First-ever Best Picture Oscar winner Wings

11:58PM ET

Wow, The Hurt Locker wins it all...and it wasn't even the most successful film ever made, nor did it rake in over $100 million in its opening weekend (or ever)!

Deserved.

The show was...slow. And uninspiring. But as always, unmissable.

"The time has come..."

11:53PM ET 

Barbra Streisand is rocking the schoolmarm look and seems ultrapleased to be handing the first-ever Best Director Oscar to a woman...even if it's not to Barbra Streisand. (TERRIBLE CAMERA WORK is keeping us from seeing the money shots when these people win at times...and playing her off to "I Am Woman" = lame!)

First Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor

11:47PM ET

After Oprah's speech, it almost seemed like Gabourey might sneak up on the front-runners and win the thing! Meryl Streep's intro by Stanley Tucci is hilarious.

But—as expected—Sandra Bullock takes the prize and gives a speech as cute and as eventually heart-tugging as any ever given. Plus she gives a shout-out to not discriminating against people based on sexual orientation.

11:40PM

Sandra Bullock sure looks pretty...and pretty nervous! She seems like such a good person. This would be what gives her the Oscar if she wins it, 'cuz even if she was amazing in The Blind Side, Meryl Streep is amazing in everything. (Even Prime!)

First Best Actor winner Emil Jannings

11:25PM ET

Loved the actors' remembrances before each of the Best Actors' names were announced, though they ran a bit long and how embarrassing that they couldn't get anyone better for Renner than Colin Farrell due to their co-starring stint in S.W.A.T. No one could top Pfeiffer's tribute to Jeff Bridges (please remind me all the amazing films he's made?), but I sure wish this one had gone to Colin Firth!

Ah, to be handed an Oscar by Kate Winslet...imagine?

Oh, that's right...The Last Picture Show (but I refuse to count Starman) 

I'm gonna go with The Hurt Locker, Bigelow, Bullock (though Streep feels like she's been surging lately), Bridges, Mo'Nique, Waltz.

But I wouldn't be shocked by Avatar, Bigelow, Streep, Bridges, Mo'Nique, Waltz.

Soon-to-be-Oscar-winning Precious actress Mo'Nique talks the gay talk, but also walks the gay walk. To The Advocate, she's continuing her streak of support for gay issues in a brand-new interview. On her belief that gay is okay: 

"[L]ove conquers all. Who you choose to live your life with—that's not my concern, nor is it my business. I think we should just love each other as human beings. We get caught up in the foolishness. I believe if we would just start loving each other as human beings, we would be in a much better positions."

And on the place she believes gay people have in the church:

"Now, I know a lot of folks that go to church and are gay. I tell them, 'God don't make no mistakes, baby, and we keep using it when it's convenient.' If we are all made in his image, there are no mistakes...With gays and church, I think there are so many of our brothers and sisters that's in pain because they go to a place to receive nurturing, the love of God, and you start hearing that you're going to hell because of who you were made to be. I just don't buy that!"

She wants to be loved by you...boop-oop-ee-doo! 

I'm not a fan of religion, but I continue to be a fan of Mo'Nique. And speaking of being a fan, Mo'Nique's one, too—asked who her girlcrush would be, she surprises with:

"Ginger from Gilligan's Island! Baby, that bitch was always sexy! Do you hear me? On an island—listen to me! Had new gowns every day, makeup and hair was beat—wasn't no damn makeup artist there! Ginger pulled it together every day, baby!" [Laughs]

 Kathryn Bigelow & James Cameron: Oscar's War of the Lenses

The Oscar nominations are out, and while some who had a pretty good shot saw their hopes dashed (Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine for Best Actor; Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria for Best Actress; (500 Days of Summer), Where the Wild Things Are, Invictus, Nine, Julie and Julia and my personal choice of A Single Man for Best Picture; Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds, Julianne Moore in A Single Man and Marion Cotillard in Nine for Best Supporting Actress; Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story for Best Documentary; A Single Man for Art Direction...it was criticized as too pretty, but apparently it still wasn't pretty enough!; "Cinema Italiano" from Nine and "All is Love" from Where the Wild Things Are for Best Original Song), most of the nominees were unsurprising. In fact, with one exception (Kruger losing her spot to Maggie Gyllenhaal), all of the major acting nominees matched the SAG nominees.

Loved how the collected press applauded for the crowd-pleasing Blind Side noms...it's like American Idol where the best frequently don't win, but the favorites do! (Maybe The Blind Side is this year's Ruben Studdard.) 

Kathryn Bigelow becomes only the fourth woman ever nominated for a Best Director Oscar (so deserved), and has an excellent chance to become the first to win. Also, Lee Daniels is only the second black man nominated for Best Director (also so deserved; the first was not Spike Lee, but John Singleton). Also re Daniels, I don't have stats on how many out gay people have been nominated for the award, but Rob Marshall comes to mind.

As for nominating 10 films instead of five, it feels like a marketing gimmick to me, especially when only five directors are nominated—it feels like the five films whose helmers were ignored are just honorary mentions with next to no chance of winning. And I didn't find the extra five to be particularly interesting choices, either—they feel like films that should have been in the running but shouldn't have been in the final cut, or, in the case of The Blind Side, they're concessions to commercial juggernauts. (I guess that is this year's Ghost, except Ghost was able to be nominated when there were only five slots, and The Blind Side probably wouldn't have had a shot.)

