Oscars 2010: Oscar Red Carpet, Sunday morning (video)

This Oscars 2010: Oscar Red Carpet, Sunday morning blog post is being written as this blogger's taking a much needed break from covering The Night of 100 Stars Party at The Beverly Hills Hotel. What's so frustrating and yet fun about this star-studed event is that, even though many of the celebrities are what are called "B" listers, they are a hell of a lot of fun to talk to and to be with. So much so that I've missed the first 35 minutes of The Oscars!

Of all the names, David Leisure, James Cromwell, Sean Young, Stephanie Powers, Stephen Collins, and Jason Ritter, among them, all great people, Ms. Young was the most fun to talk with. Sean Young has been characterized in the media in ways that are not kind. The person I met is amazingly bright, very engaging and a lot of fun. She's open and brutally honest, which I can see may set some people a bit off, but it's endearing.

Earlier in the morning I visited The Red Carpet during the media setup period. While stars had not come through at that time before 11 AM, the place, as you can see in the video, was abuzz with the life of people. From the people in the bleachers to the media representatives on The Red Carpet it was the place to be. Yours truly found the perfect role for his outsized personality: revving up the people in the Kodak-sponsored bleachers area. (That's Tina from Kodak in the video thumbnail photo.)

My visit became a YouTube Partner roundup, as Jamal from Blacktree Media and his team, Cerk from The Young Turks, and me as Zennie62 got together in the middle of The Red Carpet, the future of media.

This future of media had to leave at 11 AM. I got a limousine and headed over to The Beverly Hills Hotel for The Night of 100 Starts event. That's where I am now, happy for Geoffrey Fletcher's win of the Bsst Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Precious.

Stay tuned.

The Oscars 2010 Date and Time, 5 PM PST; 8 PM EST; not in New York

Beverly Hills, CA - Today's Oscar Sunday! The 82nd Annual Academy Awards, or "The Oscars" will start at 3 PM PST and 6 PM EST for coverage of The Red Carpet and 5 PM PST and 8 PM EST for the Oscars.

It's all on ABC Television except for those poor people in the New York City area, you're caught in the middle of the feud between ABC and Cablevision and may not be able to see The Oscars.

The ABC v. Cablevision issue is over monthly customer fees. Reportedly, according to the Wall Street Journal, Disney wanted to charge $1 per subscriber per month, but Disney says it is half that request.

Whatever the case, much of New York will miss the Oscars. But you can catch it online. ABC will have a live show from The Red Carpet here: ABC Live. Also, search around carefully, because some pages that read they have an "Oscars live stream" really don't have it.

Betty Nguyen leaving CNN for CBS News

Beverly Hills, CA - As we get ready for The Oscars (time at 5 PM PST, 8 PM EST), there's a news that popular and beautiful CNN anchor Betty Nguyen is leaving CNN for CBS News according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Betty Nguyen did confirm that Oscar Sunday will be her last day with CNN on her Twitter page:

Aww. Last morning on the show. I'm really going to miss CNN. My friends & colleagues here are truly top notch.
about 5 hours ago via web

Nguyen finished her last week at CNN with an inteview with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. While Nguyen's leaving for CNN for CBS, the AJC reports Anderson Cooper's staying put.

Stay tuned for more intense Oscar Coverage from Hollywood and Highland and Beverly Hills.  Check Zennie62.com for Twitter updates.

The Oscars predictions - Avatar loses Best Picture to The Hurt Locker

Also: The Oscars, The Hurt Locker, Best Picture, Kathryn Bigelow, 2010 Oscars Predictions, 82nd annual Academy Awards, Avatar director James Cameron

Beverly Hills, CA - The general habit here is to wait until the last possible minute until predictions for The Oscars are made. That's to give this blogger enough time to research how politics has impacted the Oscars race.

The question is annually asked "Did you see every movie?" which has nothing to do with predicting which movie will win what award at The Oscars. Getting one's Oscar predictions correct means taking one's heart out of it, and just using their head. What you have to do is guess how the Academy's going to pick and why.

The Hurt Locker is a dramatically powerful film. So much so that an arguably questionable decision to ban Nicolas Chartier, one of the fllm's producers, from the Oscars on Sunday for an email he wrote to friends in the Academy asking them to vote for his picture, will not hurt its momentum.

The reason is the overwhelming desire to give the Best Director Award to The Hurt Locker's brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow, and make her the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director. The momentum to make this happen is enormous, so much so that I'm going out on a limb and say there's no contest. And The Academy tends to believe that a film can't have the best director and not be the best picture. This powerful desire will override the new-for-2010 preference voting system and give The Hurt Locker the prize.

