Academy Awards

Yeah, baby. Lower and slower...

In 1929 a collection of some of the biggest names in cinema gathered together in a little room and held a private party. Films had been developing as an art form and, more importantly, business in recent times. After a few playful experiments in “having more than one scene” and “being more than three minutes long,” the movies had already outgrown boardwalks, penny arcades and nickelodeons and boasting gorgeous images and engaging stories. People were starting to make real money at this venture, the kind of money you couldn’t make on stage. Indeed, film had every benefit of the stage but could also play pretty much forever at little additional expense all around the entire world at once. With serious filmmaking and serious film criticism firmly established the good people of Tinseltown decided it was high time for a hearty pat on the back.

Brainchild of Louis B. Mayer and attended by Douglas Fairbanks, John Barrymore and Mary Pickford, the original ceremony amounted to a fancy dress party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Thereafter, by radio or television, and in some of California’s most prestigious theaters, the Academy Awards (read: Oscars) have gone out across the country and across the world.

Not pictured: genitals, ratings.

The big five awards which compromise a grand slam for films which win all of them are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress (these days usually Best Male Actor or Best Female Actor because feminists have some fucked up priorities), and Best Screenplay. There are actually two screenplay awards, one for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Adapted Screenplay, the latter applying to all films based on pre-existing plays, books, stories, poems, songs, magazine articles, et. al. The last film to complete the grand slam was The Silence of the Lambs (remember when Hannibal Lecter and Snidely Whiplash were different characters?).

In addition to Best Picture there are categories for Best Documentary, Best Foreign-Language film, and Best Animated feature film. There has been criticism in the past when it has been felt that a film deserving of a Best Picture nomination was “ghettoized” in one of these other categories, which seems something of a back-handed insult to everybody else in the category. Several other awards relating to performance or ingenuity in the art of filmmaking are awarded during the annual broadcast.

The science of filmmaking, however, is celebrated separate from what is considered the “real” Oscars, usually a week or two earlier. These technical awards or “nerd Oscars” receive little fanfare but honor advances in digital technology, new cameras, new techniques altogether…As in high school, the math and AV clubs get the shaft while the attractive gets get the glory.

As long as the Super-Bowl but lacking the full-contact violence or commercials selling beer and tits, many find the Oscars hard to get through and it’s a common joke (especially among the hosts; seriously, I hope you don’t get tired of “Boy this show is long” jokes) that the show goes on forever and gets longer every year. In addition to the routines performed by the host (usually a little monologue, introducing all the presenters) viewers can usually look forward to performances of that year’s Best Original Song nominees, some original musical numbers, several retrospectives on film and/or Oscar history and, famously, a roll of the departed actors, directors, cinematographers and others who have died since the previous year’s broadcast. The dead person with the most applause is the winner.

Hosting the Oscars comes with prestige on its own. Sometimes a host sputters and dies on stage (David Letterman, Chris Rock) and sometimes the act of their hosting the Oscars becomes a tradition to itself (Bob Hope, Billy Crystal).

But not for this guy. Oprah-Uma my ass.

The Oscar acceptance speeches get a lot of play every year on the news and entertainment channels. Some of the more memorable speeches have passed into television history. George Clooney's speech inspired an episode of South Park. Cuba Gooding, Jr. refused to let the orchestra play him off. Sally Field had her infamous "you really like me" speech that continues to haunt her and Adrian Brody lip-locked Halle Berry who had given an emotional, borderline babbling speech the year prior. Marlon Brando famously sent a native American to accept his award, delivering a screed against the white man in lieu of an actual acceptance speech. One of the most famous speeches was Tom Hanks, accepting for Philadelphia, thanked his high school drama coach, inadvertently outing him as gay. The speech even inspired its own sub-par movie, In And Out.

Should you find yourself lucky enough to win an Oscar, you'll wish you had read these:

If Oscar Acceptance Speeches Told the Truth

Tom Hanks' Real Oscar Acceptance Speech

Rough Drafts of Past Oscar Acceptance Speeches

If Oscar Acceptance Speeches Were Truthful

% Make friends with the gay mail clerk in the office to hedge your bets on categories like art direction and costume design. If you are absent a gay friend or girlfriend try not to fall for the old trick of thinking only the most elaborate costumes and sets will always win. Rookie mistake.

% The categories outside the grand slam are where the pools are won or lost. Make sure your picks for the technical/nerd categories (sound, sound editing, special effects, makeup, animated short and feature) are solid. Check some blogs. Note that effects makeup (e.g. orcs) is not in the special effects category so use caution in making those picks.

% Cinematography and Direction are not the same thing. Take a look at some stills on imdb, paying attention to depth of field, depth of focus, lighting. Essentially the stills should look like something from a photo spread in Time or National Geographic if you want a chance of taking this.

