Seth Macfarlane says ‘no way’ he would host Oscars again

LOS ANGELES – Comedian Seth MacFarlane said on Tuesday that he would not host the star-studded Academy Awards ceremony again, after TV critics panned Sunday’s show.
“Family Guy” creator and star MacFarlane was asked on Twitter whether he would host the Oscars a second time after making his debut in Sunday’s show, and replied: “No way. Lotta fun to have done it, though.”
MacFarlane’s response came after TV critics slammed the telecast, in which 40.3 million Americans saw Iran hostage thriller “Argo” take home the top prize for Best Picture.
In a night of risqué jokes about female nudity and zingers about gays and Jews, MacFarlane, 39, poked fun at himself in an opening sketch with William Shatner and the “Star Trek” star told him he was in danger of being deemed “the worst Oscar host ever.”
While some critics lashed out at MacFarlane’s hosting, others placed more blame on the overall song-and-dance-heavy show, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, which ran for 3 1/2 hours.
MacFarlane’s appeal among young people did though provide an 11 percent bump in the 18-49 demographic coveted by TV networks and advertisers. And overall viewer ratings were up, making for the largest Oscar audience in three years.

Read More

Oscar ‘losers’ to go home with $45,000 gift bags

LOS ANGELES – Oscar nominees who don’t end up with a coveted gold statuette at the Academy Awards on Sunday won’t go home empty handed after all.
Los Angeles-based marketing firm Distinctive Assets will be handing out its annual “Everyone Wins at the Oscars Nominee Gift Bag”, valued at more than $45,000, to the talented and well-dressed “losers,” the company said on Tuesday.
Among the items in the gift bags, known as swag bags, are trips to Australia, Hawaii and Mexico, personal training sessions, condoms, a bottle of tequila, hand-illustrated tennis shoes, appointments for injectable fillers and ‘portion-controlled’ dinnerware for those watching their figure, Distinctive Assets said in a statement.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars, stopped its practice of giving gift baskets to presenters and performers in 2007 after the practice came under closer scrutiny from U.S. tax authorities.
Celebrities who receive gifts and free trips at awards shows are expected to declare them to the Inland Revenue Service as income and pay the appropriate taxes.
The Distinctive Assets gift bag is not endorsed by the Academy but has been creating consolation goodie bags for 11 years now. The bags are delivered to the losing nominees to their homes directly or through their agents or publicists.

Read More

History alive and kicking at this year’s Oscars

LOS ANGELES – History is alive and kicking at this year’s Oscars in an unusually rich year for movies that plumb the distant and recent American past and have resonated with both audiences and voters.
Four of the nine Best Picture nominees at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony — Iran hostage drama “Argo,” Osama bin Laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” slavery revenge fantasy “Django Unchained” and U.S. presidential drama “Lincoln” — are the most discussed films of the awards season, with their very different takes on historical events.
“It’s an interesting year for thought-provoking movies that have a semblance of reality. Some look to where we come from and where we are going, and they get people thinking,” said Pete Hammond, awards columnist for entertainment industry website Deadline.com.
It’s a sharp contrast with 2012 when the silent film comedy “The Artist” was embraced by the 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a love letter to old Hollywood.
This time, terrorism, slavery, war, politics and the CIA take center stage in films that try to make sense of calamitous times for the United States and draw lessons for the future.

Read More

Could 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis win youngest best actress Oscar?

LOS ANGELES – She landed the part by lying about her age: Quvenzhane Wallis was five, and the filmmakers were only auditioning girls at least six years old.
But they believed her fib and tried her out — and were blown away, giving her the starring role in the low-budget “Beasts of the Southern Wild” over 4,000 other hopefuls.
And now she could become the youngest ever winner of the best actress Oscar, at the 85th Academy Awards, the climax of Hollywood’s annual awards season, next weekend.
“It was very clear …you don’t meet six-year-olds who have that quality,” said director Benh Zeitlin, recalling her audition. “She just had this natural charisma and focus and fierceness and wiseness and morality.
“Coming out of a body that small and a mind that young, it’s almost alien and alien in a way that goes kind of straight at your heart .. It’s her perspective that unlocks the truth in the film.”
That charisma is obvious when you see Wallis being interviewed to promote the movie over recent months, even before it was elevated to the stratosphere by being nominated for four Oscars in January, including best picture.
“I was in my bedroom half asleep,” Wallis told Jay Leno, about waking last month to learn she was nominated alongside Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Naomi Watts and Emmanuelle Riva, the oldest ever best actress nominee, at 85.
“So nothing reacted on the outside, but I was like flipping cartwheels and stuff on the inside,” she told the talk show host, whom she admonished — cutely — for asking her a question more appropriate for the director.

Read More