the Oscars up a month might have taken the surprise out of the voting. The last couple years that extra month helped movies like
Training Day and
The Pianist get more recognition. But is this necessarily a good thing? Is it better now when voters are forced to go with their first impulses; or before, when they had the chance to be contrary to the Golden Globes? (Of course, this doesn’t mean much this particular year, since the winners are acknowledged to be so predictable.)
•
6:21 PM: as long as I’m being reflective, it’s no secret I’m rooting for
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. I’m counting on a complete and utter eleven award sweep tonight. But in fact there are a couple categories where I would not mind another movie winning. Of
LOTR‘s three nominated songs, I like “Into the West” best, but I guess I can confess I am secretly rooting for “Kiss at the End of the Rainbow”. It’s a very lovely song, plus it does what I would prefer all Best Song would do: it plays a part within the movie and does not just appear during the end titles.
The character assassination of Denethor and the absence of The Scouring of the Shire still keep me from actively supporting an adapted screenplay win. And, unexpectedly, I am close to rooting for
Master and Commander for special effects. I’m surprised by this change too, but I read in the last
Cinefex magazine that of
Master and Commander‘s 100 shooting days only 10 of them were spent on water. You’d never know that from seeing the movie — and that is the mark of great special effects. (I haven’t completely turned my back on Weta, since they had a hand in manufacturing the ship miniatures.)
Having taken these potshots at
ROTK, I’m still hoping it wins as much as possibl…including some surprise write-in wins for Best Cinematography, Sound Editing, and Supporting Actor.
•
7:09 PM: no, sorry Matt LeBlanc, Barbara Walters’ Oscar special should have movie people in it. And, your monkey movie,
Ed, does not qualify you.
•
7:27 PM: Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara just told Joan Rivers there will be a Mitch & Micky reunion tonight!!!
•
7:43 PM: dang it. I took a pistachios break and missed half of Peter Jackon’s red carpet interview!
•
8:26 PM: switched over to ABC’s pre-show. PJ has the
pin on. Cool.
I’ll move the actual Awards blog below…
• 8:37 PM: yay! The song parodies are back! “Oscar, Oscar, who will win?” Some nice LOTR stuff in the opening film montage too.
• 8:44 PM: hey, it’s a Fear and Loathing reunion: Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo are a row apart.
• 9:03 PM: cool. The first LOTR win. And, by the way, it’s shameful that this is its first art direction win. All other nominees’ look was based on history and research. LOTR‘s designs were sheer invention, which is much greater accomplishment and worthy of three consecutive awards. But one will have to do.
• 9:13 PM: same goes for Costumes.
• 9:26 PM: addendum to Diet Blog: I fell off the wagon for the night. I just couldn’t go without my traditional bag of popcorn. With Renee Zellweger’s win for Supporting Actress it looks like the Awards might be just as predictable as the critics said. I think this is more an observation than a complaint. It might make for a boring show, but at least the people I like are winning.
• 9:36 PM: Part One: Ouch! Pixar wins animated movie but loses short film. Part Two: Crap, they’re doing each song nominee separately.
• 9:43 PM: is Elvis Costello’s guitar even mic’d? Oh, now I hear it. Just in time for the end of the song. Oh-oh, I recognize the flutes… Annie Lennox is going to sing… Very nice. I’ve been listening to the CD all weekend, but the song still gives me chills. –Hey, they’re going to commercial! What happened to Mitch & Micky?!
• 9:53 PM: did Wendy’s steal the music in their chicken strips commercial from Psycho, or is it just a delusion brought on by my sudden and terrible hunger?
• 9:57 PM: Visual Effects is up. I take back what I said. Come on, PJ & Weta! …… Excellent! Three in a row tonight and three in a row for them. The band sounds pretty good playing the Gondor theme too.
• 10:08 PM: in tribute to Blake Edwards I have but one thing to say. “MAX! PUSH THE BUTTON!”
P.S.: I kind of like how HDTV so heavily cropped the film clips in the tribute. It’s kind of like a little more incentive to go get me a widescreen TV.
• 10:18 PM: what I said for Art Direction and Costumes goes for Makeup too.
• 10:25 PM: nice. ROTK gets another sound award. (And Master & Commander gets a mention, only because ROTK was inexplicably left out of the Sound Editing category.)
