Blogging the Oscars: The Carpetbagger Reports

By: E&P Staff E&P was too lazy to blog the Academy Awards ceremony this year -- we'll just say it moved along well and Jon Stewart was okay but not zingy -- so we will take the easy way out and just quote a few nuggets from David Carr at his Carpetbagger blog at www.nytimes.com
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Each year, four acting slots come up for grabs. European actors frequently are part of the mix, but they never have walked away with four. Taking cultural hegemony to a new tier, Hollywood mostly stood by. And even the guys who won picture and director, are about as far as you can get from Hollywood guys. The industry rewarded itself, except it was a lot of folks who ain?t exactly industry.

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Glen Hansard showed up on the red carpet with his beat-up guitar on one arm and his professional and personal partner Marketa Irglova on the other.
For two people who busked while they worked on ?Once,? they?ve done okay for themselves, including just winning best song. They took it as a sign that a couple of weeks ago, they were eating in a restaurant and noticed that they were sitting in by Melissa Ethridge, the winner of best song last year. ?You?ll be fine,? she told them.
Hansard was effusive, in back, including walking into the press room and saying, ?I just got a text from Bono. That is the biggest thing in the world that can happen to an Irishman.?
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Tilda Swinton could not be any more different that the doughy, sweaty character she plays in ?Michael Clayton.? With a shock of red, short hair and a very thin draped in black velvet, she looked like a human exclamation point.
Oddly, she is not going to be hanging on to her Oscar. She already promised it out to her agent, setting a new standard in agent-thanking. ?He looks exactly like the statue,? she said. She said it was a weird moment when it was announced.

"I really just had a reverse Zoolander moment when I think I heard someone else?s name and suddenly slowly heard my own,? she said. ?I?m still recovering from that moment, and I have absolutely no idea what happened after that. So, you know, you can tell me my dress fell off and I?d believe you, so don?t be cruel. ?
She takes both herself and the proceedings with a huge shaker of salt.

On the carpet, she leaned in and said, ?I feel like I?m in a dog show.?