The Oscar Recap - Oscar Blew it! - Coltons Point Times picks 17 of 24 winners! Oops Fake News just changed the Movie of the Year - the Games continue!

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In case you missed the Big Show the Coltons Point Times picked 17 of the 24 winners of the 89th Academy Awards.  I thought a 71% winning record was pretty good but after the La La Land crew went on stage and accepted the Best Picture Oscar the Academy belatedly interrupted the celebration by La La Land people and said La La Land did not win, but Moonlight won.

Was the Academy getting into the Fake News game with the wrong winner being announced, and did it have anything to do with the attacks on the Academy before last years Oscars of ignoring minorities?  While Moonlight was certainly good, there is something very suspicious about this kind of a major blunder in one of the most watched shows of the year and the most respected award show in the past.

Maybe it is time to drop the award shows since they all seem to be embroiled in politics and have lost their way as an entertainment medium.  I do not know of anyone who pays to see shows because of the politics of the actors and actresses and they seem to think being on the big screen acting gives them the right to act like the news media.

The choice between the two shows boiled down to Moonlight, a movie about growing up poor, Black and gay, or La La Land, "a musical with big numbers, intimate reveries and adult feelings, “La La Land” is a boy-meets-girl tale with early 21st-century rhythms (mostly good, even if its white stars are nestled, more self-consciously than naturally, in a multicultural world)" as Manohla Dargisn of The New York Times described it.

Box Office Receipts - La La Land $141 million - Moonlight $22.2 million

How about we let the public decide?  La La Land has earned nearly $141 million in domestic box office sales to date while Moonlight has earned $22.2 million.  I guess having six and a half times more receipts means nothing in terms of movie popularity.

Maybe Fake News is now here to stay and polarizing politics will destroy the movie industry as it did the news industry.  In the end it is the American public being played and that is not right!  Here is what other media had to say about the Oscar disaster.

Oscars Blows It: Gives Best Picture To Wrong Film; Chaos On Stage As ‘Moonlight’ Wins

16 minutes ago | Deadline | See recent Deadline news »

Moonlight won Best Picture after a complete mix-up on the stage in which Faye Dunaway read the wrong winner. It was thought that La La Land won to walk away with seven wins from its record-tying 14 nominations and producers Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt even gave acceptance speeches before the mistake was discovered. It was a major upset for the top award of the night. Moonlight had gathered two awards — Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali and Adapted Screenplay and… »

See full article at Deadline »

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Newswire: What the hell just happened?

19 minutes ago | avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news »

The Oscars made history tonight, though not exactly the kind of history it wanted to make. As Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway came out to present Best Picture, Beatty opened the envelope and took a lengthy pause before reading the winner—a pause that many, including Dunaway, took for some kind of tension-building/feeble old man shtick. And when he read the winner as La La Land, no one believed anything was amiss. Of course it was La La Land. This whole awards season, the narrative has been La La Land’s inevitable victory. And so, as the producers, cast, and crew came on stage to begin their well-rehearsed acceptance speeches, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

But then Warren Beatty popped back in—always with the Warren Beatty—and suddenly it was evident something had gone very wrong.

“This is not a joke,” said producer Jordan Horowitz. “Moonlight, you »

- Sean O'Neal

See full article at avclub.com »

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Oscars 2017 live: Beatty and Dunaway announce wrong best picture winner for La La Land – Moonlight wins

21 minutes ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Follow the latest news from this year’s Academy Awards, with updates from the Hollywood ceremony, the acceptance speeches, red carpet hits and misses, and awards announcements for the best films, actors and actresses

Oscar winners 2017: the full list

Oscars red carpet 2017 – in pictures

5.28am GMT

Related: Moonlight wins best picture Oscar – after Warren Beatty reads out La La Land

5.27am GMT

As fantastic as it was to see Moonlight win, those poor La La Land guys who found out mid-speech that the win wasn’t theirs. They’re still dealing with that:

Heads are gonna roll. You couldn't have a worse possible f-up if you tried. Team Lll still consoling each other in theater. pic.twitter.com/UUr6dlKF9S

Continue reading »

- Benjamin Lee, Hannah Marriott and Ellie Violet Bramley

See full article at The Guardian - Film News »

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Oscars 2017: The 21 Best, Worst and Most Uncomfortable Moments

23 minutes ago | TVLine.com | See recent TVLine.com news »

Denzel Washington officiating a wedding. Seth Rogen breaking into an impromptu Hamilton performance. Oh, and La La Land incorrectly being named Best Picture. Those were just a few of the truly bizarre things that took place at the 89th Annual Academy Awards.

