Screening Gotham: "I Guess I Should Write About the Oscars" Edition

(Photo: NY Times)

Some of today's Oscar news of note from around New York:

--So Martin Scorsese is now "Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese." Which means two big things: 1) Fans will no longer be required to rely on their half-assed validations of work like Raging Bull and GoodFellas when challenging that relentlessly skeptical anti-Marty majority, and 2) America can finally get off the bus. Maybe the last five months of hype were worth it after all.

--"Let's face it," writes NY Daily News pop-tard Krissy Mac in the introduction to her red-carpet liveblog. "The Oscars are not about The Queen, The Departed or whatever the hard-to-pronounce name of the Best Foreign-Language Film might be, they're about the FASHION." To wit, at the 6:54 mark: "Penelope Cruz looks a little Draconian to me ... like she might swirl around her black cape any minute." The irony is that she likely doesn't realize how funny that actually is.

--Not to be outdone, the Post's resident culture shrew Sara Stewart got loose with her own Oscar blog. "We like honorary award winner Ennio Morricone better when he's speaking the international language of music," she notes. Classy.

--Speaking of classy, who else but Harvey would plant proxies with party invitations at the end of a red carpet? "These poor people had to corner every celebrity coming down the carpet and shove an invite into their hands and say, 'Come to Harvey's, it's going to be great!" reports a Page Six "spy," absolutely not affiliated in any possible way with the Weinstein Company. (Evidently Rosario Dawson, Lindsay Lohan and -- wait for it -- Brett Ratner fell for it.)

--Finally, the gang at Pajiba has the best suggestions yet for trimming and improving the marathon telecast: "But for the love of God, leave the speeches alone — if William Monahan wants to get baked to the gills and rattle off a laundry list of names we’ve never heard of, just let the man. You give him enough rope, and maybe he’ll even hang himself — that’s what we’re all here to see, anyway."

Posted at February 26, 2007 9:36 AM