2009 Academy Awards: Hot Liveblog Action!

Holy shit! It’s the Oscars! OMGOMGOMG!

The red carpet business just started—Tim Gunn is breathlessly telling Amy Adams that she “could not possibly look more radiant!”, and there’s a literal countdown clock in the corner of the screen that’s ticking away the seconds until ceremony starts—and I’m already suspecting my decision to liveblog this was a terrible, terrible mistake.

After the jump I’ll follow this whole thing, bit by bit; obviously, feel free to jump in with your own commentary, if you’re so inclined. And we’re off.

5:06 PM: Tim Gunn just declared Brangelina something like “the most glorious couple on this red carpet!” I’m not sure how this dude looks at himself in the mirror every morning. At least that CoJo dude from Entertainment Tonight isn’t here. That dude freaks my shit out.

5:10 PM: Oh, christ. Danny Boyle brought all of those mistreated Slumdog Millionaire kids along to the ceremony. And that terrifying Mickey Rourke creature just about broke into tears talking about his dead chihuahua. (And yet he still seems about a billion times cooler than Zac Efron.)

5:16 PM: OH MY GOD THERE’S ANNE HATHAWAY! I love you Anne Hathaway!

5:20 PM: The accountants in charge of the ballots or whatever are walking down the red carpet and are TOTALLY ADORABLE. They even did a little spin to show off their boring-ass tuxedos an—OH MY GOD THERE’S PENELOPE CRUZ! I love you Penelope Cruz! Hey, look, Anne’s right behind you on the red carpet! Why don’t you go introduce yourself to her!

5:21 PM: Yep, didn’t even make it a half-hour into this before making a joke about the possibility of Anne Hathaway and Penelope Cruz doing it. And there’s more where that came from! You’re welcome.

5:25 PM: Wow, the Oscars haven’t even started yet and they’re already doing a self-congratulatory feature on how they put the show together this year and how great it’s going to be. Kudos on waiting a whole 25 minutes to give yourselves blowjobs because of how great you are, Academy Awards producers.

5:31 PM: And here’s Wolverine, ready to take on his hosting duties! I’m now taking bets on how long it’ll take for him to mention X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in theaters everywhere May 1!

5:33 PM: Oh, fuck, he’s trying to be funny. With recession jokes and crappy-ass cheap props. And showtunes. OH FUCK THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE

5:35 PM: I never thought I’d say it but I miss Billy Crystal. Really bad. Glad Hugh Jackman’s cracking up and finding himself hilarious, though.

5:35 PM: YOU PUT ANNE HATHAWAY DOWN WOLVERINE, YOU PUT HER DOWN SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE INVOLVED IN THIS STUPID OPENING NUMBER

5:35 PM: Hugh Jackman actually seems like a really likeable and smart guy in person. I’m not sure why they’re making him do this goofy bullshit. Oh, right. Because it’s the Oscars. Which have somehow found a way to simultaneously ruin both the X-Men and my dearest Anne for me. Forever.

5:40 PM: Wow. They’re still going with the “thanks to the recession, we can’t afford a real opening number!” gag. Which is depressing. And not to mention a goddamn lie. Fucking A, everyone in this room makes more money in a week than I will see in my entire life. And yep, there we have it—Jackman just referred to himself as “Wolverine.” So. Who bet “nine minutes”?

5:45 PM: GYAH! WHAT IS THAT?!? Oh. Okay. Phew. Tilda Swinton freaks my shit out, man. Not on like a CoJo level, but close.

5:45 PM: “It’s not easy being a nun!” cracks former Oscars host Whoopi Goldberg, announcing Amy Adams’ nomination for Doubt. Because Whoopi was in Sister Act, get it? Goddammit. I hate everything. Every time I see Whoopi Goldberg, I want to watch this.

5:48 PM: Penelope Cruz wins Best Supporting Actress, thanking not only Woody Allen but Pedro Almodovar. What a classy lady. What a super classy, super hot lady.

5:53 PM: HOLY SHIT IT’S TINA FEY! TINA FEY IS IN THE SAME ROOM WITH PENELOPE CRUZ AND ANNE HATHAWAY! I’VE HAD THIS DREAM BEFORE!

5:55 PM: And the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay goes to Dustin Lance Black for Milk, not to Wall-E or even In Bruges. What. The. Fuck. Hey, Dustin Lance Black, maybe you should bring out the kid in the wheelchair from Milk to help you accept the award. Remember that super cheesy plot device character you used not once but twice in the movie to yank on everybody’s heartstrings? Yeah. That one.

6 PM: And Best Adapted Screenplay goes to Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire. Not surprising. Right now I feel like predicting either Milk or Slumdog for the most wins this year. Crazy prediction, I know. In related news, if melted down and sold, that single Oscar that Beaufoy just won could feed an entire Indian slum for 12-15 months.

