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Renaming The Academy Awards Venue, Oh No!

Kelly — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:00:32 +0000

As we all know by now because we think we saw someone Instagram about it, which is honestly the truth in my case because the world is a very funny vampire, the IRL film company Kodak is filing for bankruptcy. Very sad! I bet. I’m sure people are sad about it. I’m not sad about it because I have too many other things to be sad about, like how I need a new book of checks and I feel like that’s going to be kind of annoying to get, and TAXES?, and most importantly how NOW the Oscars venue isn’t going to be called the “Kodak Theatre” anymore. BUT MY CHILDHOOD! From Deadline:

Bankrupt Kodak said in court filing this week that it wants its name taken off the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland, the home of the Academy Awards since 2001. The company said the move to relinquish naming rights will save it serious cash as it begins bankruptcy proceedings after filing for Chapter 11 protection earlier this month.

“So it goes.” Yes? This is just like in that book when that guy says, “So it goes.” O, FORTUNA. Although this is a difficult time, as it’s always hard when something we thought would be one way forever suddenly changes, like when Videogum’s logo wasn’t this* anymore, we have to pick up our hearts and insides from the floor, stuff them back into our limp bodies, and carry on. Something that I think will help us move on is imagining the theatre with different, appropriate, and likely names.

The Videogum Why Don’t YOU Caption It? Contest: The Annual Vanity Fair “Hollywood” Cover

Gabe — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:30:29 +0000

It’s here! The annual “Hollywood” issue of Vanity Fair! Each year, Vanity Fair publishes 4 issues with Johnny Depp on the cover, 6 issues with John F. Kennedy Jr. on the cover, one Royal Family issue, and of course the Hollywood issue. (What a great magazine! I think my favorite thing about it are the cover articles about Cher.) This year’s Hollywood cover features the following actresses: Jennifer Lawrence, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Rooney Mara, Elizabeth Olsen, Lily Collins, Shailene Woodley, Paula Patton, Felicity Jones, Brit Marling, Adepero Oduye. I will give you one guess on whether the actresses of color appear on the outside of the magazine or folded up on the inside of the magazine. (Hint: “the 1997 hit film, Amistad.”) (Vanity Fair could try to argue that the cover alignment simply represents a star’s actual box office draw, except that I’m pretty sure more people saw Paula Patton’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol than all of the movies featuring the front cover actresses combined. Ding dong! I rest my case!) This is always a very fun caption contest because there are so many choices! Will you make a The Hunger Games joke about Jennifer Lawrence? Will you make a Rooney Mara joke about what is up with Rooney Mara? Will you make a who is Mia Wasikowska joke? It’s up to you. YOU are the Hollywood big-shot now! (No, you aren’t.)

Winner will receive special placement in this week’s Monsters’ Ball, also known as “A Civilian Oscar.” (Click the image to enlarge.)

Ryan Gosling’s Dramatic Reaction To His “Oscar Snub” Revealed!

Gabe — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:00:01 +0000

Personally, I don’t really understand the idea of an Oscar snub before the awards have even been handed out. I definitely think that the Academy, when faced with a multiple choice selection of possible winners often makes some pretty creatively bankrupt, politically savvy decisions that reflect much more the power of the Hollywood publicity machine and the empty-rhetoric of its moral core than any kind of reflection of talent or quality, and so in that sense one can be snubbed. But if someone didn’t get an Oscar nomination even, it doesn’t really feel like a snub. They just didn’t get one. Game over. End of story. Maybe they didn’t even deserve one! Did we consider that? Let’s move on with our PAINFULLY BRIEF HUMAN LIVES. (Especially this year, with all of the rampant Internet complaints about Oscar snubbage, it seems like some people are just mad that people they genuinely like for one reason or another didn’t get nominated for one of the most prestigious “artistic” awards in the world, and I get that, but it doesn’t speak to the quality of anyone’s actual work anymore than Crash winning for Best Picture had anything to actually say about race in America.) My personal issues aside, there were some actors (and actresses, and writers, and directors) that were not nominated this year but whom the fans believed deserved a nomination, and one of those actors was Ryan Gosling, AKA the reason straight people “accidentally” downloaded GRINDR to their phones. Now, after DAYS of speculation, the reclusive genius has FINALLY broken his LEGENDARY silence and let the world know just how he feels about his “Oscar snub.” E! has the SCOOP:

This Week In GIFs!

