I'm hoping you all watched the Oscars, dear readers, but if you didn't you certainly missed out! I am so very pleased to tell you that The Artist (previously reviewed by yours truly) took the award for Best Picture! It came completely out of left field, though it had been my favorite for the category. I never expected that a silent film could win out against eight other talkies. That makes the Artist the second silent film to win Best Picture, the other being "Wings" which won Best Picture in the original ceremony of 1929.
Christopher Plummer won for Best Supporting actor for "Beginners", making him the oldest living recipient of the Academy Award, only two years younger than the ceremony itself (I'd like to point out that my grandmother, whom I watched the Oscars with, is exactly as old as the Oscars!).
Though I was sad that The Help didn't win many awards, I was glad that they at least got Best Supporting Actress with Octavia Spencer.
However, the awards themselves aren't what I want to talk to you today. In fact, it's the commercials they aired during the ceremony - or two of them, at least. If you haven't yet heard, Ellen Degeneres was recently picked up by JC Penney to be their new celebrity spokesperson. I won't go into the One Million Mom scandal, but suffice it to say that equality won out. Anyway, JC Penney premiered five new commercials during the Oscars - four of them set in different time periods.
Intro Ancient Rome
The Wild West
Victorian England
The 1950s
Probably most striking of all, though, was the following ad from Dior. Pay close attention. If you blink, you'll miss it:
Did you see them? All three of them? Rumor has it that this technology has been in development since the early days of CGI (my dad has been talking about this for about twenty years). So far it's only been used to change an actors appearance, like Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button or Ralph Fiennes in the Harry Potter series. As seen here the idea is to have an actress play the body of the deceased star and digitally place a mask created from captured footage. We'll see. Marilyn is still in the Uncanny Valley, if you ask me but who knows? Maybe someday we'll get to see Meryl Streep and Katharine Hepburn (the two most Oscar-nominated persons of all time) co-star in a movie. I'd pay movie theatre prices to see that!
PS: Happy Leap Day!
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Christopher Plummer won for Best Supporting actor for "Beginners", making him the oldest living recipient of the Academy Award, only two years younger than the ceremony itself (I'd like to point out that my grandmother, whom I watched the Oscars with, is exactly as old as the Oscars!).
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| (via) |
Though I was sad that The Help didn't win many awards, I was glad that they at least got Best Supporting Actress with Octavia Spencer.
 |
| (via) |
However, the awards themselves aren't what I want to talk to you today. In fact, it's the commercials they aired during the ceremony - or two of them, at least. If you haven't yet heard, Ellen Degeneres was recently picked up by JC Penney to be their new celebrity spokesperson. I won't go into the One Million Mom scandal, but suffice it to say that equality won out. Anyway, JC Penney premiered five new commercials during the Oscars - four of them set in different time periods.
Probably most striking of all, though, was the following ad from Dior. Pay close attention. If you blink, you'll miss it:
Did you see them? All three of them? Rumor has it that this technology has been in development since the early days of CGI (my dad has been talking about this for about twenty years). So far it's only been used to change an actors appearance, like Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button or Ralph Fiennes in the Harry Potter series. As seen here the idea is to have an actress play the body of the deceased star and digitally place a mask created from captured footage. We'll see. Marilyn is still in the Uncanny Valley, if you ask me but who knows? Maybe someday we'll get to see Meryl Streep and Katharine Hepburn (the two most Oscar-nominated persons of all time) co-star in a movie. I'd pay movie theatre prices to see that!
PS: Happy Leap Day!