VideosOscars: Jimmy Kimmel Shreds Trump, Mel Gibson in Monologue — Grade It!

Late-night funnyman Jimmy Kimmel managed to do a decent job as Oscars host — which, if you haven’t repressed all memories of James Franco and Anne Hathaway’s 2011 hosting stint, you’ll know is no small feat. Sure, we could’ve done without his tired banter with frenemy Matt Damon, »

See full article at TVLine.com »

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'Moonlight' wins best picture at dramatic Oscars 2017

27 minutes ago | ScreenDaily | See recent ScreenDaily news »

In a shock finale to Sunday’s 89th Academy Awards, the drama was named best picture moments after La La Landhad been declared the winner in error.

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The 84th Academy Awards - CPT Picks the Winners

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Ever the risk taker when it comes to picking winners, especially when I know almost nothing about the picks, it is time for the 84th Academy Awards and once again I shall pick my winners without seeing a single nominated film. Lest you think this is a fruitless exercise on my part just remember last year I picked the top 12 winners of Oscars.

 This time I should get back to earth so here are my favorites.

Best Picture - The Artist

As Michael Braithwaite recently wrote, "Silent films, like theater, require their audience members to suspend a sense of reality, investing instead in wonder, imagination, and sensory titillation. The greatest films of the silent era were able to transform the dart of an eye, the contortion of a dimple, or the mournful whine of a violin into entirely new vernaculars. It is no small thing to be able to communicate character complexity in a look or a gesture, or to inspire empathy through a series of comically ill-fated endeavors."

She, yes Michael is a she, described the situation as it was 84 long years ago when silent films were the only nominees in the first Oscars and this year The Artist is turning back the clock and should sweep the Academy awards.

 Best Actor - Jean Dujardin in The Artist

See what I mean about the sweep. It would be the 1st Oscar for the French actor.

Best Actress - Viola Davis in The Help

 Best Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer in Beginners

Best Supporting Actress - Octavia Spencer in The Help

Best Visual Effects - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

 Best Original Score - The Artist

In Hugo, Martin Scorsese has hired himself a bunch of A-plus-list artists and techies, and together they've crafted a deluxe, gargantuan train-set of a movie in which the director and his 3-D camera can whisk and whizz and zig and zag and show off all his expensive toys — and wax lyrical on the magic of movies.

The source is Brian Selznick's illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which takes place in 1930 and centers on an orphaned 12-year-old, played in the film by Asa Butterfield, who lives in a flat in the bowels of the Paris station.

Hugo's drunken uncle, until he went missing, had the job of setting the station's clocks, so now the boy, to cover for the disappearance and stay out of the orphanage, does the job in secret, stealing through tunnels, up rickety ladders and over catwalks, careful to avoid Sasha Baron Cohen's stationmaster with his relish for orphan-catching.

For a while, Hugo's only company is a semi-complete automaton, a kind of primitive mechanical man that his late machinist dad (Jude Law, seen in flashback) discovered in a museum storage area. Hugo thinks the automaton holds the key to his future; alas, the key it doesn't hold is the one that would wind it up and set it in motion.

Best Costume Design - Hugo

Best Cinematography - Hugo

Best Original Screenplay - The Artist

Best Animated Feature - Rango

Best Director - Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

 There you have it, the top 12 Oscar winners.  The first films I intend to watch are Hugo and The War Horse.
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Coltons Point Times 82nd Academy Awards Picks

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Sunday is Oscar night, with the best of Hollywood glimmer, glamour and glitz. The golden statues will help us forget the chaos in our nation's capitol, corruption on Wall Street, losing the Olympic hockey finals to Canada for men and women, and yet another resurrection of Obamacare.


