7:53pm<\/strong>\u00a0 This Nick Nolte red carpet interview is amazing. 8:01pm<\/strong>\u00a0 Tim Gunn is calling everybody \u2018breathtaking.\u2019 Alex is asthmatic, Tim! He won\u2019t survive the night if you keep showing us things that will take his breath away. Please talk about War Horse a bit so he can catch his breath.<\/p>\n 8:03pm<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0James<\/em>: \u201cHow weird would it be if Albert Nobbs and Hilary Swank in Boys Don\u2019t Cry made out\u2026 would it be weird if I got turned on by that?\u201d 8:12pm\u00a0<\/strong> Every one of these red carpet interviews is awkward\u2026 although Sandra Bullock just said \u201csexy times,\u201d adding to her already infinite amount of cool points.<\/p>\n 8:18pm<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to root for any of these movies while The Rundown is playing on Spike TV.<\/p>\n 8:23pm<\/strong>\u00a0 OH GOD BRIAN GRAZER NEVER STOPS LOOKING TERRIFYING<\/p>\n 8:33pm\u00a0<\/strong> The most important thing we learned from Billy Crystal\u2019s opening short: blackface is apparently still acceptable in 2012.<\/p>\n 8:40pm\u00a0<\/strong> Alex<\/em>: \u201cThis opening is making me miss the days when James Franco was an Oscar host.\u201d 8:43pm\u00a0<\/strong> Somebody in the audience screamed as it was announced Hugo won the cinematography award. Apparently Alex is not the only person who knows that The Tree of Life just got robbed.<\/p>\n 8:49pm\u00a0<\/strong> Do you love Billy Crystal so far? Or do you LOVE<\/em> Billy Crystal so far?<\/p>\n 8:50pm\u00a0<\/strong> Brett Ratner is already at the after party, drinking and bragging about how he could have done the show better. Probably with a three-hour tribute to X-Men: The Last Stand.<\/p>\n "Do you regret hiring me yet, Singer?"<\/p><\/div>\n 8:51pm\u00a0<\/strong> Two modern technology jokes already, Billy? If you tell me to text again, I\u2019m going to kill you.<\/p>\n 8:53pm\u00a0<\/strong> That\u2019s three in 23 minutes. Fuck you, Billy.<\/p>\n 8:56pm\u00a0<\/strong> People should get an award just for properly pronouncing Michel Hazanavicius\u2019 name.<\/p>\n 8:57pm\u00a0<\/strong> The voice of the MacGuffin Men, Emily, chimes in on the festivities via that new technology all the kids are using: a text message! Her thoughts on the awards so far: \u201cIt\u2019s like someone\u2019s alcoholic aunt picks the winners.\u201d<\/p>\n 9:05pm\u00a0<\/strong> Sandra Bullock wins the day again with her intro for the Best Foreign Language film award. Sandra Bullock: making us forget The Blind Side, one day at a time.<\/p>\n 9:10pm\u00a0<\/strong> Jessica Chastain should win Best Supporting Actress for fooling me into thinking her character in The Help was played by Bryce Dallas Howard this whole time.<\/p>\n Pictured: Not Bryce Dallas Howard, apparently.<\/p><\/div>\n 9:13pm\u00a0<\/strong> She did not win. Apparently the Academy doesn\u2019t award weird, abstract achievements\u2026 Except for the fact that they are currently awarding people for achievements in acting.<\/p>\n 9:14pm\u00a0<\/strong> Moneyball is the first baseball movie to be nominated for Best Picture since Field of Dreams. This means The Sandlot wasn\u2019t nominated for Best Picture, which is a fucking travesty.<\/p>\n 9:19pm\u00a0<\/strong> HOLY SHIT HOW DID WE NOT KNOW THERE WOULD BE A CHRISTOPHER GUEST SEGMENT<\/p>\n 9:25pm<\/strong>\u00a0 \u201cAnd there\u2019s the Roons!\u201d<\/p>\n 9:38pm\u00a0<\/strong> James<\/em>: \u201cIs that what seeing movies in Quebec is like?\u201d 9:40pm<\/strong> \u00a0Robert Downey Jr. wins everything, forever. He knew he would have to really step it up to make up for the general shittiness of Gwyneth Paltrow, and that\u2019s precisely what he did.<\/p>\n 9:44pm<\/strong> \u00a0Thanks for kicking the entertaining, energetic documentary winners offstage. That\u2019s what this show needs. Less energy.<\/p>\n 9:46pm<\/strong> \u00a0Chris Rock, being the best since 1992: \u201cFuck it, I\u2019m just going to do some stand up making fun of how easy it is to make an animated film right before I present the award for Best Animated Film.\u201d<\/p>\n 9:47pm\u00a0<\/strong> Rango wins Best Animated Feature, meaning 20% of the 2011 films James saw this year have now won Oscars.