Slap & Tickle

Friday, January 06, 2006

Jon Stewart to Host Oscars™

Hurray! No Billy Crystal… Not to say that he is not that funny, but I got tired of his shtick.

On the other hand, I love me some Jon Stewart—so I’m especially excited that he’ll be hosting. Chris Rock only got one year of slamming on Jude Law… Does this mean that Sean Penn is the most powerful man in Hollywood? Poor Chris… Poor Jude… (we haven’t heard much from him since the Oscars, have we?)

Let the Nominations (for Brokeback) Begin

It hasn’t been a banner year for The Gays… while we can have civil unions in Connecticut and the UK, marriage seems to be out of the picture. The religious-right continues to slam us at every turn, leaving us with little reason to party…

…and then came Brokeback Mountain.

The Gays (and our beloved friendly straights) filled the movie theaters to give Brokeback the highest per screen average of any picture in 2005.* Finally, a beautiful movie, with beautiful actors that wasn’t porn! …sigh… and for those of you who wanted a little porn, it was nice to see Jake Gylenhaal bottom for Heath Ledger! That was the best Christmas present… ever!

Well, Christmas and New Year’s are over, and for many people it’s time to be depressed that we spent too much over the holidays, ate too much See’s Candy, and gained far too much weight. But for me, it is favorite season: Yes, it is time to roll out the red carpet for the most glorious time of the year: Oscar season! As I’m sure you are all aware—and who wouldn’t be?—the Academy Award nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 31, thus, a frenzy of activities (and award shows) are marching along—all trying desperately to be the barometer for the Oscars—up until Oscar Sunday, March 5.

The official opening of the season began when The Golden Globe Nominations were revealed in the second week of December, but the frenzy starts now as every possible organization that can hand out some sort of crappy award is stocking up on envelopes and champagne.

This week The Guilds released their nominations and let’s just say that Bareback Mountain… er, I mean Brokeback Mountain is receiving a mountain (pun intended) of nominations and The Gays in general** are racking up the nominations! Ladies and gentlemen: it’s the year of the fag!

And the (gay) nominees (from the nominating organizations) are:

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations were announced on Thursday for their January 29th Awards show:

Brokeback Mountain led the pack with four nods, including Heath Ledger (lead actor), Jake Gylenhaal (supporting actor) and Michelle Williams (supporting actress).

Capote (with lead actor Philip Seymour Hoffman) followed with three nominations.

Among those in the television Lead Actress race is Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman, for her role in Transamerica.

The Director’s Guild nominated Ang Lee for Brokeback, Bennet Miller for Capote, and too-hot-not-to-be-gay George Clooney for Goodnight and Good Luck (along with non-gay related Steven Spielberg for Munich and Paul Haggis for Crash).

The Producers Guild of America has Brokeback Mountain and Capote (along with Good Night, and Good Luck, Crash, and Walk the Line) vying for best-picture honors.

The Writers Guild of America nominated both Brokeback and Capote in adapted-screenplay category (with The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence and Syriana).

What does all this mean? I think it means that you can deny gays the right to marry all you want, but we are still going to find a way to party. With Oscar season upon us, you are going to see us partying our pants off—and if you watched any of the above movies, you’d know we’d probably be doing that anyhow, it’s just now we have a reason . It looks like 2006 is going to be a good year for the gays… provided we win.