So here are my Oscar picks and my admission I have not seen a single nominee for the 2010 Academy Awards. I simply find it no handicap to picking winners. Now make your picks.


Best Picture - The Hurt Locker


Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker


Best Actor - Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart


Best Actress - Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side


Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz - Inglorious Bastards


Best Supporting Actress - Mo'nique - Precious

Best Animated Feature Film - Up

Best Foreign Film - Germany - The White Ribbon

Best Original Screenplay - Mark Boal - The Hurt Locker

Best Adapted Screenplay - Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner - Up in the Air

Best Documentary Feature - The Cove


Best Original Score - Up

Best Original Song - The Weary Kind - Crazy Heart

Best Film Editing - The Hurt Locker


Best Cinematography - Avatar

Best Costume Design - The Young Victorian

Best Art Direction - Avatar

Best Makeup - The Young Victorian

Best Visual Effects - Avatar

Best Documentary (Short Subject) - Rabbit á la Berlin

Best Short Film (Animated) - A Matter of Loaf and Death

Best Short Film (Live Action) - The New Tenants

Best Sound Editing - Avatar

Best Sound Mixing - The Hurt Locker


Enjoy the show.

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The Week in Review - Olympics Closing Ceremony to Chilean Earthquake to Health Care to Hollywood

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Last Sunday I was sitting and watching my television as the Olympic Closing Ceremony was just getting started in Vancouver, Canada. After a pretty decent presentation by Russia on the next Olympics, we returned to a cornball Canadian Series of mini documentaries with the most bizarre themes, speeches, strange creatures and three legged Olympic flames.



Think about it. Two weeks earlier one of the highlights of the opening ceremony was when one leg of the flame platform jammed in the floor and refused to rise, leaving the torch carriers, crowd, and zillions of TV watchers around the world waiting on baited breath to see how in the world the Canadians were going to get out of this mess. People held their breath while NBC and the Canadian Olympic people seemed to be doing nothing.



Seconds before the torches held by NHL legend Wayne Gretzky and others went out, and long after the millions viewing had started breathing again, someone decided to light the three legs that did show up and hope no one noticed the drama around the missing fourth leg and torch bearer with no torch to light.



That was two weeks earlier. Now as I sat watching the flying moose and massive beavers show up and listened to what those Canadians were saying and doing on the boob tube, I was certain I went through a time warp and was back in the crazy '60's. There was Star Treks' Mr. Priceline while you were going Back to the Future with Michael J. Fox of Family Ties.



Thank God Neil Young was there, all alone, just Neil and his guitar, and he played a wonderful version of Long May You Run and showed all those Olympic kids what real music and stories sound like. They loved him and it was the last recognizable thing I saw during the abbreviated closing ceremonies.

The time machine kicked into high gear and the stage or rink or whatever became an assemblage with the weirdest conglomeration of characters, reminding me a little of an afternoon with Timothy Leary. As we watched there seemed to be a Canadian cultural collision showing all the different aspects of Canadian settlers and civilizations and Hollywood actors while interruptions from NBC anchors and reporters further distracted me from figuring out what the Hell the Canadians were doing on that screen.

Then quite unexpectedly anchor Bob Costas pops on the screen, quite awkwardly I noted, saying that the closing ceremonies would be back. First there would be an hour of a new weekly TV series called The Ref, a quite stupid show I thought, and then local news. If you survived that show and news the Olympics Late Show would then broadcast a taped version of the closing that you were just watching.

What was this?

I wait four years to see this event and NBC pre-empts it with another mindless program about the flaws of Americans. Didn't NBC pay $800 million for the right to broadcast the Olympics then cut off the closing ceremonies just as it was getting interesting? This was just the beginning of the week.