 Now, with that information in place and compared with "precursor" awards, here's Zennie62's Oscar Predictions for 2010:

Performance by an actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
Performance by an actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Mo'Nique in Precious
Best animated feature film of the year: Disney / Pixar's UP
Achievement in art direction: Avatar
Achievement in cinematography: Avatar
Achievement in costume design: Coco before Chanel
Achievement in directing: The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow
Best documentary feature: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Best documentary short subject: The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Achievement in film editing: Avatar
Best foreign language film of the year: The White Ribbon
Achievement in makeup: Star Trek
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): Up
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
Best motion picture of the year: The Hurt Locker
Best animated short film: A Matter of Loaf and Death (Nick Park of Aardman)
Best live action short film: The New Tenants
Achievement in sound editing: Star Trek
Achievement in sound mixing: Star Trek
Achievement in visual effects: Avatar
Adapted screenplay: Up in the Air
Original screenplay: The Hurt Locker

The Oscars - The Red Carpet has black version of District 9

Saturday before Oscar Sunday and the 82nd Annual 2010 Academy Awards is setup day on The Red Carpet. Media representing hundreds of outlets are here on The Red Carpet, but what's shocking is that in 2010 - in the 21st Century - The Academy Awards has its own version of District 9. In this case, three African American media outlets are all grouped in one place near the very end of The Red Carpet: BET, TV One, and American Urban Radio.

This came to light during my video interview with Jamal Finkely and Mike Melendy of Blacktree TV. It was Jamal, who's also doing double duty with another media outlet, who brought the issue to my attention. As an aside, Jamal's a YouTube Partner I met at the YouTube Partners Roundtable of last November 2009.

Jamal and his associate Mike Melendy cover entertainment events at Blacktree.tv and at their companion YouTube channel Blacktreemedia. While happy to be on The Red Carpet, the physical placement of the three black media firms together in one remote area was something that had to be mentioned.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), or more accurately someone working for AMPAS and perhaps unchecked, set up the media organization to have what is The Red Carpet's version of the alien ghetto in the 2010 Best Picture nominee movie District 9.

In District 9, aliens from a ship that had become "stuck" in position over Johannesburgh, South Africa, were segregated by the government to one place called "District 9". Hopefully there's not a Latino section or any other kind of racial or ethnic divisions along The Red Carpet for The Oscars. We didn't look from that perspective; the area Jamal pointed to is the one he works in.

AMPAS must end this practice ASAP. It's shocking to think that an organization which has such a large public presence and exists in the 21st Century would segregate media in this way. Moreover, it's terrible that AMPAS' overall media approach is so very antiquated.

If AMPAS is happy with the media coverage it's getting for The Academy Awards, it has no idea of what's possible and what it should expect today. There's no place for bloggers or vloggers and no "Big Tent" for New Media. No collaboration with firms like YouTube, Flickr, or Twitter or Google.

What's going on at AMPAS in this New Media area is the question for this day. If the New Media problem's taken care of, the apparent racial discrimination problem on The Red Carpet will end too. Or it should.

Stay tuned.

Oscar Buzz: American Idol's Ryan Seacrest at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel

Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol and Executive Producer of "On the Air with Ryan Seacrest, appeared at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel for a what seemed to be a New York minute as this blogger was collecting himself from the Hollywood and Highland slip and fall and making new blog posts.

Still, shaken marbles weren't enough to stop me from having the presence of mind to stop uploading a video and turn the camcorder to capture Seacreast as he was doing "photo-ops" with fans.

The desired focus here is video, so I asked Mr. Seacrest for an interview later rather than throwing my camcorder in his face TMZ-style. Nothing against TMZ, it's just not what's done in this space.

Ryan Seacrest is known as the hardest-working person in Hollywood. He's the host of American Idol. The executive producer of On The Air with Ryan Seacrest, and The Dick Clark New Year's Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest.

Stay tuned.

Zennie's slip and fall on way to Oscar Red Carpet for press conference

Hollywood and Highland is the place where the Kodak Theater is which is the location of Sunday's Oscar telecast and The Red Carpet. The pavement next to The Red Carpet that's used for pedestrians and has the Hollywood Stars on it, is of some kind of tarrazo material such that during a rain it gets so slippery that it's dangerous.

I should know because as I explained in the video, I fell twice.

