From In Touch (August 2, 2010): "Should Renée be JEALOUS of Sandra?" I know people buy this stuff, but...do people also buy it? 

Remember when Radar was a pointless magazine? Yeah, well, it's quite the little gossip scooper these days as a Web site. The latest is their unearthing of a nasty, anti-gay e-mail from Jesse James to a former employee from a few years back. I feel bad for Sandra Bullock, too, but let's see...sex addict, white supremacist, homophobe...how does this not, at some point, reflect on her in some way? He might not have been cheating in front of her, but was the racial and anti-gay stuff really done in out of the way motels, too? 

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.

Billy Eichner would have made a good Oscars host...!

One reason I've avoided seeing The Blind Side is my suspicion that it was right-wing drivel disguised as a movie (go ahead and say that many movies are left-wing drivel disguised as movies, but I'm left-wing so if a movie has to be drivel it might as well be blue drivel). In this piece, written in advance of its March 12 opening in the UK, the writer connects all the dots about the real-life Tuohys being Evangelicals, about the film proselytizing and spewing "Bush-era conservative values" and about how Republicans are behind it. (The film's producers have brilliantly kept this info pouring into churches and underplayed in the mainstream media.)

Who should play Anita Bryant in the HBO biopic that's coming on the anti-gay crusader?

Just remember, Bryant was kind of gorge back in the day, so they could wind up handing the role to someone you think of as being attractive as opposed to someone whose very name makes you want to fling pastry.

Jessica Simpson's too young...and can't act...

Heaton is about right and probably thinks Bryant was the bee's knees. But she's way too old.

I like...

Believe it or not, Sandra Bullock is already much older than Bryant was at the time the pie flew in her face...! But I think this role would be a great stretch for her. Now that she's an Oscar-nominated actress.

 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.

I don't doubt that Sandra Bullock is effective in The Blind Side, but I highly doubt she outperforms the other actresses nominated alongside her for a SAG Award, let alone Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia. I think she is racking up wins because she's so fucking nice and smart and accomplished and diligent—which come to think of it are better reasons than most to unfairly win awards. How many people have won Oscars due to an onslaught of studio-paid campaigning? So I guess I can't get too riled up that after winning the Golden Globe and especially last night's SAG, Bullock seems to be the front-runner for Oscar gold, narrowly ahead of the previously awarded, supremely more gifted Streep.

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...