But the Oscars are the original marketing gimmick gone good, so more power to the movies that benefit from the looser standards.

 

The full list of nominees follows (and more movie talk is available here), but my guesses right now for the top awards would be: Avatar (but Inglourious Basterds has a real shot and The Hurt Locker is not out of the question), Bigelow, Bridges, Bullock (she's had the momentum, but Streep could still pull it off in the more conservative Oscars), Mo'Nique and Waltz.

An ubersexy new clip from A Single Man is just out (see after the jump), just in time for the Screen Actors' Guild nominations (yay, Colin! aw, no Julianne...), which are also after the jump, the only gasp-inducing shocker being the absence of Up in the Air from the ensemble acting category (the equivalent of Best Picture) despite honors for Clooney, Farmiga (who was really great) and Kendrick...

The Golden Globes are always fun as quasi-Oscar predictors, and because the Hollywood Foreign Press is unabashedly pro-star. They love giving nominations (and even awards) to big names not known for their acting chops, especially when those big names stretch ever so slightly. (Case in point: Madonna was nominated for and won a Globe, though went on not to even get an Oscar nomination.)

This is why someone like Julia Roberts gets nominated for something like Duplicity (um, exactly!) and why they adore giving wins to newcomers whose shows have made a big splash (remembering Keri Russell winning for Felicity, America Ferrera, etc.)

The year's biggest shock for me was the failure of Mariah Carey to get a nomination. She was never, ever Oscar-nomination-bound, not really, but the Globes seemed a possibility for her. Guess her international profile isn't as big as her profile. (This is a breast joke, not a fat joke, and as such is an expression of my civility toward a figure—in both senses—I dislike but whom did well in a movie that was my first or second fave of 2009.)

The complete list of Golden Globes nominations—my comments, if any, follow each category...

The National Board of Review announced its winners for 2009 and they're...pretty staid, I think. I liked Up in the Air a lot (though toward the end it was quite heavy-handed and there is a twist that shocked me only in that nobody but me seemed to see it coming...and I didn't figure out The Sixth Sense!), but I'm kinda flummoxed that it seems to be a leading contender for Best Picture, winning here. More vexing, the Top 10 list doesn't include Precious or A Single Man. If this year's Top 10 for Oscar includes Star Trek, I'm leaving Oscar for good.

Also sad, seeing Anna Kendrick win—as opposed to just get nominated for an award—for her Up in the Air turn. Over Mo'Nique? Over Julianne Moore? Over [fill in the blank]? She was fine in the film, but not outstanding.

Hm.

Best movie poster ever.

If you're going into Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire expecting sadness porn, as one review stated, you'll be disappointed. True, the issues portrayed in the film are shocking and devastating in nature—incest for starters—but amazingly, this adaptation by out director Lee Daniels has an indomitable, unextinguishable buoyancy that comes in handy for both the heroine and her audience.

Queen Latifah should have begged for this; it's a surefire Oscar and instant legendary role. 

Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe) is 16, morbidly obese and pregnant for the second time by her father, but nothing is a greater challenge than her day-to-day ghetto-unfabulous existence under the thumb of her outrageously abusive mother, Mary (Mo'Nique). Mary so resents her child for stealing her man that she flies into violent rages whenever she isn't ordering her daughter to wait on her, buy her cigarettes, play her numbers, lie to help keep welfare coming in or worse.

Life is short, but precious. 

To get through all of this, Clarice daydreams in elaborate, intentionally cheesy sequences (that reminded me of My Own Private Idaho's talking porn covers)—Precious glad in red velvet at a movie premiere, bubbly and beloved by a tight, light-skinned boyfriend, Precious as the star singer in a glitzy gospel choir, even Precious and Mary in Two Women, the dialogue perhaps a bit too hilariously altered.

Dreams like this signal that Precious has an imagination—and a desire to better herself. In the nick of time, she's rescued by a concerned counselor (Nealla Gordon) who directs her to Each One Teach One, a school where she can get her GED (were girls really suspended from school for being pregnant in 1987? I didn't realize). There, Ms. Rain (a luminously pretty Paula Patton, pictured) inspires Precious and a hysterically funny batch of misfits (Stephanie Andujar, Chyna Layne, Amina Robinson, Xosha Roquemore and Angelic Zambrana, among others) to think for themselves and, more importantly, to express themselves through reading and writing. Ms. Rain helps to wash away the layers of self-loathing and resignation that had threatened to destroy Precious, and that will not leave without marking her for life.

  
In the new issue of NEXT (November 6, 2009), Precious director Lee Daniels covers the gay angle in his highly regarded new film (which I can't wait to see) and also talks about HIV among people of color:

"The truth will set you free. When I did research [on HIV/AIDS organizations for the film], I expected to see a lot of [gay] boys down there. It's not. It's a bunch of black women because black men are on the DL and they have their legs spread wider than Baryshnikov infecting black women. [Black men] can't come out to church [and] can't come out to work. To live in your truth is the hardest thing imaginable."

I'd love to have him reply to this outrageous review. Granted, I have yet to see the film, but the awkwardly interjected political bent of this one is just about as gross as Mariah Carey looks (on purpose! it's a compliment!) in Precious.