Two-Hosted Oscars

News broke this morning that the Oscar ceremony will have two hosts this year. That's only happened twice in the 21st century, but it wasn't always James Franco / Anne Hathaway disastrous...

Alec Baldwin & Steve Martin hosted in The Hurt Locker's year

We can assume the announcement of two means they're already negotiating with a pair. It's not like Oscar to go for sloppy seconds and the last time they did (Neil Patrick Harris) it was a bomb. So don't expect the Golden Globe wonders Amy Poehler & Tina Fey. They'd be excellent but it would be shocking. Here are the previous Oscar ceremonies that used two hosts -- this isn't new as much as the internet is like "whoa, TWO!" this morning -- but it is relatively uncommon in modern Academy Award ceremonies. There have been twelve ceremonies with three to six hosts but let's ignore them because that's a lot of names to type. 11 of the 87 ceremonies have had 2 hosts.

Pre-Televised Ceremonies with 2 hosts
1st Oscars - Douglas Fairbanks & William C deMille (Wings)
5th Oscars - Lionel Barrymore & Conrad Nagel (Grand Hotel)
17th Oscars - Bob Hope & John Cromwell (Going My Way)
18th Oscars - Bob Hope & Jimmy Stewart (The Lost Weekend)
20th Oscars - Agnes Moorehead & Dick Powell (Gentleman's Agreement)

Televised Ceremonies with 2 hosts
In the early days they had a side ceremony in NY so the two host system came in handy
25th Oscars - Bob Hope & Conrad Nagel (The Greatest Show on Earth)
26th Oscars - Donald O'Connor & Fredric March (From Here to Eternity)
27th Oscars - Bob Hope & Thelma Ritter (On the Waterfront)
29th Oscars - Jerry Lewis & Celeste Holm (Around the World in 80 Days)

The Opening of the 27th with Bob Hope in LA and Thelma Ritter in NYC
From the mid 50s to the mid 00s it was either group hosting or just one host

82nd Oscars -Steve Martin & Alec Baldwin (The Hurt Locker)
83rd Oscars - James Franco & Anne Hathaway (The King's Speech)

Which twosome are you hoping for? Here are some other ideas... with absolutely no attention paid to what's actually plausible. Vote for your favorite!

Pick a dream couple to host the Oscars

Jackman & Hathaway

Lily & Meryl

Jennifer Lawrence & Amy Schumer

Charlize & Channing

Stewart & Colbert

Tina & Amy (sloppy seconds!)

Chris Pratt & Anna Faris

Kristen Wiig & Melissa McCarthy

Emma Thompson & Helena Bonham-Carter

I HAVE A BRILLIANT IDEA. I'll tell you in the comment section.

Quiz Maker

Links Today. ANN DOWD Thursday!

The Guardian have you heard about the school Tilda Swinton helped found in Scotland? Is there no end to her wonder?
HugoHugo made a cheeky piece of Jurassic World / Chris Pratt fan art "Clever Girl" that went viral immediately. Sadly almost no one is crediting the source! 
Deadline in the absolute worst "WHY?" inducing news of the week, Maleficent is getting a sequel. I mean, the answer is "Money, duh!" but in TFE's opinion if the answer is only "money" to any movie-making question than we have a problem in the movies
In Contention Kris Tapley thinks Inside Out is Pixar's best film (quite a statement)

MNPP shares the happy news for Winona Ryder fans "Noni got a job!" i.e. a lead role for once - new Netflix show
Screen Crush on the rise of "selective sequels"
Towleroad Kristen Stewart's mother confirms that her daughter is dating a female personal assistant. Adds a whole new eyebrow raise to how damn good Kristen was pretending to be a female personal assistant in Clouds of Sils Maria, doesn't it?
VF BD Wong talks villainy in Jurassic World
The Mary Sue knew that it was necessary to remind genre writers that there are ways to motivate your female characters beyond being raped (sigh)
The New Yorker Perez Hilton, celebrity offspring and #NoKidsPolicy
Uproxx Mike Ryan continues to be awfully skilled at the art of the celebrity interview. Here is Amy Poehler on Parks & Recreation and Inside Out and even the Golden Globes
Towleroad has a new look / redesign. Check it out. Lot easier navigating to the types of stories you're interested in
MNPP remembers Jonathan Schaech's beauty as The Doom Generation (1995) turns 20. What a trippy movie that was back in the day
Boy Culture Burlesque star Blaze Starr -- Lolita Davidovich played her in the movie Blaze (1989) -- has died
Nights in WeHo The stars of Magic Mike XXL came out in full force for LA Pride. Smart outreach.

