I feel alone every time I try to talk about Glee with my male friends. Turns out, it’s not a show that other guys watch. But I’m not ashamed to be a straight man who loves musicals and TV shows filled with showtunes. It’s just my upbringing, having been raised somewhat by Rodgers & Hammerstein and spending most of my teen years acting in high school drama productions.

Ironically, though, I have no interest in the film adaptation of Rock of Ages, the 80s rock anthem-filled “jukebox musical” that Adam Shankman (Hairspray) has been tapped to direct. It looks cheesy and I don’t much like the idea of these types of musicals that revolve a plot around a greatest hits compilation. But Shankman thinks it will be like “Mamma Mia! for dudes,” meaning he actually believes heterosexual guys, the kind that don’t watch Glee and The Sound of Music if they can help it, will want to see it.

The whole idea got me wondering, though. What are the most guy-friendly musicals ever made? Probably those from Monty Python. Is Paint Your Wagon on the list? How about Tommy? Grease? Is Guys and Dolls cutting it close? Honestly, unless Rock of Ages has a lot of action and explosions, I don’t see it appealing to the average straight man.

Shankman is also in the news today with the announcement that he’ll co-produce the 2010 Academy Awards telecast with former Fox exec/producer Bill Mechanic (The New World). This makes me wonder if Shankman will try to jump off last year’s “musicals are back!” theme with a “guys can like musicals and the Oscars, too!” vibe. Preferably with his Pacifier star, Vin Diesel, hosting (and dancing and singing and maybe kicking some ass). In all seriousness, though, Shankman will probably try to bring Steve Martin back.

What do you think it would take for real manly dudes to both go see Rock of Ages and watch the Oscars? Comment below with your suggestions and check out the other film blogs’ responses to Shankman’s goal after the jump:

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It’s already September, and this means it’s officially awards season. Well, maybe not officially, but the Oscars seem to be a hot topic of discussion all of a sudden. On the one hand, the big fall film festivals kick off tomorrow with the opening of the Venice Film Festival. And Telluride and Toronto are about to begin, too. This means awards contenders will begin to be seen by critics and other buzz-makers.

Prematurely putting things into perspective, Vulture posted some Oscar nomination predictions Sunday evening, despite not yet seeing the majority of their picks, and bloggers at the Los Angeles Times responded with either continued analysis or the complaint that it’s too soon.

Meanwhile, those who aren’t necessarily excited or annoyed with the sudden arrival of the season at least have something to say about the Academy’s latest change of rules. This time they’ve revised the voting process for the Best Picture category — which now will include ten nomineees — in a way that could hurt a lot of films’ chances. The interesting thing is, some people believe the change is bad for The Hurt Locker, while other people think it’s beneficial to the film.

Check out what the film blogs are saying about the season and the new rules after the jump:

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Here’s a story that broke yesterday but has continued to pick up steam through the movie blogs today: The Weinstein Co. is planning to release box office champ Inglourious Basterds on DVD by the end of the year in order to use the discs for a cheap but aggressive Oscar campaign. This isn’t surprising news considering Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar addiction, but it has suddenly made me aware that Basterds is both deserving of and sure to receive a nod for Best Picture, which would be Quentin Tarantino’s first such nominee since Pulp Fiction 15 years ago.

Seriously, if we can be talking about District 9, Star Trek and other genre movies for the top category now that it will include ten contenders, how couldn’t Basterds be seen as a likely nominee? People have celebrated Christoph Waltz’s performance since Cannes, and he’s sure to garner a Best Supporting Actor nod, but few have noted how the film itself is a lock, too. Certainly if Weinstein can get The Reader a surprise Best Picture nomination with only five available slots, he can get this film onto a ballot double the size.

Don’t forget the Holocaust rule; how could the Academy ignore a movie that features vengeful Jews assassinating Hitler and 300 other Nazis all at once in a blaze of glory? Never mind that they didn’t get some of the worst offenders involved in the genocide.

Could Basterds garner more than the two obvious nominations? I doubt Tarantino will receive recognition for either directing or screenwriting, but who knows? Any other performances worthy? Any tech fields? Variety has an interesting article today on the costume design by Anna B. Sheppard. She’s been twice nominated for, interestingly enough, Holocaust films (Schindler’s List and The Pianist), but this time she was presented with more of a challenge. I have a feeling this third Holocaust-related project could be the one to get her the Oscar.

Check out what the other film blogs are saying about Basterds‘ Oscar chances after the jump:

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While most of the film blogosphere is wondering why Sony hasn’t yet greenlit a District 9 sequel, our old friends at the Oscar blogs are addressing a potential awards campaign for the sci-fi hit. According to Peter Bart at Variety, an Academy screening of the film over the weekend was very well received (best applause in years? come on), and the news has sparked buzz of a possible Best Picture nod. After all, there are ten available slots this year.

