Ok, so you are paying attention now. Cause, I mean the rank dude from HACKERS won an Oscar folks. That can’t be undone. So then we raised hands with Mo’Nique, cause she won Best Supporting and doesn’t shave her legs and makes sexual and physical abuse look real. And then things got interesting…. well actually the Screenplay awards were given out before FISHER STEVENS WON and for Adapted Precious killed it and for Original The Hurt Locker confirmed its assault on Cameron’s career and genitals. Woohah (as blind Pacino would say). Ok so back to the awards we cared about. Best actor went to my first crush, Jeff Bridges, who repeated the same speech Ive heard since the Golden Globes, but still thanked his wife and kids and stand-in. LOVE IT. Also, he’s been doing various The Big Lebowski quotes and I will heart that forever.

Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for The Blind Side. I aint seen it, and I probably wont, but I am OK with her getting an award because she is pretty rad. She also looked beyond beautiful tonight, which cemented her win. Her mom was an opera singer in Germany and she had gum on her seat while Dennis Hopper was trying to blow her and the coach of Sparkle Motion up! Bullock deserved it as much, if more, as squinty eyed Zelleweger, frozen-face Kidman and hotties Berry & Theron – SO LETS MOVE ON.
And then the big one came. Since Barbra Streisand came out to deliver the Oscar for Best Director, I knew this was going to Kathryn Bigelow. ON A SERIOUS NOTE. I cried. I cried in a room with my mom and soon to be mom-in-law and felt what i feels like to wait for fucking evah for an award. Bigelow has been able to do what both men and women havent before her, deliver an action move with heart. And she has succeeded with it. She deserved it. And please don’t forget it.
Her acceptance speech thanked the powers that be that made the movie happen, as well as the troops that give up their lives and safety for us every day. So it was fitting that Tom Hanks ran up on stage and gave the award for Best Picture to The Hurt Locker. For its story, drama and feel, this move deserved to win. And I cant think of a better way to ringing in a monumental moment like this, with anyone else in the room.

More on the dresses, awards and whats to come tomorrow, but until then, thanks to Barbra, Bigelow, McDaniel and the rest of you amazing women, who have given me even a morsel of thinking this industry could welcome us with open arms. You made dreams official tonight. There are girls who will not question their motives, their love of cinema and will continue to provide America and the world with entertainment and dreams and comedy and fantasy and horror and anything that will make you forget your real life for 2 and a half hours.

Here’s the full list of the winners and we’ll check in with you tomorrow when the Pinot has wore off. I will get to the John Hughes/comedy respective tomorrow too. This needs my full non-snark attention.

Here is the Best Picture nominees:

Best Motion Picture of the Year!!!!!
“Avatar” A Lightstorm Entertainment Production
James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers (20th Century Fox)
“The Blind Side” An Alcon Entertainment Production
Nominees to be determined (Warner Bros.)
“District 9” A Block/Hanson Production
Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers (Sony Pictures Releasing)
“An Education” A Finola Dwyer/Wildgaze Films Production
Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers (Sony Pictures Classics)
“The Hurt Locker” A Voltage Pictures Production
Nominees to be determined (Summit Entertainment)
“Inglourious Basterds”
A Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures/A Band Apart/Zehnte Babelsberg Production
Lawrence Bender, Producer (The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures)
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” (Lionsgate)
A Lee Daniels Entertainment/Smokewood Entertainment Production
Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
“A Serious Man” A Working Title Films Production
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers (Focus Features)
“Up” A Pixar Production
Jonas Rivera, Producer (Walt Disney)
“Up in the Air” (Paramount in association with Cold Spring Pictures and DW Studios)
A Montecito Picture Company Production
Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers

For the full list, check out Oscars homepage. And I will be dissecting the nominees and all the implications they bring later today. Let the games begin!!!!

Let’s get to the big one right away –
Best Picture:
Please don’t tomatoes at your screen when I say this, but I really don’t think Slumdog Millionaire deserves to win Best Picture. Don’t get me wrong, I really really liked the movie and wouldn’t mind seeing it again. The story was clever, the characters were touching and the film showed me a life I wasn’t familiar with. I think overall though, there were a few spots within the movie that fell flat, didn’t flow and I think the performances were a bit lacking. I know that these actors are all young and new to this, but I didn’t get a lot of the depth, specifically when they were older. The cinematography and editing was great and the story was refreshingly new with a wonderful destiny/hope ideal running it through it, but for me a movie to win the big one it needs to be special. It needs to have perfect performances and story that will resonate for years.
My personal fave this year was Wall-E and Doubt. I know there was no way in hell Wall-E would get a nod in that category, but I was incredibly surprised with the lack of Doubt in this category. This was a delicate adaptation of an award winning play and it made me feel. The performances across the board were shockingly good, with Viola Davis’ small amount of screen time made me breakdown within three minutes. The movie, which focused on a Catholic Church in NYC back in the 1960′s, brought forth the conversation of racism, sexism, pedophilia and fear, just to name a few. It was able to bridge its story to many facets and I believe it deserved a Best Picture nomination.

