Anybody want to talk about the Oscar nominations?

They just came out this morning. Here's the list.

I haven't seen much of that stuff, but I did see "Rocketman," and Taron Everton (who played Elton John) did not get a nomination. And I recently streamed "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" on my TV and then restreamed it the next day. Thought that was good, obviously, or I would not have rewatched. It was great for rewatching, because there were lots of details — like the different flavors of Wolf's Tooth dog food (rat, raccoon, etc.) — to pay attention to at your leisure without the distraction of thinking about what's going to happen next.  "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" did very well, with lots of nominations, but I'm in no position to say whether Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt were better than the actors in movies I did not see, and, really, it doesn't matter.

Did you know the New Yorker film critic, Richard Brody, called "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" "obscenely regressive"?

Tarantino’s love letter to a lost cinematic age is one that, seemingly without awareness, celebrates white-male stardom (and behind-the-scenes command) at the expense of everyone else.... ...Tarantino delivers a ridiculously white movie, complete with a nasty dose of white resentment; the only substantial character of color, Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), is played, in another set piece, as a haughty parody, and gets dramatically humiliated in a fight with Cliff [Brad Pitt]....

“Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” is about a world in which the characters, with Tarantino’s help, fabricate the sublime illusions that embody their virtues and redeem their failings—and then perform acts of real-life heroism to justify them again. Its star moments have a nearly sacred aura, in their revelation of the heroes that, he suggests, really do walk among us; his closed system of cinematic faith bears the blinkered fanaticism of a cult.

I don't agree with much of that, but I won't bore you by explaining why. Instead, here's Brad Pitt feeding his pit bull (Pitt bull) Wolf's Tooth dog food:

"She attended college at Brown, and spent a summer in Los Angeles trying to become an actress and a model, and going to clubs with Leonardo DiCaprio."

"('It was the summer before Romeo and Juliet came out,' she said. 'It was right after Gilbert Grape.') When Hollywood didn’t pan out, she graduated and moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion media, landing writing jobs... 'I was like, drowning in makeup and cigarettes and booze and cool people'.... In 2005, she took a break from the work force to get an M.F.A. in creative writing. She ended up selling a novel to Grove Atlantic, but 'it sort of turned into a disaster,' she said. She returned the advance and the book was never published.... After her wedding in 2011, she landed on the idea for Stone Fox Bride... [Instagram] became a place where Ms. Guy would share photos of her daughters and her husband. 'In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done any of that,' she said. By 2016, her marriage was coming to an end, and selling wedding dresses, in person and online, stopped being so fun. Ms. Guy closed her studio 'the day Trump got elected,' she said, and started selling her inventory out of her Williamsburg apartment, while her estranged husband lived in an Airstream around the corner.... Now, Ms. Guy said she is working on a memoir... Her brand, she said, has evolved to represent 'women in transition.'... [She teaches a] 'crash course writing workshop' for 'foxes in flux.'"

From "What Happens When a Weddings Influencer Gets Divorced?/Stone Fox Bride made Molly Rosen Guy the face of bohemian weddings. Then her marriage ended" (NYT).

Apparently, it's Trump's fault.

IN THE COMMENTS: Sally327 said:

I can't read the article so I don't know if it addresses this or not but I wonder if this business was profitable. I mean, enough to live on. Possibly not having a husband around to pay the bills made a difference?

I responded:

"There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor."

"Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!"

Tweeted Trump, as the big fires burned. Insensitive? Why did he choose to provoke during the fire?

Of course, the criticism was entirely predictable and harsh. Here's "President Trump's tweet on California wildfires angers firefighters, celebrities" (CNN). Excerpt:

The president of the California Professional Firefighters said the message is an attack on some of the people fighting the devastating fires. "The President's message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines," Brian K. Rice said....

"This is an absolutely heartless response," singer Katy Perry tweeted. "There aren't even politics involved. Just good American families losing their homes as you tweet, evacuating into shelters."

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio also weighed in, blaming the fires on climate change. "The reason these wildfires have worsened is because of climate change and a historic drought," he tweeted. "Helping victims and fire relief efforts in our state should not be a partisan issue."

