Daniel Boulud

If you happened to be walking along East 65th Street on Sunday night, you might have noticed a gold, person-sized replica of the Oscar statuette standing outside Daniel, restaurateur Daniel Boulud’s fancy French outpost. For the past 24 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has hosted a New York Oscars viewing party, and this year, for the first time, it was held at one of Mr. Boulud’s establishments.

Before the screening of the awards ceremony, a cocktail hour was held in the restaurant’s back dining area, giving writers, celebrities and Academy members the chance to mingle as drinks and canapés circulated through the room.

Getting an interview with Mr. Boulud proved difficult as he strode about the restaurant, barking orders in French and English. We followed him to the bar for a short conversation. “You want a cocktail?” he offered. “Wouldn’t hurt, eh?”

We obliged. When in the company of Mr. Boulud, it is unwise to turn down anything, especially a drink containing pear-infused vodka, elderflower liqueur and a splash of champagne. The glass held a big ball of ice with a paper cutout of the Oscar statuette frozen inside.

Mr. Boulud told the Transom he hopes to make the Oscars party a yearly tradition, and insisted we sample some appetizers inspired partly by this year’s foreign-movie nominees: grilled mahi-mahi for Kon-Tiki, for instance, and mouthwatering duck and apple with cranberry gelée for Amour.

As for Mr. Boulud’s favorite movies? Argo—“a real action thriller”—and Silver Linings Playbook—“so genuine.”

Moving on, we sidled up to Geoffrey Fletcher, who won the Academy Award in 2010 for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious. He told us that he couldn’t say he had a favorite movie from 2012, but added that he has written and directed a new movie, Violet and Daisy, to be released later this year, which he described as a “coming-of-age tale wrapped in a teen assassin’s fable.” We asked him to repeat his description, fearing we’d misheard.

“This is a different experience,” said Patrick Harrison, the Academy’s New York program director, comparing the party with its L.A. counterpart. “You can eat, drink, get up and go to the restroom.”

But while you can pee all you want, you are less likely to stand in line behind many leading ladies. Liliane Montevecchi was in attendance, but Angela Bassett (expected) hadn’t yet arrived when we took off for the West Side.

At KTCHN, the restaurant at The Out NYC—a gay, straight-friendly hotel on 42nd Street near 10th Avenue—chef Dale Schnell had prepared a $75 prix fixe selection based almost entirely on the original menu from the first Academy Awards, in 1929, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. Mr. Schnell said he had modeled the design of his menu card after original Roosevelt Hotel menus he found at the New York City Public Library and sought to create an “old Hollywood” vibe. “A bit of glitz, a bit of glam, without being too complicated,” he explained.

Guests were treated to finger foods like rolls, olives, nuts and celery; for the main course, diners chose either filet of sole au beurre noisette or half-broiled chicken on whole-grain toast, which Mr. Schnell had changed from the original white bread. Other sides and desserts rounded out the five-course meal.

Having found a seat at the bar, the Transom watched the awards ceremony unfold, regaled by host Seth MacFarlane’s old-fashioned song-and-dance routines. We also found much to admire in Halle Berry’s sleek Versace gown and were delighted when the lovely Jennifer Lawrence won the Oscar for Best Actress in Silver Linings Playbook. And we knew at least Mr. Boulud was happy when Argo took Best Picture.

The Best Picture category isn't the only thing that bulked up.

What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it's hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who "wore it best" (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives' Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet ... we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it's because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.

Or maybe it's because we're just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.

Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We'll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you're all set. Got it?

Great.

This year we're making our predictions in order of the film and/or celebrity, not the award. That's because this time ... it's personal. No, seriously: between Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck being iced out of Best Director, the Weinstein Bros. not having a snowball's chance in hell of scoring a big win and the fact that we're practically giving an award to Anne Hathaway just to make her stop sing-crying, there's going to be a lot of sore losers tonight. But don't worry; we're using a time-tested formula for predicting the bitter ceremonies, including taking all of the guesses on Twitter and averaging them against Nate Silver's predictions. Then we throw those out the window and  get ourselves angry over Lincoln’s inevitable windfall of awards that should be going to that movie that had all those great New Yorker articles written about it and stars a 9-year-old who wasn't even an actress when she started the film, which is about 50 percent more method than Daniel Day-Lewis's decision to become an Italian cobbler every time he's taking a hiatus from Hollywood.

