Gearing Up for the Oscars

To me, the Academy Awards Ceremony is like the Super Bowl for women. There are always incredible "plays" like amazing dresses and heart-wrenching acceptance speeches. There is the question of whether one "team" will begin to sweep early on or if the battle will be more of a back-and-forth between the rivals. And as if my home team had lost, I despair when the film I am championing doesn't take home Oscar gold.

My version of fantasy football is filling out my Oscar ballot. I take it just as seriously, doing tons of research on the nominees before the big day. When it comes to movies, I play to win. So this year, as I do every February, I have sat in many a darkened theater forming my opinions. It is hard to see all the nominees but I do my best, and this time I managed to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, Revolutionary Road, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wall-E, Man on Wire, Trouble the Water, The Witness and Wanted. Of course, any one filling out their ballot while reading this will notice a few gaping holes in my screening list. I am still hoping to see Milk and The Wrestler by Sunday, but I'll have to turn in my work picks by Friday.

A lot of strategy goes into choosing the winners; there are always some political choices or "career" wins. To wrap my head around it all I turn to the web.

The LA Times "Gold Derby" online column has often been the first stop in my research. Author Tom O"Neill compiles stories, expert predictions and odds on the winners. This year, Tom has joined the digital revolution. You can get Gold Derby on Twitter. Join the Gold Derby Group at Facebook. Become friends with Tom O'Neil on Facebook. Get Gold Derby RSS feed via Facebook. RSS Feedburner or RSS Atom.

The Academy Awards website is also good to peruse for information about the telecast and local screening events, but I go there mainly to check out the message boards to see what people are saying. I also go to sites like The Oscar Guy, IMDB, You Tube (searching for those pesky shorts), and Oscar Frenzy.

This year, my two new favorite platforms/best friends have been Netflix on Xbox 360 and iTunes. Through Netflix I watched many of the documentary nominees that were harder to find, as well as The Visitor, a sweet little film that I highly recommend. iTunes allowed me to download many of the short films. Though in past years I have gone to the IFC Center or MOMA to view the short programs, being able to download them to my iPhone has made catching them infinitely easier.

There are also tons of odds predictors if you want to get right down to it (but isn't this art?) and one of the newest ones I've come across is a sports betting site Bet Us. Seems like you might even be able to wager real money here, but online gambling is where I draw the line.

When I think back to my childhood Oscar viewing, I shake my head at how utterly handicapped I was in predicting the winners. Now with all the digital help, my picks get a little bit closer every year, and in the end, isn't that better than actually winning the award? Okay, maybe not.

Anatomy of a Media Meltdown - "Are you not entertained?"

On the February 11 Late Show with David Letterman Joaquin Phoenix appeared to promote his new film Two Lovers. Who knows if it is a good film or not, but it certainly wasn't what had people buzzing the next day.

The mostly quiet and often incoherent Phoenix appeared to either be on something or simply committing career suicide. Others have speculated that was all part of some elaborate hoax. At any rate, feel free to weigh in.



While an entertaining tidbit to break up my day, I was more interested in how the event was spreading virally. I had not seen the clip the night it aired, but the next day I received an email and an IM from two friends sending me the link to the clip on You Tube. Another friend had posted it on Facebook. I checked into my Twitter feed and saw a tweet from Defamer about it. Later in the week as I perused CNN.com I saw Anderson Cooper had weighed in and was showing a remixed version of the segment. I finished my week discussing it with my coworkers and we ended up watching it again. They even parodied it on the February 14 Saturday Night Live.

Though there were certainly bigger, more important news stories last week, it amazed me how many times that one interview kept coming up. Which seriously made me doubt the randomness of the event. I haven't heard much about the film that Phoenix was supposedly plugging. I also hadn't seen the actor's newly disheveled appearance, though I had heard he was retiring from acting to pursue his "music." Whether a calculated move or unplanned meltdown, the generated buzz was astounding. Celebrities have always been under the microscope, but now that everyone is so plugged in the scrutiny is overwhelming. Marketers and celebrity "brands" alike need to be aware that they can harness this kind of attention or have their image carried away by it.