Trump came back some hours later with 3 tweets. The first 2 take a more compassionate tone, and the third one gets back to his original point:

1. "More than 4,000 are fighting the Camp and Woolsey Fires in California that have burned over 170,000 acres. Our hearts are with those fighting the fires, the 52,000 who have evacuated, and the families of the 11 who have died. The destruction is catastrophic. God Bless them all."

2. "These California fires are expanding very, very quickly (in some cases 80-100 acres a minute). If people don’t evacuate quickly, they risk being overtaken by the fire. Please listen to evacuation orders from State and local officials!"

3. "With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!"

Jimmy Kimmel gets Kate Winslet to admit that Leonardo DiCaprio "could have actually fit on that bit of door."

Thus, the actress who played Rose in "Titanic" throws her weight with the segment of internet that has long taken the position that Rose let Jack die by not sharing her raft. Here's a much-viewed depiction of the theory:



Some comments at that image suggest the argument on the other side: "Um, yeah they fit, but it would have sank...PHYSICS PEOPLE!" "Force buoyancy = Volume of fluid displaced*density of water - weight of buoyant body.... chances are the door wouldnt have even held rose." "Wt per cu ft of sea water = 64.08lbs; red oak = 44lbs; est disp of door = 8.4cu ft; wt supported by door = 168lbs. Ergo, Jack's fucked." "May I just say, to all of you that understand the buoyancy and physics involved in this, I love you. There's hope for our future."

ADDED: Mythbusters analyzed the problem:

"The most Vine-able moment of the night, for sure, was when Gaga confidently walked by Leo..."

"... to pick up her best TV supporting actress trophy for 'American Horror Story,' and he got unnecessarily freaked out when she bumped his elbow." That's how it's put in WaPo's "Golden Globes 2016: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Lady Gaga incident and 12 other things you missed" by Stephanie Merry and Emily Yahr.



I've watched that 10 times and I'm quite sure Merry and Yahr are obtuse. Lady Gaga did not just "confidently walk by" DiCaprio. She deliberately but subtly and sexily collided with him because it was funny and fun and she smiled. He could have been irked at perceived disrespect, but he knew he was on camera and performed a jovial 2-part reaction. Watch the eyebrows. Part 1 is not Jack Nicholsonian enough so he does a second, more exaggerated eyebrow raising. It's acting. He wasn't "unnecessarily freaked out," which makes him seem wimpy-jumpy. Unfair.

ADDED: One reason it happened is that DiCaprio is expanding out into the aisle. He's manspreading — the upper-body form of manspreading. Gaga's hips — in that high-structured dress — are flaring out in a way that used to be called "secretary spread" — so: womanspreading. It was a spread fest.

Leonardo DiCaprio is not "raped by bear" in his new movie.

Drudge is getting something wrong again.

I clicked on the link, which went to Roger Friedman's Showbiz 411, and it says:

["The Revenant"] begins with the same bloody incident that launches the book – the gruesome attack by a grizzly bear on trapper Hugh Glass. Innaritu has taken essentially the following sections of Punke’s book and enlarged them into a feasting by animal on man. The bear flips Glass over on his belly and molests him – dry humps him actually – as he nearly devours him. How Innaritu and DiCaprio did this is a movie mystery because it is as real feeling as Bruce the shark in “Jaws” 40 years ago. It’s as real looking as it could be, and maybe the most frightening moment I’ve seen in a film in eons.

... dry humps him actually... That's not rape. Let's be careful about the false rape accusations.

ADD: Drudge now links to the studio's denial:

“As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass because she feels he might be threatening her cubs,” a Fox spokesperson said. "There is clearly no rape scene with a bear.” 

The studio wants you to know that not only isn't it rape, but the bear is female, so it's not homosexual, in case you were concerned. And it's not a sexual assault, because the bear isn't after the famous hotness of Mr. DiCaprio. She means well. She's a good mom. And it's all an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Also at that link, the text from the book the movie is based on:

The grizzly dropped to all fours and was on him. Glass rolled into a ball, desperate to protect his face and chest. She bit into the back of his neck and lifted him off the ground, shaking him so hard that Glass wondered if his spine might snap.

He felt the crunch of her teeth striking the bone of his shoulder blade. Claws raked repeatedly through the flesh of his back and scalp. He screamed in agony.

