Ultra Culture liveblogs The 2011 Oscars

Sunday February 27th 2011

11:00pm – Hello, and welcome to the first ever Ultra Culture ‘liveblog’. I’m at London’s simultaneously awful and brilliant Soho House for the Grey Goose Oscar Party, a gathering of half a dozen Very Important Film Bloggers being drip-fed Grey Goose vodka for six hours on the trot. I’m slightly overdressed with my clip-on bow tie: most people have gone down the smart-casual route.

We’ve got E! on in corner but the sound is down so it’s kind of hard to tell precisely what Ryan Seacrest is saying to the woman in the red dress with the blonde hair and the breasts. I imagine she enjoyed The King’s Speech and really wants to see Natalie Portman take home the Best Actress award, but of course I could be wrong.

11:20pm - They’ve put the sound on now, and when I say ‘on’ I mean ‘DEAFENINGLY ON’. Still, at least we can hear Ryan Seacrest’s amazing red carpet patter. Some highlights:

  • ‘I’m peering inside Michelle Williams’ vehicle.’
  • To Hailee Steinfeld: ‘Were you always this grown up?’
  • ‘Hello Baps, I’m Ryan, nice to see you.’

Meanwhile, Armie Hammer is winning at suave:

11:35pm – More invaluable insights from our man Ryan. Apparently Blue Valentine is not suitable for Michelle William’s five-year-old daughter.

11:45pm – All the celebs seem to be tweeting this year (HOMG SO 2011), which at least gives Ryan something to talk about. Elsewhere, Kelly Osbourne and a woman with a very pointy face are discussing how boring Florence from off of the Machine is.

11:56pm – Geoffrey Rush has arrived but his hair hasn’t.

12:00am - It’s February 28th 2011 and Kevin Spacey is still a cunt.

12:09am – The urinals at Soho House are absolutely epic. Each flush consists of ONE GALLON of water. ONE GALLON. It almost makes up for all the trendy media types who think it’s acceptable to unload half a pint of drool into the sink while they wash their hands.

12:14am – An extract from the hastily-prepared Soho House ‘Oscar Party Menu’:

Cheeseburger £11.00

This is an expensive cheeseburger.

12:21am – This is making me laugh.

12:30am – Picturehouse Podcast hosts and friends of Ultra Culture, Sam Clements and Simon Renshaw are ‘videocasting’ throughout the night RIGHT HERE and you should watch because they’re funny and that. And they’ve got guests like The Incredible Suit (pictured above, smiling maniacally).

12:46am – So I was ABSOLUTELY BANG ON about Christian Bale’s ludicrous accent. What a man, what a man.

12:53am – Amazing ‘fun facts’ on E!. Christian Bale met his wife when she was his assistant or something.

12:58am – Here’s a video of where I am if you’re mad enough to care.

1:00am – The show should be starting any moment now. I’m quite excited. Ryan Seacrest informs me that ‘the world is watching’.

1:08am – .gif of the night so far…

1:10am – I’ve just found out we have a tab at the Soho House bar. That £11 cheeseburger will be mine before the night is out.

1:19am - So it looks like the show actually kicks off at 1:30am, which is making this half hour of red carpet repeats feel a bit slow.

1:24am – News of the World critic Robbie Collin looks hilariously oversized on the Sky Movies discussion panel. They missed a trick by not sitting him next to tiny Alex Zane though. It would’ve been like Twins.

1:27am – I just ordered the cheeseburger. The night is going well.

1:30am – The show is about to start. I’m so excited about Alex Zane going away for half an hour.

1:35am – So Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s opening video (see left) is vaguely funny, if a little route one. Anne Hathaway’s joke about the microphones in The King’s Speech being quite big is almost as funny as the joke in Wall Street 2 about mobile phones in the 80s being quite big.

1:38am – Why are they in Back to the Future?

1:40am – Personally I liked Anne Hathaway’s performance in Love and Other Drugs.

1:42am – It’s all feeling a little stilted. They’re doing an ironic ‘Hi Mum’ bit. The atmosphere at Soho House is one of disappointment and cheeseburger-anticipation.

1:43am – Someone should have shown Hathaway and Franco today’s brilliant Oscar vlog from Billy Eichner. It’s a masterclass is Oscar-based ROFLs…

You might remember Mr. Eichner from his equally brilliant coverage of last year’s Oscars.

1:48am - LOL Wally Fister.

1:52am – IT’S HERE! SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!

1:57am – I’ve had my first bite and I can confirm that it’s a nice cheeseburger. Not £11 nice, but nice all the same. The chips are too salty though. Oh, and Melissa Leo won Best Supporting Actor as if anyone cares.

2:07am – I have nommed the burger. I’d give it a 6/10.