So enjoy, and don't forget to tune into our live chat on the Oscars, starting at 7 p.m.!

Christoph Waltz on Between Two Ferns

"You should be off pudding, because you're fat." #InstantGold

2013 Golden Globes, Bill Murray

If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can't understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don't know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Argo
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER:

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Les Mis

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Hugh Jackman, Les Mis

Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: GIRLS

Best Director
WINNER: Ben Affleck, Argo

Cecil B. DeMille's Lifetime Achievement Award/Freestyle Portion of Evening
WINNER: Jodie Foster

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Lena Dunham, Girls

Best Animated Feature Film
WINNER: Brave

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Claire Danes, Homeland

Best Foreign Film
WINNER: Amour

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Best Screenplay
WINNER: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Ed Harris, Game Change

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
(RUNNER-UP: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Julianne Moore - Game Change

Best Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Homeland

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series
WINNER: Maggie Smith - Downton Abbey

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Damien Lewis - Homeland

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Game Change

Best Original Song
WINNER: "Skyfall," Adele

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
WINNER: Life of Pi

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Lining Playbook (Also, best speech? Y/N?)

James Franco: also plays guitar. (Getty Images)

– Ha, James Franco's insane ramblings on HuffPost are now showing strong signs of histrionics:

Oh yeah, I got nominated for a National Entertainment Journalism award for these HuffPost blogs, but no other outlet is going to run that story, right? Hahaha--why would Gawker or The New York Post want to publicize that an actor/Yale doctoral candidate is nominated for an award for something that they are doing themselves? I'm pretty proud of it, but I can see why they must hate me.

Of course we care, actor/Yale doctoral candidate, James Franco! And we don't hate you! We're so glad you wrote a letter to a friend named R______, where you sort of talk about your feelings about Flight and The Sessions, and then decided just to post it on HuffPost, like a real journalist! (Like Celebuzz, who was nominated for six of those awards!)

– It could happen to you: Janeane Garofalo was accidentally married for 20 years without realizing it, she recently told audiences at the New York Comedy Festival. No joke, she thought her Vegas marriage had been a joke, and wouldn't stick in the eyes of the law.

– Here are the videos of 50 Cent trying to sell his line of headphones/kiss the ladies on QVC:

http://youtu.be/Nr9_rEfyWTo
http://youtu.be/_rdvFATwqh0

– The New York Times’s profile on Jennifer Lawrence included a fun fact about the time at the Academy Awards when she didn't win for Winter's Bone:
"She did get her share of mementos, like M&M’s with her photo on them. 'That literally was probably the coolest thing that I saw,' she said. 'I was like: ‘You know what? It’s all worth it’ after I saw those M&M’s.'

Lawrence as Katniss in The Hunger Games.

Unlike Brake, in which the thrills are generated by people, the sci-fi adventure The Hunger Games relies heavily on CGI effects in a variety of visual formats—2D and Imax. Thank goodness it wasn't in 3D. As a wearer of distance glasses, I loathe the revival of 3D, a silly gimmick for kids from the 1950s that blighted everything from Bwana Devil to Kiss Me Kate and mercifully died out with House of Wax. So I was grateful to watch The Hunger Games without the discomfort of two pairs of glasses, and don't feel like I missed a thing. I can live without another flying spear.

