Oh, Oscar! You Rascal, You!

I must tell you, I love going through the YouTube archives and discovering old footage from the Academy Awards. I wish the Academy would release them or something, I'd die to see them all, but alas. And even the clips on YouTube are a limited breed because the Academy likes to have them taken down - now is a good time to peruse for clips because come February/March/April they all get taken down when the Academy is on high alert.

I gotta say though, I've seen some amazing clips and here are some more!

An amazing movie montage that was used to open the show in 1990. It really is awesome. See how many movies you can pick! There's apparently something like 330.


This one is the presentation for Best Costume Design from the 1990 62nd Academy Awards, introduced by Candice Bergan and, wait for it, featuring choreography by Paula Abdul! I was particularly taken aback during the Valmont segment. There are no words! For Driving Miss Daisy we nearly get to see up Jessica Tandy's skirt and I'm pretty sure they didn't do that sort of dancing in Henry V. At least the Baron Munchausen and Harlem Nights numbers seem in tune to the movie. The winner was Henry V by the way.


This is the performance for Oscar-winning song "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Again, it's choreographyed by Abdul, but the art direction is amazing for an Oscar performance and, well, the song is still one of the best winners for Best Original Song in Oscar history, so it works on that point. The bit with the men in flippers is particularly annoying though.


This is the performances of "Belle" and "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast in 1992 (the winner was the song "Beauty and the Beast"). Again, the art direction is really great and the number is well done. Now we get skanking hookers and slo-mo dancing around car wrecks and you just know that they'd get Beyonce or Jennifer Lopez to do the singing. Orbach's "Be Our Guest" is particularly great.


Jodie Foster winning for The Silence of the Lambs. How awesome is it that this is on YouTube? Michael Douglas is rambling though. If you haven't seen For The Boys though, be prepared for the silliest old-person make-up you're ever likely to see in Bette Midler's nomination clip. I like that movie, but my god, that make-up was ridiculous.


Another crazy Best Actress find. This time it's Meryl Streep accepting the award for her role in Sophie's Choice. I do think she's wearing a gold sleeping gown though, so that's... umm... different! By the way, memo to Australian DVD distributers - RELEASE SOPHIE'S CHOICE ON DVD ALREADY! PLEASE!


I'm not sure if you're like me (perhaps I'm perverse) but one of my most anticipated parts of the Oscar show is the In Memoriam. It's fascinating to see all the notable people who have passed in just one year. Everyone's bound to find someone they hadn't heard about. YouTube has a tonne of the Memoriam packages, but I chose this one from 1997, a year that included the deaths of Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night), Krzysztof Kieslowski (director of Three Colours Trilogy) Jo Van Fleet (East of Eden), Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver), Brigitte Helm (Metropolis), Marcello Mastroianni (8 1/2) and Saul Bass (poster, credit and sequence designer for Vertigo) amongst many others. Crazy year. Imagine what next years' is going to be like.


Oh Bernadette Peters. How I wish I was around when you were creating interprative dance numbers about anything.