Rutashubanyuma
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- Sep 24, 2010
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[/h] [h=1]Oscars 2012: live coverage of the Academy Awards ceremony[/h] Didn't get an invite to this year's Oscars? Neither did Xan Brooks, but you can watch the 84th Academy Awards along with him here. The action began at 11.15pm GMT with the red carpet; we move indoors at 1.30am
- Xan Brooks
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 February 2012 02.31 GMT
- Article history
2.31am: We're back on track, ploughing on down the schedule and ticking off the editing Oscar. This goes to the duo behind The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who also won last year for The Social Network. "We weren't expecting this," they say. "This is unbelievable." They stare at each other, unsure what to say. "Let's get the hell out of here," they say.
Moments later the sound editing Oscar is delivered to Hugo and then the sound mixing prize is sent off in the exact same direction. This brings Hugo's tally up to four. Scorsese's film is dominating the technical categories and comfortably leads the field.
But again, I pity the poor losing nominees in these three categories. In this case, Oscar tradition dictates that this particular band of losers must now ride children's tricycles around the parking lot out back of the Hollywood and Highland theatre. This, initially, may not sound so bad, except that the nominees must ride in the cold, in the dark, with nobody watching as they pedal round and round in circles. Only at dawn are they permitted to return the tricycles and return to their hotels.
2.23am: The Academy Awards takes a brief detour with a spry black-and-white short, allegedly showing the results of a test preview of The Wizard of Oz. The sample audience like the "flying monkeys", mistake the Munchkins for little kids and demand the affable Kansas farm-folk be given a bigger role. Playing the producer, Bob Balaban looks suitably harassed.
2.15am: Christian Bale (still struggling to rein in his pesky, wandering accent) steps up to call the winner of this year's race for the best supporting actress Oscar.
Here come the nominees. There's Octavia Spencer, who baked a cake in The Help, and Jessica Chastain as the frazzled southern belle who took her in. Melissa McCarthy soiled her dress in Bridesmaids, and Janet McTeer played a horny-handed house painter in Albert Nobbs. Finally, there's Berenice Bejo, who co-starred as perky Peppy Miller in The Artist, a 1920s "It Girl" to rival Clara Bow.
And the Oscar goes to ... Octavia Spencer, who sparks a jubilant standing ovation as he takes to the stage. She's whooping, she's weeping; she can barely get the words out. She wants to thank her family in Alabama, the state of Alabama, and a whole heap of others. "OK," she yells, "I'm wrapping up! I'm freaking out!". And with that she totters from the stage, treading on her train and clutching her Oscar. Congratulations to Spencer. Just don't ever let her bake you a cake.
2.10am: Time now for the best foreign language film Oscar, which is a battle between Bullhead (from Belgium), Footnote (Israel), In Darkness (Poland) Monsieur Lazhar (Canada) and A Separation (Iran).
And the Oscar goes to .... A Separation, Asgar Farhadi's electrifying portrait of a floundering marriage in modern-day Tehran. Farhadi's speech is gracious and pointed, paying tribute to the people of Iran who respect other cultures and reject the language of violence. He is also, it should be said, a most deserved Oscar winner.
Outside the one-time Kodak theatre, meantime, the parties are already under way. Assuming you can't get into the Vanity Fair bash, do feel free to drop in to the Guardian's very own US Twitter party. Even if you can, we reckon the Twitter thing is probably better. Better conversation and less chance of getting stomped to death by Harvey Weinstein as you stand at the urinal.
But it's bad news for Crystal. Diaz and Lopez are not here to make his nocturnal fantasies a rich (and possibly naked) reality. They have merely come to present the Oscar for best costume to Mark Bridges for The Artist. It is Bridges' first Oscar and he duly introduces himself as "a kid from Niagara Falls who dreamed, ate and slept movies". This, on the face of it, sounds a more wholesome dream than Crystal's, although I suppose it depends on the movies.
