Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy, bally hooey Hollywood.
Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic with just a good looking pan.
Fortunately for us, Hugh Jackman and Heath Ledger who in their own ways owned last night’s 81st Oscar show, had both good looking pans (ie faces) as well as talent talent talent to boot.
Heath – long expected to have the Best Supporting gong in his back pocket after his maniacially diabolical turn as the Joker in Chris Nolan’s smash, the Dark Knight – was emphatically endorsed by the New York Times as a no brainer contest for picking up the prize. His family’s simple eloquence on accpeting the award will go down as one of the quintessential Oscar moments that you will see again and again on future repeats.
Now to Mr Jackman – who I thought did an outstanding job. The job of the host is to ENTERTAIN – and Hugh ( by virtue of being the best actor- singer-dancer combination in Hollywood today – come on – who else do you think could have pulled off what he did) rose to the occasion magnificently. Forget the whole cheesy cruise ship references some of the more acerbic US critics have savaged him with today – he was brilliant!
Line of the night – Natalie Portman – to a bearded Ben Stiller made to look like the current ravaged rap artist Joaquin Phoenix seems to have morphed into:
“You look like you’ve come from a Hasidic meth lab”
Hilarious!
If you didnt happen to catch the telecast (or even if you did) check out Ken Levine’s hysterical review of the night here on Huff Post. Believe me you WON’T be disappointed – a brief sample being:
Benjamin Button did win “Best Make-Up.” They made Brad Pitt look younger. The real trick is to do that with Goldie Hawn.
Congratulations to Penelope Cruz. Even with subtitles she won. Expect to see Will Smith in the next seven Woody Allen movies until he gets his.
I will have to get along to see Slumdog Millionaire very soon. Hard to think it was slated to head straight to DVD in the US – although given most Americans display a cultural ignorance of anything more sophisticated than grits and Southern Fried Chicken – not that surprising.
I’ve also included a link to the colour co-ordinated slideshow from the NY Times so you can compare all the hags and their frocks!