<\/p>\n 9:50pm \u00a0<\/strong>Titanic 3D commercial! FINALLY SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING<\/p>\n 9:53pm\u00a0<\/strong> Emma Stone\u2019s eyebrows should win the award for Best Visual Effects\u2026 they are too pristine to be real. (Also, that bit with Ben Stiller was really funny.)<\/p>\n 9:54pm<\/strong> \u00a0Michael Bay appearance! And yes, Alex is still mad about Transformers losing Best Visual Effects to The Golden Compass in 2008.<\/p>\n 9:56pm\u00a0<\/strong> Did Real Steel lose the award for Best Visual Effects because the steel was too<\/em> real?<\/p>\n Pictured: Reality.<\/p><\/div>\n 9:58pm\u00a0<\/strong> Billy Crystal just said, \u201cI liked that one\u201d in reference to one of his jokes, marking the first time anybody has said that about any of his jokes tonight.<\/p>\n 9:59pm<\/strong>\u00a0 Now that Jonah Hill has lost weight, does he get retro Oscar acting points for still being fat in Moneyball?<\/p>\n 10:01pm<\/strong> \u00a0Apparently not, as he loses Best Supporting Actor. Hooray for Christopher Plummer, though\u2026 We really didn\u2019t want to have to make a pun with \u2018bummer.\u2019 (Also, his speech and jacket combination were a delight.)<\/p>\n 10:03pm<\/strong> \u00a0Is that Lorne Michaels playing keys in the balcony?<\/p>\n 10:04pm\u00a0<\/strong> Oh god now Seven is on Spike TV. Spike, you\u2019re really tempting us here… Can we live blog the Spike TV Oscar counter programming instead?<\/p>\n 10:05pm<\/strong> \u00a0WHAT\u2019S IN THE BOXXXXXXXXX<\/p>\n 10:08pm\u00a0<\/strong> Billy Crystal is doing his \u2018I can read minds\u2019 bit. We hope he turns the camera on us and then gets really offended by what we have been thinking about his performance.<\/p>\n 10:09pm<\/strong> \u00a0Okay, that Nolte joke works… as do all jokes about Nick Nolte. You\u2019re now batting 0.008, Billy, but we kind of wish we were watching Luck right now, so Nolte is probably still the real winner.<\/p>\n 10:12pm<\/strong> \u00a0At least 60% of the shots in this broadcast are of Billy Crystal laughing at his own shitty jokes.<\/p>\n 10:12pm<\/strong> \u00a0The shadow on Owen Wilson\u2019s nose dent is unfortunate. It\u2019s Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s The Dark Knight eye troughs all over again.<\/p>\n "Alfred, why does nobody around here know how to properly light my face?"<\/p><\/div>\n 10:12pm<\/strong> \u00a0James<\/em>: \u201cIs it original to say I\u2019d like to score with Penelope Cruz?\u201d 10:14pm<\/strong> \u00a0The Artist\u2019s composer\u2019s name is almost \u2018Bourne.\u2019 We\u2019re counting the Best Original Score as a victory for the MacGuffin Men, despite the fact that the two best scores from this past year weren\u2019t even nominated.<\/p>\n 10:19pm<\/strong> \u00a0Bret McKenzie must feel really wonderful about his Oscar win. It has to feel great beating one other song from a movie nobody saw.<\/p>\n 10:21pm<\/strong> \u00a0Oscar promo<\/em>: \u201cWill Kristen Wiig be the first SNL cast member to win an Oscar?\u201d 10:24pm<\/strong> \u00a0Did Michelle Williams actually bring Busy Phillips as her date? With Jason Segel in attendance, that\u2019s two Freaks and Geeks cast members in the building (not to mention Judd Apatow). I assume that somewhere Martin Starr is eating a sandwich and laughing his ass off<\/a>.<\/p>\n 10:25pm<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cGood evening. I\u2019m Angelina Jolie, and this is my thigh. Also, I look horrendous.\u201d<\/p>\n 10:27pm<\/strong> \u00a0Community just won an Oscar. Suck it, nerds.<\/p>\n "Good evening. I'm Jim Rash, and I'm much cooler than Angelina Jolie."<\/p><\/div>\n 10:30pm<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cThe Academy congratulates Woody Allen, but he is not in attendance because he isn\u2019t allowed to be in the same room as Martin Scorsese\u2019s guest.\u201d<\/p>\n 10:30pm<\/strong> \u00a0With Midnight in Paris\u2019 Best Original Screenplay victory, that means 40% of the 2011 films James has seen are Oscar winners. Once Neve Campbell wins Best Actress for Scream 4, studios will be beating down his door for him to bless their movie with his eyes. He\u2019ll be like the Good Luck Chuck of cinema, until studios realize nothing can make Good Luck Chuck seem like a good movie.