She dropped him, then sank her teeth deep into his thigh and shook him again, lifting him and throwing him to the ground with such force that he lay stunned— conscious, but unable to resist any further.

He lay on his back staring up...

Not even any dry humping. Just crunching teeth and raking claws.

"How come I know you don’t write anything you don’t want broadcast in an email? How come I know that? Who’s advising people?"

Said the actress Lisa Kudrow, commenting on the leaked emails of Sony executives (in which, for example, Leonardo DiCaprio was called "despicable").

"It doesn't matter how many times [an email] says 'This is confidential, meant for just between the sender and the recipient,'" [Kudrow] said. "Why don't we know that there are no rules? Everything is broadcast and published. That's the part I just don't understand."

That tough reality has made Kudrow extremely cautious of what she says.

"I mean, I have almost no opinions anymore," she joked.

Kudrow asks a good question — and she seems to imply that the answer is that these executives were embarrassingly ignorant and out of touch with modern life. But there could be other explanations. I thought of two:

1. Email is an efficient way to conduct business, but only when the speech is sharp and clear and cuts through all the crap. The successful executives are the ones who can communicate like this, and for them, at least until now, it has been worth the risk. Email couched in pleasantries and euphemisms would waste everyone's time and make you look insufficiently hard-assed. The risk of leakage was far outweighed by the potential to succeed, and those who weigh the risk otherwise don't get to these positions of power in the first place. It's fine for an actress to cultivate her niceness image, but she's got a entirely different kind of career. And having "almost no opinions" is a good low-risk strategy for her.

2. The Hollywood executives actually don't mind if these opinions leak out. They won't come forward now and own up to actually thinking Leonardo DiCaprio was "despicable" to withdraw from whatever commitment he made to play the role of Steve Jobs in another Steve Jobs biopic or that Angelina Jolie, who was bothering them somehow over another biopic of Cleopatra, is "a minimally talent spoiled brat." Pressuring/controlling/manipulating celebrities is what these executives need to do, and creating anxieties about whether they will get their projects funded or will get work in the future is part of how they play their game. Maybe the executives want Leo and Angie and the others to know that the executives expect better compliance.

I'm not saying I'm sure either or both of those things are true. I'm just playing with alternate scenarios and trying to open up the discussion.

I encounter 5 items of celebrity news.

1. The snake that bit one of the dancers in a rehearsal of the Nicki Minaj song "Anaconda" was a "boa constrictor named Rocky who has been in the entertainment business for 15 years." A boa constrictor is not an anaconda, but the snake had no way to know the song was celebrating some other species of snake. Nor do I think the snake could take offense at the lyrics and think something like: That's all I am to you, something that reminds you of a body part of one of your kind, not as a unique individual with many facets to my serpentine being other than serving as a hyperbolic metaphor for the human penis? Do you even know about the snake's penis? Am I simply a big penis to you? Do you even know who I am? I am Rocky, a veteran of 15 years in the entertainment business! I think a boa constrictor bites when it feels threatened, so if the 15-years-in-the-entertainment-business snake bit a dancer, he must have felt really scared. He doesn't know his name is Rocky, a name that connotes a tough guy. He's just a snake. He doesn't know what snakes mean to us, and he's not really in the business, is he? Not from his perspective. He's not getting any coins, as Nicky might put it. He's a confused, frightened creature in an incomprehensible environment, fighting for survival. And that's our favorite phallic symbol.

2. Jennifer Lopez says: "I like being in a relationship. I’m not one to like, whore around, and stuff like that — that’s not my thing." Is she calling other ladies "whores"? Is that allowed these days? She used "whore" as a verb, naming the action, not the person. That might be a love-the-sinner/hate-the-sin kind of attitude, but then she didn't ever say whoring around is bad, only that it's not her "thing." Do your own thing. That's what we said in the 60s, often along with its corollary: Let it all hang out. The Isley Brothers sang: "It's your thing/Do what you wanna do/I can't tell you/Who to sock it to." Some people — like Jennifer Lopez — find that their thing is having sex with their own spouse. No judgment. It's all good. You whores.

