the nomness

I have a severe, painful, beyond the 4-hour mark, time to alert the doctor, pre AND post-pubescent HARD ON for the Oscars. I wake up early the morning the nominations are announced, after staying up late the night before in order to avoid having to wait for 8:30 to roll around. I capitalize Oscar AT ALL TIMES, because he is a fully sentient being and not a masturbatory illusion of what the film industry used to mean. I make a point of seeing as many nominated films as I can in the month between the nominations and the ceremony. I refer to Oscar as a real person and say things like, “Oscar loves a good war story,” or “Oscar loves monkeys,” as I just said to my Oscar buddy. I HAVE an Oscar buddy (OB), and the morning of the nominations we are enraptured by our own delicious repartee concerning each and every category. Vilanch hasn’t seen such wit in many a decade. I know who Vilanch is FFS, and OB and I are each secretly hoping he’s monitoring our quips and will someday pull us off the bench for the big night. I cry like a five-year-old girl in a pink party dress at least seven times during the actual ceremony. I’ve yet to find anyone I can actually watch the ceremony with so I will always choose to watch it alone. I’ve been to parties or bars before and I can’t hear a goddamn thing and people keep trying to talk to me or some such nonsense and it seems I’m the only one actually interested in the foreign films and the goddamn, the goddamn stilted reading of names and categories by supposed professionals, and the silly edited pieces of past nominees and winners for best sound editing or whatever it is. The death edit makes me cry Real Tears Of Sadness.

And all of this happens every single year, even when I’m dead sober. Add a bottle of wine and I’m a sloppy, Behind The Music, MESS of a girl on the couch in the fetal position because Colin Firth just got a standing O because everyone actually WANTED him to win and he did, and he did so with such grace. This is what happens. This is what happens to me during the season of Oscar. And the season of Oscar began two hours ago.

Ok, let’s get down to it because there’s shit to talk about and I’ve only got 33 more days to cover it all.

To begin with, Jonah Hill. JONAH HILL. Jonah Goddamn Hill. Kraut fucking X, you have GOT to be kidding me. Oscar…OSCAR, wake-up, I TOLD you to lay off that fifth martini you lousy lush, now you’ve gone and nominated fucking Jonah Hill. You remember that creepy asshole in The 40-year-old Virgin who wanted to buy the goldfish platforms? Yeah, HIM. And now I’ve got to watch his creepy ill-thin Alton Brown face? Fuck you, Oscar, we’re having words about this when your father gets home (father played by biblical Charlton Heston) (and yes I cast my Oscar fantasies, fuck you).

Jonah Hill took the seat saved for Alan Rickman. That seat was lined in a deep evergreen velvet with sparkling platinum corded ropes dripping off the armrests, with the added bonus of a footrest made from MY MOUTH. That seat was NOT reserved for dragon training, it was not reserved for Michael Cera’s buttmonkey, and it was for goddamned sure not reserved for FUCKING JONAH HILL.

Also, Nick Nolte? Srsly WTF LOL.

My money’s on Kenneth Branagh. OB made the brilliant point that, with The Artist having picked up so many nominations, this is the year of Oscar patting itself on the back. Oscar has acknowledged and awarded a myriad of overlooked groups in the past 10-15 years, but when was the last time Oscar took a hard look in the mirror only to give a chummy fist to its own chin in congratulations. Kenneth Branagh plays Lawrence Olivier. If you don’t know who Olivier is, just take a quick five minutes to go fuck yourself. I honestly can’t think of a better way for Oscar to pat itself on the back than by awarding Branagh for playing Olivier, unless Tom Hanks comes back from the dead to try to be Spencer Tracy again. Oh wait, Hanks isn’t dead? …you’re sure? Right, well, this is how Oscar shows self love; it’s either this or three and a half hours of Billy Crystal masturbating while making jokes about how the show’s running long, and I think I know what number my money’s on.

Best Picture and Best Directing are a study in the classics. Scorsese, Allen, Spielberg. Hell, even Rudin for producing. Midnight In Paris brought the best reviews and box office Woody Allen has seen in a minute, and Hugo was just magic. Like, Harry Potter magic but without the noseless creeper. Moneyball? Give me a break, I thought that went straight to video (and yes, that’s how old I am). War Horse? Sorry dude, his own mother didn’t even see that movie. The Descendants? Ehh…maybe, but let’s give Clooney a rest. Yes, he’s the modern-day Cary Grant (and see aforementioned Olivier if you…oh, nevermind), but come on. He could take some tips from Nolte and Mickey Rourke on how to not be seen for a hot minute (and he should then pass those tips along to Gosling, but that’s another post for another time).

And here’s where we come to the real test of Oscar’s self-love. Do we award the masters in the field for doing the damn thing better than anyone out there, or do we award a film that reminds us all how great the industry used to be? In an industry obsessed with youth and its own self-worth, you’ve gotta give it to The Artist. It’s a Cinderella story of production (and Oscar loves a fairy tale), and the film is so. god. damned. beautiful (and please to imagine His Beatific And Most Stylish Master of Comedy, Mr. Greg Proops, reading that last bit). And it’s effervescent and there’s *gasp* a STORY with *eek* PLOT PROGRESSION concerning *zounds* CHARACTERS ABOUT WHOM FUCKS ARE GIVEN. It’s magic. Like, Harry Potter magic but without the foolish wand-waving and silly incantations.

The Artist, hands down, and in as many categories as possible.

Now. Let’s talk a little bit about something I like to call the radiant hotness of the brunette over the blonde. Every single blond/e I’ve ever seen looks like thoughts are escaping out of their heads at all times. Even when they’re wearing a hat. Every blonde. EVERY blonde (except for Ryan Phillippe). Something is required to ground a body to the earth, and that something is called dark hair. I don’t even see blondes in real life, just human-shaped wavering mirages that I presume to be bodies beneath invisibility cloaks. The Facebook movie? Yeah, something about Michael Cera’s brother sitting at a table, having a conversation with himself about nothing. I didn’t see anyone sitting with him, did you? You know why she didn’t friend him back? Because she was NEVER THERE.

BUT.

Change her hair and poke a few more holes in her? Hel-LOOO nurse, how YOU doin’, and DAMN you can act like a sonuvabitch. Rooney Mara stole that movie. Stole it. Stole scenes she wasn’t even IN. She stole pages out of the book I was still reading, and I’m all, “hey, come back here with those pages, I haven’t finished them yet, I want to see what happens after you,” and she’s all, “Look at me, look into my crazy eyes, look at my bangs for fuck’s sake, what happens is whatever you want to happen because THAT’S HOW FUCKING AMAZING I AM.” And then she’s gone into the night and I’m left with my hardcover of Book 3 with pages missing and you KNOW B&N won’t accept that shit for return. So, Miss Mara, you owe me $12.95, but DAMN you made that film so fucking incredible. Meryl Thatcher and Yentl Close ain’t got nothing on Miss Mara.

And with that, I wind down today’s Oscar talk. Fear not, gentle reader…there’s 33 more days left, plenty of time to talk about the fact that we only get two Best Song nominations? Fucking NINE Best Picture nominations? And seriously, JONAH HILL?!