Kelly — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:00:30 +0000

Another week come and gone, another State of the Union address addressed and forgotten, another Sundance missed, another Academy Award nominees announced and boring, another mayor racist and embarrassingly inadequate. So what else is there to say but, T! G! I! F!!!!!!!! Phew! I can’t believe all made it here, together, to the end of the week. We really did it this time, and we all deserve a reward. Some kind of meaningless award that doesn’t cost anything, but also hearkens back to the week we all somehow made it out of in one piece. Ummm, I don’t know. I don’t have any ideas. Do you have any ideas? What was that? GIFs? The award you want the most is to just see a bunch of GIFs from all the stuff we went through together this week? Ok, that’s totally doable! CONGRATULATIONS!

Here Are Some Afternoon Links!

Kelly — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:15:01 +0000

Please watch Paul Rudd answer a few questions for Rookie’s “Ask a Grown Man” feature, including why men like boobs and what you’re supposed to do when you want to date a guy with a longterm girlfriend. TELL US, PAUL RUDD! -Rookie
Oh here’s some good news, the The Crow remake that was previously going to star Bradley Cooper, but then it wasn’t, and then wasn’t happening anymore, is happening again! They got a writer and a director. Congratulations. Are you so excited? You’re so excited. -AV Club
TMZ did an interview with the guy who did the “honey badger” video. Want to see what he looks like? First imagine what you think he looks like. And then remember the voice from the honey badger video. Ok. Is he wearing sunglasses even though it’s nighttime in your imagination? Perfect. -TMZ
Aww. Here is a, like, one million hour video of a young man in a spelling bee who for some reason cannot hear the person telling him what to spell. Have you seen this one? It’s great, you should watch it. And by great I mean very uncomfortable! -TheDailyWhat
The Hollywood Reporter has explained why there are only two “Best Original Song” nominees for this year’s Academy Awards. That’s great. It’s like Slate’s “Explainer” but on The Hollywood Reporter and a little bit boring even though I really wanted to know the answer. -TheHollywoodReporter
Speaking of the Academy Awards, Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms are going to be paid $15 million dollars each to do the future Academy Award winner, The Hangover III. Pretty cool, right? Pretty cool for those guys. You gotta do what you believe in. -FilmDrunk
Oh no. What is Miley Cyrus doing?! I mean, what she’s doing is posing with a cake in the shape of a penis, but WHY? I mean, I know why, and it’s because it was her boyfriend’s birthday or something but MILEY. What are you doing? Why do you keep doing this to your poor father? Don’t you know how cameras work? Please stop! I don’t understand why you’re doing this!!!!! Also, do not look at this pic if you are at work/if you have eyes that can see things. -Dlisted
The Walking Dead credits + the Growing Pains theme song = -BWE