3. That bad old billionaire racist Donald Sterling had fallen out of the news, and here's V. Stiviano rescuing him from that fate and averring that the old man is gay and she was his beard. This is not attention whoring — is that word permissible? — because Stiviano is fighting against a lawsuit filed against her by Sterling's wife Shelly, who accuses her of being "a thief and an embezzler," which provides the basis for a counterclaim of defamation.

4. To stop his descent into into a condition I think is called Jack Nicholsonism, Leonardo DiCaprio must lose 10 pounds. "He has given up pasta – and he loves pasta... He also plans on working out more and he is taking his bike wherever he goes." DiCaprio is about to turn 40, and his girlfriend is a 21-year-old model named Toni Garrn, who apparently either wants to make very sure we pronounce the "r" in her name or is a pirate. We're told of Garrrrrn that "Of course she doesn’t care" that Leo is fat. Why would Leo be with anyone who would say she cares that he's fat when he's fat? I love you just the way you are. That's what Billy Joel sang, back in 1979, stealing, he admits, the last line of the 4 Seasons song "Rag Doll," which was inspired by a squeegee-man girl who extracted $20 from Bob Gaudio. Did Joel have any particular person in mind? Yeah. His first wife, and she didn't even like the song. Joel went through 2 more wives, including a 23-year-old that he married when he was 55. Oh, but don't be too mean to Mr. Joel. He has "battled depression for many years," and once tried to kill himself by drinking furniture polish. Furniture polish? "It looked tastier than bleach." But good luck to DiCaprio, whether he chooses to remain boyishly cute or become the jolly roué. Flabby or toned, he'll always be cuter than Billy Joel, and good for him for never divorcing anyone. He has never married.

5. Speaking of fat, Warner Brothers is in trouble for "fat shaming" in its new direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie "Frankencreepy." Some curse causes Daphne Blake to go from size 2 to size 8, but size 8 is depicted more like size 22, and Tom Burns of The Good Men Project writes: "It's sad to think that my daughter can’t even watch a cartoon about a dog solving mysteries without negative body stereotypes being thrown in her face." But apparently, there's an argument that the curse is that each character loses what she (or he) is most afraid to lose, and the only reason Daphe loses her fine figure is that she's too damned in love with it in the first place. This notion of curses tailored to each psyche is familiar. In one of my favorite movies, "The Witches of Eastwick," Satan (the above-mentioned Jack Nicholson) curses the various women with their own fears, and in the case of Cher, the fear is snakes. Watch Cher wake up in a bedful of snakes. Can somebody check the IMDB page on those snakes? I want to know how long they've been in the entertainment business and what are their degrees of separation from Rocky?

Oh, no! I didn't need to see that!

John Kerry and Leonardo DiCaprio embracing.

It's not the man-on-man love that bothers me. Or even the married person swayed by a playboy. It's the grotesquerie of politicians finding love with the Hollywood stars.

Once more you open the door/And you're here in my heart/And my heart will go on and on...

No. Could you close that door please? Separation of entertainment and politics. Entertainment indulges us with fantasy and escape. Keep that out of politics. It's disgusting.

"Al Gore made $200 million. Good for him!"

Said Meade. Acknowledging that I got the reference, I said, "But he didn't do it alone..."

Meade has his computer screen open to Drudge, the right 2/3 of which looks like this right now:



It's all about smiles, as the dolphin in the lower right corner makes clear. Meade says, "Wow, George P. Bush looks like Nixon," and I say, "And Obama too... strangely." The Gore smile is waxen. For all I know the pic is of a wax depiction of the GoreBot, the ManBearPig we've come to dread.

Meanwhile, there's Leo, our new Gatsby, apparently "vibrantly alive." The word "vibrant" appears only once in "The Great Gatsby":

He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.

I think you know what to do with that sentence. And if not, my belief in the harmony of the universe — or the mystical shades and echoes of pink dolphins or the reliability of the Althouse commentariat — tells me that betamax3000 will show you the way.

New "Gatsby" trailer.

Now, with even more anachronistic pop music, including Beyonce singing Amy Winehouse.

Baz Luhrmann's "Gatsby."