6:06 PM: Best Animated Feature montage. If Kung Fu Panda wins I am going to FLIP MY SHIT.

6:08 PM: Best Animated Feature goes to Wall-E. Jack Black, one of the presenters and the main voice actor for the nominated Kung Fu Panda, pretends to be excited, which is a little bit sad. Actually, I do not care about Jack Black’s emotions at this moment; I’m just glad Wall-E won this since it didn’t get Best Original Screenplay.

6:10 PM: I wish Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black would stop bantering. It hurts.

6:10 PM: Best Animated Short Film goes to something no one has ever seen or will ever see, La Maison en Petits Cubes. I don’t care, frankly. I’m still angry that my live-action short film didn’t get nominated. I think I did a pretty goddamn good job with it, considering it was all shot with hidden cameras in the ceiling above my futon. THANKS FOR NOTHING, ACADEMY.

6:13 PM: I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kiala Kazebee for helping me with this. If I had to do this alone I’m pretty sure I’d have given up around 5:11 pm.

6:19 PM: Best Art Direction goes to Benjamin Button. Fair enough. It was pretty to look at.

6:22 PM: Best Costume Design goes to The Duchess. As I have not purchased a new piece of clothing since 1991, I’m going to avoid commentary on this one.

6:23 PM: Okay wait I can’t help it MOST BORING ACCEPTANCE SPEECH EVER DUCHESS DRESS-MAKING DUDE

6:24 PM: Best Makeup goes to Benjamin Button, which is fine, though fucking A, it would have been nice to see Hellboy get it. That The Dark Knight nod was a little silly. I’m pretty sure Two-Face was mostly, if not all, CG, and the Joker just looks like any girl in line outside the Barracuda on a rainy night.

6:26 PM: Huh. The dude from Twilight and the girl from Mamma Mia! are presenting something? Good god. They both act like they’ve had lobotomies, staring at the teleprompter with those slack faces. (Maybe that’s unfair. I guess if I had to pretend to care about Twilight or Mamma Mia! for months on end, I’d probably have problems not drooling and/or shitting myself in public, too.)

6:32 PM: So there’s Natalie Portman, presenting the Best Cinematography Oscar, which means I’m delighted right now. AND YET. Ben Stiller is standing next to her, doing a Joaquin Phoenix impression. Thanks for ruining everything, Ben Stiller. Look how pretty she is! She’s so pretty! One day I will marry her. AND YET. I can’t focus. I cannot pay attention to Natalie Portman. One day I will kill you Ben Stiller. I will kill you. Over and over.

6:33 PM: If I was a cinematographer and was nominated right now, only to have my nomination ruined by Stiller’s standing there in beard and acting like a fucking idiot? I might go a little bit Christian Bale on somebody. (Stiller.)

6:35 PM: Slumdog wins Best Cinematography. This movie does not deserve to win every award it’s been nominated for this year, but I’d say it deserves this one. ALSO LOOK HOW HAPPY THIS HAS MADE DANNY BOYLE. He’s sitting there watching his boring cinematographer accept his Oscar, and he’s back in the crowd, unabashedly grinning with glee like he’s Spud from Trainspotting.

6:39 PM: And here’s Jessica Biel for some reason, the least talented person in this room by a long shot. But ha! They made her host the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards—you know, the ones they don’t even bother showing on TV! I hope having to do so made Jessica Biel miserable. She should be forced to host the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards every year. Sometime around 2073, she might have done appropriate penance for her performance in The Illusionist. Then she can start trying to do penance for Next.

6:43 PM: Judd Apatow makes a short movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco about how how comedies get shafted at the Oscars. Also about how crappy Mamma Mia! and The Love Guru and Doubt and The Reader are. And they have a staple gun! Like in The Wrestler! Holy crap. Janusz Kaminski is hanging out with the Pineapple Express dudes! I wish the whole Oscar ceremony was like this. And now Rogen, Franco, and Kaminski are giving the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short Film. It’s good they got these guys to give away this award, since no one gives a shit who’s going to win.

6:48 PM: Some speech from the bald dude who won Best Live-Action Short Film. Please bring Rogen and Franco back out. Also please get Janusz Kaminski to co-star in Pineapple Express II: The Reckoning. He could be to Pineapple Express what Joe Pesci was to Lethal Weapon. Except, you know, funny.

6:42 PM: ANOTHER FUCKING MUSICAL NUMBER STARRING WOLVERINE? Did he blackmail somebody or something? WHY THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING. AND HE’S SINGING A SONG FROM GREASE?

Okay. I’m going to take a break for a second. If I don’t come back, it’s because I’ve slashed my wrists. (Vertically, not horizontally, because I mean it this time.) Kiala, you can have my stereo.

