The Oscars open thread…or NASCAR open thread; Update: Sicko loses; Hollywood uses the troops, gives lukewarm reception, then bashes them; Update: A Gulf War vet responds
Scroll down for updates…video and anti-war babbling added below…plus: a Gulf War vet responds…
Who’ll stroll the red carpet in an Obama t-shirt? How long until the first outbreak of BDS is spotted? With Jon Stewart as the host of tonight’s Oscars, politicization of Hollyweird’s biggest night is certain.
A brief preview:
The “green” limos are ready and graceful gowns begged, borrowed and bought. Hollywood is ready for a glittering Oscar Sunday, but the films that will be honored are expected to be darkly pessimistic and the comedy sharply political.
Having hired America’s leading political satirist, Jon Stewart, as master of ceremonies during a presidential campaign, Oscar organizers hope to spice up Hollywood’s big night with jokes that will be repeated around the water cooler on Monday.
Oscar producer Gil Cates has promised an award ceremony filled with big stars such as George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Broadway songstress Kristin Chenoweth and teen idol Miley Cyrus to cheer the crowd. Yet, rainy weather may conspire against the festivities and dampen the red carpet that had been expected to burst with bold colors.
Hollywood can’t say it has been a happy camper this Oscar season as a three-month long screenwriters strike, which ended earlier this month, caused awards shows to be canceled or drastically curtailed.
Oscar watchers say this year’s best film nominees reflect the mood of the 5,800 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two frontrunning movies for the best film honor are violent, a third nominee tells of corporate and legal greed, a fourth of family betrayal and the fifth teen pregnancy — that’s the funny one.
You could always skip the show and watch my favorite, wonderful John Wayne videoclip again.
***
Several commenters are watching the NASCAR race. Feel free to shoot the breeze about the Auto Club 500 instead!
***
Update: Speaking of dramatic performances, someone give Hillary Clinton an award for this rip-roaring, Obama-bashing monologue.
Update 8:41pm Eastern. Rather mild political humor from Jon Stewart in his opening monologue.
Re. Obama: “Normally, when you see a black man as president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.”
Follows up with a weak joke about “Barack Hussein Obama…His middle name is the same as Saddam’s last name, his last name rhymes with Osama…remember that candidate from the 1940s? ‘Gaydolph Titler.’”
Update 11:54pm Eastern. I turned it off. Couldn’t stand the self-congratulatory orgy anymore. Anyway, commenters and e-mailers send word that 1) Michael Moore’s “Sicko” lost out to a BDS documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side” and 2) The Academy Awards featured soldiers in Iraq introducing the short documentary category…followed by anti-war statements by the last presenter award-winner, according to readers who watched. Several commenters say the applause for the troops was lukewarm. Allah watched it, too, and reports that the reception for the troops was “middling.”
But, you know what they say: DON’T QUESTION THEIR PATRIOTISM!
Here’s the vid of our troops–God bless ‘em all:
The video was followed by these remarks:
Director Alex Gibney accepting his best documentary feature Oscar for the Iraq war-related “Taxi To the Dark Side”: “Lets hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and turn back to the light.”
Update 1:00am Eastern. Gulf War I Vet Kyle Smith responds to Hollyweird’s “Axis of Chutzpah”…(hat tip: Libertas)
Given that the most recent statistics show that approximately 97.4 percent of all documentaries present America as a scary place and of those 97.4, most are meant to present the troops in Iraq as overmatched at best and as abusive, sadistic criminals at worst, it’s pretty cheeky of the Oscars to have troops serving overseas present the Oscar for best documentary short subject.
“Move away from the dark side and back to the light,” the director of “Taxi to the Dark Side” says. I doubt our troops agree that we are stuck in the dark side. I think they would argue that the vast majority of them abide by the law, by the rules of engagement and by their own moral compasses, yet they get little feeling of support from their country because those who work in the media are bent on presenting sordid, depraved and illegal acts committed by members of the military and intelligence services (which are of course elements in this war, as they are in every war) as the norm in order to undercut the war and defund the troops.
Allah’s got the vid of Gibney’s speech.
See what others have said
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No thanks on the Oscars. I TIVO’d Bill Dance and American Chopper. I’m good.
Michelle,
Thanks for the clip of two of my favorite actors from the days of my youth when Hollywood still had some class. I think we will be watching one of the Duke’s movies tonight instead of paying attention to the modern day denizens of Hollywierd fawn all over themselves.
Instead of the awards, we are watching the NASCAR race from Fontana, CA on Fox, but it’s currently delayed because water is seeping from creases in the pavement in a few of the turns.
Jeff Gordon was out to a HUGE 3+ lead before the race was red flagged because of crash.
olympian,
He won’t stay there long
No offense but I can’t think of anything less apealing than watching these people show up and pat themselves on the back.I never watch these type of shows.I will watch some of the race that started late.I’m usually a sports viewer being from Indiana I have the COLTS,IU basketball although we’ve recently had to buyout our coach for recruiting violations.
Idiots on display.
