My Oscars best dressed & recap

I know this is rather late news but here are my Oscars 2013 best dressed.

I pretty much hated everything I saw on the red carpet this year.  Everyone either wore super boring white, black or beige dresses or clingy gowns encrusted with metallic sequins.  The place was drowning in sequins.  I never want to see a metallic dress ever again.  Seriously, like 5 people wore anything with color.

[Sidebar: Who cares about Jennifer Lawrence's ridiculously dress that actually physically impaired her all evening--- and not just that time when it prevented her from getting from her front row seat to the stage stairs.  Ridiculous.]

Here are the only three dresses I liked from the red carpet.

#1.  Jessica Chastain - This coppery dress with Chastain's beauty, skin tone and hair, in my opinion, was easily the most beautiful dress on the red carpet this year.  It was the one dress worthy of exemption from my sequin/beading/metallic-hating.

#2.  Halle Berry - I could get behind the art deco-ness of this dress.  Bringing the Gatsy-trend to the party.  I got pretty sick of her gushing about Bond movies though.  SNOOZE.

#3.  Jane Fonda -  She just looked great.  And she actually wore a color.  Thank you Jane Fonda.  Show these fools how it is done.

Since the red carpet was such a boring place, I combed the after-party photos to find a few other dresses of note.

#4.  Solange Knowles - This woman is just generally on top of her stuff.

#5.  Ginnifer Goodwin - Always looks cute and looked cuter than most of the other boring-colored, shiny metallicness happening around her.

Also here is a great picture of her and Josh Dallas:

#6.  Lily Collins - Pretty.  Purple. A little Gothic. but with stripes.  A little different.

Worst:  Well, pretty much everyone in metallics made me angry, as you can probably tell.  Emmy Rossum looked particularly terrible (especially after looking so AWESOME in Beautiful Creatures). 

And here is a picture of Jeremy Renner looking a little awkward to represent the men.  I couldn't put a picture of Ben Affleck because he is just way too handsome and charming.

As for the Oscars themselves, I found them SUPER boring.  And I usually find them interesting.

This was pretty much my reaction to the controversy that became represented by he who is known as Seth MacFarlene: http://www.shewired.com/box-office/2013/02/28/op-ed-feminists-defense-seth-macfarlane

Favorite things:
Taylor Swift not being invited.
Capt. Kirk trying to save the Oscars. (and no, not Chris Pine).
Joseph Gordon Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe dancing & singing.
The joke about the director of Argo being unknown to the academy.
The orchestra mercilessly using the theme to The Magnificent Seven to kick someone off the stage.
Jeremy Renner was funny when the Avengers presented stuff.
The TIE!
The Sound of Music joke.
Michelle Obama crashing the end of the Oscars.

Least favorite things:
That first song.
My parents deciding to watch that first song with me.
The pre-recorded jokes in the opening monologue.  Just too long and not funny enough.
The Bond-worshipping.
The SUPER RANDOM musical numbers.  So so painful.
Joseph Gordon Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe not being integrated into the SUPER RANDOM musical numbers.
Shameless Chicago promotion.
Jessica Chastain not winning.  (Disclaimer: I do like Jennifer Lawrence.)
Anne Hathaway winning.
Les Mis winning anything.
Hearing anything about Les Mis.
Jack Nicholson showing up right at the end when I thought we'd actually escaped him for one year.

Nice surprises:
Argo winning best picture & Ben Affleck being handsome, emotional and inspiring.
Anna Karenina winning something.

Favorite speeches:
Ang Lee - most adorable speech
Daniel Day Lewis - most charming and errudite speech
Ben Affleck - most handsome, emotional and inspiring

 . . .

And with that, I have spoken.

Inspiration Lately: Ben Affleck, Oscars 2013

I found Ben Affleck's Oscars speech on Sunday incredibly inspiring (and in a way I might add, that transcends the fact that I inexplicably and frustratingly got a major crush on him after watching Argo).  I can't even count the number of times nearly every day that I convince myself not to try and think: why bother?  I'm just going to fail/suck/get made fun of/be told I can't/ fill in whatever discouragement we often tell ourselves.