If you loved "Moulin Rouge," as I did, you may find the new trailer thrilling:



I was literally thrilled. And I'm very skeptical of all movies. I resist going to the movies. I see one comment over at YouTube whining about this not being in 3D. 3D is a curse. I've vowed never again to see a movie shot in 3D unless it's in a 3D theater. I saw that most recent "Planet of the Apes" movie, which was shot as a 3D movie, in a non-3D theater, and it was full of dumb shots — objects placed in the extreme foreground, actors framed in a way that you could tell was for an effect that you weren't able to see. I'd love to see "Life of Pi," but I put off going, because it's such an ordeal to engage with a 3D experience, and now it's only around here in non-3D, and I can't go, because of my vow. I'm delighted that Luhrmann didn't mess up the visuals to pander to the 3D dweebs.

Here, you can read "The Great Gatsby" on line, in a nice format. This is one of my favorite books. What I like is that each sentence is good, on its own. Seriously. Test it out. "As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon." Every sentence is a writer's inspiration. I'll vouch for that.

ADDED: A trailer was put out last summer using many of the same visuals and a very different audio track, and I blogged at the time: "It looks awful, with horrible acting." I'd forgotten that! Here's the old trailer:



But I did say: "But then I think it's like 'Moulin Rouge,' which can seem bad if you look at it the wrong way, and this new 'Gatsby; is in fact directed by the same person, Baz Luhrmann." There's a fine line — in some quarters — between garbage and greatness. 

Bestsellers.

Here'sa list of the bestselling books at Amazon. I know women are reading "Fifty Shades of Grey," but I'm amazed to see that the top 4 bestselling books are "Fifty Shades of Grey." It's a trilogy, so that makes 3. The 4th one is a boxed set of the 3.

There's an incredible amount of junk in the top 100 books, but for some reason #17 is "The Great Gatsby." Oh, I know the reason. It's a new movie. Here's the trailer. It looks awful, with horrible acting. But then I think it's like "Moulin Rouge," which can seem bad if you look at it the wrong way, and this new "Gatsby" is in fact directed by the same person, Baz Luhrmann. And now I see that Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of Gatsby. So the book is moving. Googling, I turn up this article in The Daily News:

Now, we haven't read "The Great Gatsby" around here (hadn't even heard of it, in fact, until we learned of the movie). But from these stills, and the trailer, we've deduced that it is the story of some dapper hipsters with a serious retro aesthetic who open an artisanal distillery somewhere on Long Island. Also, they seem to inexplicably like disco.

Anyway, what are you reading today... in book form?

ADDED: "Even the opening line of her novel—'I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror'—has at least two too many words." Yeah, you criticize, but you just wrote "two too."

"He'd yell from the other room: 'Press your hand into her back more! And when you take her face, really grab it!'"

It's a dangerous thing when your husband is the movie director ordering the beautiful naked actor to sex up that scene with you, the beautiful naked actress.

That movie "put a lot of stress on their marriage," the friend said. "Kate [Winslet] came to regret making ["Revolutionary Road"] with Sam [Mendes].

"They've been pretty much living separate lives since the end of the summer," the friend said. "They realized some time ago that they were not a good fit. They were more like brother and sister."

Movies are art, and they can affect us profoundly. They can jar us into realizing things about our lives — things we would otherwise exclude from our conscious mind. Then, consider what it is like when  you are inside of a work of art as an actress, summoning feelings to create a performance, and the feeling you need to display is deep in the sexual realm of your body and the feeling needs to extend to the gorgeous, naked Leonardo DiCaprio. And there in the other room is your husband, a man who no longer excites you in bed, and he is telling you — urging you — to transfer all the passion that is inside you onto that ravishing man.

She is Kate Winslet, the most brilliant actress of her era — renowned for her ability to manifest sexual desire on screen — and she needs to go on and on pulling performances out of the core of her being. Her once-husband, now-brother Sam Mendes is an artist too, and, one assumes, he understands all this and is able to let go of his beautiful love and go on...

The Oscar nominations.

Here.

Observations:

1. Kate Winslet's performance in "The Reader" is classified as a "leading role," and it is her only nomination. She won Golden Globes for "leading" in "Revolutionary Road" and for "supporting" in "The Reader." The Academy is not buying that, and I'd say rightly so. It's a leading role in "The Reader," and I'm tired of big stars getting their roles categorized as supporting to horn in on the lesser actors with smaller parts.

