Oscar curse strikes again

Derrick Hawkins, Alestle Photographer

by Derrick Hawkins, Alestle Photographer

The glamorous life of red carpet events, fame, fortune and wanting to win that little gold man named Oscar comes with a price. It seems when ever something good happens, something bad it not far behind.

The first of the curse was Janet Gaynor in 1929. She won the very first Academy Award for Best Actress award in 1929 and four years latter she and her husband divorced. In more recent times, many of the Best Actress winners’ marriages have ended in divorce. Halle Berry won back in 2002 for her performance in “Monster’s Ball” several months latter she was divorced. In 2006, Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for “Walk the Line;” by 2007, she was divorced from Ryan Phillippe. Hillary Swank, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman are just some of the A-list ladies to have the Oscar curse.

The most recent lady bitten by the curse is our very own Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock. She won the best actress award March 7 for her performance in “The Blind Side,” and 10 days latter it was reported that she had moved out the house that she lived with husband, Jesse James. James is rumored to have cheated on Bullock, or so says the reported mistress, Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.

Sandra was indeed blind sided by her husband’s cheating ways, but then again what do you expect when the mistress was at one time, among other less savory professions, a stripper? Nevertheless, it seems that husbands of Best Actresses don’t like sitting on the bench while their leading lady is the one scoring the touchdowns.

Kanye West’s outbursts can have serious consequences

by Sean Roberts, Alestle photographer

Sean Roberts

Yo, Kanye, I’m gonna let you finish but Michael Jackson was one of the worst addicts of all time!

After his outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards, rapper Kanye West’s personality has come into the limelight—a very negative light. What he did was unacceptable- regardless of Taylor Swift’s singing abilities.

However, according to the New York Post , West may have been drinking before the show, and photos surfaced of him on the red carpet with a bottle of alcohol in his hand.  It’s not the first time he’s been accused of drunken outbursts. According to MTV News, he had another disturbance in 2006 about not winning best video for his song, “Touch the Sky”. He claimed to have had a “little sippy sippy” before the event.

One has to wonder how much alcohol played a part in all of his outbursts. I would wager that it’s at least likely that alcohol played a large part in some of his outbursts. He even admits it.

Could Kanye be dependent on alcohol, or does he just like to have a too much of a good time? Alcohol abuse occurs when someone consumes alcohol despite knowing continued consumption can cause significant problems. West continues to drink, presumably heavily, even after him crashing an award show in 2006.

Society always looks the other way when a celebrity has a serious addiction—that is, until he or she die. We all turned away from Michael Jackson and his problems until he died—the his doctor charged with his death.

Before West becomes another celebrity who goes before his time, he should seek treatment for whatever is causing these outbursts, before things get much more serious.

Bringing Up Oscar

By Jeff Mason

Later this week, the nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards will be announced. It should be a great week of speculation for awards and entertainment writers, serving up who they think will be chosen and who will be snubbed, opening up a debate about what exactly film excellence is and who is responsible for it. That sure would be nice, but that isn’t going to happen, at least not while being interesting.

Let me save you the trouble of waiting a week and tell you the nominees for Best Picture right now: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. In addition, this list is the same group that will be nominated for best director. And finally, as most everyone following the awards circuit knows, Slumdog Millionaire and director Danny Boyle are the heavy favorites to win the awards come Oscar night, so lets just go ahead and say they’ve won right now.

There you go, the race is over and most of the movies that will be nominated haven’t even been in wide release yet. Even most of the writing and acting awards already have their strong frontrunners, such as the supporting actor category where the bigger question is who will accept the award on Heath Ledger’s behalf.

While I’ll certainly be checking who made the list on Thursday, it probably won’t bring any surprises, so why not make things interesting by doing something the Academy hasn’t done since “Casablanca” won the Oscar in 1944: have 10 movies nominated for Best Picture.

Sure, it won’t necessarily be as prestigious, but it will make for a better discussion and allow many movies that wouldn’t otherwise be recognized get in. It would let comedies and action movies, which usually get slighted in favor of dramatic ones, jump into the discussion and at least be recognized.

Animated films could vie for the highest award in the land instead of being tossed in a category that nominates nearly half of the movies that qualify in it. Possibly the most important thing an expanded Best Picture category would do is open up the discussion to the usually neglected independent movies.

Just imagine if the Best Picture category included The Wrestler, Tropic Thunder, WALL-E, Rachel Getting Married and Burn After Reading. Sure, none of these movies would stand a chance to win the award, but it would make the nominations more interesting and give each one of these movies more exposure, which is especially important for the independent films.

It wouldn’t change a whole lot in the end and would probably tick off some people in the Academy, but why not do it for the sake of mixing things up?

Best and Worst Dressed at the Golden Globes: A Subjective Idea

By Sydney Elliot

So, I don’t really pay much attention to awards shows, but this year’s Golden Globes have caught my attention. I didn’t watch the actual ceremony, but the hype surrounding one of my favorite movies of the year, Slumdog Millionaire, made me actually look at the nominees and the winners of this year’s Globes.

But in my search of who swept the Globes besides Slumdog and 30 Rock, I found out who the best and worst dressed were. I’m not exactly fashion savvy, but looking at the commentary on the worst dressed of this year’s Globes actually made me feel bad for these celebs. Who strutted their stuff down the sacred red carpet and who rolled out of bed and onto the red carpet? That’s definitely subjective.

I compared the lists of best and worst dressed from Entertainment Weekly online, Film.com and AOL.com, and I found that some of the were similar. It just seems like so much hype was put into the fashion scores and wardrobe let downs that no one took the time to consider who won and on what grounds. Isn’t it more important that we acknowledge great directing or acting ability instead of who wore what to which awards ceremony?