It's really hard to try.  And it is hard to remember that those talented people that we admire and aspire to be like also had/have the same feelings of constant doubt and discouragement, and times when the only people who believed in them were themselves and maybe a few other loved ones.  It's hard to remember that most of the time, the most remarkable thing about these people is that they just kept working really hard and they kept believing in themselves and their work and they don't experience failure as just failure and evidence that they don't deserve to do great things in life.

I'm going to make Affleck's words into an inspirational mantra.



(At about 4:00): "You have to work harder than you think you possibly can.  You can't hold grudges.  It's hard but you can't hold grudges.  And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life, because it's going to happen.  All that matters is you got to get up."

P.S.  Sorry the only full video I could find (in the 5 min I was willing to spend searching) was this one where everything is sideways.

My love affair with Kristen Stewart continues

Since Kristen seduced me with her BAFTA speech, I have found myself feeling more and more protective of her. She did her duty as a presenter (probably invited in order to draw in the younger viewers) at the Oscars last weekend. Even though she was one of the few ladies who took the stage that did not have serious difficulty going down the stairs, the blogosphere hated on her for clearing her throat between sentences. I never realized coughing was such an ultimate faux pas!

Likewise, Joan Rivers (who, granted, is mean to everyone) spat some venom her direction. As her co-commentors tried to mercifully point out that K Stewart was cutting a pretty good rug on the red carpet as someone who was normally really bad at it or "anti-red carpet, anti-glam," Rivers tells her to then "get out of the business." I mean, seriously, how excessive! A talented, promising actress should not be forced out of the business because she feels uncomfortable with interviews, expensive dresses, and wild displays of self-importance.

But was perhaps more irksome was the response of some of my fellow Oscar-watchers. As Taylor Lautner and K Stewart came onstage to announce the tribute to horror movies, several girls around me started to boo:

Girls: (generally) Boooo!!!
Girl 1: (about Taylor) I like him. Don't boo him, boo her.
Girl 2: Yeah, she is so annoying. I'm not booing him, I'm booing her.
Girls: (at K) Boo!

I'm just as willing to jump into a hate-fest on Twilight and Bella, but people's ability to distinguish between the actor and the character seems to be rather selective, especially when it comes down to gender. I feel like in general no one is really blaming the Twilight boys for the fan frenzy that follows them around. Sure some people complain that RPatz is ugly and that they don't understand what all the fuss is about, but they don't seem to blame the rabid fan-girl pestilence up on him personally. It is rather the fault of the rabid fan girls. Taylor's plague of fan-girl locusts is slightly more tolerated by the critics, mostly because he is not RPatz and general Team Jacobness. But again, he is not blamed for the phenomenon. Rather the two male actors are often depicted as victims of insane, tween, vampire wannabees. However, this coutsey seems not to be extended to Kristen Stewart.

Instead she is hated on for (1) being Bella (and I find this the most sympathetic argument), (2) being popular, and (3) struggling with her fame. The boys of course have the likability of their characters working for them, but issuse (2) and (3) should be just as applicable to them as it is to K Stewart. However, instead the public seems to covet and sympathize with RPatz and TL, while booing Stewart off the stage and telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself. It is hard for me not to this as arising from (a) female viewers jealously of Kristen Stewart for being linked to these handsome men (and being gorgeous and popular) and (b) the unfair standards of perfection set for celebrity women rather than men. While it is ok for men to complain about being harassed by fans and tabloids, when Kristen Stewart-- a young and developing person-- struggles with the limelight, she should apparently throw in the towel, pack her bags, and never show her face again. It is additionaly irritating to hear her take such disproportional flack for the Twilight phenomenon, when compared with her male costars, especially since, let's face it, she's got the better credentials. Stewart has definitely proven herself to the industry and looks on track to continue to do so. Don't see Lautner or RPatz with a BAFTA, do we? If anyone should be staying the game, it should be K Stewart.

I was glad to see Stewart some what stand up for herself when she appeared on Leno. Defending her cough, for which she has been much ridiculed, she points out if she had not cleared her throat she would not have been able to finish the sentence, which she reckons would have irritated people more. Also, she adds that she finds the whole 'cough' controversy quite funny because she had been in fact so proud of herself that night for getting through the lines and the evening without any serious embarassments.

And I say, yes Kristen, be proud! It is the rest of us snarky women that should be ashamed.