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Monday, February 25, 2008

Oscar Roundup

I half watched the Oscars while watching episodes of 30 Rock on my computer. The Oscars were difficult to watch since the sound on my television is broken and I had to use the closed captioning. I don't know if you've ever used closed captioning during live television but it's annoying as hell. The words are about four seconds behind the action on screen which ruined all of Jon Stewart's delivery. The closed captioning system uses some sort of voice recognition software for automatic captioning, but it's far from perfect. At one point the word "nominated" was printed as "no ma'am nated", and "documentary" as "dom unitary". At one point you could actually see mistakes being deleted on the fly, by whoever monitors the closed captioning, just to make sure that Penelope Cruz's name came out right.

In any case I was pretty happy with the winners overall. Especially Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova winning for best song. Huzzah! I missed Javier Bardem's acceptance speech, unfortunately, but I'm sure all the Oscar highlights will be on Youtube tomorrow. Daniel Day Lewis was awesome during his acceptance speech. Marion Cotillard and Diablo Cody both gave very moving speeches as well. Did anyone else notice how excited Cate Blanchett was for Cotillard when she won? Very classy.
I really, really must see La Vie En Rose when it comes out on DVD this week.

The major category winners were mostly very predictable this year. But that's fine, since the movies that won were generally very good.

I was a bit shocked that Brad Renfro was snubbed during the memorial montage, however. He died a couple weeks before Heath Ledger, and I think it's a shame he wasn't recognized. I know he wasn't a major star, but The Client and Apt Pupil were pretty big films. Maybe I blinked and missed it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Video Addendum (enjoy them while you can):

"Falling Slowly":


Random Wii appearance:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, you did not miss Brad.I guess he was not good enough for them snobs! The oscars suck! Apparently you have to have an accent of some sort to win anything! Johhny Depp should tell them all to piss off next tim,they nominate him for nothing!

Paige said...

I teared up a bit for Daniel Day Lewis...I could listen to him for HOURS.

And yes I agree it was a bit uncomfortable that they didn't at lease recognize Brad Renfro.

rachel. said...

did you watch glen hansard and marketa irglova's acceptance speech(es)? if not, you tube them...i'd love to see how glen hansard's gaelic at the opening of his speech translated on closed captioning *snort*.

Sharkbear said...

I have not yet watched their speaches non-captioned. But I thought it was very classy of Jon Stewart to let Marketa come back on stage to giver hers.

rachel. said...

yeah, that was pretty awesome. i also noticed cate blanchett jump when cotillard's name was called...it's great to see someone be genuinely happy for someone else in a situation like that. :)