While some of you are waiting for the awards to start and me for the NASCAR race to resume…
I recently discovered a new singer from Poland, Karolina Pasierbska. Here is her version of ‘Con Te Partiro’ (”Time to Say Goodbye”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ8l3PuXXLQ
(made famous by Andrea Bocelli and Sara Brightman)
Curious what you all think about this rendition?
They love themselves, they really love themselves. (sister Batrill reference for you young’uns)
Re #7: The Oscars, not NASCAR.
We have picture in picture so we’ll be checking the awards and NASCAR at the same time for the next few hours. The Awards are also on down in the basement family room. REAL men are up here with us watching NASCAR.
NASCAR race is…. boogity, boogity, boogity… let’s go racin’ boys!
Green Flag!
Does getting you a** kissed 24-7 require a moisturizer of some sort?
Thanks for the NASCAR nod, Michelle!
They’re back under green. Let’s hope they can get to lap 125, at least.
your
Who are these people anyway? I’m watching the red carpet crap just for entertainment purposes and I think I’ve known only 2 people! Will turn it off soon to avoid all the liberal speech garbage.
Mimi, switch to the Fox channel. Much, much more entertaining
Great idea. After the clip, I’m going to pop in the DVD “Blood Alley”. John Wayne escapes with an entire Chi-com village to Hong Kong…
Heidi Klum did have on a specatcular and beautiful red dress. It will be shown on any highlights from these awards.
There’s a ton of trash on the track. I didn’t know Californians were such litterbugs!
Mrs. Malkin, and anyone else, I invite you to give this NASCAR stuff a try. It’s really exciting racing.
#19:
That’s the first thing I thought when I moved to Socal!
I’m from Orlando, not the cleanest city in FL, and before that the tiny town of Ocala, and I never saw so much trash as I’ve seen along the streets and streams out here in this environmental-friendly commie state!
Amazing how something as insignificant as a hotdog wrapper can block the air intake and overheat an engine on one of these cars. You’d thing by now they would have invented a wiper device to clear the front grille.
As you probably know one way they do clear the grille under green flag is drive right up to the back bumper of the car ahead and use the turbulence to clear it. This usually works.
Uh, well, when it’s not raining anyway. Looks like we’re under caution again.
olympian –
Of course, if it weren’t for the ridiculous air dam/splitter design, most of that trash would blow off on its own. Just another of the many unintended consequences that weren’t considered on this spec car.
Rain again, yellow flag … I’m looking at the LIVE radar at the Weather Channel from the Los Angeles area. It should be a very brief shower. Looks good after this passing light rain clears the track vicinity.
I’m reading a good science fiction book, “It Came from Hollywood”.
They still need to get the Nationwide race in tonight, if possible. There’s nothing worse than racing on Monday.
I had my first live NASCAR experience last year at Loudon. I knew nothing about it and had been dragging my feet about going but by the time I left, I was blown away.
Hillary Clinton tried to upstage the Academy Awards today by winning an Oscar for a dramatic performance during her rally in Rhode Island today. It’s a must see video clip. Just goto Drudge and look for (Clinton Turns From Anger to Sarcasm…”) at the top of his page for the video link.
IMHO, this will sink her campaign. This is causing a huge backlash towards Hillary on liberal blogs everywhere.
Welcome to our world
Someone please tell me what that means?
Once you’ve sat for hours in person watching cars go ’round, ’round and ’round you’ll always be back. My first NASCAR race was at Texas Motor Speedway back in 2000. It was just awesome. The pre-race events, star-spangled banner, fly over, etc. is a great lead-in to the race itself.
It was pretty awesome. The marketing alone blew my mind. I have never seen that much stuff for sale! And the trailers that fans were staying in were absolutely decked out. I still don’t know much about the cars but the experience was fantastic.
The Oscar’s…bleggh…I wouldn’t give them my market share…anti American pieces of crap!
I’d go back in a second. I love my Sox but if I had to choose between a race and game, I’d take the race.
I’ll try to report on which candidate the stars are supporting (ones that I know of).
George Clooney – Barack Obama
Yeah, there’s nothing quite like attending a NASCAR event, or any other racing event, in person. If you have a local short track nearby, you should definitely check it out. I think you can find your local short track by looking at nascar.com.
Good man.
There is tax cheat Wesley Snipes.
My first NASCAR race was at Talladega in 1980. Darrell Waltrip was slingshotting past 4 or 5 cars at a time on the frontstretch. He probably would have won but his motor went sour 13 laps from the finish.
Woman, but thanks.
No pants suit for costume design… What’s up with that?
I’m jealous of all the old-timers who got to see NASCAR in its glory days
My bad
These days Talledega is the most intense race in NASCAR because of the 20 – 25 car 2 wide draft all race long at those high speeds. (and sometimes 3 wide)
It’s also in Alabama, which makes it one of the best
George Clooney looks just like my dad and one of my younger brothers. We used to watch his father Nick Clooney on local TV in Cincinnati, ‘THe Nick Clooney Show’ on WKRC Channel 12.
Persepolis is a fantastic movie. It should be out on DVD pretty soon and it’s worth checking out.
Rousch is looking strong tonight. I knew they would be.
Back in the ’80s there wasn’t as much 3 wide action, but the cars were bigger and didn’t have restrictor plates, so using the draft to slingshot around another car worked a lot better.