2. "Revolutionary Road" generally seems snubbed. Leonardo DiCaprio didn't get a nomination. (Though Michael Shannon got a supporting nomination.) And there is no Best Picture or Director nomination.

3. I've seen 4 of the Best Picture nominees: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Milk," "The Reader," and "Slumdog Millionaire." I haven't seen "Frost/Nixon," and frankly, I don't want to. I can see in the trailer the way Nixon's own words have been edited and ham-acted into something they were not. I'd give the Oscar to "Slumdog Millionaire." "Milk" would be fine too.

4. Richard Jenkins in "The Visitor"? I know nothing about that one. I guess he must have been good. I'll try to check it out before saying I think Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke should win Best Actor. I think Rourke will win because he suffered so much making that movie.

5. Melissa Leo in "Frozen River"? Again, I know nothing about that one. And I haven't seen Angelina Jolie in "The Changeling." (Oddly, I've never seen Angelina Jolie in anything! I guess I just done share her taste in films.) I guess the plan is to give Best Actress to Kate Winslet. Wonder if there will be a backlash.

6. I've seen all the Supporting Actress films. Personally, I love Penélope Cruz. What an amusing performance!

7. I've seen 3 of the Supporting Actor films. I love Robert Downey Jr., but I haven't seen "Tropic Thunder." (I will.) I saw "Iron Man." And I haven't seen "Revolutionary Road" yet, because it hasn't hit town. I've seen "Milk," "Doubt," and "The Dark Knight," and if it were between those 3, I'd pick Josh Brolin in "Milk." That was one of the most effective performances I've ever seen. And I went into the film not knowing he'd been singled out as especially good, so, for me, he came out of nowhere and killed.

8. I see both Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt got nominated. Congratulations to the happy couple. Life's not fair, but they seem to be decent people making good decisions. No need to hate them.

I'm live-blogging The Golden Globes.

6:00: Come hang out with me. I'm watching Nancy O'Dell on the red carpet interviewing the Jonas Brothers. They seem like nice young men, but boring. I guess they don't need to be interesting, as they are obviously loved for whatever it is they do — which I've never experienced. 

6:05: Commenting on her success, Miley Cyrus says she's not a big planner, but "God has a plan." She looks pretty there in her very long drapey white dress, with her dad who's flat-ironed his hair as much as a man possibly can. 

6:15: Steve Carrell bows down to Ricky Gervais. 

6:27: Gah! I screwed up the title line. Fixed. Sorry. The red carpet stuff is made less glamorous by the presence of TV folk, who seem especially interested in getting camera time. Meanwhile, we see Kate Winslet lurking over there, looking splendid. 

6:29: Vanessa Hudgens's hair doesn't just look like a wig, it looks like a play wig. Jessica Lange is escorting Drew Barrymore. They are holding hands. I love Drew's hair — it seems to be inspired by Marilyn Monroe after a long night of drinking. Blah! Now it's Jeremy Piven whining about his ailment that no one believes he has.

6:41: Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together again. This time he's the one who looks ever so slightly bloated. She's wearing a black dress and looks so good wearing red lipstick that maybe all of us women will be wearing red lipstick tomorrow.

6:47: Is that Tom Cruise's phone ringing? He's moved off to the side so Nancy O'Dell can get to Robert Downey Jr. — who's wearing dark sunglasses and looks very unkempt, yet brags about his sobriety — and then Sting — who's very red and bloated and bearded. He needs to go on Tom Cruise's diet, because Tom looks radically rejuvenated, all sharp edges.

6:50: Marisa Tomei promotes her movie — "The Wrestler" — which she says is "very verité."

7:01: Jennifer Lopez is handing out the Best Supporting Actress movie award. And it's... Kate Winslet. She's acting flustered, which she attributes to her "habit of not winning things." She's glistening with sweat. And maybe the rest of us women will try to be glistening with sweat tomorrow. She's thanking the movie makeup people for "making me look so old." [LATER: Ricky Gervais says he told her if she did a Holocaust film she'd win. This is a reference to the first episode of "Extras," where Winslet plays herself as an actress who is doing a Holocaust film in order to win an Oscar.]

