Curio: Sunday's Special Oscar Foods

Alexa here. My annual Oscar tradition of theme food took a detour this year, primarily because the most anticipated part of the show for the members of my household under 5 was hearing Idina Menzel sing the song that launched a million YouYube viewings.  

So, instead of a meal made of clever puns I made a "Let It Go" cake, complete with swirly snow icing.

Appropriately enough, our meal beforehand was some rather uninspired pizza, which we enjoyed sharing with Brad and Meryl. [More from the menu after the jump...]

Click to read more ...

Oscar Night Crumbs, Mysteries and Endearments

Here we are, the final Oscar night review post. Except for the ones coming tomorrow so, um, no never mind. Can I take that intro again? The Final Oscar Night Review Post... Tonight! Tomorrow a few more tidbits. I'm still debating but I can probably keep at it longer than you can stand to read about it.

Is that a threat?"
- terrified reader.

A random collection of thoughts is the only way I'll get through this this year because my mind is more scrambled than in year's past when it comes to Oscar night. I seriously need a team like "you get this topic", "you take that one." "You! Everything Meryl, go!" (that hypohetical person wins the assignment sweepstakes obviously). Bear with me and continue the conversation in the comments. 

Ready? Here we go on the whirlwind review

Click to read more ...

An Open Letter, Some Linkage, Blurry Photos

The Dolby Theater was quick about getting 12 Years a Slave up in their awesome atrium of Best Picture winners in Hollywood. I stared at that so much while I was in LA, trust. But naturally it must prompt my annual outrage again.

Dear, Internet. If the Academy themselves understand that we just watched the 2013 Oscars, so can you! - Love, Nathaniel R

This is really all the IMDb's fault and then Google, too. Now virtually everyone except the Oscars and The Film Experience calls the Oscars by the wrong year, which will wreak so much havoc at future trivia nights and in every way of documenting film history. I have a friend who did really great work on several Wikipedia pages and people kept trying to change his dates to the wrong year so now it's a mess of conflicting pages. This madness must stop. Cate Blanchett is not the Best Actress of 2014... (at least not yet. Will Carol be ready in time?). She's the Best Actress of 2013. The Oscars aren't like a Beauty Pageant where you get a title andtour the country for the following year before you pass on the tiara. It's not like that. It's for a movie you did. Pretending that Cate is the Best Actress of 2014 puts you in People's Choice territory where people just win prizes even if they sat at home that year but are still popular. It's not really territory you want to be in. 

Five completely random links (more time to catch up what's happening elsewhere tomorrow)

• Vanity Fair on their Oscar Party 
• Daily Mail on that pizza guy and the tipping situation at the Oscars
• Buzz Feed if John Travolta had to pronounced other people's names at the Oscars
• Vulture Pharrell's Happy performance gifs of the stars joining in. This was SO smart to include so early in the show. The energy was perfect. 
• Vanity Fair [LONG READ] I bookmarked this story about trying to find out what happened to the real "Patsey" from 12 Years a Slave and I haven't had time to finish it yet but it's totally an interesting subject. I WILL carve out time to read it this week and so should you. 

After the jump my favorite blurry photos I took of my TV last night. But why blurry photos, you ask?

Click to read more ...

The Best Tweets of Oscar Night

And if Matthew McConaughey can be his own hero, I can include some of my own tweets, too! But I'll be sure to thank God as well because everything i have comes fro...

If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014

I share the tweets primarily because Ellen DeGeneres made history last night with this selfie... which isn't really a selfie because Bradley Cooper took it ...although maybe not because that's a really wide view for a selfie. And there were other versions of this picture suggesting multiple cameras, like the one I tweeted below. a selfie that's not really a selfie that contains multitudes and all of our fantasies and dreams... and Lupita's brother.

This picture will be parsed for pop cultural meaning for as long as we all shall live pic.twitter.com/WouYCgEfM4

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) March 3, 2014

FUN TWEETS after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Beauty Vs Beast: Death Becomes Them

JA from MNPP here, starting off a new week with a brand new round of Beauty Vs Beast! I hope everybody enjoyed the Oscars last night - there were highs (Lupita!) and there were lows (another year of ill-incorporated montages) but there is one thing we can all agree upon: seeing Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in the same room like that made us all wish we were watching Death Becomes Her instead.

I was really hoping they'd present together, or maybe Meryl would just randomly scream out "NOW, A WARNING?" while Goldie was on-stage, or maybe Jennifer Lawrence would tumble down the theater's stairs and break into pieces in an elaborate tribute to the nearly twenty-two year old film? ...Something. Anything! Isabella Rossellini could've been carried out onto stage by some muscle men, perhaps? Alas it wasn't to be, save my imagination.

Thankfully I can trot out my imagination here, then. I give you this week's competition...

poll by twiigs.com

As always go ahead and make your cases for and against Robert Zemeckis' forever-living nut-cases in the comments, and in one week's time we'll down the potion and crown our new eternal queen.

And speaking of, crowns and queens and golden things with icy-cold skin, we've got to name our winner from last week's Frozen poll! It was pretty much a blow-out - Princess Elsa had too much diva-draw and strut herself to an easy win against her less flashy sister. As Anne-Marie said in the comments:

My vote is entirely colored by how badly I felt for Anna when I went to Disneyland in January. Literally every Elsa doll in the park was gone, so there were just all of these abandoned Anna dolls all through the park and it just made me so sad for this fictional character. Always living in her sister's diva shadow."

And so she shall remain. Team Elsa for the win!