The 2012 Academy Awards Nominees

Gabe — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:15:38 +0000

They are here! The 2012 Academy Award nominations are here! Have you ever watched the actual nominees announcement broadcast? It’s kind of like watching the actual Academy Awards if it was presented at an abandoned hotel buffet and it only lasted 30 minutes. Every once in awhile you’ll hear two people “whoo!” in the background, but that’s about it. It’s actually kind of great. Without all of the pomp and the medleys and the overlong speeches and the commercial breaks, it plugs along at a really nice clip and ends at a reasonable hour. And the best part is that everyone is still theoretically a winner! I’m not sure who the dude was standing next to Jennifer Lawrence this morning, though. Who was that dude? I’m also not sure who the dude was who gave Jennifer Lawrence her No Affect Pills. Guys, please be careful when you’re administering the No Affect PIlls to Jennifer Lawrence right before she goes on TV. She should have no affect, not NEGATIVE affect. Anyway, lots of predictable things in here: The Descendents is doing great. Everybody loves The Artist. Brad Pitt was in Moneyball. And of course, Andy Serkis for Best Director. (Just kidding, apparently the time is later. Sorry Serkis!) Tumblr will probably be very excited to hear that Kristen Wiig, Amy Mumolo were nominated for the Bridesmaids screenplay. (Melissa McCarthy nominated for Best Supporting Actress, if you’re a Reddit user. The point is, congratulations Internet.) And that brings us to the Best Picture nominees. A few years ago, they expanded the number of nominees from five to 10. The reasoning behind this was that it would draw a bigger audience to the broadcast somehow, but the defense was that it would allow more films to get the recognition they deserve. Uh, EPIC FAIL TIME. Hahah. Seriously, The Help AND Extremely Nine and Incredibly Eleven are both nominated for BEST PICTURE? Of the whole year?! Good grief. I will literally TOLERATE War Horse and Midnight in Paris on there. (War Horse, no duh it’s on there. Midnight in Paris was cute and certainly more interesting than a lot of other junk, so fine.) But those boldly straight-forward celebrations of American Racism and The Reverse Voldemort Of National Tragedies (she who must ALWAYS be named) need to get out of here with that noise. Oh well. It’s just weird that the Academy Awards would celebrate something less than artistically perfect, since they never have in the past. They’re usually nothing but completely dedicated to integrity and the advancement of the medium’s loftiest ideals. (Oh, on that note, congratulations to PUSS IN BOOTS for being an Oscar-nominated movie.)

The full list of nominees after the jump:

Andy Serkis Acting His Banana Off

Gabe — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:45:07 +0000

As by now you probably know, Andy Serkis and his boys are making a big, somewhat grandiose push this year to get him an Oscar nomination for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Sure. He played the role of “The Monkey.” Andy Serkis is widely known as one of the best motion capture actors in the game after his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and King Kong, and now this. Actually, I think he’s the only known motion capture actor in the game. I literally cannot think of another person who has been given so much credit for his motion capture work. This means one of two things: either Andy Serkis has cornered the market, or there is no market and Andy Serkis is trying to pretend like there is a market. (How sad would it be to be the second biggest motion capture actor out there, just constantly living in the shadows. There goes big Andy Serkis, getting another multi-million dollar franchise, and you have to be, like, a tortoise swimming in the background of A Dolphin Tale or whatever. So sad! Hang up your cleats!) Anyway, as part of the Andy Serkis Oscar Circus (see what I did there? I used a word that sounded like another word and then drew attention to it like it was a thing: IT’S CALLED BLOGGING) a behind-the-scenes clip of Andy Serkis acting out a Planet of the Apes scene pre-CGI over-mapping has been released, and well, uh, so, here you go:

Oscar Prediction: They’ll Stink

Gabe — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:15:22 +0000

If this new star-studded trailer for the Oscars, which was made in partnership with Funny or Die and is clearly intended to show that the Oscars are “fun” and “hip” and “with it,” is any indication, this year’s Oscars are going to stink just like all the year’s Oscars. #Stink #HELPMEDONDA

