red carpet feelings

We must hurry. There is much to discuss and darkness will fall soon. The cattle will have to be called home and the jam will have to be set for the winter. For the summer. Spring is next? Whatever, I'm not a farmer. Let us make haste and distribute compliments and ridicule.



Renee Zellweger! To start with you is a lesson in cognitive dissonance. You trouble me, Renee. Your face, which you can do nothing about, about which you are innocent, troubles me. Is it attractive or not? Which is it?! No one knows. As soon as we become certain one way, a photo surfaces that confirms the opposite. It's also important for you to know, Renee, that I saw a few minutes of Miss Potter. WHY? WHY SO...WHY WERE YOU LIKE THAT? But you can dress. I'll give you that. You always look great on the red carpet. This silver number is very the-name-on-everbody's-lips-is-gonna-be--ROXIE!...in a good way. Congratulations. Please go figure out if you're attractive and also whether you're a good actress or not. I will go and try to figure out the same thing for myself. Maybe we can be pen pals.



Keri Russell. I have no feelings about you. I only feel that it's important to wear colors that don't wash you out. You apparently feel differently.



Laura Linney, I like you. You're a fantastic actress. So I feel bad that I have to say bad things about your hair. Why so much volume at the crown? Why so much and also not enough? Why so neither here nor there regarding your volume at the crown? Also, it's time to not wear those sorts of necklaces on the red carpet any more for a few years. For a decade. In ten years it will be all right again. Much about this look is too stiff. But your face is purty and who can fault your dress? And the sides of your hair look very nice. When is your next movie? I'd like to see it.



Marion Cotillard! Vous etes completement la cutie patouttie! How adorable were you when you won, saying how Los Angeles really has angels in it?! Le super adorable. Your movie looks very good! And your dress is gorgeous and you look flawless. You are sans flaw! You are inflawABle!



I am happy for you, Nicole Kidman, that you are having a baby. I think that maybe I'm happy for you about how interesting your necklace is but I think I'm not happy about how it interacts with your dress, and I know I'm happy for you about the simple elegance of said dress but I'm also unhappy that your hem was not three inches longer. But I understand that it's very important you don't trip on it and smush the baby. Please continue inside to a comfortable seat. P.S. Little side bun = cute!



Penelope Cruz: Please see me after class. The drape in front of your dress is confusing and obscures your point. Also, I believe I had assigned no feathers at the top of your bodice. I want you and Laura Linney to get together and write a paper about the problems associated with looking too stiff on the red carpet. You're headed down a bad road. I want you to succeed.

Look, I don't want to talk smack about Sarah Larson. I imagine she's got to be a groovy person in the extreme to have caused love to erupt in the coolest motherfucker alive. And I want George Clooney to invite me to dinner with Barack Obama and Al Gore and Walter Cronkite at his house in Lake Como. So...I won't. I won't talk smack. Congratulations, lady. I mean it.



It's going to happen like this:

That industrial I just got cast in? Where I'm going to be playing a doctor? Someone is going to see that and see how good I am on film. This will lead to a significant role in a serious film where I play a doctor who does battle with internal and external forces of some sort, who succeeds or fails compellingly and Academy Award winningly or at least nominatedly. Then I will do a Jedi mind trick on everyone wherein they permanently forget that Helen Mirren wore this dress and then I will wear it.



And during the week leading up to MY Oscars, I will wake up at night in a tepid sweat after having dreamed I wore this dress that Hilary Swank is wearing, and that I wore my hair like that to the Oscars. Note that it's a tepid sweat. I realize that it's not THAT bad. It's not a cold sweat. But it's not what I want for myself in my moment of triumph. Uptight Grandma on the make. No!



Jennifer Garner, please talk to Laura Linney and Penelop Cruz about your assignment. And then go kiss your adorable baby and great husband! You know, your hair helps offset the stiffness. I'm not mad at you. I like you.

Katherine Heigl, please turn down the color on your set and then carry on. And don't let the turkeys get you down about how nervous you were presenting that one award! It was really sweet and sincere and made you very likeable! C'mere. Oh, my eyes. So bright. Yi yi. But so cute, this look.

In fact, Katherine Heigl, you could have just split the brightness difference with ol' Amy Adams here and you both would have looked like a million dollars. I like this look but the color is just a little bit dull, methinks. Amy Adams, your purse with nothing in it is weird and pretty.



Anne Hathaway, you look almost as good as Kate Winslet looked in her great red number from a few years back. All in all, you get an "A" because we're not grading on a curve that includes looks from previous years. Please continue inside to your seat and enjoy the show.



Cameron Diaz, why are you here at the Oscars? Oh, I don't know what to do with you. I generally like how you dress. This color is sort of lame. And you could have ironed your gown, I guess. I don't know. Go inside.

Hi, Cate. Love you, love everything all the time, etc. See Jessica Alba underneath you? She's got a bun in the oven, too. And she's not afraid of tripping on her dress. Just a few inches longer is all I needed from you. I guess your maternal instincts were just too strong. I can respect that. The scarf-ish feeling at the neckline makes this dress feel a little on the casual side for the Oscars. I'm telling you, the longer hem would have helped. Ah, well. On the whole, I dig it.

Hi, Jessica Alba. I like this better on tv than I do in this photo. But I think you look nice. I like your braid-y, milkmaid-y hairdo. I even don't mind the feathers atop your bodice. You weren't given the same no-feathers dictate I'd given Penelope Cruz. The color of your dress is yummy, flattering and unusual. You're like a big, cascading, boysenberry waterfall. Kudos, mommy!

That's it. I can't go on. More people were there, but I just cannot talk about them all. I'm just one woman! Tilda Swinton, you run free. That's right. Run! Run away in your weird, one-sleeved gown and no makeup, with all of your indie integrity and huge, weird talent. Run, with your heavy Oscar that looks like your agent! I loved you in Michael Clayton, so you just run, now. There's a hole in that fence. You can sneak through it.