Shane Life

So last night, Alli and I held the 2nd Annual Olathe Community of Christ Young Adult Oscar Party. It’s a great time watching the show with a bunch of friends and competing over who wins the awesome prizes provided by Brad and June.

Alli successfully defended her title as Best Prognosticator of Awards and unsurprisingly, I came in second once again. There were several great moments, some confusing moments, and some downright surprising moments.

My favorite moments:

• Forrest Whitaker’s speech
• Scorsese finally wins Best Director (and receives it from Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg)
• The cool dance troupe segues that formed the interpretations of the Best Picture nominees.
• Ellen’s opening monologue - totally spot-on, perfectly self-deprecating and not insulting to the nominees at all (do you hear me, Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg?)
• In fact, the Errol Morris opening nominees montage was really cool too.
• Ellen overall - she did a great job hosting, in my opinion. The part with her dropping off the script to Scorsese was priceless.
• Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly’s song - awesome.
  

Confusing:

• Jack Nicholson’s bald head
• Jaden Smith and Abigail Breslin’s presentation
• Dreamgirls getting all but shut out (2 wins in 8 nominations)
• Chris Connelly. I can’t stand this guy and I can’t figure out why they had him backstage if he was just going to pass by the stars. Pointless.

Surprises:

• Eddie Murphy loses Best Supporting Actor. Not a bigger meltdown since Russell Crowe’s for A Beautiful Mind. Guess releasing Norbit when you did wasn’t such a great idea, huh Eddie? I was very happy for Alan Arkin though.
• The Departed wins Best Picture. I had it 3rd on my big board, behind Babel and Little Miss Sunshine.

Overall, it was a decent night. I was glad to see Scorsese win, but I think that it showed that the level of films this year was just average. The Departed certainly is not Scorsese’s best film to date, but for some reason, he wins for it. That seems to happen a lot (see: Denzel Washington).

I’m hoping that the next year brings some better movies and a more competitive race. As good as Jennifer Hudson was in Dreamgirls, I doubt we’ll hear much more from her ever again.

Much better than I expected.

I’m not a huge Leo DiCaprio fan, but he was phenomenal in this movie. Much better than in Gangs of New York. I expected this year’s Oscar race to be Jamie Foxx’s to lose, but after seeing The Aviator, I don’t know if that will be the case (Ray is on my rental list).

While the movie was long, it was gorgeous and had a great cast. Cate Blanchett (another so-so actor, in my opinion) was fantastic as Kate Hepburn and John C. Reilly did what he does best…support the big names with a solid performance.

I really think that The Aviator may finally get Scorsese his long overdue Best Director Oscar, but we will see.

IMDb Rating: 7 out of 10.