Academy Awards

Picture: The Artist , Thomas Langmann, producer Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners Cinematography: Hugo , Robert Richardson Art Direction: Hugo , Dante Ferretti (production...

An hour into the Oscar telecast Sunday night, with only four of 26 statuettes distributed, you could hear remote controls across America click off the tube. An IRS 1040 form would have made livelier TV than the 71st annual Academy Awards, a barrage of tributes to dead cowboys and real-life heroes memorialized on celluloid. In a room containing Gwyneth Paltrow, Whoopi Goldberg and Steven Spielberg, why import Sen. John Glenn and Gen. Colin Powell for glamor? If brevity is the soul of wit, then these Academy Awards were positively soulless.

It was 1942, and one of the nominees for an Academy Award had refused to show up at the Biltmore Hotel. "He did not want to be humiliated," his wife later explained. "He thought he'd get mad and do something drastic when he didn't win. " The writer was Herman Mankiewicz and the film was one you may have heard of - Citizen Kane. He won the award for screenwriting, but his misgivings at participating in the ritual of the Oscars were well founded. Mankiewicz could argue on the evidence and many precedents that little justice could be expected from the Academy voters, and predict that someone would make a fool of himself.

I'll tell you, it's hell getting old. I not only can't stay up for World Series games any more, I can't make it through the Academy Awards. I start out bright as a People magazine subscriber, but as the evening wears on, things start running together, and I begin to doze off. And in the doze, I dream. I dream up my own Oscar ceremonies, awards to real world people engaged in real world dramas. For example, here are the Oscars I gave out the other night, while the Motion Picture Academy was discovering (Surprise!

You may find it a bit hairy to recall who won Academy Awards last year. But hostess Jane Fonda's daring new coiffure may come to mind. The shoulder-length wispy style caused waves in the fashion world; women still trickle into the Barron Hair Studio in Studio City, the place responsible for the look of Fonda's locks, and ask for her style. For Los Angeles hair stylists, the anticipation of last night's awards show practically made hair rise with excitement. Which hairdo would cause the biggest stir?

Those who watched CBS's NCAA basketball championship last night instead of ABC's Oscar telecast didn't know what they were missing - until they tuned to the Hollywood ceremony at 10 p.m., when the game ended. Then they soon discovered what loyal Oscar viewers already knew: They were missing nothing. Last night's Oscar telecast was more boring than a Southfork oil drill. Many opportunities for drama were robbed, most opportunities for comedy were mishandled, and any chance of pace or excitement was doomed from the start when Telly Savalas, Dom DeLuise and Pat Morita bleated the opening number.

It was the the most expensive picture in the history of movies, and the delays and staggering logistical problems that beset its production were eagerly publicized in the media. But the studio that gambled everything on the epic film reaped a huge reward as it became a worldwide blockbuster. Titanic in 1997? No, Ben-Hur in 1959. Ben-Hur went on to win a dozen Oscar nominations and an unprecedented 11 statuettes, a record of suitably biblical proportions that stands to this day. But will it still stand after tomorrow night?

In 1988, a couple of months before she won her best-actress Oscar for The Accused, Jodie Foster mused on her first trip to the Academy Awards. She was 13, and a supporting-actress nominee for Taxi Driver. "The Oscars are like a party, in a way, and it is a great honor to be recognized by your peers," said Foster, nominated this year for her turn in The Silence of the Lambs. "But actually, I think the only thing you remember afterward is who wore what. " How true. In bygone decades, when the fashions of the moment were hideous to begin with, attendees seemed to compete for the tackiest-outfit Oscar.

Nominations for the Academy Awards will be announced Thursday at 8:35 a.m. For coverage, go to

"Cher will still look like Cher," reports designer Bob Mackie of the gown he's whipping up for the actress to wear at the April 11 Academy Awards. He promises, however, "she's not going to look like she did a couple of years ago" - when she showed up at the Academy Awards in a see-through harem outfit that was barely there. Mackie pleads guilty to having designed the outrageous outfit that set eyes to popping, but he assures us, "I didn't recommend it; it was her idea. " This year Mackie is not only designing the gowns Cher and producer Sherry Lansing will wear to the Awards, but is creating all the Oscar show costumes as well.

