It’s five days to the big event, an event, which for me, is bigger than the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NCAA championship game, Fashion Week, the Pillsbury Bake-off, and the Hannah Montana tour combined. It is the week before the Oscars, and I am all jazzed up! So for the next several days, my usual cerebral, erudite, artsy persona preoccupied with “obscure” theater, art, and foreign cinema is in hibernation, and my Oscars self, sort of a combination classier Michael Musto and hipper Mary Hart, with the sophisticated touch of Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter and the film buff knowledge of Robert Osborne, will be front and center. Yeah, I am trying to make myself feel a little better since I am envious that the divine Jennifer, my Oscar soul sister, has decided to bring her birdwatching binoculars and her sensible loafers to Los Angeles to jump some celebrities and, in her own words, “at least be in the same airspace as the Oscars”. While Jen is getting some real tan for a change (instead of her usual Mystic spray-ons), I am stuck in the frozen tundra that is Chicago in February, with just images of this year’s nominees George Clooney, Viggo Mortensen, and Marion Cotillard (not those images! well…maybe about Viggo) floating in my head. And I get stuck to write the introduction to our Oscar predictions and show recap notes.
Before From the Ledge, there were the Oscar notes. Part of the reason why I ultimately decided to have an arts and culture blog, was because I was having so much fun writing, with passion, humor, and distinct opinions, my Oscar prediction and Oscar show recap notes with Jennifer, and I wanted to write in this vein all the time, not just every February. We’ve been writing the notes for the past eight years, ever since Jennifer, who has been doing Oscar predictions since the Paleolithic age, took me under her wing when we were working together at that consulting firm in the northern suburbs of Chicago, sort of like Glinda and Elphaba in Wicked (drat, there’s that theater reference again, I couldn’t resist!). Over the years, it has grown spectacularly, in both readership (the notes were sent to our individual personal distribution lists of friends and assorted others which increased every year), and in length (the 2007 predictions note was a 10 paged, single spaced Word document!). As avid film lovers, we loved having lengthy back and forth discussions (and I think our readers had a hell of a time with them too!) but as arts and culture bloggers and communications-oriented people, we have decided to operate within the stylistic norms of our chosen communications medium. Here then are some of the things to expect from the 2008 Oscar notes:
- Because no one really wants to read lengthy blog posts, the Oscar predictions note will be split into two postings: on Thursday, look for our predictions on Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director, and on Friday, we’ll post the predictions for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture. The Oscar show recap note will still come out on Monday. Unlike last year, we intend the writing to be brisk and to-the-point, in line with blogging conventions.
- We’ll still have Jen’s predictions separate from mine, and for each category, we’ll have our personal favorite (who we think should win) and our picks for who will actually win.
- The beauty and wonder of writing online is that we’ll be able to post pictures (we’re currently looking for some really hot ones of Clooney from our respective personal collections- I think Jen has boxes of Batman stills!) and link to other Oscar blogs and articles about the ceremony and the nominees. My own personal favorite for Oscar gossip, handicapping, and breaking news (and general cattiness) is Awardsdaily.com. Check it out.
- We’re really expecting some spirited, passionate, interesting commentary on the notes from all of our avid readers (and others who stumble upon the blog, who will be immediately cut down if they post anything obnoxious or obscene), something that was not possible with the email distribution of the notes during the past years. So please post freely- we’d love to hear from you.
This is a terrific Oscar year with many of the nominees, such as There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Cotillard’s Edith Piaf, Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd, Cate Blanchett’s Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and the direction and writing of Diving Bell and the Butterfly, certain to go down in film history as cinematic milestones. Let’s hope the Oscar show this Sunday gives them tribute and testament appropriately.
Recent Comments