2:08am – Lee Unkrich ‘can’t believe’ he’s accepting the award for Best Animated Feature. Because it’s not like him and EVERY OTHER PERSON ON THE PLANET knew it was going to win or anything. Also, Justin Timberlake has set the Obvious Bar pretty high with jokes about Banksy and iPhones within a single introduction. You’d think he could at least mention Egypt.

2:17am – Sorkin does a typically charming speech but gets played off midway through giving David Fincher a verbal handjob. The King’s Speech writer David Seidler unjustly takes home Best Original Screenplay, where ‘original’ here means ‘exactly the same as every other film ever’. Still, nice speech.

2:27am – Anne Hathaway sung. Russell Brand did a funny.

2:31am – It had to happen…

2:32am – Tumblrite DirkDigglr points out the A-BLOODY-MAZING work taking place on Kirk Douglas’ Wikipedia entry (see right).

2:35am – I’m popping to the loo. Let me know if I miss anything. Apart from this bloody Dustin Hoffman Sky Atlantic ad obviously.

2:44am – This is pretty exciting…

2:56am - The Wolfman takes home makeup, which is fair enough. I think I’m the only person who quite liked that film.

3:00am – Christ, it’s 3am.

3:01am – They’re asking ‘the man on the street’ what his favourite movie songs are. Black people seem to like rap music and white people seem to like folk music.

3:02am - Kevin Spacey IS STILL A MASSIVE TWAT.

3:07am – Best Original Song Round-up:

- Randy Newman doesn’t look anything like I thought he did.
- Zachary Levi looks exactly like I thought he did.

3:12am – Someone’s drawn facial hair on Alex Zane.

3:13am – James Franco and Anne Hathaway really aren’t very good.

3:17am – Some guy called Luke Matheny wins Best Live Action Short and also the night with an effortlessly charming speech and the best opening line ever:

‘I should have got a haircut.’

3:22am – Inside Job beats Exit Through the Gift Shop. But it’s not just a win for Inside Job, it’s a win for mediocre, smug, forgettable documentaries everywhere.

3:28am - Billy Crystal gathers a few chuckles.

3:33am – Inception wins yet another award that won’t be on the homepage of BBC News tomorrow morning. Visual effects guy FINALLY makes the night’s first ‘is this a dream like in Inception?’ joke.

3:42am - I’m pretty sure Jennifer Hudson just introduced ‘A.R. Walkman’.

3:47am - Gwyneth Paltrow sings her little heart out but Randy Newman takes home the prize. He looks a bit like John Goodman’s spritely cousin.

3:52am – Celine Dion is here. At the ceremony, not at Soho House. Not that either makes much sense given that it’s TWENTY BLOODY ELEVEN.

4:00am – We’re on the home straight now. Just a few prizes for The King’s Speech left to go and then we can all go home and forget it ever happened.

4:04am – Someone dial 911. David Fincher just got robbed.

4:16am – Portman wins.

4:23am – Firth wins.

4:26am – Typically beautiful speech from the man who nonetheless didn’t deserve to beat Jesse Eisenberg.

4:29am - Just Best Picture to go. If you need a reminder of the nominees, here’s my rundown.

4:36am – The King’s Speech wins. Aaaaaaand we’re done. It’s been fun if slightly lacklustre show but (I think we can all agree) A RUDDY MARVELLOUS LIVEBLOGGING EXPERIENCE. See you all next year!

P.S. This is what Shaftesbury Avenue looks like at 5am – creepy.

Best film ever made goes into pre-production

Sunday February 27th 2011

James Franco, actor and Oscars host, is working with indie film auteur Harmony Korine on “a violent new art film.” The duo is reportedly planning to stage a fight between actual L.A. street gangs, but they might allow the gangs to use real weapons and hurt one another in “a gory battle” at an iconic location like the Griffith Observatory.

- via Vulture.

This year’s Best Picture nominees, from crappest to bestest

Sunday February 27th 2011

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to all the broadsheet supplements this weekend, I might as well inform you that it’s the Oscars tonight. I’ll be live-tweeting the entire show at @ultraculture and also blogging throughout the night right here, so if you’re demented enough to still be up at 4am, why not check in?

In the meantime, here’s one last look at the nominees, in ascending order of brilliance:

10. 127 HOURS
It’s lucky for Danny Boyle that a handful of Academy voters can just about remember how much they liked Slumdog Millionaire back in 2008, because there’s no way this misconceived, gaudy, graceless lump of a movie was getting nominated on its own merits.

9. BLACK SWAN
‘Oh shit, Darren Aronofsky made all these great movies in the noughties and we were too busy giving Oscars to Paul Haggis to notice.’ ‘Never mind, we’ll just chuck a nomination his way for whatever he churns out next, even if it turns out to be a self-parodic, tedious mess.’

8. THE FIGHTER
It certainly felt like quite a bargain to get a two-hour boxing movie free when I bought a ticket to see that Christian Bale performance a few weeks back. But calling it the best movie of the year is a bit like giving the extras on the Toy Story 3 DVD a Palme D’Or.

