So... it was a strange night. There were big winners, and there were big bloody surprises (and not the good kind for the most part).
The LowsDeborra-Lee Furness losing Best Supporting Actress - Seriously. I just... I... I... *
shakes head* It's just
wrong. And to Susie Porter, who just minutes before winning this category won a different prize (the one I did predict she'd win). I mean, I understand why (she'd been nominated three times before with no wins), but giving her two statues was just greedy. Deborra-Lee - If you're feeling down, please give me a call (or better yet, let Hugh). Also, read Stinky LuLu's on January 7. I'll give you a nice present.
Jindabyne went home empty, quite strangely. I don't really understand why.
The Technical Awards - Not even announcing the winners in some form during the big night. I can understand having them seperated (nobody wants to see them, they just drag it out) but it'd be nice that people know
Ten Canoes won an extra three awards or that
Macbeth won two or so one.
The Dresses - Not the quality of the dresses - Victoria Hill, Dannii Minogue, Saskia Burmeister all looked stunning - but that's the thing. We didn't see enough of them.
The stage - It was
huge yet so freakin'
empty. Except for the podium and some weird lighting... things, there was nothing there. So the award girl just had to stand there looking awkward and when Geoffrey Rush wasn't at the podium he too just had to stand in the vacant nothingness.
The production - Poor lighting (way too dark), sitting nominees way too far from the stage (including a woman, who won, who was pregnant), and just a general oddness about the whole affair. Nobody knew what they were doing or where they were going and everyone got lost. It was strange. Plus, whenever they cut to people's reactions it wasn't interesting and was usually of somebody nobody knew.
Gargoyle winning - After Furness, this was the strangest win of the night. I didn't think anybody liked it.
Magda Szubanski - I'm sorry love, the jig is up. When you're outclassed and outjoked by Dannii Minogue you know there's a problem. And it sort of soured a win that Heath Ledger by all accounts should have been proud about.
Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish - The
Candy stars... umm... okay, if
this is what a Ledger exceptance speech is then maybe it's a good thing he didn't get the Oscar (okay, that will never be true, but you get the drift). So... uninterested and off with the fairies. Although I'll give him credit for pashing Magda and then joking about it later, for his
Brokeback Mountain joke ("I just can't seem to get away from this movie") and for, well, showing up. And Abbie Cornish? As
Seinfeld once taught us you can't just "acquire" grace and lordy does this girl have no grace. Sorry love, you're a champ but, dear god it's called SMILING ("Smile. ... Don't Smile.")
Those weird interludes - They just kind of popped up out of nowhere. Like at EUROVISION!
David Campbell - I'm sorry, you exist... why?
The Downright BizarreGeoffrey Rush - Sometimes he knew what he was doing and at others times he went on weird tangents about cookies and other random things. He did a strange strange job. Can I make a suggestion for next year? Julie Zamiro kthnx.
Johnny Depp - HOLYOHMYGODFREAKINGJESUSCHRISTSONOFGODMOTHERMARY what the fuck
was that? Like... that was probably the most surreal moment ever in the history of forever.
The clips - It's as if the producers had no idea what clips to show for certain people so they just showed them
STARING AT SOMETHING or
SHAKING THEIR BODY AROUND or
CRYING AND THEN BREATHING REALLY HEAVY - although, I suppose it would be hard to pick a clip of Teresa Palmer that wasn't a) of her crying or breathing heavily, or b) of her being raped. But, still, for Susie Porter's clip they showed her covering her face as she cried. I did love the delightful inclusion of profanity in the clips though. "Shit" and "Fuck" could be heard everywhere.
Sam Neill - I'm fairly certain he was drunk as a skunk and slurred his way through a Rolf de Heer tribute that was...
Rolf de Heer Tribute - ...so bland you could feel the room falling asleep. Does Sam Neill even like de Heer? And the presentation? One clip from four of his movies (
The Tracker,
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories,
Dance Me To My Song and
Bad Boy Bubby) that didn't really show much about him at all. And they didn't even include
Ten Canoes? WTF?
Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne - Hey, you guys nominated them! The least you could've done was applaud. Maybe if they'd bothered to show up... compare that to the applause
Ten Canoes and
Kenny (especially) received.
Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin - Baz was either drunk or still pissed off about that whole
Lantana beating
Moulin Rouge! thing from 2001. Either way he was strange. And Catherine Martin? Oh sweet baby Jesus.
Catherine Martin. Why is it that costume and fashion designers always wear such hideous abominations to big events? And then there's... the walk. I love Catherine Martin (seriously, I want her to design my afterlife) but she is as unglamourous a walker as I've ever seen (and I've seen a few, quite obviously uncomfortable, drag queens in my time). I'm not sure what was going on with that (as my friend Simon called it) upside-down cupcake dress, but she was stomping around something crazy.
Radha Mitchell - She was nominated in the Internation Performance category for
Silent Hill.
I KNOW!!! Hilarious, right?
THE GOODThe winners - For the most part, they were good. Yay for
Ten Canoes sweeping the pool with six trophies.
That Sony Blu-Ray plug - Rush and Depp used again in a joke, but this time it was funny and not at all my-head-is-gonna-explode-from-my-eyes-bugging-out-of-my-head-so-much...ish?
The
Elizabeth sketch - The bit of the night. Stealing a scene from
Elizabeth (or was it actually from
The Golden Years?) with Rush putting his own dialogue over the top. Geoffrey: "If you don't go to the AFI awards we'll get... Helen Mirren. She's played Queen Elizabeth the First
and Queen Elizabeth the Second" Cate: "THAT WHORE!" - i paraphrased that entire thing, but you catch the drift, right?
Daniel Radcliffe - Strangely, he was one of the best presenters.
Er, that's about all. I'll do my roundup of the winners tomorrow, but I predicted all of the four major categories, missed the supporting ones and screenplays, predicted most of the rest.
Ten Canoes took out Best Film in the end.
Today is the 25th birthday of, depending on who you read, the next big thing to come from these fertile movie star shores - Abbie Cornish. Here she is to the left looking all dreamy in blue light from her breakthrough performance, Cate Shortland's endearingly offkilter Somersault. After also starring with Heath Ledger in last year's drug drama Candy she has the upcoming sequel to Elizabeth in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which is getting mightily big buzz and many are predicting she's Oscar bound. She also has Kimberley Pierce's Stop Loss - finally following up the Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry. It was also the film that started those nasty (and seemingly non-evolved) rumours that she was the reason for the breakup of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's marriage. 
Also on Cornish's agenda is Jane Campion's latest Bright Star, which could be amazing and perhaps the chance of being a "Bond Girl" in the 22nd James Bond feature. Busy actress that she is I'm sure she'll have time to blow out some candles and eat a slice of cake. She has four AFI nominations to her name, including wins for Wildside and Somersault and two FCCAA awards for Somersault and Candy. Needless to say, she's one to watch! 
