My 2013 Oscar Nominations Coverage

Well, the longest day of the year has officially come and gone.  Yep, Oscar Nominations Day is always   a fun, but tough day to get through. This year, I woke up at 1:30am so I could get to the theatre in time to set up at 3am.  By 4am, I was happily eating bacon and a Jamba Juice in preparation for the big announcements. (By the way, Jamba Juice and Coffee Bean sponsored the beverages this morning.  That's a first and it was totally appreciated.)

No heels until showtime.  A girl has to be comfy at 4am.

As always, the nominations came at a fast and furious pace for a total of 8 minutes.  Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone were completely charming and I am excited for Seth's hosting gig.  Then the nominations came and wow!..... there some major snubs.

Here's my article on the Snubs and Surprises for SheKnows.

It's great catching up with old friends.  Megan Telles from ABC Las Vegas.

This year, after giving my video assessment with The Academy's nominations, I was lucky enough to interview legendary film critic Leonard Maltin and the executive producers for this year's show, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan.  The producing duo gave me some great inside scoop on what to expect for this year's show.

Here's my video coverage for Starpulse.

And my pal Luz Peña from MundoFOX

Finally, my favorite thing to write is the behind the scenes scoop that you miss while watching the nominations on TV.

So, here's what you missed this morning with my Top 5 for SheKnows.

The dress was $74.99 retail, but I used Ebates to get additional money off.

The Dress:

This was the winning dress! Congrats to Robin who picked this "Luck Be a Lady" dress from Modcloth.  It fit like a glove and the PR team from Modcloth agreed after they saw my photo on Twitter.  Robin gets a $25 gift certificate to the store of her choice. (By the way, I added a thicker belt versus the skinny belt the dress came with to slim down my waistline on camera.)

As for the Shabby Apple dress, Jennifer picked a beautiful dress for me.  However, the one that was sent to me was not the champagne color, it was gray.  The lining of the dress didn't match up with the lace, so it was poorly constructed.  I was pretty disappointed in the overall quality.  So, Jennifer has great taste, I just wish the Shabby Apple dress was exactly the same as what we saw online. The good news is that Jennifer can relish in the fact that she won the popular vote.  Her pick received 58% of the vote.


Finally, I had fun with James Molnar of Gold Knight Blog who assessed the Oscar Nominations in a fan chat for Spreecast.  Do you agree with our picks?

 My awesome cameraman, AJ, who did a great job shooting all of the videos today.

Hanging with Oscar

Hot Topic Tuesday: Do Award Shows Still Matter?

When the news broke yesterday that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were co-hosting the 2013 Golden Globes Awards, my iPhone blew up with text messages like, "Tina and Amy are trump cards for sure...trying to regain thunder after noms announcement before show."  Now, some of this may seem like a bunch of code and gibberish to you, but the underlying message is:  Award shows still matter.

To give you a bit of background on this, the tiff between the Golden Globes began awhile back as the Globes started becoming a serious predictor of the winners for the Academy Awards.  The Oscar nominations happened after the Globes show and no one likes to share the same stage. So, this year, in a last minute trump move, The Academy announced that the nominations would occur 3 days before the Golden Globes show.  Talk about stealing a little thunder, the Academy ran away with it.

In recent years, the two shows have battled for a bit of attention since the Oscars are all about prestige while the Globes are all about alcohol and fun.  No one wants to be the old dinosaur, and the Academy has fought that image, yet still gone with a tradition show each and every year.  To change that image, the executive producers of this year's show, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, invited The Family Guy's Seth McFarlane to host the show.  This is the closest to the changing of the guard we have seen in decades.  Whether he succeeds or not, someone finally thought outside of the box when it came to the show.

Well, how does the Globes challenge that casting?  They've had a wicked Ricky Gervais (One of my favorite hosts ever for just making fun of Hollywood and telling it like it is.) to drum up controversy and throw out scorching one-liners to Hollywood for the last two years.  It was time to find someone just as witty, but smart and sexy.....bring on Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, two women in comedy at the top of their game.  The move was brilliant, calculated, and brought more excitement on my Twitter feed for a host than I've seen ever.  The Globes trumped the Oscars once again.

So if you think these shows don't count, don't matter, or are a waste of time, think again.  They bring in money to the box office, they send award show execs into their back offices to rethink strategies, and the announcement of a fresh, exciting host sends their name to the top of a Twitter trending topics list.  You can make fun of the shows all you want, but I bet most of you will catch the red carpet, watch the opening monologue, or click over to YouTube to catch a glimpse of what you missed the night before.

Bring on Awards Show season 2013!