We are grateful to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Good morning. This evening's Oscar activities will include me abandoning my ExtAngel persona on Twitter —but not, necessarily, his honey-badgeresque undeniably poor attitude—and "live-tweeting" the Oscars from the more professional-seeming Twitter feed of Nomad WIde Screen. Do by all means follow me if you like (it's @nomadwidescreen, but you could probably figure that out), and see how I can churn out high-quality wisecracks better and faster than all the other morons out there tweeting. And if you're into following "live blogs," by all means follow my delightful and wise colleague Kim Morgan's ruminations, from the red carpet to stuff that happens after the red carpet, over at MSN Movies, where I'll be writing a wrapup best of/worst of essay to be posted in the ruinous, rueful aftermath of the shamefully self-congratulatory event. In terms of Oscar picks: you know me, I'm terrible at them, and so, or so he claims, is Alicublog's Roy Edroso, although I credit his logic, good sense, and superior wisecracking abilities. His impersonation of a Magic 8 Ball is here. 

Update: Commenter Mike Grost asks if the above frame is from Two Weeks in Another Town. Well, what else? Actually, there are two films one could name right off the bat that contain similar thank-yous: Minnelli's prior The Bad and the Beautiful and Tashlin's Susan Slept Here. It's been a while since I saw the delightfully godawful The Oscar; I wonder if the Academy saw fit to sully itself with such sensationalist trash. I wonder, too, about the Pia Zadora great The Lonely Lady, which climaxes with…oh, never mind. Here's Eddie G. cradling a memento of glories past in the delirious Two Weeks.