Oscars 2006 Liveblog

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Welcome to the 2nd annual Making the Movie Oscars Liveblog. This year I'm in sunny L.A. instead of freezing New York City, but I'll still be watching the show on t.v. like everyone else.

Need to cram before the quiz? Need to see all the Brokeback parody videos? Check out my Oscar Preview.

Go to the liveblog!Red Carpet Preshow

3:52 Just got home. Traffic is backed way up downtown. Coming up Highland there is a lane blocked by orange traffic cones and signs that say "Limos Only". I guess you can gather what that's for... that's right, they are running a simulated evacuation of LA in the event of a terrorist attack.
4:01 I just remembered how inane the Red Carpet show is... and it's extended to an hour this year. Do we really have that many celebrities to care about?
4:05 These capsule reviews of the movies are hilariously selective. Terrence Howard is a "Memphis dreamer"?
4:11 Swear alert: Paul Giamatti drops the a-bomb!
4:15 Ah! Movies and monkeys. A great combination, any way you look at it.

4:30 "What did you do to make us fall in love with a pimp?" Finally, they admit Terrence Howard played a lovable character.
4:35 Matt Dillon slams the LAPD. Good luck next time you have a paparazzi run-in, Matt.
4:37 Twenty-three more minutes of bad montages and awkward speeches, er, wait.
4:40 Felicity Huffman gets congratulated by her fellow Housewives -- and gets her makeup ruined -- the first genuine moment of the night. Although from what I've heard about catfights on that show, the genuineness might not have been in the congratulations. (This blog's Transamerica review.)
4:57 Ah... here we go!

Liveblogging the 2006 Academy Awards

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5:02 Opening with a Brokeback parody... original.
5:05 Opening line got mild chuckles here. The goodwill is still with Stewart.
5:06 The set designers among us are hating on the set. "Trashy, trying too hard to be glamorous." Somebody alert Joan Collins.
5:07 Stewart doesn't seem to believe his opening monologue. Pull it together.
5:08 Great reaction shot from Clooney.
5:09 Katherine Keener laughing hard at the Capote riffs.
5:09 Stewart is very pointy.
5:10 Bjork goose dress callback gets a big response in the hall and here at my sparse Oscar party.
5:11 Stewart would do well to speed up. He's playing to the Oscar crowd, not the t.v. audience.
5:13 Now come the Brokeback jokes... a montage of classic Western gay moments. Coulda been snappier. The internet does it better.
5:15 Nicole Kidman announces Best Supporting Actors as if in a botoxified haze... Winner... Clooney, for Syriana. The room approves.
5:20 Classy speech all around, George. He avoids going overtly political.
5:22 Can't wait for Whitey McAnnouncer to say, "Stay tuned for nominated song 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp'!"
5:24 MasterCard is officially out of ideas. How about coming up with another advertising phrase yourself, guys?
5:25 Tom Hanks demonstrates how to keep your Oscar speech short. A winning bit where the musicians attack the long-running presenter. Seriously, the room here agrees that playing music under the whole speech is annoying and awkward.
5:26 Ben Stiller has me laughing right away with a green-screen spoof. VFX Oscar to King Kong, the only movie that anyone watching at home actually saw.

5:31 A pretty Reece Witherspoon introduces Best Animated Feature nominess. Wallace and Gromit in a walk is my prediction. Winner is... Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I'm happy. I think I'm 3/3 in the office pool.
5:33 Cute Brits in bowties... gotta love 'em.
5:34 Naomi Watts wearing plastic bags introduces Dolly Parton singing "Travelin' Thru". Turn up Dolly's mic! Oh wait, turn it back down.
5:36 The room comments: "More plastic surgery than the Transamerica character. But she would be the first to admit it." So kudos, to you Dolly. You were post-ironic before big boobed martians were post-ironic.
5:40 Munich bombing scene clip -- cliche scene; great sound design.
5:42 The Wilson Brothers present Best Live Action Short. This is the part where everyone is peeing and getting food at home... and in the Oscar hall. "Six Shooter" wins. It's an Irish something or other.
5:45 Ah, the annoying part of the show where animated characters present something.
5:46 "The Moon and the Son" is favored to win. And does. John Canemaker teaches at NYU film school, my alma mater, ahem.
5:48 How did Jennifer Aniston manage to get her lips the color of her tan? It's like Regis and his ties, but with lipstick.
5:50 Best Costumes... Memoirs of Geisha. Audio glitch on the HD feed we're watching...
5:51 Russell Crowe's lips are moving, but we can't tell what he's saying. Wait.. no difference.
5:54 Montage of famous impersonations... dull. Rather like the movie Capote.
5:57 They are keeping the commercial breaks mercifully short. Or maybe they just didn't sell any.
5:58 Big laughs for Will Farrell and Steve Carell playing it straight in bad makeup on Best Makeup.
5:59 Big ups for Howard Berger and Tammy Lane for Chronicles of Narnia: The Makeup Artist's Dream Movie.