The Andy Serkis Oscar Campaign Is A Bit Much

Gabe — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:30:46 +0000

After building a long and illustrious film career by playing CGI goblins and Mega Apes, Andy Serkis is apparently tired of not getting the credit he deserves. (If you ask me, I feel like he gets a lot of credit, and I’m not saying that dismissively, I am just saying that as much as someone who is responsible for wearing a motion capture suit and translating his body language into on-screen monsters without anyone really knowing very well what he looks or sounds like, I feel like Andy Serkis is doing GRRRRRREAT!) After his apparently subtle and nuanced performance as Cesar in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes–”apparently” because I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it’s pretty good, and I’m sure Serkis’s computer monkey was very subtle and nuanced compared to James Franco as a “scientist”–FOX is launching an all-out publicity campaign to get him an Oscar nomination for best actor. Fair enough! Seriously, sure. Why not? He seems like he really knows what he’s doing, and I’m sure he’s as good of an actor as 1996 Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (won for Snow Dogs, I believe?). We live in a time of extraordinary technological innovation, and being able to turn a Photoshop into a believable character that you can have actual human feelings about seems like no small trick. So, yes, OK, Andy Serkis for President of Movies 2011. But now that the actual publicity campaign ads are coming out, GOOD GRIEF, that is a bit MUCH, don’t you think?! “The Time Is Now”?!?!?!?!??! Take it easy. (It’s also kind of funny that they used a side-by-side comparison in which Andy Serkis and the ape are actually making pretty different faces? Rest your case, poster, rest your case before the judge’s gavel!) Honestly, though, you’d think Andy Serkis was the new Rosie the Computer Programmer based on this poster. THE TIME IS NOW! Garbage. It’s so weird that something associated with the Academy Awards is puffed up, self-congratulatory, overly dramatic, and treats the already impossibly well-compensated work of movie-making as some kind of noble sacrifice for the human good. So weird. So unlike them. Go figure. (Via /Film. Click through to enlarge if you want to read the quote about Andy Serkis’s performance from TIME MAGAZINE*!)

At a certain point, we’re all going to have to agree that Time* magazine is not as powerful and weighty of an imprimatur of quality and integrity as it used to be, based mostly on the fact that who the fuck reads Time magazine anymore?

A Fake Interview With Billy Crystal

Gabe — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:45:16 +0000

[Billy Crystal needs no introduction. He also doesn't need to waste his time doing an interview with us. Which is why this is a fake interview.]

Videogum: Hello, Billy Crystal.
Billy Crystal: Hiya!
VG: Let’s just get right to it. You’re the replacement host for this year’s Academy Awards after Eddie Murphy dropped out following Brett Ratner’s meltdown.
BC: I sure am, and I couldn’t be more excited.
VG: Ugh.
BC: I take it you’re less excited.
VG: What are you going to do one of those fucking medley’s again?
BC: People love my medleys.
VG: They did. 100 years ago.
BC: You’re not very nice.
VG: You’re not very relevant.
BC: First of all, the Academy Awards is a beloved institution and a tribute to the glamour and tradition of Hollywood. It’s not about jumping on whatever tween trend comes along. Who would you rather have, Justin Bieber?
VG: The worst part about everything you just said is that I doubt you even know who Justin Bieber is. You probably sent your grandson a priority letter asking him for a “hip” new reference.
BC: And if I did, what of it? He’s a sweet boy! Whip smart.
VG: You said first of all. What’s second of all?

Videogum » Academy Awards

Renaming The Academy Awards Venue, Oh No!

The Videogum Why Don’t YOU Caption It? Contest: The Annual Vanity Fair “Hollywood” Cover

Ryan Gosling’s Dramatic Reaction To His “Oscar Snub” Revealed!

This Week In GIFs!

Here Are Some Afternoon Links!

The 2012 Academy Awards Nominees

Andy Serkis Acting His Banana Off

Oscar Prediction: They’ll Stink

The Andy Serkis Oscar Campaign Is A Bit Much

*At a certain point, we’re all going to have to agree that Time magazine is not as powerful and weighty of an imprimatur of quality and integrity as it used to be, based mostly on the fact that who the fuck reads Time magazine anymore?

A Fake Interview With Billy Crystal

At a certain point, we’re all going to have to agree that Time* magazine is not as powerful and weighty of an imprimatur of quality and integrity as it used to be, based mostly on the fact that who the fuck reads Time magazine anymore?