Billy Crystal Nominees for a Billy Crystal Oscars

The nominations for the 84th Academy Awards were announced this morning and they’re perfectly befitting a show that has Billy Crystal for a host. Safe, traditional, hokey, and above all, boring. Hugo led with 11 nominations, with The Artist just behind with 10. Meryl Streep was nominated for The Iron Lady again, and it’s almost guaranteed that she’ll win, even though she didn’t win anything for Doubt or Adaptation. Andy Serkis was (deservedly) snubbed, as were Brendan Gleeson, everyone from 50/50, Ryan Gosling, Michael Shannon, John C. Reilly (for Cedar Rapids, not We Need to Talk about Kevin or Carnage), and probably someone really awesome who I’m forgetting.

It’s nice to see Midnight in Paris get recognized, not because it was the best movie I saw this year (it was cute), but because it was the only one of these not specifically marketed as an Oscar picture. It’s amazing, you just tell Academy voters what they like and they like it! It’s like MANswers for middle-aged faux-intellectuals wearing shawls. I’m not sure if these idiots thought they were judging art or buying cigarettes. “Debonair dudes prefer Moneyball. It’s the smoothest!” The only way to make this telecast watchable is if they put the horse from War Horse in the audience and keep cutting back to it while it sits there pooping and eating hay.

Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

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We talk a lot about Banksy these days, even though we don’t really know much about him. But he is the mastermind behind Vince’s favorite film of 2010, Exit Through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. Vince recently wondered who would show up to accept the Oscar if Banksy won and we now have an answer – Banksy.

While the artist didn’t reveal his identity at any point during the film, he implies that he might show up in person to accept the Oscar if Exit wins. You know, for a guy who spends his life in secrecy, Banksy sure does talk a lot.

The graffiti artist, who has never revealed his real identity in public, released a cryptic statement, saying: “This is a big surprise.”

He added: “I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I’m prepared to make an exception for the ones I’m nominated for. The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.” (Via NME)

Exit is up against Gasland, Restrepo, Inside Job and Waste Land in the Documentary Feature category, and since I’ve only seen Exit I’m going to predict that it wins. I mean, you have two films with land in the title, so that’s redundant and we can count them out. Inside Job sounds controversial and Restrepo? I don’t even know what that means. Exit gets the gold statue, Banksy accepts and reveals that he is actually Danny Masterson. Damn you, Masterson.

Back in November, angelic unicorn whisperer Anne Hathaway hosted Saturday Night Live and the result was an episode that wasn’t necessarily terrible. And while I can sit here and break off into a 10,000-word rant about how terrible Jim Carrey’s recent hosting gig was, I won’t, because Vince won’t reach around if I do. What I can tell you is how Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are allegedly boycotting the Academy Awards because of Hathaway’s impression of Holmes from that episode.

Hathaway, who is as pure as a golden retriever’s smile, is hosting the Oscars alongside Filmdrunk favorite James Franco, so this news comes as a blow to the zero people who care about TomKat. As for the sketch and impression in question, for once I actually looked at Anne and thought, “Hey, she’s more than just an amazing rack and oddly pale hotness.” But Cruise and Holmes took the harmless impression as an insult and now they’re calling off their trip to the Oscars because they’re both terrible actors and will never be nominated for crap and would probably be left out of the “In Memoriam” montage at this point in their careers offended.

Jump on my couch, All Headline News…

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Anne Hathaway and AMPAS president Tom Sherak announced the nominees for the 2010 (82nd) Academy Awards a few minutes ago.  Here are the nominees for Best Picture (they switched to 10 nominees from five earlier this year):

• The Hurt Locker
• An Education
• Precious
• Inglourious Basterds
• A Serious Man
• Up
• District 9
• The Blind Side
• Up in the Air
• Avatar

Out of all of these, I’d say the only real surprise is The Blind Side.  You could argue any number of films — Star Trek, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Bad Lieutenant, etc. were better, but they wouldn’t have a chance of winning anyway, so who cares.  And relax, there’s no chance “Yer changin’ that boy’s laahfe/Nope, he’s changin’ maahne” will win the Oscar any more than there was a chance “In Afrrika et’s ‘bling bang’” would.  An exchange that stupid is grounds for disqualification.  After its PGA and DGA wins, The Hurt Locker is looking like the odds-on favorite.  If it were up to me, it would be a contest between Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron.  Whoever shares the most embarrassing sexual secret about the other wins.  Or maybe they could just bang onstage.  Wouldn’t that be a heartwarming reunion?  I dunno, I guess I’m old fashioned like that.

Subnote: This year’s list is waaay better than last year’s (Slumdog, Ben Button, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Milk).  So turn that frown upside down, pussy.

The National Academy of Boring Old Farts just released their shortlist of seven films (which they’ll eventually whittle down to three) in contention for an Oscar in Visual Effects.  The list includes:

• Avatar
• District 9
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Star Trek
• Terminator Salvation
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• 2012

Yep, Transformers 2.  Because I guess it’s not part of a visual effects supervisor’s job to, you know, MAKE SURE YOU CAN TELL THE EFFING ROBOTS APART.  I’m not asking for high art here, I just want to be able to tell which giant robot is getting punched.  Is that so much to ask?  Now, I realize, I’m not a visual effects artist.  If you asked me to draw a turkey, I’d start by tracing my hand.  When my computer breaks down, I throw rocks at it and pee my pants.  That said, it seems to me that you could just make the robots different colors.  But maybe I just don’t understand these newfangled visual effects and their indistinguishable masses of shiny pieces of metal. Oh my God, bra, this is so gnarly I don’t even know what the hell’s happening!

Additional Facts: Every morning, Michael Bay’s visual effects team meets to blow dry his hair.

[source = THR]