The first time I slipped as I was walking onto the pavement after crossing Highland Avenue to get to a press conference announcing the winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and MTV-U student competition to be the interviewer on The Red Carpet Sunday. I managed to catch myself that time as I was falling backwards. After that, I tried to walk carefully and slowly. A lot of good that did.

On my slippery way to the press event, I had an idea to turn back and make a quick video to explain to someone to take steps to prevent someone from falling the way I did. I turned and then took two steps onto the pavement and the next thing I saw was black. I felt like I was alive in a black tunnel, then saw light, then a security person asking me if I wanted help from the end of the tunnel. I said "yes" and reached out. I felt a number of people grab me at once and pulled me up; at that point I fought to clear my head, and did.

It was scary. What happened was I'd slipped and fell back; my head hit the steel plate of a steel girder that was part of the support structure for The Red Carpet.

What went through my head, which is still now a bit fuzzy as I concentrate to write this, was how much I needed to stay alive for my Mother as I'm the only child. That was what made me fight to get back to normal and once I did, I resolved to try to return to normal, so I headed for the press conference. But I was, and am not, the same.

Beyond me, someone should do something about that pavement. I was told several people fell, and met the mother of a little girl who told me her daughter fell. Reportedly, the property in question belongs to the City of Los Angeles, so I'm going to tweet this over to Mayor Vililaragosa and bring it to his attention, especially since he follows me on Twitter.

I want to take this time to thank the security staff at Hollywood and Highland for their care and assistance.

It's one thing for this to happen today, but it would be a disaster if it were to happen on Oscar Sunday. Pray for no rain.

The Oscars: Danny Glover calling on boycott of Hugo Boss suits

As Sundays Oscars approaches, we'll see styles that set the trend for the year and some wearing traditional brands, like Hugo Boss. Actor Danny Glover's not going to be one of them and he's issuing a call to celebrities like Sean Penn, who's presenting and Oscar nominees Colin Firth, Matt Damon, and Quentin Tarantino, to name just some of the male actors, not to wear Hugo Boss suits.

In a letter, Danny Glover says that he's writing to take a "small stand" for American workers. Hugo Boss is reportedly set to close American plants and fire "more than 300 workers".

According to the SEIU Workers United...

They say they want to make suits more cheaply in Turkey or Eastern Europe. They don’t even claim the Cleveland factory is losing money -- they just say they need to make a bit more money. Please.

It's clear that the one major cause of America's economic decline has bee the offshoring of jobs. This blogger estimates that $976 billion in wealth has been lost in over 30 years of this process; over $400 billion over the last eight years. Some economists have pointed to the sub-prime loan system as the reason for America's problems, but it takes a job to pay a loan. The real problem has been that the rate of growth in the number American jobs has been negative, not positive.

No word on the reaction of Oscar stars to the boycott of Hugo Boss by Danny Glover.

Stay tuned.

Oscars predictions: The Hurt Locker beats Avatar for Best Picture

Also: The Oscars, The Hurt Locker, Best Picture, Kathryn Bigelow, 2010 Oscars Predictions, 82nd annual Academy Awards, Avatar director James Cameron

Beverly Hills, CA - The general habit here is to wait until the last possible minute until predictions for The Oscars are made. That's to give this blogger enough time to research how politics has impacted the Oscars race.

The question is annually asked "Did you see every movie?" which has nothing to do with predicting which movie will win what award at The Oscars. Getting one's Oscar predictions correct means taking one's heart out of it, and just using their head. What you have to do is guess how the Academy's going to pick and why.

The Hurt Locker is a dramatically powerful film. So much so that an arguably questionable decision to ban Nicolas Chartier, one of the fllm's producers, from the Oscars on Sunday for an email he wrote to friends in the Academy asking them to vote for his picture, will not hurt its momentum.

The reason is the overwhelming desire to give the Best Director Award to The Hurt Locker's brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow, and make her the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director. The momentum to make this happen is enormous, so much so that I'm going out on a limb and say there's no contest. And The Academy tends to believe that a film can't have the best director and not be the best picture. This powerful desire will override the new-for-2010 preference voting system and give The Hurt Locker the prize.