• 10:41 PM: I’ve read complaints about the short film and documentary categories, how they should be presented off-camera, on a different night, so as to make the Oscar broadcast shorter. I don’t agree. This is the only time you hear about these films or see clips of them. I would request that the telecast go even farther. That there should be some kind of post-show program (assumedly not on the same night), where the network actually shows these films so the general public might get a chance to see them.
• 10:51 PM: the annual “Oooh, he died?” segment.
• 10:57 PM: Musical score! Musical score! … Excelllent! Howard Shore gets it again! Time to simultaneously fire up my iPod…
• 10:59 PM: Wow! ROTK gets another technical award, this time for film editing! This is the greatest Oscar night ever.
• 11:12 PM: okay. Here‘s Mitch & Micky. I shouldn’t’ve panicked anyway, since I remember Jamie Lee Curtis saying earlier she was introducing them. And now, following the commercial break, here comes the winner. …… Well, too bad for Michael & Annette, but at least the ROTK streak continues.
• 11:23 PM: Master & Commander wins for cinematography. Feh, it’s a non-ROTK category. (This might be a surprise however, since I thought Girl with the Pearl Earring was the favorite.)
• 11:29 PM: here comes another one. Adapted Screenplay. … Yikes! They’ve won again! What is that, nine out of nine?! Some government is going to start investigating Peter Jackson for monopolistic practices. (The broadcast has also passed the three hour mark.)
• 11:41 PM: the Director’s award. Here we go. C’mon. YES!!! A much deserved and much delayed win for Peter Jackson!!! It’s about bloody well time too. Hail, and praise him with great praise!
• 11:55 PM: a nice chuckle from Adrien Brody and a touching speech from Charlize Theron, The-ron, Thee-ron, Therron, Therone…
• 11:59 PM: Sean Penn wins Best Actor. There go your chances for a big surprise. The crowd likes it though. And any chance for a nationally televised dig at President Bush is fine by me. Still, about the only acting I really like in Mystic River, which seemed natural to me, was by Kevin Bacon.
Over on iChat, my niece is pissed at Sean Penn for stealing the award from Johnny Depp.
The broadcast has also gone past midnight. Which means I need to change the date on this entry.
• Monday, March 1 2004. 12:04 AM: nah, I’ll just change the date here.
And now here is Steven Spielberg to end the evening. … Man! “A clean sweep.” Amazing. Congratulations to all, now get on over to the TORN party!
Hey. Cool. All the winners are on stage together. That’s a nice touch. And probably made more possible by the fact the same ROTK people kept winning. Hee hee.
The announcer said Return of the King ties Titanic and Ben-Hur for most Oscars. But I believe ROTK is alone in its clean sweep. Titanic (1997) had 14 nominations and won 11, while Ben-Hur (1959) had 12 nominations and won 11. As far as my minimal research shows, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is unparalleled in its 11 out of 11 winning streak. So there you go. The Academy done good when they singled out this historic movie with its own bit of Oscar history. Not to mention their finally awarding a “fantasy” movie, as well as a popular, crowd pleasing, successful movie. “You bow to no one.”
Wow. What a night. What a victory. What a culmination of five or so years of fandom (for the movies. Twenty-eight or so years for the books themselves). ”One film to win them all,” to quote “Jade of Orc”.
It looks like the TORN site is down, so I guess I’ll listen to my soundtrack CD and play with my Sideshow Weta statues…
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I was shocked this morning to discover Wendy’s does not sell a fish sandwich. I was informed the fish sandwich did not sell well over the Winter, and it was a corporate decision to remove it from the Wendy’s menu. What boggles my mind is that right now is the season of Lent, the season of fish on Fridays, the one time of the year when Wendy’s should be offering a fish sandwich! In fact, McDonald’s created the first fish sandwich just so they could attract Catholics during Lent. I know Wendy’s offers special sandwiches every month or so, so why would it be so difficult to add the fish sandwich right now, between late February and mid-April?
?! [3/5/04 3:52 PM]
I was wondering if the folks at 
I finished Phase Two yesterday for the second time, which seemed a good occasion to weigh myself. I have better news than my last Diet Blog entry. I weighed in at 214½, which marks a 3½ pound loss since last time, and a total loss of 24 pounds.