Best Actress:
This is very heavy group of women. First, we have Meryl Streep, for her role as Sister Aloysius in “Doubt”. The best actress award has been won by Streep more than a few times and her performance was breath taking, but I don’t believe it was the best. Second, we have Kate Winslet, who is always a bridesmaid, never a bride when it comes to the dang Oscars. This year, if previous awards are true indicators, that she will get her golden man. Winslet has delivered, time and time again, pitch perfect performances and has continuously lost out in this category. She is definitely due, but unfortunately I think this will be robbing the person who should be receiving the award – Anne Hathaway. Hathaway gives a shocking performance in “Rachel Getting Married”. The actress, who plays the black sheep, drug addict within a broken artist family, and she is magnificent. Her pain is palatable, her awkwardness makes you cringe. Its like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” meets suicide. Anne went above and beyond the typical next role with this indie and I can only hope the IFC Spirit Awards(more on those in a bit) will appreciate her departure and strength in this role.

Best Supporting Actor:
Heath Ledger will walk away with this, if only for the Academy to support what could have been one of the greatest actors of all time with an award. Josh Brolin though will be due for this within the next two years if he keeps up with past performances.

Best Supporting Actress:
Penelope Cruz will walk away with the honor, but Viola Davis was able to make the most significant impression on me out of all the films I saw with her twelve minutes on the screen. She will be a force to reckon with in the future.

Best Animated Film:
If Wall-E does not win this, Academy members take cover. Its one thing not to nominate it for Best Picture, but if this does not win against Bolt and Kung Fu Panda, bad things will happen.

For the other categories, I am pretty much on par for the assumed winners. I am curious (look at me go) about “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” possibly losing all thirteen awards they were nominated for.

Tomorrow, IFC will be presenting their annual Spirit Awards, which reward smaller films, with smaller budgets and actors who command smaller salaries. Last year’s winners were pretty identical to a lot of Oscar winners, but I don’t think that will be the case this year. Steve Coogan will be the host this go around for the zany little brother to the Oscars, so it should be a funny one. I will be Twittering during those, so check it out.

So to wrap up, I will be watching the Oscars, hosted by Sexiest Man of the Year Hugh Jackman. Its not a bad idea to have an attractive singing and dancing star up there, who has won a TONY and an Emmy for hosting the Tonys. These are not bad credentials and will definitely pull in the 35 – 55 year old female market they desperately need. I know that ratings expectations this year are low and I can only imagine the top level celebs they are bringing in to walk the carpet and hype it up. I will be live blogging the evening, beginning with red carpet and Barbra Walters special coverage. Don’t forget – Sunday, February 22nd at 8PM on ABC – The Oscars.

Who do you think got stiffed? Who do you think will win?

I thought that the Academy was ballsy with their choices for the Supporting Actor and Actress and Best Actor categories. With Heath Ledger practically a shoe-in for a posthumous Oscar in the Supporting Actor category, the Academy was able to bring four other actors into the fold who might have not have been recognized in years past. Michael Shannon’s nod for his scene stealing role in “Revolutionary Road” was a refreshing surprise and it was lovely to see a comedic role rewarded with Robert Downey Jr.’s turn in “Tropic Thunder”. The Supporting Actress group was a bit of a downer for me, with Rosemarie DeWitt not being nominated for her wonderful performance opposite Best Actress nominee Anne Hathaway in “Rachel’s Getting Married”.

Within the Best Actor and Actress categories, there were some refreshing surprises, like a nod for Richard Jenkins in The Visitor and Melissa Leo in Frozen River. Angelina Jolie’s ability to continously swindle the Academy into rewarding her for mediocre work is quite intriguing to me and the fact that Kate Winslet’s supporting role was rewarded with a nod in the Best Actress category is a bit disengious to me.

But the big and serious let down this morning was the Best Picture category or lack of. I understand the need to honor serious and independent movies, but this year was like a parade to bummer town. First, I can not understand how a movie like “The Dark Knight”, which is one of the highest grossing films in history, with layer upon layer of goodies can get snubbed for the category. to them but NOT Best Movie or Director, which is a shame because the movie was breathtaking. While I liked Slumdog and Curious, not sure they were the best of the year. Apparently you need to make a movie about the holocaust starring either Ralph Fiennes or Liam Neeson and you would have be a shoe-in for the Best Director or Best Movie. “The Reader” took away any possibility of “The Dark Knight” or “Wall-E” getting a nod and since they were two of the best movies of 2008, . Congratulations Weinstein, your perfect advertising and marketing department in regards to Oscars wins another battle. Ugh. Anyways, I am definitely not the only one who is annoyed by today’s nominations. Peter Travers, famed film critic from Rolling Stone, Oscars since last year’s numbers were so low, so my hope is that a movie deserving of the nod gets the gold on February 22nd. I will put together my predictions this weekend. Let’s hope that freaking Red Carpet is spectacular because ABC is going to need it!

What did you all think about today’s nominations? Who do you think was snubbed?

Oh and can I trade jobs with Ben Lyons? Seriously.

UPDATES..
Supporting Actress – Boo to No Rosemarie DeWitt..Woohooo Marisa Tomei
Supporting Actor – Woohooo to Robert Downey Jr., Heath Ledger, and Micheal Shannon
Actress – Woohoo to Anne Hathaway!
Actor – Woohoo to Mickey Rourke
Director – David Fincher and Gus Van Sant and Danny Boyle – No Eastwood??
Screenplay – Woohoo Milk and Wall-E
Adapted Screenplay – This will be a tight one I can assume since all the nominees are great.
Film- BOOOOOOOOOOOOO to no Wall-E!!!!! I will cut a bitch!

Here is the full list of nominees for The 81st Academy Awards, which will be broadcast on February 22nd on ABC at 8PM.

My full roundup, with my thoughts on who will be the winners, who should have been nominate and who shouldn’t,  will be posted this afternoon.