2008 Oscar telecast … Go or No Go?

The big question on everyone’s mind this morning, after the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees, is will there be a show or not? Will there be a show similar to the People’s Choice Awards with a a host and some entertaining interviews and taped bits of the winners receiving their awards? Or will there be a very shortened telecast with a few people just rifling out the winners’ names like the Golden Globes? Or will the Writers Guild have a change of heart and realize that the Oscars are so big, as we head into the 80th anniversary of the Academy Awards, and just allow some sort of deal to be worked out? Do we need David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants on the case?

We do know that the host of whatever show goes on the air will be Jon Stewart, the host from two years ago. Why Ellen DeGeneres isn’t the host again, we’re not quite sure. It could be any number of things at this point. Maybe they feel Stewart would do better without writers, or maybe she decided against crossing the picket line for the telecast, even though she’s already crossing for her show. Who knows?

There are only going to be a few awards given out I really care about the outcome anyway. Despite seeing one or two movies a week, for some reason I haven’t seen most of the movies up for awards. This is because of a variety of reasons. For one, some of them didn’t interest me (I’m not really into historic epics …) and for another, many of them were originally out in a limited release and weren’t offered to me here out in the suburbs.

For Best Picture, the only one I have seen that is up for the award is Juno. Yet, I feel this is definitely the best all around picture I’ve seen this past year, so I would want it to win regardless of the movies it was up against, and if I had seen them or not. It’s up against Atonement, which I wanted to see but wasn’t offered to the ‘burbs until it had been out several weeks, Michael Clayton, which I just never got around to seeing, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood, which I don’t even remember one way or another, but have heard several good things about both.

For Best Actor, every actor up for the award was in a movie I didn’t see, George Clooney for Michael Clayton, Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, Johnny Depp for Sweeney Todd, Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah (I swear I’ve never heard of this), and Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises. On the opposite side of the coin is Best Actress, with the young, talented Ellen Page being nominated for Juno. Along with her is Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth: The Golden Age (must there always be an “Elizabeth” or “Queen” up for awards?), Julie Christie for Away From Her, Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose, and Laura Linney for The Savages.

Again, Michael Clayton makes another showing, with a best supporting actor nod for Tom Wilkinson. Also nominated are Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (perhaps it also deserves a reward for longest movie title), Javier Bardem for No Country For Old Men, Hal Holbrook for Into the Wild, and Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson’s War. Interesting that there is no acting nod for Tom Hanks this year, bet there is for supporting actor for the same film. Cate Blanchett is also nominated for a supporting actress award, as are Ruby Dee for American Gangster, Saoirse Ronan for Atonement, Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone, and Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton.

I have no idea where this one is going to go, but many times when an actor or actress is nominated for both a lead and supporting role, they get the supporting role award as a consolation while someone else gets the lead actor. If Blanchett gets the supporting role, I’m wondering if Ellen Page could get best actress. The academy seems to like to give young ingenues this award. But before we even get to that, we have to figure out if there’s even going to be a ceremony. And who will be watching if it’s anything less than what we’re used to?

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