One of the most memorable races was in 1986. 26 drivers led that day. Guys you never heard of like Rodney Combs led laps. Bobby Hillen won.
NASCAR race just went green again (lap 73). Looks like Jeff Gordon (24) and Jimmie Johnson (48) have the cars to beat in this race.
They are okay, but it’s Hendrick dominating so far. Too bad Junior and Mears got knocked out so early.
I love the prayer that they start the races with. Nascar has strong Christian heritage. And I know it drives the liberals crazy to have a prayer on national television.
Hannity has a piece on illegal immigration on Fox News right now.
What I like to tell people about my man Jeff Gordon is, “He’s OK–if you like talent.”
Go #24!
Rousch has always been good here, and Biffle is proving it. I fully expect Kenseth to find his way to the front before this is over.
Mega-dittoes!
Fixed that for ya!
I’m a big Jeff Gordon fan but, I am not disappointed when Jimmy Johnson wins or Jr. or Jeff Burton. Tony Stewart has settled down and he races hard, Joe Gibbs is a class guy.
Olympian2008,
Thanks for the Opera clip. That and John Wayne makes for a well rounded evening.
FYI: ‘The Rock’ played DL for the Miami Hurricanes in college. In 1991 he was part of their National Championship team.
Here’s hoping Gibbs can do for Busch what he did for Stewart. I really do not like Kyle Busch.
Aside from Jeff Gordon, I also like Carl Edwards, Jeff Burton, Ken Schrader, and Mark Martin.
Amazing Joe Gibbs fact… three Superbowls and three NASCAR championships. I think that is a world record of some kind.
I think you’re right.
Ugh! Rain again… Red flag.
Dale Jarret, Michael Waltrip, Kyle Petty all good guys.
Very interesting interview on Speed about the IRL/Champ Car union, for you open-wheel fans.
I still can’t believe that Joaqiun Phoenix didn’t win the best supporting actor for his role of ‘Commodus’ in ‘Gladiator’.
Mark Martin is my man. Been a fan of his as long as I’ve been alive.
I like Joe Gibbs, but he’s taking some chances with that bunch of hotheaded drivers. I suppose he could add Kurt Busch and Robby Gordon to the stable.
Robby Gordon would never do it.
Don’t know what year that was, but obviously, it was a year when men were men.
NASCAR Rain Delay diversion -
Mormon Tabernacle Choir – ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic‘
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEAEcca9pRk
Doesn’t get much better than that!
While we’ve got a little time, I want thank our lovely hostess for giving us permission to have a racing discussion!
I hate rain delays.
Most definitely. Thank you very much!
Thanks for posting that video, Michelle… I’m in need of some cheer today, and that clip always brings a smile to my face.
The replays from previous Academy Awards they are showing are cool. Brings back some great memories of movies I haven’t see for a long time.
The race was postponed?
I live an hour east of the track, my guess is it will be.
Well, there’s always NHRA.
The phone rang so I paused the movie (Blood Alley), switched to regular TV. While on the phone, best supporting actress was the topic. Whoever that winner was, Tilda somebody, was completely unattractive. Her speech sounded like it was delivered from some freshman at a trade school. Holy Cow! That was awful.
It will be a great Academy Awards this year if Michael Moore’s ‘SICKO’ does NOT win.
NASCAR hasn’t given up yet. If that one area of showers would blow on over, there would still be time to finish it tonight.
No official announcement yet so I think they are going to wait a while.
Thanks. I see Fox quit carrying it and swtiched back to The Simpsons.
Wait – they’re back on!
Just a teaser, I guess. Back to the crap cartoon.
It’s stopped raining. They’ll have an update at 11:00 ET, 8:00 PT. It’ll take at least that long to dry the track.
OFFENSIVE CONTENT WARNING (Team America), but still you must listen to this monologue at the FAG Awards(Film Actors Guild), or least watch to see Alec Baldwin losing his head.
Tee hee!
I’ve been waiting all day for this race – I can wait another hour.
I used to enjoy the oscars and the other frivilous stuff but they all have lost their shimmer, it looks flat no more glamour. I wonder if it was the onset of reality tv, that finally caused the descent of celeberity watching for fun…when anyone could be a celeberity it just doesn’t seem so special. Especially when we constantly watch them rotate out of rehab..or use toy dogs and adopt foreign children like accessories. Changing up spouses like spin the bottle gone extreme? Or just a whole lot of people who like to act out, more then they like to act! Hedenist Hollywood lifestyles, they wish they could blend in as Liberals
It has gotten stale and boring.
I was watchinng the 8,000 hp 330 MPH in 4.5 seconds NHRA nitro cars on ESPN2. Checked in on NASCAR a couple of times but their pavement was leaking.
What kind of car is an Os-car?
Obsolete Slow Car.
Hey Laree, nail on the head ya did. Been awhile, how’s the weather up there?
You mean the Car of Tomorrow?
Though, I guess the O would stand for Obtuse in this case.
I think Ralph Nader is driving the Os-car this year?
Actually, I was thinking Hollywood is obsolete. Or senile.