Moving on, the Oscar for best make-up is painted and plastered onto Mark Coulier and J Roy Helland for The Iron Lady. They offer thanks to Meryl Streep, the film's star, who "makes our work look good, no matter what."
So that's that. But do spare a thought for the losing nominees. In a long-standing Oscar tradition, they are now ushered through to the kitchens where they must count grains of rice ahead of the after-show dinner. Every diner must have the exact same number of grains in their bowl or there is hell to pay and the dinner is now just a few hours away. So they had better get cracking.
Second later Hugo picks up its second award of the night, for art direction.
Scorsese's 3D spectacular has now converted the first two of its 11 Oscar nominations.
1.37am: Onto the stage steps Morgan Freeman, instantly bringing a little gravitas to the carnival. The 84th annual Academy Awards, he says, are here "to celebrate the present and look back to its glorious past." This, it transpires, is the host's cue to do both, at the same time, via the medium of the traditional Oscar montage.
Get a load of Billy Crystal! He's gatecrashing all the Oscar-nominated movies, making like a silent-screen hero, being kissed by George Clooney on his hospital bed and munching merrily on Minnie's chocolate cake. One second, he's a mo-cap Tintin, the next he's chasing, poignantly after a roll of film that un-spools out of a top floor window. "Ladies and gentlemen," says the voice in the sky (I'm assuming it's not the crow). "It's Billy Crystal." As if we didn't know that already.
1.28am: Finally, finally, we are about to begin. Run for the doors and fight for your seats, the 84th annual Academy Awards are about to begin. Live, live, live from the Hollywood and Highland Centre (formerly the Kodak theatre). Stick with us and don't, for the love of God, listen to anything that Nick Nolte's crow tries to tell you. It means harm, it brings evil, and it must not be allowed to rain on this parade.
1.18am: And still the red carpet circus shows no sign of finding its way into the big top. It is now Penelope Cruz's turn to be grilled in the sun. "Penelope, Penelope, you never disappoint," soothes the compere, thereby proving that he has never sat through Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
What's going on? Hasn't this thing supposed to have begun already. Could it be that they have started handing out the Oscars inside, the ceremony playing out to rows of empty seats as the likes of Brad Pitt and George Clooney still cavort before the cameras? Enough with the carpet! It's high time we went inside.
1.08am: Oh please let there be an Oscar for the formidable Nick Nolte. He's nominated for his fine turn in Warrior but gives what is arguably an even better performance on the carpet, facing off against a jittery TV host, with his shoulders squared and his chin jutting, a monument of Midwestern menace. The host is cooing and flattering and posing her honey-dipped questions while he stands stock still and stares right through her, as though listening to other voices on another frequency. The voices, I suspect, come from demons within.
Unnerved, she tries another tack: "Now, I've heard you own a pet crow."
"I do what?" says Nolte. And with that he's back hearing voices. Perhaps it is the crow that speaks to him. Perhaps it is telling him to kill her, to kill them all. To torch the Hollywood and Highland and then run for the hills. Pray God, he does not listen to the crow.
1.01am: Reeling from his altercation with the Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen, TV host Ryan Seacrest opted to beat a hasty retreat, skulking for cover with the ashes of Kim Jong-Il on his shirt, up his nose, in his eyes; a hideous indignity to be meted on a man of his stature.
12.49am: Fashionistas take note: Emma Stone is on the carpet and she is wearing "John Batista Volley", although I may have misheard the name. Wasn't he the former Cuban dictator who played tennis while Havana burned?
Talking of tears, the excellent Melissa McCarthy (nominated for Bridesmaids) is already dabbing at her eyes. She's arrived with her mum and the occasion is threatening to get the better of her.
12.39am: The longer they remain on the carpet, the more these nominees risk repeating themselves. Octavia Spencer has just asked to make another "shout-out to my hometown", while somewhere, across the way, George Clooney is regaling another reporter with his tales of driving an insensible Tony Bennett home along Mulholland Drive.
