Two-Hosted Oscars

News broke this morning that the Oscar ceremony will have two hosts this year. That's only happened twice in the 21st century, but it wasn't always James Franco / Anne Hathaway disastrous...

Alec Baldwin & Steve Martin hosted in The Hurt Locker's year

We can assume the announcement of two means they're already negotiating with a pair. It's not like Oscar to go for sloppy seconds and the last time they did (Neil Patrick Harris) it was a bomb. So don't expect the Golden Globe wonders Amy Poehler & Tina Fey. They'd be excellent but it would be shocking. Here are the previous Oscar ceremonies that used two hosts -- this isn't new as much as the internet is like "whoa, TWO!" this morning -- but it is relatively uncommon in modern Academy Award ceremonies. There have been twelve ceremonies with three to six hosts but let's ignore them because that's a lot of names to type. 11 of the 87 ceremonies have had 2 hosts.

Pre-Televised Ceremonies with 2 hosts
1st Oscars - Douglas Fairbanks & William C deMille (Wings)
5th Oscars - Lionel Barrymore & Conrad Nagel (Grand Hotel)
17th Oscars - Bob Hope & John Cromwell (Going My Way)
18th Oscars - Bob Hope & Jimmy Stewart (The Lost Weekend)
20th Oscars - Agnes Moorehead & Dick Powell (Gentleman's Agreement)

Televised Ceremonies with 2 hosts
In the early days they had a side ceremony in NY so the two host system came in handy
25th Oscars - Bob Hope & Conrad Nagel (The Greatest Show on Earth)
26th Oscars - Donald O'Connor & Fredric March (From Here to Eternity)
27th Oscars - Bob Hope & Thelma Ritter (On the Waterfront)
29th Oscars - Jerry Lewis & Celeste Holm (Around the World in 80 Days)

The Opening of the 27th with Bob Hope in LA and Thelma Ritter in NYC
From the mid 50s to the mid 00s it was either group hosting or just one host

82nd Oscars -Steve Martin & Alec Baldwin (The Hurt Locker)
83rd Oscars - James Franco & Anne Hathaway (The King's Speech)

Which twosome are you hoping for? Here are some other ideas... with absolutely no attention paid to what's actually plausible. Vote for your favorite!

Pick a dream couple to host the Oscars

Jackman & Hathaway

Lily & Meryl

Jennifer Lawrence & Amy Schumer

Charlize & Channing

Stewart & Colbert

Tina & Amy (sloppy seconds!)

Chris Pratt & Anna Faris

Kristen Wiig & Melissa McCarthy

Emma Thompson & Helena Bonham-Carter

I HAVE A BRILLIANT IDEA. I'll tell you in the comment section.

Quiz Maker

Linker in the Rye

WTF w/ Marc Maron talks to Peter Bogdanovich
Yahoo! has the first image of Michael Fassbender in Assassin's Creed but don't get too excited because it could be anyone, given that the character loves those face covering hoods
EW everything Mads Mikkelsen wore on Hannibal thanks to costume designer Christopher Hargadon. So much fine suitage!
Awards Daily Nicolas Hoult to play JD Salinger in a biopic Rebel in the Rye. Danny Strong is on writer/director duties
Variety Penny Dreadful S3 adds Wes Studi (remember how good he was in Last of the Mohicans), Shazad Latif, Jessica Barden, and Patti LuPone (!) as a regular now, albeit in a new role since her witch died last season

Deep Dish [nsfw] celebrates 66 factoids about Richard Gere for his recent birthday - I didn't know a lot of the off-movie stuff
Tracking Board Michael J Fox is voicing a robotic canine for a new film called A.R.C.H.I.E. as befits an 80s sounding high concept comedy
Empire Sam Worthington and Ruth Wilson to headline a new sci-fi picture called The Titan about a military family participating in an experiment in space
Empire French filmmaker Pascal Chaumeil (Heartbreaker) dies at 54 
Film School Rejects has a bathe with A Room With a View... such a great movie 

We ♥ to Watch
Gizmodo Amazon Prime now first subscription service to offer download / watch offline
Cinematically Insane looks at the changes at TCM and what that might mean down the road. I'm so wary of this because even if they rebrand to be less about "old" movies then agreed upon "greats" how will we see the really old movies that are harder and harder to find with the death of DVD? I know I'm not alone among cinephiles in the desire to see less-than-great films regularly so as to get context for a career (director or actor) or timeframe at the movies 
/Films warns you about all the films leaving Netflix in September. (I'm so glad i never gave up my dvds since the range of their streaming options get grosser and grosser beyond their original content)

For LOLz
The Toast A League of Their Own inspired thinkpieces. Inspired silliness.
MNPP Michel Huisman strutting around New Orleans 
Back of the Cereal Box discovers an old Meryl Streep joke that still holds up 

Off Screen
Boy Culture a-ha's "Hunting High and Low" to receive 30 year anniversary rerelease. Such an amazing album - pity that people only think of "Take On Me"
Playbill Jim Broadbent returns to the West End toplay Scrooge in A Christmas Carol this season
Towleroad author Oliver Sacks who wrote Awakenings (which became an Oscar nominated movie) recently died (RIP)

Finally
The trailer to the final season of Downton Abbey. So many big shows wrapping up lately.