<\/p>\n 10:32pm<\/strong> \u00a0Note how this segment of actors talking about film are using the score from Beginners<\/a>. Where was its Best Original Score nomination, Academy? (Moneyball has a great score as well.<\/a>)<\/p>\n 10:32pm<\/strong> \u00a0Also, why did the first two of those segments end with Adam Sandler? Although the Academy\u2019s apparent enjoyment of him might explain some of these nominees being here, as well as the choice of host.<\/p>\n 10:34pm<\/strong> \u00a0The Oscars are 84\u2026 maybe when we’re 84 we\u2019ll like Billy Crystal\u2019s jokes too.<\/p>\n 10:36pm<\/strong> \u00a0We feel bad that The Artist is losing so much to Hugo, but at least Jean Dujardin didn\u2019t have to understand Billy Crystal\u2019s monologue.<\/p>\n 10:42pm<\/strong> \u00a0Rose Byrne is trying to beat Angie at the \u201cWho can look terrifyingly skinny?\u201d game.<\/p>\n 10:44pm<\/strong> \u00a0Ellie Kemper is cuter than all of these animated creatures combined.<\/p>\n 10:46pm<\/strong> \u00a0We didn\u2019t know Michael Shannon and the guy from Mythbusters made an animated short together.<\/p>\n 10:47pm<\/strong> \u00a0Does Angelina Jolie keep adopting so she can have a new person to challenge herself to weigh less than?<\/p>\n 10:58pm<\/strong> \u00a0Pharrell has been playing drums in the balcony all night and they haven\u2019t given him a close up. And they wonder why they can\u2019t draw in a younger audience.<\/p>\n 11:03pm<\/strong> \u00a0Billy Crystal says he\u2019s been thinking of deceased Oscar producer Gil Cates every second of tonight. We appreciate the sentiment, but maybe that\u2019s why all of your jokes have been duds.<\/p>\n 11:13pm<\/strong> \u00a0Billy Crystal said the talking head segments about stars describing why they love film were good. Finally, Billy and the MacGuffin Men agree on something. Hey, Academy! Perhaps the best way to explain how great film is is simply to have the least identifiable humans on the planet appear totally identifiable. It makes you seem like human beings, as opposed to people that thought a live-action version of The Smurfs was a good idea.<\/p>\n 11:14pm<\/strong> \u00a0In her speeches to the Best Actor nominees, Natalie Portman is really speaking from the heart\u2026 of the teleprompter.<\/p>\n 11:18pm<\/strong> \u00a0Jean Dujardin didn\u2019t learn that if you want to get your Benigni on, you have to do it before the speech.<\/p>\n "MERDRE!"<\/p><\/div>\n 11:29pm<\/strong> \u00a0Sandra Bullock has been crying for the whole show. There must be gum on her seat\u2026 gum.<\/p>\n 11:31pm<\/strong> \u00a0It\u2019s very difficult to hate on Meryl Streep, regardless of how few of her movies are actually good, or how that one line in her acceptance speech was kind of dickish.<\/p>\n 11:32pm<\/strong> \u00a0However, still no Oscar wins for the cast of Dawson\u2019s Creek. Maybe next year Michelle Williams will bring Linda Cardellini as her good luck charm instead.<\/p>\n 11:33pm<\/strong> \u00a0Tom Cruise is presenting the award for Best Picture, and he is apparently very excited about it… TOM CRUISE ACTION VEIN<\/a> SIGHTING.<\/p>\n 11:36pm<\/strong> \u00a0Thank god War Horse didn\u2019t win\u2026 Now we don\u2019t have to do a podcast on War Horse.<\/p>\n 11:38pm<\/strong> \u00a0Good night, Billy Crystal! We won\u2019t miss you at all!<\/p>\n The Academy Awards show this year was mediocre, but it represented the average person\u2019s feelings towards the Academy quite well. The broadcast\u2019s best moments were either the moments that were the most abstract and interesting (Cirque du Soleil\u2019s performance) or the moments that were the most human (the talking heads segments). In between all of that, however, was proof of the Academy\u2019s inability to really show that they know what it is they want, with a wealth of forgettable, uninteresting, and unfunny segments. The show was depicted as a look at going to the movies and, with few exceptions, the Academy made themselves seem completely removed from actual people that go to the movies. By making this their show\u2019s theme, the Academy was more or less saying they go to the movies