6:00 Stewart is back with a Saddam statue=giant Oscar statue joke.
6:02 Science and Tech presentation covered elsewhere in a more interesting way.
6:04 Morgan Freeman, the consummate announcer, stumbles. Best Supporting Actress... Rachel Weisz, for playing a saint. I'm kind of surprised at this. As you can see from the clips, her character didn't have many interesting scenes. (Constant Gardener reviewed on this blog.)
6:12 Lauren Bacall, operating under her own power, enters. Yes, she managed to get through the speech! Right before I was about to lay odds she'd blow a servo.
6:15 Big laugh in the room here when Stewart jokes Films Noir would've been great in color. Also big laughs on the fake political commercials for Best Actress. (Stephen Colbert with uncredited voiceover.)
6:19 Stewart defines 'pimp': "An agent with a better hat."
6:20 Best Documentary for Documentary Short Subject for "A Note of Triumph: Norman Corwin and I Couldn't Read Fast Enough to Catch the Whole Title"
6:21 Charlize Theron and her giant black (dark green?) bow intro Best Documentary nominees. Just give it to March of the Penguins already.
6:26 A bronzed J-Lo intros "In the Deep" song from Crash. Cheezy slow mo re-enactments of scenes from the movie, including a white guy feeling up a black woman, backlit by a burning car. Oh Academy, you are the definition of class!

6:33 Keanu and Sandra Bullock intro Best Art Direction. Somebody wakeup Sandra! Is she wearing a corset; she looks like she could use some smelling salts.
6:34 Keanu manages to open the envelope but needs help reading the name inside. Second win for Memoirs of a Geisha... and the last.
6:36 Sam Jackson gives a great reading of his lines, just like he did recently in racial prejudice movie, The Man.
6:40 And Liam Neeson was in an issue movie, once!
6:41 White bearded man keeps talking... I need wine, stat!
6:43 Cut to Mickey Rooney!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a treat for him, to shake off the mothballs and be wheeled out for his yearly cutaway.
6:44 Isaac Mizrahi does a score medley. This guy plays the violin really well for a fashion designer!
6:48 Brokeback score should win... and does. That song haunts my memories... my very straight memories.
6:51 Capote cut scene. The most interesting scene in the movie. You just saved yourself $10. Thanks Academy, for doing the movie pirates' job.
6:58 These supposedly restored films look horrible on my HD set.
6:59 Gone with the Wind by the way was not shot widescreen.

7:00 Jessica Alba and Eric Bana, Invisible Girl and Incredible Hulk. Best Sound Mixing... King Kong. The same group of dudes won last year for Return of the King.
7:03 The dowdy women of the Academy present an Honorary to Robert Alman. Great ad libbing. Love the 'peyote buttons' line. My friend Jason did a nice early review of Altman's next movie, Prairie Home Companion.
7:10 Altman with the plugs. Zhang Ziyi, meanwhile, is wondering why the guy who played Frankenstein is just now getting an award.
7:15 M. Night Shyamalan's... Twin Peaks. Weird American Express commercial.
7:17 Jon Stewart intros Ludacris introducing "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" - epileptics take cover from the crazy strobe!
7:20 Yes, even the Oscars can make a rap performance seem lame. (Notice Taraji is singing 'witches' instead of what I know I heard in the film.)
7:24 Upset of the night!!!!!!!!!!!!! It goes to "Pimp"!!!! They let all the black folk in the audience out to holla!!!!
7:25 Stewart quips, "I think it just got a little easier out here for a pimp."
7:26 Love the sound editing geekitude. (Colbert again uncredited.)
7:27 Jennifer Garner proves pregnant is the new thin.
7:29 King Kong wins again! I believe they had as close as it comes to a tech sweep. The winners remind us that Andy Serkis should've been nommed for a truly breakthrough performance. They can't sweep digital collaboration under the rug forever. Nom Serkis!