Honestly, I enjoyed the movie very much, but if it’s being considered Oscar-worthy, I’ll be the first to begin the backlash (against the awards push; Armond White already took care of the general backlash). District 9 shouldn’t be nominated for Best Picture any more than Star Trek should. It shouldn’t even be nominated any more than Transformers 2 should. Regardless of how much better it may be.

And I don’t necessarily have anything against a sci-fi movie being up for the award. If Cameron’s Avatar is groundbreaking and brilliant, give it a nomination. I just want to make it clear that District 9 is very good, but it is not that good. And just saying that it deserves an Oscar campaign adds to the continued depreciation of the Academy Awards.

Read what other film bloggers are saying about the District 9 Oscar buzz after the jump:
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Another blockbuster, another record broken. What’s the big deal? Well, the biggest deal might be that film critics are wasting their time reviewing movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, because a billion trillion negative words written about the blockbuster sequel couldn’t have kept it from breaking the Wednesday opening record. Grossing $60.6 million over a day and two nights (the figure includes Tuesday’s midnight show tally of $16 million), Transformers 2 knocked Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix off the throne.

I haven’t heard of anyone liking the sequel, so it’s very possible that word of mouth will keep the movie from making too much more over the weekend. But then again, if another one of my weekends is completely rained out, I’ll probably go see the thing just to see how godawful it is (this Best Week Ever post makes me masochistically curious to see it). The first Transformers was a total bore, so I’d be happier with elements as ridiculously terrible as racially offensive robots and parachute farts, as long as there was something interesting going on.

The only thing keeping me from rounding up a large posse for a MST3K-inspired viewing is the idea that buying the tickets will only encourage Paramount and Michael Bay more (how about a group of us goes and buys Star Trek tickets and then sneak into Transformers? Paramount can’t complain, since they’ll still get the money, only for a better film).

Check out the film blogs’ response to the record breakage after the jump:
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As if this year’s Oscars ceremony wasn’t abnormal enough, next year’s telecast is sure to be even weirder. Today the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced that it’s increasing the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. This isn’t a totally odd idea, since the Academy Awards used to nominate ten films for the big prize, but the last time we saw so many candidates was 65 years ago, when Casablanca beat out nine other titles for the win.

The first thing that I thought — and I’m sure I’m not alone — was, “are there actually ten great films made per year?” Certainly we’re a far, 70-year cry from 1939, considered to be the peak of American cinema, when Hollywood released such masterpieces as Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men, Love Affair and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, all of which ran up against and lost to Gone With the Wind.

The second thing I thought is that the Academy is really slapping both The Dark Knight and WALL-E in the face with this change. Now, comparatively, should Star Trek and Up really be the ones to make up for those “snubs”? They’re good, but they’re not that good.

Check out the rest of the film blogosphere’s reactions after the jump:
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In case you haven’t heard (even though most people were talking about this yesterday — sorry today is that slow), next year’s Oscars will return to the month of March, due the Academy’s need to get out of the way of the Winter Olympics. For some of you, this may mean you have extra time to see the nominees. For most of you, this also means you’ll have more time to complain about how the Academy snubbed Wolverine, Avatar, Up or whatever other movie you think deserved a Best Picture nod. As for us film bloggers, the delay gives us additional time to speculate, predict and otherwise cover awards season to death.

As if this year’s Oscars didn’t seem over-blogged enough, I can only expect there will be even more movie sites, including those specializing in the Oscars, next year. And therefore I can only expect that by the time the Oscar telecast airs on March 7 I will be so sick of the whole film awards concept that I’ll almost not even live-Tweet the big night.

Reactions to the Academy’s announcement from other Oscar bloggers after the jump:

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Ratings were up 10% from last year, and polls indicate that viewers of the Oscars last night mostly enjoyed the telecast and would like Hugh Jackman back to host next year. So why am I still harping on the negatives? Well, no matter how many entertaining elements of the ceremony people remind me of, I have to argue that while the awards themselves were great, the television show was not. And unfortunately, I was not inside the Kodak auditorium where I might have better appreciated the things we all at home should have been able to appreciate. And anything I found entertaining from where I sat in my apartment was pretty much thanks to talented presenters and winners, such as Philippe Petit, Tina Fey, Janusz Kaminski, Dustin Lance Black, Kunio Kato and Danny Boyle.

And I’m not the only one who has complaints. Below you’ll find some criticisms from bloggers who either thought the show was completely terrible or thought it was mostly good with only a few minor gripes.

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Never mind last night’s show being the gayest Oscars ever (I doubt it). And never mind it potentially being the most predictable (nuts to the Academy for not going with any of my badly foreseen surprises). Here’s my biggest criticism of the ceremony: the 81st Academy Awards had surely the worst directed telecast in history. Throughout the show I found myself commenting over and over, “show the clips, not the [stage; musicians; Queen Latifah; etc.].” There were great injustices done to the deceased, to Baz Luhrman’s choreography (even if it wasn’t a great musical number) and to the nominated actors and actresses, many of who could have used a spotlight on their performances rather than isolated praise from a random peer.