6:57 PM: “The musical is back!!!” Wolverine declares as he and Beyonce and those little High School Musical shitheads finish up their big stupid useless uncalled for musical number. And then Wolverine thanks Australia director Baz Luhrmann for coming up with the number! At this point, I don’t think it’s an overreaction to suggest that for his various crimes against humanity, Baz Luhrmann should probably be shot.

7:03 PM: Best Supporting Actor nominees are being announced. Huh. I wonder who’s going to win this one?

7:04 PM: I do not know why Philip Seymour Hoffman is wearing a beanie. Maybe it’s really cold in the Kodak Theater or something? Or maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman just likes looking kind of dumb?

7:06 PM: I really do love that Robert Downey, Jr. got nominated for Tropic Thunder. I would have loved it even more if James Franco got nominated for Pineapple Express, too. Those might have been my favorite performances of the year. Yep, a stoner and a dude in blackface. I’m a pretty classy guy.

7:09 PM: And the Best Supporting Actor Oscar goes to the late Heath Ledger. Accepting the award for him are his father, his mother, and his sister, and they get a standing ovation as they walk onstage.

7:11 PM: Heath Ledgers’ family collectively gives a sweet, understated acceptance speech. Which is a weird sort of relief: I was worried that whole thing was gonna be a lot tackier than it ended up being.

7:13 PM: Best Documentary. “Probably we will move in the direction of poetry, in the direction of something that really illuminates us,” Werner Herzog says in his adorable accent during a too-brief (did I just say “too-brief” in relation to the Oscars? Wha?), Albert Maysles-made film that collects interviews with the nominees for the Best Documentary Oscar. Herzog better win this thing.

7:15 PM: Nope, it goes to Man on Wire. That’s great. Good to see Herzog get ignored for 40 years and get shafted the one time he gets nominated. To be fair, I didn’t see Man on Wire, and for all I know—WHAT THE FUCK? ARE THE DUDES WHO JUST BEAT WERNER DOING FUCKING MAGIC TRICKS ONSTAGE FOR THEIR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH? Oh, fuck this. Fuck this so much. This is why I hate the Oscars. And magic.

7:19 PM: So some chick is accepting an award for something right now, I’m guessing maybe Best Short Documentary or something? I don’t know. I’m still kind of angry about this Herzog business. I’m going to watch a YouTube and feel grumpy for a minute instead of paying attention to whatever she’s saying. No, no, don’t worry about me. I’m just moody. I’ll be better in a few minutes.

7:25 PM: About the only time action movies ever get a shout-out during the Oscars is in the post-production-centric sound and special effects categories. I have to say that the montage of blockbuster action flicks they’re showing right now kind of makes me want to turn off this awards show and watch Iron Man or Rambo or Hulk or Indiana Jones instead. I like explosions and stuff.

7:27 PM: The Oscar for Best Visual Effects goes to Benjamin Button. Totally legit. Totally unsurprising. If there’s one award that Benjamin Button deserves this year, it’s this one. This probably means there’s no goddamn chance Brad Pitt’s getting Best Actor, though, since it look like the Academy has decided the special effects did most of the acting for that character.

7:30 PM: Best Sound Editing goes to The Dark Knight. Wall-E should have gotten this—seriously, you could go to that movie with your eyes closed and it would still be amazing—but The Dark Knight‘s sound was pretty badass, too. I liked the explosions and stuff.

7:31 PM: And Slumdog gets the nod for Sound Mixing. Feel free to reference my incessant whining about Wall-E (conveniently located one paragraph above), but hey, at least Danny Boyle looks all totally delighted again! That dude is having the night of his life.

7:36 PM: Best Editing: I do want Slumdog to win this. Come on.

7:37 PM: And it does. They keep cutting to all the Slumdog Millionaire kids every time Slumdog wins anything. It’s pretty adorable. (As adorable as Danny Boyle grinning and giving DOUBLE THUMBS UP? No. Not that adorable.)

7:40 PM: Wow. Eddie Murphy is giving the humanitarian award to Jerry Lewis? “From one nutty professor to another”? Okay. Fair enough. Just keep it tasteful, everybody! Jerry, that means you can’t call anyone a “faggot” in your acceptance speech. Eddie, that means that for the next five minutes, we’ll all pretend that you didn’t do this:

7:51 PM: The orchestra is performing a medley of the nominated scores. Theyr’e somehow making every single one of them sound exactly the same. ZzzzZZZZzzzZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZ. OH HELLO ZAC EFRON. FUCKING AGAIN? PRESENTING SOMETHING? Goddammit. What are you doing here, Zac? Why won’t you leave? Nice to see Slumdog‘s AR Rahman win, though.

7:56 PM: Hey, it’s a musical number that doesn’t include Wolverine hamming it up! How refreshing. I don’t trust this, though. It can’t last. I keep waiting for Hugh Jackman to jump out from behind the curtains and do jazz hands or something. “Ta-dah! Oscars!”

