February 2008 Archives

Diablo Cody, the Chicago-area ex-stripper who just won an Oscar for writing "Juno," is now a columnist for Entertainment Weekly magazine. In her latest missive, she sets the record straight about crying during her acceptance speech: “I get something stuck in my eye and am widely misinterpreted as weeping. Yeah, like I would cry in that situation. You punks obviously don’t know me. I’m tough. I would never break into ragged sobs on live television, and I would also never run off stage immediately afterward and blubber in front of the entire production crew and Helen Mirren."

Much was made of the fact that several actresses at the Oscars were sporting baby bumps. Jessica Alba, however, was threatened by a real bump.

Entertainment Weekly interviewed Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, following the news of the dismally low ratings for Sunday's Oscars. He acknowledges that a majority of the traditional viewers simply didn't tune in at all this year, and instead of casting blame to elements of the show or the writers strike, he concedes that, in the movie industry of the future, the Oscars may naturally be a smaller affair.

"Some of these movies are just too difficult for a mass audience, frankly," Davis says. "And if we have moved into an era where there's this dichotomy between big popular studio movies and smaller pictures for more specialized audiences, we may just have to get used to smaller audiences [for the Oscar telecast.] This could be a one-year blip but it doesn't look like one. It looks like something that has been developing over the past few years. It's as if the National Book Awards had to make a choice between giving awards to very serious fiction or to the most popular bestsellers. We've come to that point where there are two kinds of movies, and we're focusing on the ones which, almost by definition, aren't going to be blockbusters."

ABC’s broadcast of the 80th annual Academy Awards hit a ratings low with only 32 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media. Though Oscar ratings are often directly related to the popularity of the nominated films (and this year’s bunch were not box office sensations), many are calling for the academy to retool its broadcast. One of the first things the Oscars should re-examine is its Web site.

Studios now regularly promote their movies on the Web, (the success this winter of ‘‘Cloverfield’’ was partly based on a viral ad campaign). And the writers strike — which was primarily over revenue from material played online — proved just how much Hollywood is fixated on the Web. So why during its biggest night would Hollywood shun the Internet?

Whoopi Goldberg has accepted an apology from producer Gil Cates for not including her in a montage featuring Oscar hosts during Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast.

Cates called her Tuesday and ‘‘talked about the fact that he had made an oversight, pure and simple. He said, ‘You know I love you,’’’ Goldberg said today on ABC daytime talk show ‘‘The View.’’

Whoopi Goldberg seemed sad and choked up on ‘‘The View’’ on Monday when her fellow co-hosts discussed how she was not included in a montage featuring Oscar hosts during the Academy Awards telecast.

The 52-year-old Goldberg has received two Oscar nominations, winning for her role as Oda Mae Brown in 1990’s ‘‘Ghost.’’ She hosted the event in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002. She did, however, appear as an Oscar winner in a separate montage Sunday night.

Goldberg appeared stumped that the academy would leave her out of the one clip, as well as repeat host Steve Martin.

Every Oscars telecast includes the requisite "bring out your dead" moment, where the screen flips through movie clips of actors and other film industry folks who've died in the last year. But there's been a small uproar online last night and today about some notable exclusions from this year's death watch.

The Oscars are a ratings dud. Nielsen Media Research says preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast are 14 percent lower than the least-watched ceremony ever.

Of all the industry parties to celebrate the Academy Awards, one was notable for having very few women, no bar, and the best rides in town all parked outside — Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and countless Lincoln Towncars.

The limo drivers who shuttle the stars to and from the Kodak Theatre spend Oscar night watching the telecast and eating dinner under heat lamps on a patio at the Hollywood Bowl while they wait for their clients.

‘‘Los Angeles doesn’t have enough limos for this event,’’ said Rick Ham, who has been driving limos for 26 years. ‘‘They call the companies in Orange County and San Diego to help out.’’

The red carpet has been rolled up, but what's happening today is one of the main reasons they do this whole Oscars thing to begin with. The awards, the glitz, maybe the clips — they got your attention, your interest is piqued, and now you're buying the DVDs.

Amazon.com, of course, has its own Oscars store, and the shiny discs are suddenly flying off the conveyor belts. According to the online retailer:
— The biggest jump in sales rank come from the surprise wins this year with "La Vie en Rose" up 1,850 percent and "Once" up 566 percent.
— A number of other films featured last night during the ceremony also experienced a jump in sales, including "There Will Be Blood" up 191 percent, "No Country for Old Men" up 170 percent, "Enchanted" up 116 percent and "Sweeney Todd" up 86 percent.

By SOLVEJ SCHOU

LOS ANGELES — With Vanity Fair sitting out this year’s celebrations, the belle of the Oscars parties was a piano playing Elton John.

The 60-year-old singer’s 16th annual viewing dinner and after-party benefiting the Elton John AIDS Foundation topped other bashes Sunday, with 750 guests and a bevy of A-list stars who sipped cocktails and feasted on a four-course meal under the Pacific Design Center’s red-draped tent.

Vanity Fair’s lavish, celebrity-drenched annual affair, typically the top Oscar-night party, was canceled weeks earlier, before the end of the writers strike.

By ANGELA DAWSON

Best actor winner Daniel Day-Lewis (‘‘There Will Be Blood’’) was asked whether he expected to receive complimentary milkshakes from now on wherever he goes.

He quipped, ‘‘I’m looking forward to getting all the complimentary milkshakes I can drink for the next 25 years or so.’’ He explained his kiss to fellow nominee George Clooney after his win this way: ‘‘he was the closest (nominee) to me. ... I kissed my wife and, in the interest of parity, I kissed George.’’

‘‘The Counterfeiters,’’ the Austrian tale of a master forger forced to work for Nazis in a concentration camp, won the foreign-language Oscar on Sunday.

Now it has to earn some respect.

The category’s five nominees had been overshadowed in weeks leading up to the ceremony by an uproar that severally critically-acclaimed films didn’t make the cut.

Domestic box-office totals for the most-honored films at the 80th annual Academy Awards:

A year after the Oscars finally honored Martin Scorsese as best director, the academy took care of business in speedier fashion by feting the widely admired Coen brothers.

Though Joel and Ethan Coen’s many die-hard fans might say their win was nevertheless belated — it coming 24 years after their first film — their Texas crime film ‘‘No Country for Old Men’’ has generally been viewed as a culmination of craft for the brothers.

Here's a look at their win as directors:

"No Country for Old Men" by Joel and Ethan Coen!

Complete list of winners at the 80th annual Academy Awards, presented Sunday night at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles:

She may have dressed like Wilma Flintstone, or maybe Bam-Bam, but when she won the Oscar for best original screenplay, "Juno" writer Diablo Cody thanked her parents "for loving me exactly the way I am" — and, heck, so do we.

She was clearly excited to be in the spotlight, shrieking, "What is happening?!" as she stepped to the microphone. She then brandished her new trophy and — in one of the surprisingly few nods to the writers strike this evening — said, "This is for the writers."

And is most gracious during his moment in the spotlight ...