But apparently this year’s ceremony wasn’t designed for the TV viewers, possibly because the Academy didn’t expect anyone to tune in anyway (we showed them; ratings were actually up!). It was a big insular party for Hollywood — and a number of foreigners with excellent accents (and Styx tributes) — during which we were all better off reading the live-blogging and live-Twitterings found all over the interweb than watching the actual program. Often, awards live-blogging is pointless; too many bloggers merely list wins and incidents as they happen, which is redundant for people actually watching the show, while others comment without details, which is insufficient for people who missed the event. But overdone Snuggie references aside, this year’s type-it-as-they-see-it bloggers were better than usual. Chalk it up to boredom, but the commentary on the disasters and disappointments of the Oscars was witty, insightful and actually worth reading. Maybe not on all websites, but on a lot of them.

So, for my final Oscar column of the 2008 awards season, I’d like to circumvent celebrating the event (which doesn’t deserve much praise, in my opinion) and instead celebrate five of my favorite live-blogged/Twittered moments of the night. Though everyone loves to watch a train wreck in progress, sometimes it’s better to turn your head away and listen to someone else describe the tragedy for you. Here is a sampling of the best such observations of the worst such wrecks at this year’s ceremony:

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I had heard a couple of weeks ago that Bennett Miller, director of The Cruise and Capote, had directed a short film that was to be shown at the Oscars. The short apparently included interviews from “regular filmgoers.” I know that at least two known film bloggers were interviewed for it, including one who has contributed to SpoutBlog (not me). But as the show stretched into its third hour and nothing resembling what I had heard about the Miller short had yet shown on the broadcast, I started to wonder about its fate. I Twittered to that effect, and I got a private email in response from someone close to the production of the short (and not one of those interviewees, I assure you):

People at Radical Media (the producer) said it wasn’t great - too many old white men - more Mickey Rooney than Mickey Rourke - apparently it got cut…Also, as of Friday night they thought it was in, I don’t know who or when the decision to cut it was made. That being said, the show was 4 hours without so…

I had heard that the short had been set to open the show; I was personally surprised when the telecast started with Hugh Jackman on stage, just because that seemed extraordinarily abrupt in comparison to the montages that have opened the show in years past. The New York Times reports that the Miller short was seen in the Kodak Theater, but didn’t make it to telecast. Did you see it? Do you have any idea why it wasn’t shown to TV audiences? Please let us know.

UPDATE: I’m now hearing that four clips were cut hours before broadcast, as producers calculated the show would run 40 minutes over if they left them in. More details as they come in, until I stop caring…

UPDATE 2:40 PM: The short film is embedded above, via Vanity Fair. Looks like none of our blogger friends made the celebrity-studded final cut, but Jay and Mark Duplass did.

“The best part about the 81st annual Academy Awards on Sunday night—y’know, besides Zac Efron, OMG!—is that once it’s over, we’ll never have to think about Slumdog Millionaire again.” — Christopher Rosen, at The New York Observer.

As the last weekday before the big event, today seems to be filled with more Oscar bloggery than all previous awards-season days combined. There are last minute predictions, last minute commentary and, most enjoyable, last minute Oscar nonsense. Are you ready? Are you bored? Are you so behind that you really need to attend tomorrow’s Best Picture nominee marathon at your local AMC theatre?

Whether or not you care about who or what wins on Sunday night, you may enjoy some of the following stories, quotes and video:

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Two more days until we find out who wins this year’s Academy Awards! Okay, so the exclamation point is more than forced. It’s been quite awhile since we’ve had even an ounce of excitement about the Oscars. But we mustn’t let predictability get us down. Sure, even the still-uncertain races (Penn vs. Rourke; Winslet vs. Streep; Man on Wire vs. Trouble the Water) are anything but interesting, because the everyman of 2009 couldn’t care less about who gave the year’s better performance and would probably be fine shrugging his shoulders at the TV screen in the event of a tie (or, better yet, irresolution). However, there’s one thing people keep forgetting about the Academy: they’re full of surprises.

So, rather than just go with the easy, “predictable” predictions, we attempted to guess who and what will Crash the Oscars this year with a surprise victory — preferably the kind that adds an “ing” to “upset.” And once again, we’d like to extend the forecasting fun to you. What surprises do you expect and/or hope for? Or, if you’re down with the boring route, what “certain” winners do you truly believe in? And why? The most accurate comments will be reprinted in our final Oscar column on Monday.
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Is it possible that Jeff Wells and The Playlist’s shared gloomy outlook on 2009 Oscar bait (or lack thereof) has anything to do with the fact that neither Kate Winslet nor Marisa Tomei has a film coming out this year? And that even if they had something coming soon, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t get naked for it? Probably this fact and subfact have nothing to do with their premature worries, and it’s just a coincidence that the internerds were hit by the misfortunate news that Winslet is giving up onscreen nudity plus the clarification from Tomei that she’s actually not in a nudity phase of her life.

After the jump, some of the more together reactions (meaning the ones not from gossip blogs claiming Winslet hates us).

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