7:30 The award for most important Hollywood icon to die this year goes to... Richard Pryor. Way to bring us down, Academy.
7:37 Will Smith isn't funny introducing Foreign Films. He says "Palestinian Territories" instead of Palestine or the Palestinian Authority, caving to pressure. Winner... Tsotsi, from South Africa, directed by... Christian Bale? All people should thank through websites! Amandla, man!
7:41 Zhang Ziyi intros Film Editing. Winner... Crash. Hmm... could be a harbinger of a Best Picture upset.
7:44 Hilary Swank looking swank, and female. Best Actor... should be PSH. And the winner is... PSH. Will "Pimp" be the only upset?
7:48 Philip Seymour Hoffman is losing it! And with no music playing under to help him along. After everything, he's just a big cuddly mama's boy. Awww.
7:54 Stewart asks for a round of applause for the orchestra. He's been very funny; he won't be invited back.

8:00 Travolta, still alive, announces nominees for Best Cinematographer. Winner is... Dion Beebe for Geisha. I was wrong; it had one more Oscar in it.
8:01 Jamie Foxx announces the nominees for Best Actress. Winner is... Reece Witherspoon. An informant informs me Reece gets $29M a movie. Hmm, that seems a little high. By about $28.9M.
8:02 Seriously, she was absolutely great in Walk the Line but her acceptance speech was pretty generic. Make us love you, you pixie woman!
8:08 Hate the rolling poster displays on stage. Like bad airport advertising.
8:09 An unethusiastic Dustin Hoffman introduces Best Adapted Screenplay. Should be Brokeback in a walk. It is.
8:10 My favorite cowboy novelist, Larry McMurtry and his big-armed amanuensis Diana Ossana give big ups to booksellers. Feeling threatened, Mr. Jeans Tux?
8:13 Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, er, Uma Thurman introduces Best Original Screenplay. Winner: Crash. Haggis quotes Brecht to no point. But saved by a final classy dedication. Writers rule. (Paul Haggis, by the way, created Walker Texas Ranger. Let the Chuck Norris jokes commence.)
8:15 So it looks like it's coming down, as expected, to Crash vs. Brokeback for Best Picture. Look for Best Director to be the final clue.
8:19 East Coasters who are still awake, you deserve an Oscar.
8:20 Tom "Two Timer" Hanks gives Ang Lee Best Director for Brokeback Mountain.
8:22 Little known fact, Ang Lee can speak perfectly inflected British English, but he chooses not to.
8:23 A hoarse Jack Nicholson lays the final nominees on us. We feel the same way, Jack.
8:23 Whoa! A Crash upset. Incredible. The Academy does hate gays. This. Is. Unbelievable.
8:24 If this was a World Series game, this is the equivalent of a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth putting the (remake of) Bad News Bears on top. Amazing.

Thanks to all the readers. Followups tomorrow and into the next year. I'd like to thank the guests at my Oscar party, for giving me all the good one-liners. I dedicate this liveblog to my statcounter. You've been with me through all the years I was stuck at 12 visits (from my mom). You're a true class act.

DAY AFTER: Cleaned up the spelling mistakes and opening comments. For an Oscars post-mortem pick your poison.

SEE ALSO: TIME thought Jon Stewart acquitted himself admirably. The BBC is with me, feeling the performance was a let-down.

Other Oscar Livebloggers:
ATN Zone
Mr. Sun
Alex Nunez
Wizbang Pop (red carpet, actually live)
Vince Keenan
Blowing Smoke
The Reeler reviews the "majors"