8 PM: This mash-up performance of music from Wall-E and Slumdog is slowly but steadily making me hate the music for both of those films.

8:01 PM: AR Rahman wins again, this time for Best Original Song. And here’s the obligatory cut to Boyle, looking like he’s simultaneously on ecstasy and cocaine.

8:06 PM: Best Foreign Language Film, presented in part by Liam Neeson. If I were him right now, at the very end of the list of nominees, I’d be like “And also Taken is nominated, because holy shit did I kill a bunch of foreign language-speaking assholes in that one! Am I right? Midichlorians!” Anyway, some movie from Japan that no one’s seen wins, which is weird, ’cause I thought either The Class or The Impossible to Spell Baader-Meinhoff Complex would win pretty easily. Anyway, some Japanes film wins, and I think it’s fair to note that acceptance speeches that are delivered in 50 percent broken English and 50 percent unabashed delight are always fantastic to watch. Always.

8:09 PM: You know, I keep trying to get over it, but I just can’t. Seriously, Ben Stiller can suck it.

8:11 PM: Queen Latifah is singing a super-sappy song dedicated to everybody who died in 2008, while the “In Memoriam” montage plays in the background, showing everyone from Syndey Pollack to Ollie Johnson to Paul Newman to Roy Scheider to Charles H. Joffe. THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, RICARDO MONTALBAN! (And also for you, Bernie Mac.)

8:22 PM: Reese Witherspoon is giving out the Oscar for Best Director. Poor Reese got all thrown off when they started playing music behind her spiel. I still find it bewildering she won an Oscar for that Johnny Cash movie.

ANYWAY, Best Director, and a pretty good indicator of what film will get Best Picture, goes to: Dannny Boyle for Slumdog. HE IS SO FUCKING STOKED. He is literally jumping up and down like Tigger because of some old promise he made to his kids. Good for him. I think in my review of Slumdog I mentioned that the film’s hardly perfect, but you can tell that Boyle cared about it immensely, which is what makes it great to watch; this speech is kind of like that. And the dude deserves it, anyway, for the cumulative effect of his other stuff, 28 Days Later and Trainspotting and yeah, even Sunshine. So okay, I’ll roll with this.

8:30 PM: Best Actress. I don’t have a dog in this fight, as they say, though that’s probably a really inappropriate thing to say here. But jesus, is that Shirley MacLaine presenting? God she’s nuts. Put her and CoJo and Tilda in a room and trap me in there too and I would eat my own leg off. Not as like a tactic to get out of there or anything, but just because I’d panic to such a terrifying degree that that’s the only thing I could think of doin—OH FUCK SOPHIA LOREN IS TERRIFYING MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP SHE’S GOING TO EAT ME

8:33 PM: Winslet wins, Loren can go back to the coffin in which she sleeps during the day, and it looks like stacking the odds turned out to be a pretty good tactic.

8:37 PM: Wait. Why is it called “The Academy”? What do they teach? I get calling something “academy” when you teach something there—like, for a totally random example, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, or something. But does it make any sense to call something an Academy when all it is is a bunch of people who get together and pat each other on the back once a year? Anyway.

8:42 PM: Ben Kingsley is ridiculous.

8:43 PM: Whoa! Sean Penn wins for Best Actor! No that he wasn’t great, ’cause he was, but seriously, did anyone not think Mickey Rourke was a lock for this one? Mickey and the ghost of his dead chihuahua are going to come after Penn tonight. With a staple gun.

8:45 PM: At least he’s going out with a heartfelt speech. His hands are shaking, his voice seems quivery, and he keeps saying things about homos and commies, for some bizarre reason. Actually, maybe his hands are just shaking and his voice is just quivering because he’s terrified of being haunted by the ghost of Mickey Rourke’s chihuahua.

8:49 PM: Huh. A labored montage that seems to be valiantly trying to connect this years’ Best Picture nominees to Best Picture winners of the past? Like connecting The Reader to The Graduate? And Milk to Braveheart? What a terrible, terrible idea. This makes no sense. This is goofy and naval-gazey and self-congratulatory. Which I guess makes sense. God, seriously? Linking up Benjamin Button and Good Will Hunting?

8:52 PM: What a weird thing to have Spielberg present the Best Picture Oscar. He’s like a weird king, presiding over the ceremonies, declaring who hath earned his favor.

8:53 PM: Slumdog wins! The adorable slum dwellers come up onstage! Actually, everyone comes up onstage! The stage is not big enough to hold all of them. There is no way all of these people worked on Slumdog. I suspect Mickey Rourke has snuck up there and is onstage too right now, hiding behind one of the adorable slum dwellers, patiently waiting for his chance to steal an Oscar.

9:02 PM: Goddammit. I guess if it hasn’t happened by now, it isn’t going to. Thanks for nothing, Penelope Cruz and Anne Hathaway.