Oscars 2008 - Live Blog Part 3: The Show

Jon Stewart. Heh, he's funny. Not going to transcribe him, sorry. I actually want to enjoy the show. Try hunting for his opening monologue on youtube tomorrow, I think it's worth it.

Jennifer Garner presents Achievement in Costume Design. The Oscar goes to Elizabeth - The Golden Age. Her name's Alexandra and she thanks her family, among others.

Barbra Streisand in some kind of retrospective. This is random. And - commercials! Time-check: 2.45am CET. This year's equivalent of coin commercials seem to be the Michael Clayton trailer and promotional trailers for ProSieben programming.

George Clooney talks about the Oscars turning 80 (which according to Jon Stewart automatically makes Oscar the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination). There's a montage. Awww.

Anne Hathaway and Steve Carrell present Best Animated Feature Film. The Oscar goes to Ratatouille. Second Oscar for the guy. He's thanking his high school guidance counsellor. He was actually kind of funny. I wish more of these people we don't know were funny. He's being interrupted by the orchestra. I guess being funny doesn't leave you enough time to thank everybody.

Katherine Heigl presents Achievement in Makeup. The Oscar goes to La Vie En Rose. Cute French accent from French guy! The woman sounds British. She's being interrupted by the orchestra. I think if you're unknown and not funny, you should be required to have a cute French accent.

The first of the several nominated songs from Enchanted is performed. My favourite part of the Oscars. Yawn. The only time this part of the show could've been cool was when Eminem was nominated (and won!). But they were too scared to invite him, so his was the only nominated song that night that was not performed. The Academy are a bunch of sissies.

Another random retrospective, this time with Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Commercials. Time check: 3.03am CET. Only ProSieben trailers this time. Looks like no one wants to book advertising time at 3am on a Monday morning. Weird.

The Rock (they call him Dwayne Johnson here, because the Oscars are serious and professional, you know) presents Achievement in Special Visual Effects. The Oscar goes to The Golden Compass. 4 guys and they just want to say "THANK YOOUUU!". I was hoping it would end there, but no, they have a list. No funny and no French accent. But also no orchestra interruption, so I guess they did something right.

Cate Blanchett presents Achievement in Art Direction. The Oscar goes to Sweeney Todd - The Deamon Barber of Fleet Street. The winners previously won for The Aviator. They're Italian. And shy. And have accents. I think I'll accept Italian accents alongside the French ones. And again, orchestra interruption.

A retrospective. This time about the Best Supporting Actor - category. The presenter is last year's Best Supporting Actress winner, Jennifer Hudson. The Oscar goes to Javier Bardem for No Country For Old Men. Wonder if he has an accent? He does! A Spanish one! And he's dedicating and sharing the award with tons of people and talking Spanish to his mum whom he brought as his date. Awww.

Commercials. Time-check: 3.20am CET.

And we're back. Montage of binoculars and periscopes. No, I'm not kidding. Montage of bad dreams. Jon Stewart thinks this is funny. I kinda do too.

Keri Russell presents a nominated song from a movie she was in (August Rush, I think?). We have to endure the song. Snack break!

Seriously, I don't mind the people who wrote/performed all these songs, but every year it seems the Academy nominates any original song written for a movie during the past year, with no regard to quality, because there are so few of them. That's why three songs from the same movie are nominated.

Owen Wilson presents Best Live Action Short Film. The Oscar goes to Le Mozart des Pickpockets. It's a French guy with a cute French accent. So obviously he has already scored points with me. And the Orchestra of Doom didn't even have to interrupt him!

Best Animated Short Film presented by Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie character. The Oscar goes to Peter And The Wolf. From the brief glimpses we got of the other nominees, I think I would've preferred either one of them. I just don't like puppets, sorry. The winners don't have cute accents and aren't funny. One of them's holding a puppet. Therefore, I don't like them, sorry. No orchestra, though.

