Bridesmaids To Bring Us Joy on Oscar Night

Whether or not they win Ensemble at the SAG Awards on Sunday night -- be right here for the live blogging! --we'll see all six principal cast members of the hit comedy at the Oscars. They're the first announced presenters and the press release says that

This will mark the first Oscars appearances for all six actresses"

Hmmm. That must mean on the stage since hasn't Maya Rudolph been there with her man Paul Thomas Anderson for like There Will Be Blood or something? I can't remember. 

This news filled me with a rainbow burst of happiness but I'm going to be so sad if they don't sing at least one bar of Wilson Phillips.

Which category will they present? Give us BOTH your best guess and the category you most wish they'd present in the comments! I'll pick a winner and send you a Wilson Phillips CD*

*not really. But play along anyway!

"No Relation" ...an Oscar Name Game

Last year 'round about this time our movie buddy Kurt was having fun with mash-ups of Oscar nominees. He sent us a few this year for posting (Thanks Kurt!) and, as he puts it..

These unlikely pairs of hopefuls may seem like they were separated at birth, but there's no relation aside from their mutual hunger for Oscar gold."

So here we go...

 

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY GLENN CLOSE

 

MICHEL / MICHELLE

CLOONEY / ROONEY

Ha! Well Lisbeth definitely could use some sun. Though I can't imagine Hawaii would suit her exactly. Though she probably wouldn't flinch at berating defenseless coma patients or investigating ex-lover real estate agents.

Kurt had two more ideas that I visualized to wrap up (after the jump)...

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Hail "César"s. France's Favorite Pictures

If by some stroke of bad luck or homegrown Hollywood love for The Descendants or Hugo,  The Artist is derailed at the Oscars on February 26th, it could still take home double handfuls of trophies at the Césars. While I'm sure all countries hate their own awards being called "_____'s Oscars", it's easy shorthand. Oscar was first, after all, thus laying the groundwork for all of this "Best Movie This, Best Movie That" until the end of time. 

France's Best Picture lineup has homegrown hits, successful exports and their Oscar submission

The Artist is up for 10 awards at the Césars... same number as the Oscars! The Cesars allow more than 5 nominees a category so it seems a bit like everyone is nominated. Other favorites from the French industry are two female-helmed films: Valerie Donzelli's gutsy vivid memory piece War is Declared (opening today in the States. Highly recommended!) and another actress turned director Mäiwenn's Polisse. (I always feel the need to remind people that Mäiwenn was the blue opera diva in The Fifth Element.) 

Film Experience favorite Carmen Maura is also up for a statue for her work in Women on the Sixth Floor.

Finally, in this quick take, we always get a kick out of the "foreign film" categories across the oceans when things are suddenly flipped and Hollywood itself is the foreign entity. Incredibly, The King's Speech is still with us (ARGH!) and it's up against other previous / current Oscar nominees like Black Swan, Incendies, and A Separation as well as films that were far too auteurist or contemporary for Oscar like Melancholia and Drive. Rounding out their foreign category is The Dardenne Brothers The Kid With the Bicycle. Great lineup, eh?

Full list of nominations after the jump and sexy pictures of a few "newcomer" nominations, since we love the French and we love eye candy. Who would you love to run into if you had a ticket to the Césars?

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Oscar Loves Two Women. In The Same Film. Often.

Amir here. Since the Oscar nominations were announced on tuesday we’ve all heard tons of new stats about this year's slate. All the ‘oldest’ and ‘youngest’ and ‘most’s aside, the one thing that caught my eye was the double nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Help’s ladies Jessica Chastain & Octavia Spencer. This is now the fourth consecutive year that the category has included two nominees from the same film. For the trivia lovers among you, this equals the previous longest streak of double supporting actress nominations from 1947 through 1950: Gentleman’s Agreement, I Remember Mama, Come to the Stable, Pinky and All About Eve... (though the earlier run is more impressive since 1949 had two sets of double nominees.)

Trivia: The two longest double supporting runs (though 47-50 actually had a year with two double noms."Pinky" is not pictured by accident. Apologies). In both one actress appeared multiple times (Amy Adams and Celeste Holm) and one of those times she played a nun!!!

Last year’s winner, The Fighter’s Melissa Leo, was accompanied by her co-star Amy Adams, who had been nominated along with Viola Davis for Doubt two years earlier. When Adams was taking time off inbetween, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick filled in for her for their performances in Up in the Air. Had it not been for 2007's spread of wealth, the record could have been extended another two years since Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza were both nominated for Babel the year before.

If you look back through the history of the shiny gold man you'll find that in the 76 years since the Supporting categories were introduced 28 films have managed two supporting actress nominations. That’s an astonishing number but here’s what's more interesting. (Continued... with Pie Charts!)

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The Art Direction I Live In

I always try to finish the "Oscar Categories" of my own Film Bitch Awards before the Oscar nominations. I was racing to the deadline, panting heavily, sweating profusely and then I collapsed. I am now crawling towards the finish line. If anything can revive me it's eye candy! So here are my nominees for Art Direction and Cinematography. I would post Costumes too but I'm still arguing with myself over 8 films. (So many worthy efforts!) 

But while I have your eyeballs, I want to talk about one film in particular. Film is a visual medium so you'd think it would be a given that filmmakers would convey their themes and moods and characters visually. But many of them don't, relying on dialogue as exposition or voiceover profundities or leaning heavily on the gifts of their actors to get themes and nuances across. In other words, we have too few Pedro Almodóvars behind the camera.

In the two stills above from The Skin I Live In (which went without any Oscar nominations and was not submitted by Spain for Best Foreign Film) you can see how visually rich and how carefully planned every beat in an Almodóvar film is [MORE AFTER THE JUMP]

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