Sunday, February 22, 2009

Penelope Cruz for Best Supporting Actress - UPDATE! CRUZ WINS!

Okay, I'm getting ready for the Academy Awards, and keeping with my pledge to feature more feminine lovelies around here (and with R.S. McCain's "Rule #5"), I give you Penelope Cruz:

Penelope Cruz

Ms. Cruz is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

I've long admired Penelope Cruz (see her in
Volver, for starters), and she's much more attractive, IMHO, than Salma Hayek, who's the top-hottie of political scientist Daniel Drezner.

The complete list of Oscar nominations is at
Big Hollywood, where they'll be live-blogging (no word yet on Althouse's live-blogging, however).

See also, "Penelope Cruz is 'Always Surprised' to Win Awards."

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UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain's got an Academy Awards post up, where he notes that Kate Winslet, who's nominated for Best Actress, has "appeared nude in 10 films," which means "on average, Kate's gotten nakies for the camera every 18 months since she turned 18."

Also, Dan Collins gets hip to McCain's "Rule #5" (or, check out three beautiful lovies you don't want to miss).

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UPDATE II: Penelope Cruz wins Best Supporter Actress honors!

The Los Angeles Times is live-blogging:

Wow, what an acceptance speech from Penelope Cruz. That was her mother she kissed. She used her extra tickets to bring her brother, sister, and her childhood friend. Her dad went with her to the Golden Globes and Baftas. She told us ahead of time she was not going to prepare a speech. She opened with such a nice moment - "Has anyone ever fainted up here? I might be the first" and then ending with a salute to the unity of the Oscars and wrapping up in Spanish.
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UPDATE III: Ann Althouse is
live-blogging after all:

7:43: Best Supporting Actress ... a stripper need never take off her dignity with her clothes... blah blah... bullshit. Ugh! this is boring. So so stilted. But yay! Penélope Cruz, won. I love her.
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UPDATE IV: It's quite a different-styled production, and while I think Hugh Jackman's doing well overall, I was curious as to the five-actor teams of previous Oscar winners who announced the nominees for Best Supporting roles. Check out this, from
Niki Finke's Deadline:

The producers ... have dissed last year's actor winners by deciding that France's Marion Cotillard (Best Actress for La Vie En Rose) and Spain's Javier Bardem (Best Supporting Actor for No Country For Old Men), Scotland's Tilda Swinton (Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton) and even England's Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor for There Will Be Blood) weren't big enough names to carry on the time-honored tradition of announcing this year's winners by themselves. So, I've learned, the unusual step will be taken to bring onstage from a riser 5-person groups of other Best Actor or Best Supporting Actress winners from past eras in order to add more glitz and glamor to the presentations.

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UPDATE V: Check again at the Los Angeles Times' entertainment page for all the news and glamour on tonight's awards show. The New York Times has a big wrap up, "A ‘Slumdog’ Kind of Night at the Oscar Ceremony ."

I felt badly at the end of the broadcast, when Sean Penn won Best Actor for Milk, for all the other nominees would did not win. I'll never forget in 1997, Juliette Binoche won Best Actress for her role in The English Patient. She beat out Lauren Bacall, the grand dame of film noir of the 1940s, who had been nominated her very first time for The Mirror Has Two Faces. Bacall was visibly shaken at not winning the award, and there have been other times where the cameras flash across the faces, only to register the pain of loss.

I didn't get a look at Mickey Rourke tonight, but I'm sure it may well have been heartbreaking for him to come so far on his comeback and lose out at the end. That's some brutal competition.

It's a strange thing, all of it.

6 comments:

Reese74 said...

Maybe I'm just a hater but was anyone else turned off by the amount of diamonds dripping off penelope when so many americans are struggling to make mortgage payments.

Stogie said...

Yes Reese, no doubt if she didn't wear the diamonds those folks struggling to make their mortgage payments would somehow magically become prosperoous.

Your comment should be filed under "moral exhibitionism."

AmPowerBlog said...

Thanks Stogie. I was just ignoring the guy.

cracker said...

Penn's turn ......

totally

JBW said...

Stogie, you are as sensitive as you are obviously intelligent. My take on the toned down Oscars can be found here.

Don, while I applaud your recent revelation that straight men like pictures of hot chicks I think you are a crazy person for saying that the spindly Cruz is hotter than the voluptuous Hayek (her recent Dark Continent breastfeeding episode not withstanding). Just one straight man's opinion of course, but there it is.

Amadauss1 said...

Woody Allen could film a mailbox and those quote "movie critics" would say it was a work of art. He made some great movies but this one...just bad. Everyone I spoke to had a hard time sitting through it. And then to give the oscar to someone that really is just an ok actress...I just don't see it.