So then came wave after wave of strange stories like follow up on the Chile earthquake that hit the night before the Olympic Closing debacle. Obama was talking about health care yet again. Hasn't Congress been trying to figure out what to do about health care for over a year? Don't tell me the president just noticed we had a problem with health care. Funny he still ignored the number one worry of the people, the economy and our national debt. Congress and the media seemed clueless as well.

During the week the Democrats were trying to figure out how to ignore the people and circumvent the legislative process on health care. There was the day long, great, Pacific tsunami watch which started after the tsunami had already hit Chile and wiped out villages killing hundreds. The multi-network watch ended when no one could tell the tsunami hit them beyond Chile. Hawaii reported a two foot rise in the water lever. Big deal. We get more than two feet change twice a day from the tides, every day, and we are just in the tributary backwaters of the Atlantic.



Then came the scandals, reality news instead of the old political innuendoes. A governor, congressman and another congressman from New York all got sucked into abuse of powers scandals, tax evasion, even alleged sexual misconduct. Those Democrats sure do know how to have fun, at our expense. Okay, Greece was collapsing, Toyota was in the midst of the worst recall in history, Ford was selling cars like mad. No one could figure out what Chrysler was doing. We did know Congress was still doing nothing. Kentucky men lost a second basketball game and Bebraska women remained unbeaten.



Three more people told me they now know how to play curling and asked me where was the nearest curling alley. I never knew they existed. There are 131 curling clubs in the USA but do they all have their own curling alleys? If there are 131 curling alleys then there is one curling alley for every 62 Wal-Mart stores in America. Good luck finding a curling alley to go shove a 46 pound rock they call a stone down some ice with two broom-carrying people sweeping up a storm as the rock slides down along it's way.

I have Scottish blood and curling was invented by the Scottish in the 1500's but I prefer to remember the scotch whiskey and those long haired cattle of Scotland. Besides, if you want your own curling game it costs $32,000 for just the 16 stones you need. That is for just two people in one game. I mean in America you can find a ball, bag and bowling shoes for about a hundred dollars.



I'm just glad this week ends with the most glorified awards ceremony of the year, the Academy Awards, to help us forget what we just lived through. There is nothing so soothing to a nation sinking in debt as statues of gold, glitz and glamour. I hope you had an interesting week as well and I share your concerns that given the climate in Washington, we hope next week can continue to divert our attention away from our nation's capitol, leaders and news media.



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Oscar Gold - The Winners Are???

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Today the Oscar nominations were announced and there were a few surprises but not many. Since picking the winners, in other words reading the minds of the Academy voters, is an inexact science I have decided to make it even harder because I will be the first member of the entertainment media to pick the winners without seeing a single nominated movie.





The interesting nominations, the movies Avatar directed by James Cameron and The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bieglow pits an ex-husband and wife, Cameron and Bieglow against each other. One was a $200 million blockbuster and the other an independent costing a few million.



Here are my picks:



Best Picture - The Hurt Locker

Best Picture nominees

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Best Director - Kathryn Bieglow



Best Director nominees

James Cameron: Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow: The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels - Precious
Jason Reitman: Up in the Air



Best Actor - Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart



Best Actor nominees

Jeff Bridges: Crazy Heart
George Clooney: Up in the Air
Colin Firth: A Single Man
Morgan Freeman: Invictus
Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker



Best Actress - Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side



Best Actress nomiees

Sandra Bullock: The Blind Side
Helen Mirran: The Last Station
Carey Mulligan: An Education
Gabourey Sidibe: Precious
Meryl Streep: Julie & Julia



Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actor nominees

Matt Damon: Invictus
Woody Harrelson: The Messenger
Christopher Plummer: The Last Station
Stanley Tucci: The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz: Inglourious Basterds



Best Supporting Actress - Mo’Nique - Preciuos

Best Supporting Actress nominees

Penelope Cruz: Nine
Vera Farmiga: Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal: Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick: Up in the Air
Mo’Nique: Precious



Best Original Screenplay - Inglourious Basterds

Best Adapted Screenplay - Precious

That's enough.

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