This futuristic tale of teenage violence is so not my kind of movie that I approached it grudgingly, so imagine my surprise when I ended up being totally exhilarated and enjoying it immensely. Based on the teenage cult novel by Suzanne Collins that I admit, in my ignorance, I had never heard of, The Hunger Games takes place in some distant world called Panem that was once America before the Capitol was defeated in some unexplained, apocalyptic war. As punishment for the aggression, the wreckage was divided into 12 districts. Every year each district must send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18, chosen by lottery, to compete in a nationally televised event called “the Hunger Games.” The purpose: a mass killing spree with only one survivor. Everyone shows up at the Hall of Justice to watch, just as the ancient Romans cheered the Christians when they were eaten alive by lions in the Colosseum. Part spectator sport, part law and part show business, the “games” are the World Series of the Holocaust of Tomorrow. The winner serves as a metaphor for honor, courage and sacrifice. What gives this 74^th year’s event special TMZ appeal is that the two 16-year-old contestants from the 12^th district are a pretty girl named Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, from Winter’s Bone) and an even prettier boy named Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, from The Kids Are All Right) who, in the process of becoming warriors, fall in love. The publicity value of two lovers fighting until one kills the other in order to survive gives the games a special edge that guarantees ratings. If she were still around, Oprah would have them on her show.

It’s a nasty but transfixing idea, and Shirley Jackson got there first with her unforgettable classic “The Lottery.” But still, the myriad details in the screenplay Ms. Collins adapted herself and the colorful direction by Gary Ross provide enough stimulation for three movies in the same genre. From the “reapings,” where the contestants are chosen by drawing numbers, to the lavishly appointed dining car on a train to the Capitol, where they meet their mentor, a cynical, drunken reprobate named Haymitch (Woody Harrelson in a long blond hippie wig), to the 100,000 cheering spectators gathered for the blood spill like the dress extras from Quo Vadis, we watch the teams with their costumes and pageantry, preparing for the slaughter. The master of ceremonies is a campy Caesar (played by Stanley Tucci as a cross between Liberace and one of the trashy Kardashians). Injected with a tracking system that reveals their whereabouts at all times, they are transported to the playing fields. Equipped with knives, swords, bows and arrows and other weapons of choice, they begin the massacre. In one poetic image, a butterfly lands on Ms. Lawrence’s finger in battle, the last symbol of freedom she will know. Forests of land mines, a lethal hive of poisonous wasps that cause pain, hallucinations and death called “Trackerjackers” and nuclear fires are among the many CGI effects unleashed like torpedoes. It’s all supposed to be mind-boggling, but excuse me. In an age of reality TV, when 90 percent of everything on the tube has turned ugly, vulgar and stupid, the movie lacks a necessary sense of creepy tension. It just looks like what you saw the night before on the latest installment of Survivor.

Still, it’s entertaining. And you find yourself rooting for the lovers, who literally kill themselves to stay together. The cruelty of the games results in a civil war, mob protests and a revision of the rules, allowing two winners instead of one, as long as they both come from the same district. Now all Katniss and Peeta have to do is find each other in the wilderness in time for a final fadeout. No wonder The Hunger Games is so popular with young readers. It has a message about the triumph of good over evil. It has romance, action, danger, expensive eye candy, flamboyant villains, teenage carnage, two attractive leads who symbolize honor, courage and sacrifice and it ends with a kiss. It might even end with a profit. The publicity machine is already cranked at full throttle. Or it could crash and burn like the ridiculous, ill-fated John Carter. Kids have invented new ways to spend their allowance money, and it doesn’t always end up at the box office.

rreed@observer.com

HUNGER GAMES

Running Time 142 minutes

Written by Gary Ross (screenplay) and Suzanne Collins (screenplay)

Directed by Gary Ross

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth

2.5/4

Lawrence of The Hunger Games. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

We love this time of year. Spring is in the air, we get an extra hour of daylight, and people are placing bets in offices across the country on who they think will win in their favorite division brackets.

No, we’re not talking about March Madness. We’re talking about The Hunger Games, the latest YA book-to-screen sensation that had its premiere in New York and L.A. this week. (For the over-18 crowd, we’re still waiting on Harvey Weinstein to buy the rights to  E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.)

If you don’t want to pay $20 for an IMAX ticket (including the price of the KitKat bar and the Nalgene of merlot that you slipped into the theater), you can watch your own version of The Hunger Games play out down at Zuccotti Park. That’s right: Occupy Wall Street has come out of its winter hibernation to clash with the police once more. Over 70 people were arrested over the weekend during a protest held for the six-month anniversary of the first Occupation.

We have a different take on why the movement started up again: the protesters wanted to make sure they got a head start on Game of Thrones comparisons once the HBO show about warring states and magical dragons premieres its second season on April 1. “War is coming” is pretty catchy. Maybe the General Assembly can make it their official motto.