Again, this was all so very different back in 1929, when the red-carpet team was made up of hobos and box-car riders whose names had been drawn from a raffle. These days they say "Oh, wow it's Jessica Chastain, you're looking so beautiful, who are you wearing this evening?"
Back then they'd say, "Hey buddy, who the heck are you?" and, "Ooh mercy, get a load of Miss Fancy-Pants."
They'd say, "Miss High-Britches here thinks she's better than me. Hey Miss High-Britches, you ain't better than me. Aw, come back here, don't be shy. You ain't better than me."
The longer this goes on, the more we pine for far-off 1929.
12.26am: A late contender for the title of "Rooney Mara's Most Surreal Moment": Sacha Baron Cohen has just shown up on the carpet, brandishing what he claims are Kim Jong-Il's ashes, which he then proceeds to dump onto Ryan Seacrest.
12.15am: It is now standing room only on the red carpet outside the Hollywood and Highland. Up in the bleachers, the public stand and applaud as Octavia Spencer (nominated for The Help) jostles with Harvey Weinstein and offers a "shout-out to Montogomery, Alabama", Janet McTeer runs the gamut of the TV reporters and P. Diddy says "What up? What up?". Nobody, it seems, is able to provide an answer that satisfies.
The evidence suggests that Clooney is bang on the money in tipping The Artist to win big tonight. Assuming it scoops the top prize, it will be the first silent best film winner since Wings emerged victorious way back at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929. How does one even begin to compare then with now? Back in 1929, the guests arrived in pony-and-traps and "Oscar" was just a humble tin spittoon. The host for the night was Douglas Fairbanks Jr, whose show-stopper was a huge song-and-dance eulogy to all the "favourite housemaids" who used to "polish his bedstead". It was a different and more dodgy America back then, before The Help came along to sort the nation out.
12.00am: Make way, make way for that wily old pro George Clooney, who is nominated for his turn in The Descendants but claims to have come without a speech. Clooney, it transpires, does not think much of his chances. "Go find Jean Dujardin and ask him if he has a speech," he shrugs. "I think it's going to be a very French night.
"And was he nice?" bleats the red-carpet compere.
"Yeah, he was a lot of fun," says Clooney. "Always drunk in the back seat. Either wetting himself or making out with hookers."
Whoops, sorry, the sound levels are playing tricks. Clooney didn't say that at all. Instead he says that Tony Bennett was "unbelievably nice". There was no mention of hookers.
11.52pm: Out on the carpet, the stars are massing. Look, there's Demien Bichir, nominated out of the blue for his role as a migrant worker in A Better Life. And look, here we have demure Rooney Mara, shortlisted for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and resplendent in a dress of full-fat cream. "Rooney is always edgy," the red carpet compere informs us. "She always goes there." But goes where, exactly? Right now she is just standing there, motionless, her eyes fixed on the middle distance. Perhaps they have glued her feet to the rug.
11.43pm: High time to recap the main contenders. This year's awards, it strikes me, can either be regarded as a golden festival of nostalgia or a tragic wake, depending on your point of view. Leading the field with 11 nominations is Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a wistful celebration of the early days of cinema, while the firm favourite to sweep the big prizes is The Artist, a loving homage to the wonders of the silent screen.
11.25pm: Roll carpet, roll cameras: it's the 84th annual Academy Awards, live and lurid from Hollywood. The Guardian film team will be covering the event throughout the night, weeping with the winners and wailing with the losers as this season's awards circus clatters exhaustedly towards the finish line. This is where it ends, inside the Hollywood and Highland Centre (reputedly the winner of the 2007 "Ugliest Building in LA" award). Inside, the victors shall be encased in gold, the vanquished shown the door and all manner of movies laid tenderly to rest.
You can also take part in our Twitter interactive, or swan up to our US Twitter party, or make like an Academy voter and cast your votes for the films you want to win. And yes, our suspicion (as ever) is that your choices will be better than theirs.
10.57pm: .
