Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Oscar nominations & predictions

Jeepers don't keep a guy in suspense! I missed the show, did Depp & Theron do well???

I gather the third Lord of the Rings movie whipped everyone's ass...

All of my predictions were right on the mark!

(Of course, it helps when you don't actually tell anyone what your predictions are beforehand... )

To sum it up:

LoTR won all 11 awards it was nominated for, tying the all-time record set by Ben-Hur and Titanic for most awards. This included best picture and best director!

Sofia Coppola won best screenplay. (And I think she's cute if no one else does!)

Renee Zellwenger won best supporting actress.

Tim Robbins won best supporting actor for Mystic River.

Charlize Theron won best actress in a lead.

Sean Penn picked up best actor in a lead.

Billy Crystal was funny and fun, and proved why he is the only funny host the Oscars have had in fifteen years (Letterman, Martin and Goldberg are absolutely attrocious IMO).

All in all, a good Oscar night! I loved Depp in Pirates, but I think Penn deserved it--I've never seen so many people cry in a theater before. Either way, Penn was very gracious in his acceptance speech, and the other actors seemed to be in approval.

And Lash, your girl Theron looked stunning!

well done to Peter Jackson and LOTRs !!!

i've managed to not see any footage of the winner, collecting their OSCARS !!! or seen what everyone was wearing !!!

so i'm looking forward to watching the highlights this evening .....

Matthew.

Well, I think Tim Robbins is adorable!!!! (Though Sofia isn't bad either, I liked when she was sharing the stage with her father. He seemed SO proud.)

KP, Tim Robbins portrayal in Mystic River is absolutely HEART BREAKING. He definately deserved the award!

And he and Susan Sarrandan are always a cute couple too, always smiling and laughing together. I've been a big Tim Robbins fan since Shawshank Redemption!

Not that it was an awful movie or anything, but I thought Lost in Translation was soooooo overrated.

The cinematography was nice and Murray and Johansen (sp?) did a fine job, but the weakest part of the movie was the writing (which is odd, considering that's what Sofia won for)... to me, it just didn't "feel" convincing at all -- it felt like a pastiche of what someone who'd only spent a few days in Japan thought Japanese culture was like. I dunno -- maybe Sofia actually did extensive and immersive research on the culture, but if she did, it didn't come through in the movie for me.

And other jokes jarred the suspension of disbelief so badly that they stood out like sore thumbs -- "Look at me! I'm a joke!" -- like the slapstick bit on the treadmill, or the clips on the back of Murray's jacket when he was in the bar. What, didn't he feel them when he sat back in the car on the way back from the studio? Or did he just walk all the way back to the hotel?

I should have entered some of those online "predict the Oscars" contests. I could have won big.

With the exception of Errol Morris finally getting one for best Documentary, there wasn't much in the way of surprises.

The interesting part is that rumor has it there wasn't much of a script to begin with, and that many of the film's best scenes come from Murray improvising.

Coppola actually drew upon the time she spent in Japan in that same hotel beween early modeling gigs when writing the film. I think part of the point is that it *isn't* deeply immersed in Japanese culture. Which helps communicate how out of their environment the main characters feel.

Coppola modeled??

I agree -- when you're an outsider, you wouldn't get to see the reality behind a culture, you'd see the odd stuff that makes you realize you're far from home. I think it's that sense of familiarity, that connectedness to something you understand that's "lost" in translation from one world to another here. The film isn't meant to be about Japanese culture so the facade we saw made sense ("Last Samurai" on the other hand, which was all about a man discovering Japanese culture was a lot worse imo, because it turned it into a romanticized, westernized, hollywood-ized version of samurai culture).

Not for very long, I believe.