4:58PM Hey, Ryan here live in the press room at the Academy Awards. The show has yet to officially start, with a half hour of red carpet interviews left before the show begins, plenty of time to get your Oscar Bingo Cards ready.
5:39 With the red carpet portion of the show done, it's time to see what Hugh Jackman can do as host of the Academy Awards. Plenty of jokes about his home country, and the usual host opening number. He might not be a comedian, but I can't imagine Billy Crystal pulling off the dancing so well.
5:43 Now that Jackman's obligatory Wolverine plug is over , it's time to see an Award, starting with Actress in a Supporting Role. And the award goes to...Penelope Cruz for Vicky Christina Barcelona.
5:52 Time to award the writers. Dustin Lance Black wins for Original Screenplay for Milk with an emotional and politically-minded speech. The Oscar for Adapted Screenplay is next, with Simon Beaufoy's script winning for Slumdog Millionaire, in what could be the first of many Slumdog Oscars.
6:05 The fairly new catagory of Best Animated Feature Film is next, with three whole movies nominated: WALL-E, Bolt and Kung Fu Panda. And the winner, no surprise to anyone, is...Bolt. I'm kidding! Of course, it's WALL-E.
6:10 An early favorite for best speech of the night goes to Japan's Kunio Kato, winner for Animated Short Film, who thanked a variety of people including "Mr. Roboto." Cue the band with STYX! No? Oh, ok. Well, anyway, great speech, Kunio.
6:24 With 10 nominations for Slumdog Millionaire and 13 for Benjamin Button, the running tally for the two most nominated movies stands as 1 for Slumdog to 2 for Button after Button wins for both Achievement in Art Direction and Makeup.
6:25 Twilight sighting! I couldn't tell what was happening when Robert Pattinson was on stage due to all the high-pitched screaming in the press room.
6:30 Emotions still run high backstage for Dustin Lance Black. "Harvey gave me his story and it saved my life," he said. The same could be said for Penelope Cruz, however, she continued where she left off at the end of her acceptance speech, speaking mostly in Spanish. If she had said "The library is green" I definitely would have understood it, but I'm pretty sure she didn't. Wait, she spoke in English! Cruz mentions that she wondered about the "tone" of Vicky Christina Barcelona, but "never doubted the genius of Woody Allen."
6:34 Make that 2 to 2! Slumdog wins another, this time for Cinematography.
Posted 02.22.09 by Ryan 
In Slumdog Millionaire, a poor orphan without any schooling makes it to the final round of India's biggest quiz show, causing an entire nation to wonder how he's doing it -- and the police to arrest him on suspicion of cheating when the show breaks for the evening.
Despite winning numerous festival and audience awards, Slumdog initially wasn't going to be released in the U.S. Director Danny Boyle says, "It's sort of a bit like the story in the film really -- the film and this guy apparently [have] no prospects and then they get turned around and suddenly fortune beckons."
The movie was inspired by Q & A: A Novel, the first book by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. To write the movie's original script, Simon Beaufoy "had to go to Bombay and rediscover a whole life story for this character...while keeping this very seductive core of [the novel]."
To find more details about Slumdog Millionaire, which is being viewed as an Oscar contender, see our interview with Slumdog director and interview with the movie's writer.
Posted 11.12.08 by reelz