We had begun to think the whole OWS movement was over, but apparently it’s just a fair-weather fusillade. Pretty soon, the money could start pouring into the Occupy Wall Street coffers again, as people donate. It’s a better option than donating to the Invisible Children campaign against Uganda’s Leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army Joseph Kony. The 20-minute video made by the group had such a rush of viral popularity that the nonprofit’s cofounder Jason Russell went bonkers and started showering the streets of San Diego with his own invisible children.

And if you like a little more celebrity with your morning March, go down to D.C. and stand outside the Sudanese Embassy, where George Clooney was arrested during a demonstration to raise awareness of the tempestuous relationship between the country and South Sudan. As he was led away in handcuffs, Mr. Clooney channeled his inner Fight Club and told the police he was Brad Pitt.

We hope the cops bought it, but we’re not gonna bet on it.

'Battleship' star Rihanna (Getty Images)

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) March 23

Your children have been refreshing Fandango daily to see if tickets are available yet for the movie based on Suzanne Collins’ kiddie novels—think of them as Twilight, except with actual murder instead of benign vampirism. Games promises a chaste love triangle and lots of angst for the tween set, but what’s in it for adults? Potentially, some solid acting. Jennifer Lawrence, last widely seen in her Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone role, hopefully turns in another subtle and edgy performance as a young woman fighting to survive, and she’s accompanied by some tried-and-true character actors, like Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Donald Sutherland.

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) March 30

The long-absent Terence Davies returns with an adaptation of a play by another Terence—the late Rattigan, who wrote about the subtle emotionality of the British upper crust. This work is no exception, featuring as it does Rachel Weisz (and where has she been?) as the wife of a judge who is engaging in a dangerous liaison with a pilot. The cast also includes Tom Hiddleston, who was in just about every movie last year, of brows high and low (War Horse, Midnight in Paris, and Thor), but we’re more excited about the return of Mr. Davies, whose last narrative film, the moody The House of Mirth, came out way back in 2000.

Titanic 3D (James Cameron) April 4

To paraphrase Céline Dion, “It’s here—there’s nothing we fear.” Just in time for the centenary anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes the rerelease of the multiple Oscar winner. It’s been converted into 3D, too—so it’ll feel like Kate Winslet is throwing her diamond necklace right at you! Surely director James Cameron hopes he’ll break his own record by getting this film back to the #1 all-time box-office spot, but we suspect that, nearly 15 years after Titanic’s release, we’ll be among the rather limited number of Kate-and-Jack die-hards who simply can’t ever let go.

Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman) April 6

Whit Stillman, who was hiding out with Terence Davies, is back too, with a drama that proves he’s still interested in what the kids are up to. The director who blew the lid off deb parties and disco dancing now examines a suicide-prevention mission undertaken by a WASPy queen bee whose idea of “It Gets Better” is introducing her classmates to tap dance. Sure, the notion of frolicsome young beauties put in “distress” by the men in their lives seems a bit fainting-couch-y, but, given that his previous films were all more or less period pieces, one exactly doesn’t go to Mr. Stillman for insights on the way we live now.

Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan) April 20

Every one of our favorites unites in a project that might be the Avengers of 1980s Oscar-ceremony attendees. Diane Keaton tries on a new Chico’s scarf-and-blazer combo as a woman who loves her dog a bit too much, and Kevin Kline is the husband who misplaces that dog. Throw Dianne Wiest and Sam Shepard into the mix, and you have a winner. We’re not sure why there’s so much hue and cry—it’s not like the dog is played by Uggie—but if there was ever an actress who seems like she’d be a little too into animals, it’d be Annie Hall herself!

