Live Blogging the 85th Oscars

Tonight, Never Mind Pop Film is blogging the Oscars live.

The big talk of the 85th Academy Awards will definitely be whether Argo continues to steamroll into a write-in win for Best Director. Daniel Day-Lewis could make history tonight if he wins Lead Actor for the third time. Also looking to make history is Amour actress Emmanuelle Riva who is poised to become the oldest winner for Best Actress, but in order to so she will have to fend off Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain. The big question tonight will be what wins Best Picture (the last four years, the winner was a given going into the evening, but tonight is a toss-up).

Tonight is my first attempt at doing this, so here goes nothing...

Seth MacFarlane is doing well thus far. He already made Tommy Lee Jones laugh. Still, taking no prisoners.

And there goes his goodwill...

Captain Kirk! Where was he when James Franco co-hosted?

So no Muppets version of Flight then? Bummer.

Best Supporting Actor

Christoph Waltz

Cool! Nice to see that the Academy doesn't make a big deal about winning recently.

Best Animated Short

Paperman

Best Animated Feature

Brave

"So you got nominated for something a 9 year old can do?"

The Avengers assemble to not piss of Samuel L. Jackson.

Best Cinematography

Life of Pi

Best Visual Effects

Life of Pi

That cut-off was a little harsh. Congratulations on the Life of Pi team and Rhythm and Hues anyway.

Best Costume Design

Anna Karenina

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

Les Miserables

Skyfall wasn't nominated for Best Picture, but here's the attention Bond deserves.

Best Live Action Short

Curfew

Best Documentary Short

Inocente

Any films plugged with Liam Neeson's voice has an excellent chance to win.

"When the Levee Breaks". Best song ever, yes?

Best Documentary Feature

Searching for Sugar Man

Best Foreign Film

Amour

I don't think anyone anticipated the director of Funny Games would win an Oscar for a romance.

Thank you, John Travolta, keep on dancing.

Damn, Jennifer Hudson. Just damn. I feel bad that Les Miserables has to follow her performance.

Best Sound Mixng

Les Miserables

Best Sound Editing

Zero Dark Thirty/Skyfall

Where are the Von Trapps! Well done, MacFarlane, well done.

Best Supporting Actress

Anne Hathaway

Best Editing

Argo

Argo's first win of the evening, Les Mis and Life of Pi lead the pack with two each thus far.

I always wondered where winners put their Oscars for the rest of the show. Thanks, Christoph Waltz.

Best Production Design

Lincoln

There's Lincoln's first win for the night.

D.A. Pennebaker, you rock.

A nicely done In Memoriam.

Best Score

Life of Pi

Life of Pi pulls ahead with 3, is an upset coming with director and picture?

Best Original Song

Adele - Skyfall

Best Original Screenplay

Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained

Best Adapted Screenplay

Chris Terrio - Argo

Best Picture rarely wins without screenplay. Will the Argo train continue?

I really thought that the Academy wouldn't touch the script for Django Unchained with a ten foot pole. Too much controversy didn't bother them apparently.

Best Director

Ang Lee - Life of Pi

Keeping my fingers crossed that picking Life of Pi as Best Picture pans out. Ang Lee looks psyched.

Best Actress

Jennifer Lawrence

Grace under pressure, she earned that Oscar.

Best Actor

Daniel Day-Lewis

Such an amazing lineup for Best Actor, there is literally no way they could go wrong. Meryl Streep didn't even need to look.

That's a record, congratulations, Mr. Day-Lewis, even if you were second choice behind Streep.

Best Picture

Argo

And let the conspiracy theories about George Clooney and the White House begin.

That's a night folks, drive safe and enjoy everything the movies have to offer in 2013!

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Keeping Their Fingers Crossed for Oscar

Sunday night is rapidly approaching and the favorites for the 85th Academy Awards have mostly set themselves apart from the field. Still, favorites have a way of managing to be surprised when the winner's name is announced. These nominees may just benefit from playing the dark horse.

Emmanuelle Riva
For a majority of the season, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain had the inside track for Best Actress, but along the way 86 year old Riva upset both actresses at the BAFTAs. Her strong performance may connect with a majority of the voting body that thinks Lawrence hasn't paid her dues and Chastain has many nominations in front of her.

Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph is the hip choice right now, it has swept its respective category for the last several awards, but these two animated features have their own passionate fanbases. Tim Burton has never won an Oscar over his long career and maybe that changes Sunday evening. Either way, Disney will win its first Animated Feature Oscar for the first time since the category's inception.

Silver Linings Playbook
Chris Terrio (Argo) and Tony Kushner (Lincoln) are the front-runners for the Oscar, but Academy voters have a history of giving awards to films as compensation for losing bigger contests. David O. Russell has a lot of competition for Best Director, but conceivably he could come home with the adapted screenplay award.

