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!

The Winning Moment & The Loveable Losers

Oscar night is still rich with the thrill of victory but not, I'd argue, with the agony of defeat. At least not anymore. The Oscar race has never been as sports-analogous as some would like but the victory part in the modern awards season maybe. That requires true endurance... months of campaigning and appearance and interviews and people whisking you here and there. The agony of defeat is surely now lessened by way of expectations. There didn't use to be all these signposts along the way that you're never going to win which might account for how polite and calm the losers are in their little live-television grids. Nevertheless we still love to slow-mo the shit out of those moments.

We're doing three and a half categories (Supporting Actress, Director, Actress, and ?)  starting now...

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The Beautiful People

The Class of 2013 via The 86th Academy Awards,  March 2nd, 2014!

Damn, that's a good looking bunch. It occurs to me that there was more than just a little bit more of a consensus this year behind "shoulds" when it came to acting winners, hence the repeats from ceremony to ceremony. That was true even here at The Film Experience. Though McConaughey didn't win his reader's poll here (he came in 3rd in a tight race for 2nd with Chiwetel, both behind Leo), the rest were your preferred winners as you can see on their percentage totals on the individual charts. And Cate and Lupita were also my gold medalists in the The Film Experience's long running Film Bitch Awards, too.

Group Tidbits & Trivia
• Cate and Matthew are the exact same age (44) and I wonder when or if that's ever happened before with the lead winners? It probably doesn't happen often given Oscar's double gender standards when it comes to what age its appropriate to honor male and female actors; generally speaking, women win most often when they're in their late 20s to mid 30s wherease men have much better luck in their 40s.
• The lead winners are both married and both have three children. The supporting winners are both single and keep publicly joking about the rumors that they're dating

Jennifer and Lupita reenact the last month of the internet backstage!

• another cute Lead/Supporting divide. The leads brought their spouses to the Oscars and both Lupita and Jared brought a sibling!
• Interesting gender divide in terms of origins. The women are international (Australia and Kenyan/Mexican) while the men are both from the Southern US (Texas and Louisiana)
• All four went to college --  so since Ellen went there with a joke: stay in school, kids

Jared Leto photobombing Anne Hathaway

• Cate is the old pro (6 noms / 2 wins) but the other three are all 'first time's the charm' winners
• I interviewed 75% of this group, alas not a perfect fab four: ICYMI my chats with Matthew, Jared, & Lupita
• Four different zodiac signs but we have two waters (Matthew & Lupita) and two earths (Cate & Jared) and yes, I have insomnia, or else why else would I be looking this up?!

Oscar Winners As They're Announced

I will be doing a full fun recap but during the show mostly just minor notes. I'm gonna enjoy the show this year! 

OPENING MONOLOGUE 
Very bold for Ellen DeGeneres actually!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Presented by: Anne Hathaway
winner: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

This is for the 36 million people who have lost the battle to AIDS.

ANIMATED "HERO" MONTAGE
Presented by Jim Carrey
"Light on Finding Nemo" according to Ellen Degeneres 

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Oscar Night ~ Notes Upon Arrival

I've been thinking, I've been thinking Why can't I keep my fingers off it, baby? I want it, na-na. Oscar Night. We be all night! ♫

And we can't stop And we won't stop
<-- Can't you see it's He who owns the night?! ♫

REFRESH YOUR SCREENS FOR UPDATES AS WE GO...

6:15 If you have to pee now would be a good time. It's going to be a long night.

>6:21 I will take this as a good omen for the night. The first E! interview is with Viola Davis "green is my go to color." While they're talking Liza arrives channeling the blue hair contingency of the Academy. More...

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