7:07: Best Song. I was going to say I don't care, but then I see that the "Gran Torino" song is up. And there's Bruce Springsteen, who bellyached his way through a typical Bruce Springsteen song for "The Wrestler." And damned if he doesn't win. "This is the only time I'm going to be in competition with Clint Eastwood. That's for sure."

7:19: Supporting TV Actor. I guess Ben Franklin will win. Yeah. Tom Wilkinson. One of these days I'll finish watching the episodes of "John Adams." It wasn't my favorite sort of thing, but Wilkinson was good in it. He's acting quite geezerly now.

7:22: Supporting TV Actress. The only one I know is Laura Dern from "Recount." And she wins. She played Kathrine Harris — very amusingly. Oh, now, she's blabbering about the election and looking forward to "amazing change in this country." I hope that doesn't make anyone else think now would be a good time to talk politics. At least, her little TV movie was about a presidential election.

7:31: Best TV Actor is Gabriel Byrne, but he's not there. So on to Best TV Actress. Anna Paquin wins for "True Blood." Remember how cute she when she won an Oscar -- as a little girl? By the way, the presenters are the 2 young actors who are playing Captain Kirk and Spock in some new "Star Trek" project. They look interestingly like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy — but handsomer — younger and handsomer.

7:40: "Wall-E" wins for animated movie, and the guy accepting the award thanks his kids and says they inspire every emotion he tries to capture on film. That sounds nice until you think about it for about 2 seconds.

7:45: Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical goes to Sally Hawkins, and I'm sorry I didn't see "Happy-Go-Lucky." She beat Meryl Streep, who detains her on the way to the stage. Bow to the Streep. She beat Emma Thompson too. And Frances MacDormond. That's some major ass-kicking.

7:56: Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore are still holding hands. They're presenting the Best TV Mini-Series or Movie. Unsurprisingly, "John Adams" wins. Surprisingly, the award is accepted by Tom Hanks. He could use some makeup.

8:01: Best Supporting Actor in a movie. Heath Ledger wins. He's not there to accept the award... needless to say. The director Christopher Nolan accepts the award. They show the "You complete me" clip.

8:05: Here's a list of all the nominees, in case you're wondering who the losers are. Now, here's Tom Brokaw. Why? Oh, he's introducing the clips for "Frost/Nixon." Funnily spoofed on "SNL" last night as "Frost/Other People."

8:09: Best Foreign Film. Oh! Israel won. "Waltz with Bashir." The producer accepts and says he hopes when his kids watch the film some day, the war it depicts will be something from the past.

8:13: Actress in a TV Mini-Series/Movie goes to Laura Linney — Abigail Adams — and it's no surprise. She's wearing an ugly dress and that hairstyle that mainly consists of not brushing.

8:22: Movie Screenplay. "Slumdog Millionaire." Excellent! 8:24: Best TV Actor. Alec Baldwin. I don't watch his show, but maybe I should.

8:33: Actor in a TV Mini-Series/Movie. Of course, it will be Paul Giamatti, right? Yes.

8:38: Best TV Comedy series. Obviously, it will be "30 Rock." I've never watched it. Heard it's good.

8:45: Original Movie Score. Gotta be "Slumdog." Yeah. A lot of movie music is just background emotional mainipulation, but "Slumdog" had some really exciting stuff. The composer thanks the "billion people from India."

8:48: Everyone seems to know that Tina Fey will win Best TV Actress, and she does. She's got a dress cut all the way down to the waistband, but don't get nervous. It's clearly glued on. She's bitching about the internet. She's telling specific bloggers — I think they're bloggers, they sound like bloggers — they can "suck it." It's nice to know the celebs read what the bloggers say about them and that it can bug them.

9:03: I'm not interested in watching the honoring of Steven Speilberg. It's not about this year's movies. It's such a drag. I hate all the shots of actresses faces — all that admiration. I imagine them all thinking about whether they look pretty giving the impression of caring.

9:15: A big one: Best Director. I say out loud: Danny Boyle. And that's right. It's Danny Boyle. I loved "Slumdog Millionaire" — saw it twice. Apparently, everyone in India is watching. That would be 1 billion people. Maybe some of them are watching TVs in shop windows, like the people in "Slumdog."