Programming Notes
Ann Dowd is a very busy woman -- talent like that will fill up your schedule -- so we've had to do some tinkering with this week's schedule. So this week's gone a bit crazy and everything's been pushed back to Friday (Women's Pictures & our Best Shot edition of Magic Mike) and Ann will be taking over Thursday! This is the last time that you will ever read "Ann Dowd" and "Magic Mike" in the same sentence unless she has a surprise cameo in XXL that we don't know about. 

P.S. You'll also notice that there are suddenly dozens of articles about Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy (1990) up around the web. This occassion is the 25th anniversary of its initial release today. Sadly none of these "it's so beautiful!" odes to the movie's exquisite visual work link back to our Hit Me With Your Best Shot episode (we celebrated the movie two weeks ago) but what can you do?! "Best Shot" remains the web's Best Kept Secret of Cinephilia Eye Candy.

Here's what's up next in that series. Join us and spread the word so it's less hush-hush, y'all.

Would You Rather, With Tina and Amy

JA from MNPP here, taking the bait since Tina and Amy were nice enough to ask and there's not much we enjoy more than playing silly games involving good-looking celebrity fellows. First off, the Colins...

poll by twiigs.com

(Those pictures up top are via the Globes official Instagram btw; lots of great pictures over there.)  And secondly...

poll by twiigs.com

Big Eyes Surprise? Final Best Actress Predictions

One of last night's most unnerving moments may well have been hearing Big Eyes mentioned multiple times. It's easy to forget that the movie is out in theaters now, since it didn't make big Christmas waves in the media or the box office (it's likely to end its run as Burton's second least successful film of all time after Ed Wood which is 100 times better), didn't earn rave reviews (it's sitting at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes which is, shall we say, generous) so Amy Adams surprise upon winning is entirely understandable.

To say that I am ill prepared for this moment is a huge understatement. Huge."

The surprise win reminds us that she's been generously adored by nearly all the awards communities for years now, an embryonic-Meryl perhaps. This season provides the biggest test yet of how much of a default nominee she truly is with AMPAS. If she manages an Oscar nod this year against much stronger competition in much better films (Reese, Julianne, Felicity, Marion, Rosamund, Hilary, and Emily) and a much more willful campaign for another performance that's better than its movie (Hi, Jennifer Aniston!) you should expect her to be nominated for every film going forward, as you would Meryl herself.  

Nevertheless I don't think it's going to happen and the dye is set on this category. Our nominees will be

Best Actress Oscar Predictions
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Felicity Jones, Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

A few critics groups made a valiant stand for Marion Cotillard but in the end Two Days One Night killed that dream itself by arriving in theaters way too late to build any presence of its own as an impressive movie, which would have bolstered support for the shockingly real performance at its center from an actress that keeps topping her Oscar-winning role without the Academy paying her any mind. 

In conclusion, may Big Eyes greatest pop culture legacy be the opening monologue joke from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. They announced that there was a live Margaret Keane painting at the ceremony. Cut to: Emma Stone. Well, they are gigantic. They take up her whole face like an anime character. What really sold the punchline was its coda; Tina & Amy are great at those little joke extenders when you're already laughing.

Emma reactions to a BIG EYES joke aimed at her gif via Vulture

It's cute. But it's creepy."

We might say the same of Amy Adams Awards Haul!

Podcast: Mean Girls Commentary, Two Parts

You own a copy of Mean Girls (2004), right?

Pull it off the shelf, rent it or Netflix Instant it (it expires May 1st!) so you can watch as you listen to this podcast. In this very special 10th anniversary celebration, Nathaniel R (The Film Experience) and Joe Reid (The Wire) return to North Shore High to watch Mean Girls together and provide you with our very own DVD commentary track. If you don't watch while you listen we'll sound like mad men giggling out of context or merely like we're too gay to function.

We discuss everything: performance, writing, costumes, set design, scoring and even casting that almost was -- it would have been such a different film. We also talk the reliable time capsule worthiness of the high school comedy film genre and tangents occur. Due to file sizes and the 97 minutes of running time, I can't embed both parts here in the post but you can download the 2 part conversation on iTunes. Or, if you are seeing this post much later, both parts are here on the podcast upload page from 2014.

Joe and I would really love you to continue the conversation in the comments. (Katey and Nick couldn't attend. But they love Ladysmith Black Mambazo!)

Articles referenced in The Podcast
Mean Girls Cast power rankings
Hit Me With Your Best Shot 
'let me tell you something about Lindsay Lohan' 
IndieWire: Daniel Franzese's coming out letter 
The Map of North Shore High's Cafeteria