Nominations for the Academy Awards will be announced Thursday at 8:35 a.m. For coverage, go to

Picture: The Artist , Thomas Langmann, producer Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners Cinematography: Hugo , Robert Richardson Art Direction: Hugo , Dante Ferretti (production...

THE ACADEMY Award favorites this year - "Hugo" and "The Artist" - are movies about the wonder of movies, the sort that do well at Oscar time. "The Artist" is a love letter to cinema's adaptive power; "Hugo" a celebration of pioneer Georges Melies, an early effects wizard and audience-wowing showman. But here's a question: If Melies were alive today, what movie would he be watching? "Hugo" or that other backward-looking piece of nostalgia, "The Artist"? I think Melies would be scratching his head, wondering why the latter is not even tinted.

Eddie Murphy , who garnered his first and only Oscar nomination in 2007 for Dreamgirls , will own the show next year. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday that Murphy, 50, would host the 84th annual Academy Awards, live on ABC on Feb. 26. "I am enormously honored to join the great list of past Academy Awards hosts, from Hope and Carson to Crystal, Martin, and Goldberg, among others," Murphy said in...

LOS ANGELES - The release of "The Adventures of Tintin" trailer last week revealed the look of director Steven Spielberg's long-gestating adaptation of the popular European comic series. The story of an intrepid young reporter on a hunt for a ship's treasure inspired by the work of Belgian artist Herge, "Tintin" was shot in a shadowy film-noir style using the same performance-capture technology that James Cameron deployed on "Avatar. " The trailer's scenes of photo-real characters adventuring in an animated world raise anew a question that has bedeviled the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recent years: how to treat films that use performance capture, or motion capture, as the technique is also called.

While the value of an Oscar is priceless, the price tag of an Academy Award campaign is dear. Yet the win isn't about the statuette alone; it's also about the film's enhanced earnings potential. This year, the average bill for the Oscar hunt of a multiple nominee is $10 million to $15 million, according to Tom O'Neil, whose website, goldderby.com, is the gold standard for all things Oscar. Ever since 1999, when mogul Harvey Weinstein ambushed contender Saving Private Ryan with his $15 million ad blitz for Shakespeare in Love , Oscar spending has exploded.

TODAY, OSCAR snubees are wondering what they have to do to get a nomination. Cut off an arm? Possibly. It worked for James Franco in "127 Hours," for "True Grit," and for "Winter's Bone. " All of these limb-rending epics scored nominations for cast and crew yesterday, while other folks went home . . . empty-handed. Like Chris Nolan. His hit "Inception" scored nine nominations, second only to "True Grit" (10) and "The King's Speech" (12), but he was again shut out in the race for best director (shades of "The Dark Knight")

LOS ANGELES - Organizers of the Academy Awards are ironing out the logistics of moving the ceremony up to late January or early February in 2012, and that could mean that Oscar voters may be watching contending films - and voting for the winners - on their laptops. Next year's ceremony will be held Feb. 27, but an earlier date could allow the academy to steal back some of the thunder from other award shows and boost TV ratings. But any date switch - which has yet to be approved by the academy - has been complicated by the National Football League, which is considering adding two games to its schedule.

IT'S THE DAY after the Oscars in economic-crisis America. Mind if we warm our cold fingers a little longer in that Swarovski-crystal glow? Scanning the post-show reviews, producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark scored well. With congenial song-and-dance hunk Hugh Jackman in the host-seat, the Oscars had more sizzle and less snipe - or, as Jackman promised Barbara Walters during her pre-show special, "a little more show and a little less biz. " Having previous winners laud nominees in specific categories got good reviews.