Team Experience: Oscar's Best & Worst Moments

Neil Patrick Harris' big musical opening had fun shadow effectsAre most of you over your Oscar party hangovers now?

I polled Team Experience (and myself) on their very favorite moment and their "Agony!" bit alike from last night's show of shows and here's what they had to say about the 87th Academy Awards. Please do share your single Best & Worst moment in the comments, too as we work our way through putting this film year behind us.

BEST MOMENTS

Timothy: Pawel Pawlikowski muscling right on through the play-off music in order to pay due tribute to his late wife.

Julien: That opening song was really some... Oh who am I kidding ? Watching Julianne finally clutch that Oscar was a dream I thought would never come true. 

Nathaniel: Once you get past Julianne I'd go with 1) Emma Stone reaction shots  2) "Glory" 3) Jessica Chastain saying "Chivooooo" 4) the insanity of "Everything is Awesome" - particularly the fake Oscars and the Batman interruption 5) Patricia Arquette's infectious righteousness (sub-shoutout to Meryl & JLo). I understand that people are up in arms the day after but that's called 'missing the point because people love to be outraged' which is an epidemic online that distracts the world from progressive goals like eradicating inequality and sexism. 6) "because you're rich"

More heartfelt applause (and then some jeers) after the jump...

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22 Oscar Tweets

Though liveblogging and livetweeting has its drawbacks -- I always miss something when i"m typing, Social Media has kept "events" in event status so we welcome it. Here are some tweets that had me screaming or thinking or nodding or LOLing on Oscar night and the morning after.... plus a couple from me because Michael Keaton thanks Narcisuss at the Indie Spirits so I'm allowed. 

pic.twitter.com/ErtsNUxWDX

— Daniel Switzer (@daniel_switzer) February 23, 2015

On Oscar Day I start rooting for chaos. What if Cooper wins Best Actor? What if Anderson wins Best Director? Release the hounds!

— kateyrich (@kateyrich) February 22, 2015

Meryl Streep doesn't lose. She let's other people win.

— Sam Stryker (@sbstryker) February 23, 2015

if u watch the oscars backwards, a select number of white peopel bring golden statues on stage and give them to a bureaucracy

— jomny sun (@jonnysun) February 22, 2015

Redmayne, Desplat, Cotillard, Gaga, and NPH bombing after the jump

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Oscar Style: Henry Hobson & Those Gorgeous Graphic Sequences

Manuel here to talk about the gorgeous designs we saw last night. The Oscar telecast was, as usual, a very pretty affair. Humor may be subjective (a pun can both garner a laugh and an eye roll) and winners can be fought over (oh those Birdman takedowns aren't gonna get any less nasty now are they?) but the show will always provide the eye candy. And I'm not just talking about the gorgeous dresses, the preened faces and the sculpted male torso that walked the stage. I'm here to talk about the beautiful title cards that were featured throughout the night. 

Combining Tumblr-ized minimalism and Instagram's cataloguing style, Henry Hobson and the Elastic Design created some beautifully stylized graphic sequences for last night's awards:

I particularly loved the (ever so brief! -- guess they wanted to keep these sequences short and sweet?) Best Picture montage:

Best Picture Oscar Nomination Title Sequence - 2015 from henry hobson directing & design on Vimeo.

If there's one objection to make about all these pretty pictures is that they seemed designed to deny us of the power of those moving pictures we were supposed to be honoring (or, in the case of the In Memoriam tribute, of the work which Meryl reminded us, would live on). 

Were you taken with the designs? Or did you wish we could have gotten full clips of some of these nominees, especially as the telecast was unusually reticent to show clips of any kind?

Lady Gaga Isn't the Only One Who Loves "The Sound of Music"

Be here a week from tomorrow for the season premiere of Hit Me With Your Best Shot when we look at the classic Julie Andrews... or, rather, the classic Julie Andrews in between her other classics. the one where she spins on a mountain top (though hopefully not everyone picks that opening scene)

If you've never played before it's easy. You 1) post your favorite shot from the movie somewhere. 2) Say why you chose it. 3) We link up. Here's the March schedule for the series every Tuesday night!

And dont forget to "like" TFE on facebook and sign up for our weekly newsletter which will start next week. Don't vanish post-Oscar because we do this all year round: lovin on the actresses, investigating the directors, and having fun with cinephilia.

After the jump excerpts from Lady Gaga's performance and fun tweets about it.

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Your Reminder That Julianne Moore is Now An Oscar Winner

We should start every morning this beautifully in 2015

a moment 20+ years in the making

It was "the foxiest bitch in the world" Amber Waves that first won Julianne Moore her legion of obsessed fans and should have won her the Oscar back when Boogie Nights (1997) first dropped its pants and entered pop culture. Sure, the ginger goddess had been fun in films before that like the trash hit The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the romantic comedy Benny & Joon (1993) -- her first stab at playing a bad actress, a recurring and utterly delightful subthread in her filmography -- and she even got to slap Madonna early on onscreen (Body of Evidence, 1993). And she'd been brilliant before Amber in films like Shortcuts (1993), Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and [safe] (1995) but the latter two were slow burns, only developing their ardent fanbases later on DVD and the first was loved for reasons well beyond and usually eclipsing Julianne's work.

Julianne first truly turned heads in 1993 in a trio of "who is that?" performances: SHORT CUTS, BENNY & JOON, & THE FUGITIVEShortcuts in particular had an interesting awards history. It was one of those odd ensemble pieces, courtesy of Robert Altman, wherein noone ever settled on a favorite performance. The Golden Globes were wise, presaging the invention of SAG's ensemble prize by giving it a special award. Julianne nabbed the films sole acting nomination at a major event with Independent Spirit Awards, but the critics weren't yet in Juli's corner. The NYFCC liked Jennifer Jason Leigh best citing only her (3rd place in their prizes), the NSFC gave their actual supporting actress win to Madeleine Stowe (also my favorite performance in that particular film) as Moore's sister, and the Chicago Film Critics rallied around Andie Macdowell. Oscar didn't know what to do with it either so Robert Altman won the films only nomination for Best Director*. 

But however long it took Julianne to get there, taking her place in history as a Best Actress winner, she got there.  Over the years she continually revealed new shades, new angles, and fresh daring and mystery as a performer, and became a leading lady par excellence to compliment her early supporting genius. She's also kind to fans and visibly appreciative of her good fortune in the industry. Everyone's personal favorite performances vary with a gallery of characters this rich but for yours truly she has more than earned this Oscar.

To Julianne: for Alice, Yelena, Mia, Havana Segrand, Barbara Baekeland, Laura Brown, Linda Partridge, Maude Lebowski, Marian Wyman, Marlene Craven, Sarah Miles and especially for that holy trinity of Amber Waves, Cathy Whitaker and Carol White: thank you, god. You've earned this golden man several times over. May Laurel Hester in Freeheld, your next creation, be a worthy and compelling victory lap. Yours always, xo, Nathaniel 

I love you.

*It's another topic entirely but the films that have only one nomination and its Best Director have always been a fascinating curiousity within Oscar history: see also Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, The Last Temptation of Christ