to get wrapped up in something outside of themselves, but by giving The Artist their most prestigious award, they showed us they most like to get wrapped up in something that reminds them of themselves. The fact that everybody seems to enjoy The Artist shows that it is a good film, but it is certainly not a great one, mostly due to its overly simplistic nature. Abstract questions of fate in The Adjustment Bureau were ignored, as was the almost universal humanity found in Beginners. The incredibly ballsy and kind of great writing present in Young Adult was somehow dismissed, and 50\/50 remains a more heartwarming movie than anything about a horse stopping a war ever could. Other Best Picture nominees were more interesting for how they twisted a simple idea (The Tree of Life, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris), or for the pure humanity on display in Hugo and The Descendants. Through the nomination process, the Academy told us that they are as old as you think<\/a>, and in picking The Artist as their winner, they showed how self-absorbed and uncreative they are as well.<\/p>\n There is a chasm between the Academy that hands out the awards to the viewers that watch the acceptance speeches, and this will never change. There will never truly be a consensus film of the year, as opinions on art are much too subjective for that to happen. But that doesn\u2019t make the Academy Awards unimportant. Like the feelings expressed by the stars throughout Sunday\u2019s talking head segments, film is important to us as a culture. It is our most pervasive and wide-reaching art form, and regardless of how one feels about the current state of movies, that isn\u2019t changing. Your Monday morning likely contained at least one conversation about the Oscars, if only to say how apathetic you were towards their existence when a co-worker brought up the topic. If you\u2019re like Alex, you sent angry text messages when The Tree of Life failed to win Best Cinematography, and if you\u2019re like James you got excited that Dean Pelton won an Oscar. Our reactions to these awards are instinctual and emotional, and will remain so. The Academy might not realize that they are closer to us than they realize, but so long as they continue to have their show hosted by an old dog doing no new tricks, in an effort to remind themselves of what once was, this space will remain. That doesn\u2019t matter, however, so long as people are still willing and able to make films that are interesting, beautiful, and remind us why we ever started to pay money to see other humans play make believe on a giant screen. These movies still exist\u2026 we just have to work a little harder to find them.<\/p>\n Be sure to check back this Thursday, when our podcast will be about the newly-crowned Best Picture, The Artist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alex and James care about movies, and as much as they try to pretend to not care about the Academy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[9,580,582,583,581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJames<\/em>: \u201cThose two people are not in the same conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAlex<\/em>: \u201cYes, because you would be getting aroused by Hilary Swank.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/brian_grazer_640.jpeg\" "\\"brian_grazer_640\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJames<\/em>: \u201cJust remember, that song could have been Party All the Time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nAlex<\/em>: \u201cI\u2019ve been to the movies a lot of times, but that has never happened.\u201d
\nJames<\/em>: \u201cCan Cirque du Soleil host the show next year?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nAlex<\/em>: \u201cNo. But since our comments aren\u2019t particularly original, I\u2019m writing that down anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nJames<\/em>: \u201cNope.\u201d
\nAlex<\/em>: \u201cIf The Tree of Life can lose best cinematography, I\u2019m sticking with Kevin Garnett\u2019s advice and saying anything is possible.\u201d
\nJames\/The Academy<\/em>: \u201cYOU DON\u2019T GO AGAINST HUGO.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>