 Now, with that information in place and compared with "precursor" awards, here's Zennie62's Oscar Predictions for 2010:

Performance by an actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
Performance by an actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Mo'Nique in Precious
Best animated feature film of the year: Disney / Pixar's UP
Achievement in art direction: Avatar
Achievement in cinematography: Avatar
Achievement in costume design: Coco before Chanel
Achievement in directing: The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow
Best documentary feature: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Best documentary short subject: The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Achievement in film editing: Avatar
Best foreign language film of the year: The White Ribbon
Achievement in makeup: Star Trek
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): Up
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
Best motion picture of the year: The Hurt Locker
Best animated short film: A Matter of Loaf and Death (Nick Park of Aardman)
Best live action short film: The New Tenants
Achievement in sound editing: Star Trek
Achievement in sound mixing: Star Trek
Achievement in visual effects: Avatar
Adapted screenplay: Up in the Air
Original screenplay: The Hurt Locker

Anquan Boldin signed by Baltimore Ravens; Oakland Raiders need him

Anquan Boldin, a fast yet powerful and sure handed, angry-running NFL wide receiver, was acquired in a trade from the Arizona Cardinals to the Baltimore Ravens during the NFL Free Agency period. The move is yet another score in the storied career of Ravens General Manager Ozzie Newsome.

The Ravens gave their third-round and fourth-round draft choices in the 2010 NFL Draft to the Cardinals for Boldin and a fifth-round pick in the same draft. But it's the Oakland Raiders who needed, and should have got, Anquan Boldin.

Of all NFL teams, the Oakland Raiders lack an experienced deep threat, sure handed wide receiver who's feared in the NFL. There's no one pass-catcher on the Oakland Raiders squad that has been effective for the Oakland Raiders. And while much of the problem is due to poor coaching in the passing game, Raiders receivers have done little when they've caught the ball.

Anquan Boldin would have been the perfect player around which to rebuild the Oakland Raiders passing game. But the Baltimore Ravens got him first.

Rodney Stuckey: prayers for Rodney Stuckey after apparent seizure

Detroit Pistons point guard Rodney Stuckey is receiving prayers and well-wishings from the entire sports World after suffering from an apparent seizure during the Pistons game against the Cleveland Cavaliers Friday night.

Cav star LeBron James said to the Detroit Free Press "The game is much bigger than players, coaches and fans. Tonight was a game between Cleveland and Detroit, but when an instance like that happens, we all become one family. All of our prayers are with Rodney Stuckey and his family."

Rodney Stuckey reportedly collapsed behind the Pistons' bench during a time-out at 2:30 left in the third quarter. Stuckey was said to be fine after receiving medical attention.

The Hurt Locker: Best Picture - 2010 Oscar Predictions

Also: Hurt Locker, Best Picture, 2010 Oscar Predictions, 82nd annual Academy Awards

Beverly Hills, CA - The general habit here is to wait until the last possible minute until Oscar Predictions are filed. That's to give this blogger enough time to research how politics has impacted the Oscar race.

The question is annually asked "Did you see every movie?" which has nothing to do with predicting which movie will win what award. Getting one's predictions correct means taking one's heart out of it, and just using their head. What you have to do is guess how the Academy's going to pick and why.

The Hurt Locker is a dramatically powerful film. So much so that an arguably questionable decision to ban Nicolas Chartier, one of the fllm's producers, from the Oscars on Sunday for an email he wrote to friends in the Academy asking them to vote for his picture, will not hurt its momentum.

The reason is the overwhelming desire to give the Best Director Award to The Hurt Locker's brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow, and make her the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director. The momentum to make this happen is enormous, so much so that I'm going out on a limb and say there's no contest. And The Academy tends to believe that a film can't have the best director and not be the best picture. This powerful desire will override the new-for-2010 preference voting system and give The Hurt Locker the prize.

 Now, with that information in place and compared with "precursor" awards, here's Zennie62's Oscar Predictions for 2010:

Performance by an actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
Performance by an actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Mo'Nique in Precious
Best animated feature film of the year: Disney / Pixar's UP
Achievement in art direction: Avatar
Achievement in cinematography: Avatar
Achievement in costume design: Coco before Chanel
Achievement in directing: The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow
Best documentary feature: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Best documentary short subject: The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Achievement in film editing: Avatar
Best foreign language film of the year: The White Ribbon
Achievement in makeup: Star Trek
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): Up
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
Best motion picture of the year: The Hurt Locker
Best animated short film: A Matter of Loaf and Death (Nick Park of Aardman)
Best live action short film: The New Tenants
Achievement in sound editing: Star Trek
Achievement in sound mixing: Star Trek
Achievement in visual effects: Avatar
Adapted screenplay: Up in the Air
Original screenplay: The Hurt Locker