The Five-Year Engagement (Nicholas Stoller) April 27

Jason Segel, tired of speaking to Muppets, has returned to romantic comedies about human beings. His Forgetting Sarah Marshall follow-up  costars Emily Blunt as a fiancée who has taken her sweet time making it to the altar—hey, it’s hard to plan a wedding! Between choosing a venue and bridesmaids’ dresses … Also featured are NBC Thursday-night comedians Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, the inescapable Mindy Kaling, and, for some reason, Oscar-nominated Aussie spitfire Jacki Weaver. We’re not sure why Mr. Segel keeps getting cast as a romantic lead—perhaps because he writes the parts for himself? (Aspiring actors who don’t resemble Channing Tatum, take note.)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden) May 4

An all-star cast of Britain’s actors most likely to cluck “Well, I never!” trade their manor houses and cozy flats for India in this tale of white people encountering brown people. Characters played by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, among others, decide to retire to the subcontinent before realizing that “exotic” is an unalloyed positive only when applied to the term “dancer.” It is likely, though, that they will all learn, like, three lessons before dying—perhaps some of them taught by Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel!

The Avengers (Joss Whedon) May 4

The most anticipated film of the year among circles too young or too cool to remember Titanic unites Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and a bunch of less popular and less charismatic superheroes in a quest to save the world from threats of an unclear nature. Scarlett Johansson is the lady who kicks and punches, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are the slabby studs, and moody blue Mark Ruffalo is the Incredible Hulk. (You wouldn’t like to see Mark Ruffalo when he’s angry—he brews some Kombucha to cool down then talks passionately about hydrofracking!). Unlike this summer’s noirish Dark Knight reprise, this promises to be big and bright and dopey—just what we want as rainy winter changes to overheated spring.

The Dictator (Larry Charles) May 11

Sacha Baron Cohen is back in character; apparently Bruno didn’t sate his appetite for foisting upon audiences a goulash of an accent and nightmarishly draggy scenes of his imposing himself upon unsuspecting people. The Dictator has him playing the Qaddafi-esque ruler of the fictitious nation Wadiya, one who gets to do fun things like shoot his subjects onscreen and seduce Megan Fox. We’re pretty sure that for all the Americans who were unaware of the Arab Spring, this will be a bit too insider-y, but who knows—everyone loves to laugh at Mr. Cohen when he impersonates an ethnic.

Battleship (Peter Berg) May 18

Rihanna makes her acting debut in a film about robotic aliens sent to destroy Earth—and despite her singing voice, she plays one of the humans defending us! This adaptation of the numbered-grid board game promises to be anything but B-9, with a cast that also includes the ever-more-grizzled Liam Neeson, Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, and Brooklyn Decker, who just finished playing Ophelia at the Old Vic (just kidding, she’s a bikini model!). We hope this one is successful—not due to partisanship for any of its stars, but because the deadline headlines about “sunken Battleship” are just too predictable.

Jennifer Lawrence, our generation's Simone de Beauvoir (Getty Images)

From well-loved children's series to highly-anticipated film franchise, The Hunger Games has made a stunning cultural impact in a very short amount of time. The first book in the series was released in 2008 and the series has not merely generated a spring tentpole movie but also a forthcomic academic treatment, in the form of The Hunger Games and Philosophy: A Critique of Pure Treason.

The book is highfalutin: its editors include a lecturer at the University of Indianapolis and an instructor at the University of North Florida (we guess the Harvard types are working up their academic treatments of Twilight). And yet it's also a bit frivolous: the contributors list is retitled "Our Resistance Squadron" and the titles of individual essays mix the most arch tones of academia with references you may have heard from your younger cousins. To wit:

• "'Somewhere Between Hair Ribbons and Rainbows': How Even the Shortest Song Can Change the World," by Anne Torkelson
• "'No Mutt Is Good'--Really? Creating Interspecies Chimeras," by Jason T. Eberl
• "Why Katniss Chooses Peeta: Looking at Love through a Stoic Lens," by Abigail E. Myers
• "Sometimes the World Is Hungry for People Who Care: Katniss and the Feminist Care Ethic," by Lindsey Issow Averill
• "Why Does Katniss Fail at Everything She Fakes? Being Versus Seeming to Be in the Hunger Games Trilogy," by Dereck Coatney

Far be it from us to deny that popular culture can expose valuable truths when looked at by members of the academic community! Indeed, we wish we had a Ph.D so that we could have submitted a consideration of the gold eyeliner and pink wigs in Capitol culture vis-á-vis the history of cosmetics and the display of wealth in the American Gilded Age.