Ang Lee
Ben Affleck's snub opened the field up for a while and if Steven Spielberg doesn't capitalize on the moment, Lee seems most suited to take home the trophy. Life of Pi has no acting nominees, but nearly all voters acknowledge the technical prowess Lee exercised while making the film.

Joaquin Phoenix
Mr. Phoenix may not personally be keeping his fingers crossed, but current guarantee Daniel Day-Lewis name-checked the actor for his work in The Master when accepting one of his awards. Is a groundswell starting for the recently retired Phoenix? Day-Lewis has won Lead Actor twice previously so his win is a lock, yet a surprise here would be almost unprecedented.

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Review: A Man and His Legacy (Lincoln)

Times are contentious in the Union. The Civil War rages on and the death toll is in the hundreds of thousands. Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) has two choices placed before him by his trusted Secretary of State, William Seward (David Strathairn at his wit's end). One, an amendment that would allow for slaves to be freed and the other, a peace agreement with the South. His recent re-election has bundled some goodwill for his agenda and he means to package it for the amendment.

The House is publicly divided between the Democrats, conservative and radical Republicans, with abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (an Oscar-bound Tommy Lee Jones) corralling his caucus and Seward's task force of Bilbo (James Spader), Latham (John Hawkes) and Schell (Tim Blake Nelson) trading positions for votes.

Despite the heavy title and the prestige that the marketing and advertising have treated Lincoln with, this is not a biopic that showers its protagonist with awe. This is no Honest Abe by any means, he is a wily politician who knows people and what needs to be done to get legislation passed. It is easy to forget over the course of time that these icons were still men. That truth is often lost to time.

A man like President Lincoln casts a long shadow over history. He presided over an unparalleled time of controversy and he united a nation. What makes Lincoln successful is that Day-Lewis, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner play with the myths in the shadows.

Here, Lincoln's voice is not rich, it is of a plain speaker. He was not a perfect father, nor a perfect husband. He did not possess a crystal ball, but he held his beliefs with fierce conviction. Some of the Lewis' best scenes come when he is pressed on why he feels slavery has to be abolished at the cost of creating peace between the Confederates and the Union.

One of the directors that Steven Spielberg has been most compared with is John Ford. Now, it is no coincidence that both are masters at utilizing light and landscape. Often during the film Lincoln creates a large shadow walking into the room, but very quickly it shrinks down. The human interactions between him and Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) or Abe and Marie Todd (Sally Field) bring Lincoln down to an earthly scale. Day-Lewis and Sally Field's scenes offer a revelatory take on the dynamic between President and First Lady.

Considering the majority of Lincoln takes place in legislative halls and the halls of the White House, Kushner does an excellent job with the dialogue. The shop-talk portions including Spader, Jones and Strathairn feel like being let in the Capital in the 1860s. Limiting the scope of Lincoln's life was the best possible decision that Spielberg and Kushner could have made.

Whatever hold-ups some may have with Spielberg handling Lincoln are largely unfounded. Frequent collaborator, John Williams, refrains from creating swells of music that take viewers out of the drama of the moment. The tone is not Pollyanna-esque as one would expect, Lewis plays Lincoln as the world-weary man tired of war on his watch and tired of what humans are capable of doing to one another.

What Spielberg's film does is take Lincoln out of his marble casing and let's him stretch his legs amongst the people.

***1/2 out of ****

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"Clothed in Immense Power"

Daniel Day-Lewis' delivery of that last line is chilling. So can we please stop talking about his voice?

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'Lincoln' Teaser Promises Much

The man comes around. Finally, Daniel Day-Lewis is able to speak in the new trailer for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Much like Henry Fonda in Young Mr. Lincoln, Lewis has to create a definitive tone for a man whose voice is not known. Unlike Fonda, Lewis has to do so for one of the most hyped films in recent memory. One of the greatest directors of our time tackling a subject of great consequence featuring one of history's most famous icons.

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'Lincoln' Poster Is as Stoic as the Man

In case anyone forgot, Steven Spielberg is making a very serious movie about a serious president in a serious time. If "for your consideration" were slapped on there now, Dreamworks could save costs on ads in Variety later. In all seriousness, Daniel Day-Lewis resemblance to the deceased is remarkable. One of the major question marks I had going into production of this was Day-Lewis' ability to look like the man. No questions about that now.

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First Official 'Lincoln' Image

One can't help but think that Daniel Day-Lewis is considering which shelf to place his next Best Actor Oscar on. Either that, or Mr. Lewis has mastered the art of acting whilst asleep.

Lincoln opens November 16, 2012.

(Courtesy: EW)

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