Curio: Oh Sew Nerdy

Alexa here with your weekly arts and crafts. Since I first posted on pop culture cross-stitch in 2009 the craze has only grown, with new styles and patterns hitting etsy daily; now even a novice can spend some free time stitching Wes Anderson characters. Last weekend Gallery1988 opened its first-ever cross-stitch only exhibition, and it is a great one: a solo show by one of my local heroes Derek Sanchez-Hoeksema, aka OhSewNerdy. Derek stitches about some of his pop culture obsessions from here in corn country, and has quite a knack for blending words and image. Here are some of his movie-inspired designs featured at the show.

After the jump I've left them without captions because guessing the film is part of the fun...

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12 Questions: DVD & BluRay Releases

Twelve questions for you to answer (comment party!) inspired by this week's new DVD releases. Ready? 

7 Minutes Heist movie starring Jason Ritter, Kris Kristofferson and more
Q1: Do you follow Jason Ritter on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine? You should. 

About Elly Asghar Farhadi's pre-A Separation breakthrough, is finally out
Q2: Did you hear that Penélope Cruz is going to star in his next feature?

Boulevard (reviewed) starring the late Robin Williams as a closeted gay man. With Kathy Baker as his depressed wife and Roberto Aguire as his favorite rentboy.
Q3: What's your favorite Robin Williams performance?

The D Train (reviewed) button-pushing comedy. Jack Black, who can't let high school go, obsesses over classmate James Marsden, who made it to Hollywood. Geographically.
Q4: Have you ever obsessed over James Marsden? If so, when?

Face of An Angel  Daniel Brühl and Kate Beckinsale and a murder investigation
Q5: How many movies does Daniel Brühl make a year anyway?

Gemma Bovery  a "reimagining" of Flauberts classic with Gemma Arterton
Q6: Did you think Mia Wasikowska and Gemma are aware of each other?

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me a documentary on the music icon
Q7: Don't you think "I'm Not Going to Miss You" (Oscar nominated) is a pretty song?

Good Kill (reviewed) Director Andrew Niccol and star Ethan Hawke reunite for this military drama
Q8: Remember Gattaca?

The Harvest Horror movie starring Michael Shannon, Charlie Tahan, and Samantha Morton, the latter reportedly in scenery devouring evil mode
Q9: When's the last time you saw Samantha Morton work her magic?

I'll See You In My Dreams (Performances of 2015) A retired widow considers dating
10: Would you go out for karaoke with Blythe Danner?

Mad Max: Fury Road (Podcasted, Reviewed, Obsessed Over) Director George Miller returns to his name-making franchise and humiliates his earlier self and most working directors with his Mad Skillz at age 70 (!!!). With committed work from: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult
Q11: Are you joining us for Hit Me With Your Best Shot on Monday September 7th? PRETTY PLEASE!

The Turning
An Australian omnibus film with 17 directors doing little vignettes starring Aussie screen icons like Blanchett, Byrne, Weaving, Otto, and Roxburgh
Q12: Have you ever been to Australia?

TV Seasons
Castle (7th), Nashville (3rd), Scorpion (1st), Vampire Diaries (6th) 

Goodbye to the Master of Horror, Wes Craven

Glenn Dunks, our resident "Scream" fanatic says goodbye to Wes Craven...

It’s not easy writing about the passing of Wes Craven. The director who was synonymous with the horror genre, and in particular the slasher franchises A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, died on Sunday at age 76 from brain cancer after having battled ill health for several years and the news hit like a stab to the chest. His three-year illness likely explains why he hadn’t directed a film since 2011’s Scream 4, but it hadn’t stopped him from working altogether. He was completing a horror comic with Steve Niles called Coming of Rage, was developing a remake of his 1991 film The People Under the Stairs, and continued to executive produce MTV’s long-form TV adaptation of Scream.

There are few older celebrities whose death could hit as hard as Craven. He wasn’t just a great filmmaker, or a filmmaker with a lot of films that people liked. No, Wes Craven was quite literally a filmmaker that changed lives. A lot of ‘em – and that’s not an exaggeration. It’s genuinely hard to make even one, let alone two, generation-defining movies and it’s been wonderful to hear so many people, friends and strangers alike, share their stories on social media of how A Nightmare on Elm Street was the first horror film they ever saw and how it turned them into scare-seeking horror fiends. Or how Scream made them want to write about film. I’m one of those people, and there are a few extra Film Experience writers who share the same sentiments, but the numbers I've seen cite that seemingly inocuous 1996 slasher as a life inspiration has been surprising and actually comforting.

So when I went to write about his passing, I actually couldn’t. Not immediately, anyway. How do you describe the man who made the movies that defined our life? I hope he knew the effect his films had on people beyond simply scaring them.

...more

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