THE GONG SHOW
Sarah-Kate dons her best dress for the Oscars
Ah, the Oscars. I can’t even hear the word without remembering the year I was lucky enough to attend. Actually, I couldn’t recall the year I was lucky enough to attend, so had to check with my buddy who was nominated and knew enough about my obsession with celebrities to arrange for me to go with him.
It was 2014. Cate Blanchett in dangly beige won Best Actress for BlueJasmine and Lupita Nyong’o dazzled in peppermint blue as she picked up the Supporting gong. Ellen DeGeneres hosted and Pharrell Williams and U2 performed.
I had the best blow-dry of my life, which I got on Sunday morning on Melrose Avenue in LA and was still sporting back in New Zealand five days later, such was its superiority.
I ogled the celebs (they’re so small in real life) throughout the ceremony and will never forget going to the studio after-party, where the gold statues were passed around for anyone who wanted to have their photo taken with them. What a night!
Every year since, I’m watching them at home with everyone else, although I’m still suffering palpitations after last year’s mega fizzer with Best Picture mistakenly being given to the wrong film. Oh, the shame for the poor schmuck who handed over the wrong envelope. Wonder what he was doing this year? Crying into the soap suds as he finished his shift washing dishes at Spago?
The past few weeks have been a blur of trying to see the Best Picture contenders. I’d already knocked off Darkest Hour after watching it in the fabulous outdoor surrounds of Sydney’s Centennial Park over the summer. Anything with Kristin Scott Thomas in it gets my vote, but for a story told in the same time zone, my heart belongs to the fabulous Dunkirk, complete with legend-in-themaking Harry Styles.
I wouldn’t normally bother with a movie about sewing, but Daniel Day-Lewis is the Meryl Streep of man world, so PhantomThread’s worth a look. And obviously Meryl herself has to be seen in The Post, even though if you’ve worked at a newspaper, you know exactly how exciting it is – which is not very.
GetOut I saw last year because I like Marnie from Girls, although I am not a particular fan of horror, but TheShapeofWater and Call MebyYourName were the two that eluded me before the awards. I’ll have to see them now, although a film about a cleaning lady falling in love with a merman doesn’t particularly rock my boat. But four enviable golden statues can’t be wrong, can they?
My faves were LadyBird – a mother-daughter story and who doesn’t love one of those – and ThreeBillboardsOutside Ebbing,Missouri with its timely maybe-anger-isn’t-the-bestapproach message.
So it was a big old soz to Greta Gerwig and a “you rock” to Frances McDormand as I sat in layers of pink fru-fru watching the events unfold and providing my own personal fashion police commentary (in two words: not impressed). Bliss.