AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...
There’s sure to be great drama tonight, in and out of the Dolby Theatre, writes Kirsty Blake Knox
FRONT-ROW tickets for tonight’s 90th Academy Awards are a rarity and elusive as finding All-Ireland Final tickets on the bus home, or grabbing the last loaf of Brennans during the snow, or getting Dermot Bannon to stay within budget.
So when The Academy come knocking you tell them you’re coming. Unless you’re Consolata Boyle.
The Irish costume designer received her third Oscar nomination this year for her work on period drama Victoria & Abdul starring Dame Judi Dench.
However, Consolata will not be heading to the Dolby Theatre tonight due to work commitments.
The designer is currently on location in Budapest working on her next film, Radioactive.
Based on Lauren Redniss’s 2010 graphic novel, the movie follows the life of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. Gone Girl actress Rosamund Pike will take on the leading role.
According to a spokesperson for Boyle, there was a ‘conflict in schedules’, so she bit the bullet and ducked out of the Oscars.
That’s some serious employee dedication.
However, we will still be well represented on the red carpet this evening with Saoirse Ronan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cartoon Saloon’s Nora Twomey, and Martin McDonagh all up for awards.
Irish costume designer Sinead O’Sullivan, the younger sister of comedian Aisling Bea, will also be attending. O’Sullivan worked as assistant costume designer on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson, which got the nod in Best Costume Design category.
Sinead and Aisling were among the guests at the 13th annual Oscar Wilde Awards hosted by JJ Abrams last week.
“Am I jealous that my sister is going to the Oscars before me?” Aisling Bea said.
“No it’s totally fine, it’s absolutely fine but I’ll tell you this much — that is not in the Sisters’ Contract,” she joked. “That is not how it is supposed to go.”
The awards ceremony, in support of the US-Ireland Alliance, was packed to the rafters.
Colin Farrell, comedian Kathy Griffin, Diane Keaton, Jason O’Mara, Sarah Bolger, Andy Serkis, Victoria Smurfit, and designer Don O’Neill all raised a toast to the 2018 Oscar Wilde honourees Mark Hamill, Barry Keoghan, Paula Malcomson, and Home Alone star Catherine O’Hara.
“Tonight is one of the rare and magical moments when the ‘one percenters’ come together to honour some of their own,” comedian Martin Short joked.
The mood was buoyant, but conversation inevitably turned towards more pressing matters such as the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement, Hollywood hierarchy, and how political the Oscars could and probably should be.
While the Academy is insisting its primary aim is to entertain the 33m Americans tuning in, the mood surrounding the 90th Academy Awards is markedly different this year.
No one could have predicted the tectonic shift in Hollywood in the last six months. All of Hollywood is in uncharted waters and the Oscars are on edge.
On the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, just down the road from the 900ft-long Oscars red carpet, a statue of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein has appeared. The statue, titled Casting
Couch, shows Weinstein sitting on a chaise longue wearing a loose-fitting bathrobe and clutching an Oscar.
In a sort of homage to Martin McDonagh’s film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a Los Angeles street artist has erected three billboards referring to sexual misconduct.
One reads “We All Knew and Still No Arrests”.
A 43ft installation of a rotating uterus, with fibreglass boxing gloves in place of ova- ries, representing female solidarity has been constructed near Sunset Boulevard.
On top of all that, the ultimate red-carpet roving reporter, Ryan Seacrest, has been accused of sexual harassment by his former stylist.
Seacrest vehemently denies the allegations and has refused to give up his spot outside the Dolby Theatre.
But there are rumours that some PRs are planning on guiding their talent away from the E! Entertainment host.
This week Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence said she was unsure if she would stop and speak to him.
“He has not been to trial for anything. I am not a judge. I am not a jury, you know,” Lawrence told Howard Stern.
“I don’t know… that is where this stuff gets tricky.”
Last night, construction workers continued to hammer down bleachers as rain clouds hung in the sky.
Outside the barricades street performers posed for pictures, aspiring singers hawked CDs and Scientologists in suit jackets handed out leaflets about personality tests as tourists photographed the scaffolding.
Even though 3,300 of the biggest names in Hollywood will be sitting inside the Dolby, much of the real drama will inevitably be taking place outside the theatre.
‘Ryan Seacrest has been accused of sexual harassment...’