% Remember that among films of similar technical, cultural, or artistic merit, acclaim will always win out. Five minutes on Rotten Tomatoes will go a long way towards completing your pool’s grand slam.

% Don’t forget that there are professional odds-makers who pay attention to this sort of thing, like betED.com. Always double check your picks against the odds-makers.

% Pay attention to the other awards shows. The Golden Globes are a good indicator of how things will go but it’s not always a 1-1 match so keep an ear out for SAG, WGA and DGA news. Checking each film’s imdb or Wikipedia page should help you keep track of all the awards a show has racked up, including a lot of press awards that don’t make the news.

% Don’t even worry about the editing category. Just pick something.

If you need more help making your picks, consult these articles:

Cracked's Oscar Rundown (Part One) 2006

Cracked's 2007 Oscar Rundown

Harold Russell signed up for the Army the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. A hard enough man to become an Army instructor, Russell was producing a training film when his hands were blown up thanks to a shitty fuse. At the hospital he was fitted with two claws, like Woody Harrelson in Kingpin. Unable to participate in regular service or produce training films for the military any more, Harold instead became the subject of an Army promotional film about recovering veterans. His charisma on camera led to his immediate casting in the William Wyler movie The Best Years of Our Lives as Homer Parrish, a soldier who lost his hands in service to his country. For some reason he was really great at this.

The Best Years of Our Lives is beloved to this day, considered by a majority of critics to be one of the most important pieces of American cinema. Russell's performance is a large part of that. Although he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor nobody in the Academy seriously believed he had a shot in hell; it was just a token nomination, after all. They had to acknowledge he did a good job but since he wasn't a REAL actor he had no chance in hell. So they gave him a special Oscar, like they gave Walt Disney for Snow White (that Oscar had come with seven smaller Oscars; the Academy wisely vetoed giving Russell a hook-handed Oscar). It was an expression of everything good about film and everything good about phoney baloney award shows. About an hour later Russell showed how phoney baloney they were by winning the Best Supporting Actor award.

If it were us, we would've become James Bond villains.

Perhaps the historical Oscar upset, Russell was the first of only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award and the only man to win two awards for the same performance. He is also remembered for controversially selling his Best Supporting Actor award in order to pay his ailing wife's medical bills in 1992 (winners have to sign a contract valuing the award at $1 and promising not to sell the award).

1. Do a war picture, preferably a World War II movie. This includes Holocaust films.

2. Be really young. Fresh performances make an impression, especially during slow years, increasing your chances for an upset.

3. Be really old. The chances of the Academy honoring you go up if they think you’re going to die soon.

4. Make a movie for Miramax. The Weinsteins campaign for Oscars more shamelessly than anybody in town.

5. For actresses: try to play an ugly woman, rape victim, iconoclast who stands up to patriarchal society in the form of a corrupt corporation. If possible, be Katherine Hepburn.

6. For the fellows: soldier, slave, genius, mentally challenged. The corollary to this rule is known as the “Tropic Thunder Clause.”

You never go full retard.

For more help in bagging "the Golden Dude" read these articles:

How to Win an Oscar

How to Win Your Very Own Oscar

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is composed of some 6,000 professionals across 63 countries. While the annual awards may be the best known facet of the organization this group of actors, writers, comedians, directors, set dressers, makeup artists, and composers also oversee other efforts in film preservation and celebration. This includes a series of theaters that offer special, rotating screenings of moving pictures, such as the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The Academy also pioneers film restoration and conservation efforts and maintains a massive film archive comparable to that held by the American Film Institute and the Library of Congress. Naturally, this archive includes the greatest film of all time, Sylvester Stallone's Cobra.

The golden age of Hollywood gave the then-New York-associated gossip columnist a wet, dark place to mold and fester. As Hollywood's influence on America grew, the omnipresence of fashionistas and gossip rags began, more and more, to influence Hollywood and, by degrees, society. The Oscars are the night when all the stars come out, also known as a feeding frenzy. The parade of famous people has always attracted a mob of pressbut the era of satellite multimedia networks and superstations exascerbated things immensely. The Red Carpet has grown from the fifty feet from the street to the door into a gauntlet of people with microphones, becoming an event in itself for many people. Every single tabloid at the grocery store check-out, not to mention publications lie In Touch, People, Look, and Us, owe a debt to the Oscars Red Carpet pre-show for the bulk of their content for the quarter. A few years ago time on or near a red carpet meant tangling with Joan Rivers and her malignant gut-spawn. Currently hibernating in the warm earth for seven years, Rivers has been replaced by Joey Fatone and Lisa Rinna. This is what is known as a "lateral move."

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