Retrospective of Best Supporting Actresses. Presenter is last year's Best Supporting Actor Alan Arkin. The Oscar goes to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton. She looks shocked. She obviously did not expect to win. First time nominee and winner. She dedicates the Oscar to her American agent who apparently looks like the Oscar statuette. She thanks a lot of other people and pokes fun at George Clooney's Batman role. Heh, that never gets old. Cate Blanchett didn't win. Hmm. Maybe for Best Leading Actress?

Our retrospective to lead into commercials is narrated by Sidney Poitier this time. Time-check: 3.41am. By the way, these retrospectives are really short. I realize, I made them sound long. They're not. Neither are the commercials, but they're frequent. This live-blogging-thing is pretty hard work, by the way. And I think we aren't even half way in...what did I get myself into here...

Jessica Alba presents the winners of the Scientific Technical Awards that she hosted a couple of weeks ago.

Josh Brolin and James McAvoy (the emphasis is on the "Mc"-part, apparently) present Best Adapted Screenplay by rattling down a lot of famous movie quotes. The Oscar goes to Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country For Old Men! Apparently they've won before, for Fargo. They don't really know what to say on stage. They end up going with "Thank you very much".

Some old guy talks about the process of selecting the nominees and choosing the Oscar winners. I don't know who he his. Maybe he's the president of the Academy Awards? Thrilling.

Miley Cyrus presents the next nominated song from Enchantment. Again, we have to listen to it in its entirety. Performed by Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth (you may know her from Pushing Daisies).

Commercials. Time-check: 3.55am CET.

Dame Judi Dench and Halle Berry present - wait, no, two guys replace them and argue about who gets to be Halle. They present Best Sound Editing. The Oscar goes to The Bourne Ultimatum. By the way, I can't figure out who the two presenters are. Could be writers - they sure look nerdy enough. The winners have no cute accents and aren't funny, so they don't get points. The woman is actually shaking, so she gets sympathy points. Orchestra of Doom interrupts.

The two guys now present Best Sound Mixing. The Oscar goes to The Bourne Ultimatum again. Three guys get up on the stage. They are boring. No accents. And here comes the orchestra.

Yay, Best Leading Actress retrospective - that can only mean, this is the next category! Yay! Presenter is last year's Best Leading Actor Forest Whitaker. So, will Cate cash in on her second nomination of the night? Probably not. I'm gonna guess Julie Christie or Marion Cotillard. Ellen Page would be cool though. And the Oscar goes to ... Marion Cotillard. Aww, she's crying! And hugging Forest! She's cute, has a nice dress and has a French accent and she's really really happy. Now she's thanking life and love. Ok then.

Commercials. Time-check: 4.15am. I'm gonna take a wild guess, using my cunning skills in pattern-recognition: the commercial breaks are scheduled in 20minute-intervalls.

Colin Farrell presents the next nominated song. I can't even tell you from which movie, which just reiterates my engrossment in this category, I guess.

Jack Nicholson presents a retrospective of the last 79 Best Picture Winners and I remember how much I loved Forrest Gump and American Beauty.

Renée Zellweger presents Achievement in Film Editing. The Oscar goes to The Bourne Ultimatum. Wow, three awards already? So far it seems The Bourne Ultimatum is actually leading in number of awards, so far. Only minor ones, sure, but still. The winner is not funny and doesn't have an accent. His dad won an Oscar once, too. Good for you, no more standing in daddy's shadow!

Nicole Kidman presents the Honorary Oscar. Robert Boyle gets it this year. He's apparently been a set designer for 70 years. Cool. He's 98 now. Montage-time! And then the 98 year old guy gets helped onto the stage by Kidman and another woman. Standing ovations. He says that this is the good part of getting old and that he does not recommend the other parts. True dat, methinks. By the way, I think the Honorary Oscar recipients are the only ones who do not need fear the Orchestra of Doom. They usually take advantage of this fact, which kinda makes sense - after a 70 year career you probably have a lot of people to thank. Although, maybe you can leave out the dead people? That oughta shorten the list.

Commercials. Time-check: 4.37am. Hmm, 4.37am. Don't I remember watching Gwyneth Paltrow accept Best Leading Actress around 7am the year she won? That would mean 2.5 more hours for me...let's hope time-management has improved since.