7. INCEPTION
Christopher Nolan finally got a chance to dent his impressive record with this cinematic equivalent of a maths textbook: 50% explanation, 50% application, negligible excitement. It didn’t even do us the courtesy of putting the answers at the end.

6. TRUE GRIT
This disappointingly MOR entry from the Brothers Coen is a long way from bad, but it also lacks their trademark rebelliousness. They, more than any other directors, will be feeling the benefit of the 10-nominee system, which all but guarantees them a yearly nod from this point forward.

5. THE KING’S SPEECH
Yes, it’ll win. No, it doesn’t deserve to. But at least this Britishiest of all British movies is among the better half of this year’s nominees. Cynical and formulaic yet undeniably involving, the Academy could certainly do worse than this unnecessary love-letter to the British Monarchy.

4. WINTER’S BONE
Oscar voters filled their ‘indie gem’ and ‘misery porn’ quotients at the same time with this satisfying but forgettable blend of the two. Like The Fighter, it’s largely a performance with a film draped over the top of it, but at least here we get a few tense showdowns as well.

3. TOY STORY 3
Great in isolation but disappointing in context, the conclusion of the fifteen-year Toy Story saga was last year’s foremost victim of Difficult Third Movie Syndrome. It had laughs, it had heart, it had mind-blowing animation, but admit it, something just wasn’t right.

2. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
It’s a sad state of affairs when my second favourite Oscar nominee is only my nineteenth favourite movie of last year. Still, it’s lovely to see this relatively humble movie get a look in, and you’re kidding yourself if you weren’t touched by the extraordinary wealth of acting talent on display.

1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
The only movie on the list that anyone will be talking about in ten years time is so much better than its fellow nominees that it makes a mockery of the entire procedure. Bold, uncompromising and instantly absorbing, it’s quite literally Citizen Kane by comparison.

Gravelly-voiced man doesn’t know who he is

Saturday February 26th 2011

Unknown (cool title bro) is a Liam Neeson thriller in a vaguely similar vein to 2008′s surprise hit Taken, except this time there’s more amnesia and less Holly Valance.

Neeson plays Dr. Martin Harris, the man with the most doctor-y name in the world, who falls into a coma only hours after arriving in Berlin with his wife to attend a biotechnology summit. And yes, ‘biotechnology summit’ is cinematic shorthand for THIS MAN IS A GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT SCIENCE PERSON AND MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT THAT LATER ON WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO WORK OUT WHY SOMEBODY MIGHT WANT TO STEAL HIS IDENTITY but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

Awoken four days later, Dr. Martin finds that another man has assumed his identity and is living happily with his wife. You might want to pop a hat on because there’s a good chance your mind just got thoroughly blown. Speaking of hats, it turns out Frank Langella is still wearing his costume from The Box three years on:

That’s just plain lazy.

113 lengthy minutes pass before Unknown finally shows its (not entirely disappointing) cards and even then it’s hard to tell whether or not it’s actually been ‘a good movie’. It’s certainly no Taken but it does manages some fairly diverting set pieces and stops just short of wearing its central premise thin. I’d like to say it’s a three-star film but let’s be fair…

It’s a 0.52.

Exciting news for the six or seven people who live near Millbank

Friday February 25th 2011

A new cinema opens in London today and given that I live in London and spend most of my time in cinemas, I figured it was worth writing about. The Curzon Millbank is situated on the ground floor of Millbank Tower (where all the students had their fun a few months back) and contains one 280-seater cinema and one fully licensed ‘cafe-bar’.

They had an open day last weekend and we went along to case the joint.

First things first, they’ve got a Banksy in the foyer:

This is already feeling very authentic.

They’d also laid on plenty of free food and drink for the half dozen elderly people who showed up to have a look around, and we quickly set about consuming as much of it as possible before the staff’s glaring eyes became too much and we had to move on.

Saying that, we did get through a good three bowls of crisps. They just kept bringing more, with an efficiency that said ‘is this what you really want? DO YOU THINK YOU DESERVE MORE CRISPS? WELL FINE, HAVE THEM IF YOU THINK YOU’RE SO SPECIAL!!!!’ And we did.

We eventually started feeling a bit sick from all the salt so went in to look at the auditorium itself:

Here’s a quick review of the Curzon Millbank:

Cons: shit sightlines, no masking, distractingly bright walls.

Pros: fancy cup holders.

It’s a shame because I used to go to art school just down the road and know from experience that it’s an area largely devoid of cultural sites that aren’t the Tate Britain, but it’s hard to imagine students getting too excited about £10+ ticket prices and a programme of inoffensive family dramas.

I can’t however knock the bathroom facilities, which included these delightfully quirky urinals:

It’s a world gone mad!

The Curzon Millbank opens today and is showing West is West which might be awesome but looks a bit shit, doesn’t it? Upcoming films include Fair Game and The Red Shoes.

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