9:21: Colin Farrell wins the Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical. He says things like "Ignorance is nemesis."

9:32: Sacha Baron Cohen is riffing on the subject of economic hard times. "Even Madonna has had to get rid of one of her personal assistants. Our thoughts go out to you, Guy Ritchie." The audience sighs with disapproval... and also laughs. The award he's presenting is Best Musical/Comedy. Ah! "Vicki, Christina, Barcelona." Nice to see a Woody Allen movie win.

9:40: Best Drama Actress. This is the one where the GG website seemed to reveal that Anne Hathaway had won. But no! It's Kate Winslet!!!! Our Kate! She's won twice! "Okay. Gather." "I want to thank my beautiful agents."

9:46: Best TV Drama: "Mad Men."

9:53: Best Drama Actor. Mickey Rourke! I'm glad he won over Sean Penn simply because he's there and Sean is not. He gets a big, enthusiastic standing ovation. He looks really cool — sleazy cool — with stringy, highlighted hair, a mustache, light sunglasses, dark spray-on tan, dark satin lapels, and a dark sequined scarf. It shows that he really wanted it. He's touchingly pleased and genuinely humble.

10:00. Tom Cruise is here to give the Best Drama award, and I think we know it's going to be... it is... "Slumdog Millionaire."

10:03: The producer accepting the award, getting rushed to wrap up, says "Oh, fuck!" and the audio is removed. So we know it was tape delayed, and I wonder if this will affect the Supreme Court's "fleeting expletives" case. See? It's not hard to snip out the fleeting expletive. And here it is so conspicuously demonstrated. (And now, I can put the "law" tag on this post.)

10:07: Ah, finally, it's over. Highlights: Kate winning twice. Mickey Rourke. All the kudos to "Slumdog."

Titanic vs. Lord of the Rings. Prof. Bainbridge is responding to my challenge about whether, if there were an ensemble acting Oscar, LOTR would have won it and neither Titanic nor Ben Hur would have, thus making LOTR the biggest Oscar-winning movie ever, with 12, not just 11.

Bainbridge points out that LOTR won the SAG ensemble acting award, but Titanic didn't. The Full Monty did!

I realize now how complex this what-if question is. Bainbridge points out that the SAG ensemble award may be essentially its version of best picture: SAG only gives acting awards, so ensemble works as a way to recognize the whole picture. If that's so, and if the Oscar voters tracked the all-actor SAG voters, we could infer that the ensemble Oscar would have gone to Titanic. But it is a different group of voters, as we can tell from the way the Oscars didn't care at all about The Full Monty.

Bainbridge also theorizes that an ensemble award would be used to honor casts in movies that did not feature one or two dominant stars, that is "true ensembles." Voters might conceive of the ensemble award as a way to make up for the fact that films with large crowds of actors don't have a fair shot at the individual actor awards. Clearly, LOTR had many great actors in it, but they were in relatively small roles. But small roles can earn supporting actor awards, and it's notable that no one even had a nomination in a supporting category.

I can't speak for Ben Hur, because I've never seen it, but I'll accept that Charlton Heston was an overriding star there, and maybe the cast of thousands types would not seem to deserve any recognition.

But how about Titanic? Bainbridge says look at the posters: it's all about Kate Winslet (the sublime Kate Winslet, whom true Peter Jackson fans will love from Heavenly Creatures) and Leonardo diCaprio. But what about Kathy Bates (people love her), Victor Garber (the New Yorker thought he was the best thing in the film), Billy Zane (an acquired taste), David Warner (you want an English actor of long reputation, look at this), Francis Fisher, Jonathan Hyde (deliciously evil as Ismay), Bill Paxton, and the beloved old actress Gloria Stuart?

I say it would have won an ensemble award. What was the real competition? Not The Full Monty. Not Boogie Nights (because of the subject matter). Maybe L.A. Confidential. Considering the extreme love of the acting in Mystic River, I'd say that the ensemble award for Titanic would have been more likely than for LOTR.

UPDATE: Christopher Althouse, who's a devoted student of film, writes: "I think Titanic and Ben Hur would both have won ensemble awards, and to the extent that they could have not won, I don't think it's a given that LOTR would have won."