Oscar’sTrade Roughage 02/25/08

By Karina Longworth on February 25, 2008 at 9:08 am

All news is Oscars news this morning, I'm afraid. I sorted through the sour milkshakes of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter's packages so you wouldn't have to.

“Celebrities brave rain on Oscar night” goes the headline––and really, the morning after the Oscars, we should ALL be commended for our “bravery”––but the red carpet reactions story gives Daniel Day-Lewis the opportunity to crack the best paranoid metaphor we’ve heard in a while: “I feel like a British rail sandwich.”
Score one for fourth quarter release dates. The Coen Brothers stands to take advantage of its Best Picture win to an extent that other recent winners haven’t, just by virtue of No Country being in full release at the time of the awards. “It’s the first time since Million Dollar Baby three years ago that the winner of the top Oscar can partake in the traditional box office surge that follows such a win.”
Which I guess is all the better to, as Steven Zeitchik puts it, “solidify their transition from cult directors to Oscar power players.” Because as Diablo Cody has taught us, you can’t win an Oscar without a narrative of upward mobility––and weirdness assimilation––for the publicists to latch on to.