When our friends at ThePlaylist (specifically Oly Lyttleton) recently posted their Oscars post-mortem, “5 Suggestions on How to Make Next Year’s Ceremony Better Than 2012,” one of their suggestions involved a certain lumpy effervescent novelty t-shirt enthusiast who may or may not be eye f*cking me in the banner of this post. I don’t want to give it away, but that seems like a good hint.

Axe Bruce Vilanch, Get New Writers
While Crystal gets the lion’s share of the blame this year, there’s been a recurring problem over the last few years: the jokes have just not been that funny. Veering on the side of respectable (except for the sort-of-staggering blackface and race gags this year, which, like Crystal, seemed to come straight out of a 1961 ceremony), and rarely hitting the spot, responsibility must come at the feet of veteran comic Bruce Vilanch, who’s been head writer on the show for a decade. James Franco publicly feuded with Vilanch after the show last year, and while Franco was far from blameless, we saw his point: like Crystal, Vilanch, who is 63, has seen better days, and the show needs some new blood. And that’s something they seem to be aware of – Hugh Jackman‘s gig in 2009, was penned by, among others, Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab (“Community“) and Ben Schwartz (“Parks and Recreation,” “House of Lies“). They’ve all been busy on TV shows, for sure, but given that writers rooms on many shows wrap in early February, it wouldn’t be impossible to get them back. And if not them, there’s plenty of others who could make it work.

What ThePlaylist, who I should point out are generally pretty solid, especially with their research and fact checking, didn’t count on, was Bruce Vilanch being an avid self-Googler. DON’T DO IT, BRUCE! YOU’LL GO BLIND!

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I actually have a lot of respect for actors and actresses who refuse to play along with the whole superficial awards season ass-kissing routine, and especially the ones who don’t kowtow to the bronzer-faced, stuffed-shirt jackwagons who do most of the red carpet interviews. I just think it speaks better of you to be openly disdainful of the highlighted hot air balloon of a person in front of you rather than spend five minutes earnestly discussing the psychology behind your gown selection process like Cameron Diaz did (“Maybe it’s because I’m an only-child with a Libra rising, but f*ck it, I dig sequins, you know?”). But even I have to admit that Richard Dreyfuss may have gone a little overboard. I mean wow. The video is below. Set phasers to “open contempt.”

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"We did it. We fooled the Americans."

As most predicted, The Artist won Best Picture at the 84th Annual Academy Awards last night, which means Drunkards won too. Well three of you who guessed The Artist would win won. And those three are…

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Leading up to the Oscars, Sacha Baron Cohen’s whole will-he-attend-the-Oscars-or-has-he-been-banned, or-did-he-just-purposely-get-banned-so-he-could-make-this-video shtick was getting stale before the event even started. In the end, he showed up on the red carpets in character after all, making the whole back and forth beforehand seem like that much more of a publicity stunt. I mean, it was intended as a publicity stunt from start to finish, but still, there are limits to how far you can stretch it before everyone tunes you out.

So then Cohen, dressed as Admiral General Aladeen from The Dictator, pulled the stunt you see above. I watched 90 minutes of red carpet and the entire telecast and still managed to miss it. Long story short, Cohen had an urn with Kim Jong-Il’s picture on it, saying “it was his dream to be sprinkled on the red carpet, and Halle Berry’s chest again,” and then dumped the ashes on Seacrest, who says he wasn’t in on it.

“I definitely did not know that he was going to do that!” Seacrest, 37, said Monday on On Air with Ryan Seacrest. “He comes over, and I asked him a couple of questions, but . . . You know that feeling in your gut.”
His saving grace? The advice of his mom Connie to “always make sure to bring two jackets, because you never know what’s going to happen!” [USWeekly]

That is the whitest advice ever. I bring two jackets too, but I do it in case I have to help a pretty lady cross a puddle. Anyway, obviously they weren’t actually Kim Jong-Il’s ashes, they were probably just some stray dogs’. All in all, the bit turned out far better than anyone could’ve imagined. Who could argue with Ryan Seacrest getting dumped on? Classic comedy, fun for all ages. The only way it would’ve been better is if they could’ve somehow worked in Billy Bush getting hit in the crotch with a wiffle bat.

Well the Oscars happened last night, and thanks to our overzealous drinking game, I’m not feeling so hot this morning (Hangover Pug is with us this morning). The “Marty” rule was a baaad choice, for instance, and Brangelina in the front row didn’t help any. Billy Crystal opened with a super long, corny dance number, and the whole time I imagined the Academy producers somewhere thinking, “What the hell is this?? I didn’t hire Billy Crystal so he could do hokey dance numbers!” He followed that with a joke about how “This is my ninth time, just call me War Horse.”  What? What does that even mean? It’s cats who have the nine lives, not horses, isn’t it? VILANCHFAIL. Then there was a Field of Dreams reference in the first five minutes, and we had to drink AGAIN (drink for +10-year-old references). But after that, he settled in and didn’t seem that bad. Or maybe I was just drunk.

The first award of the evening went to veteran cinematographer Robert Richardson for Hugo (Richardson’s third), who may be more familiar to FilmDrunk readers as the wizard who appears when Quentin Tarantino does too much cocaine. Congratulations, Coke Wizard! Reached for comment, Richardson said, “Askwala Pasquala ishkabibble hazoo! It’s quite the wizard’s honor, to accept this from you!” and disappeared in a cloud of bong smoke. Someone turned over a rainstick.

Of course, the big story was The Artist, which won damn near everything it was nominated for, including Picture, Director, Actor, and Score. The backlash will be swift and noisy, I’m sure, but… eh. It seems so very precious and gimmicky and so Oscars that a silent movie from France would win best picture in 2012, but the movie itself… it was pretty good. Not life changing, but… cute. Better than The King’s Speech, Crash, Slumdog Millionaire, etc., certainly. Meryl Streep got the Best Actress trophy she so richly deserved for any number of prior films for that awful snotpile The Iron Lady, and immediately proved herself worthy by convincingly feigning surprise. What an actress! Anyway, things got pretty fuzzy for me after that. Last thing I remember was Jean Dujardin babbling something about “Doogloss Far Bonks.”

"Allo? Mee star far Bonks?"

(List of winners below)

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