Friday, March 5, 2010

Programming Note: Two Oscar Night Live Blogs


And just like that, it’s Oscar weekend. Being perfectly honest, I’ve paid so little attention to the awards races this season that while I think I could name all of the rumored frontrunners in the major categories, I could by no means name all of the nominees. For example, who is contending with Anna Kendrick to be runner-up to Mo’Nique in the Best Supporting Actress race? I can’t remember. Not that it matters. I’ll go into Sunday with my usual Oscar-weekend attitude: crossing my fingers that some of my favorites might win, being filled with joy if they do, and otherwise shrugging off the night’s unavoidable disappointments and injustices. It’s a fun yearly tradition, and I’m pleased to say that my recent Oscar tradition will continue, too: live-blogging.

Just like last year, The Cooler is offering you two live blogs on Oscar night. My dear friend Allison Morris, who usually blogs about her life at Tales From LaLa Land, will once again be helming the Red Carpet Live Blog starting at 6 pm ET. Allison got married over the past year, but the self-proclaimed “clusterfuck” assures me she’s only barely matured and is still well qualified to make crass yet entertaining observations about Ryan Seacrest. With any luck, she’ll bring with her a posse of equally entertaining friends, so keep an eye on the comments section. I’ll start my official 82nd Academy Awards Live Blog sometime before the telecast begins on ABC at 8 pm ET.

These live blogs are greatly improved with your participation. So, come Sunday evening, please put down the Twitter and come hang out at The Cooler. It’ll be a fun party. Hope to see you there!

3 comments:

Jake said...

Normally, I'd be all over this, as I look at Oscar night as my way of expelling all the film geek egomania in one go so that I might hopefully be more measured for the rest of my year (think of it as a pathetic version of Carnival in which I don't get laid). I spend the whole evening oscillating between personalities, one personality outraged at the nominations, the winners, the simpering speeches, the unfunny musical numbers and the waste of good hosts; the other haughtily and hypocritically stating that none of it matters. Occasionally, a third personality appears, a kindly Canadian man named Jeff (or "Geoff," as he so patiently reminds me).

But this is shaping up to be the most predictable ceremony I can remember. 3 of the 4 acting categories were called before the winter, and the only hotly contested category is Best Pic, and then it's only between two films, thus negating the whole 10 picks thing. I'm sure I'll pop in, but couldn't they have had the decency to be their usual astonishingly bad selves, for the sake of my own mental health?

Anonymous said...

Have you thought about using cover it live? http://www.coveritlive.com/index.php?option=com_altcaster&task=register&referral_code=LiveBlogReferral

You paste the code in a blog that you post. Then everyone comes to the blog clicks on the coverit live play button to login. You can see an example of how it works at http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=204902433

It's free and everything is in real time. At the end of the session you lock the blog. It's pretty cool

Sam Juliano said...

My predictions:

Picture: The Hurt Locker
Director: Bigelow
Actor: Bridges
Actress: Bullock
Supp. Actor: Waltz
Supp. Actress: Mo'Nique
Original Screenplay: Hurt Locker
Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
Editing: Hurt Locker
Cinematogrpahy: The White Ribbon
Foreign Film: The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina)
Animated Film: Up
Documentary Feature: The Cove
Original Score: Up
Original Song: The Weary Kind (Crazy Heart)
Art Direction: Avatar
Visual Effects: Avatar
Costumes: Young Victoria
Make-up: Star Trek
Sound Editing: Avatar
Sound Mixing: Hurt Locker
Animated Short: The Lady and the Reaper
Live Action Short: Instead of Abracadabra
Documentary Short: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province