Word: oscars
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...most of us armchair movie critics, predicting Oscar winners is a hobby. For Johnny Avello, it's part of his job. Avello, executive director of race and sports operations at Wynn Las Vegas, runs the only sports book in all of Sin City that sets odds on entertainment. TIME caught up with the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. native to get his picks on which movies will win the hardware Sunday night, and what goes into setting Oscar odds in general. (See TIME's Oscar guide...
...Which Oscar races do you expect to be most hotly contested? It has to be Best Actor and Best Actress. It's practically a toss-up between the top two in each category. For Best Actor, Mickey Rourke is the favorite at 6 to 5, while Sean Penn is the second choice at 7 to 5. The other three: Frank Langella at 6 to 1, Brad Pitt at 15 to 1, and Richard Jenkins at 40 to 1. For Best Actress, Kate Winslet is the favorite at 8 to 5, while I've got Meryl Streep...
...Fantastic Four. In Germany, he's better known for his reputation as a maverick, a troublemaker known for partying and the occasional barroom brawl. A tall rail of a man with graying hair and a raspy smoker's voice, Eichinger stunned moviegoers everywhere with Downfall, the 2004 Oscar nominee that focused in shocking detail on the final days of Hitler and his cohorts in the tight quarters of the Führer's underground bomb shelter. Long before then, his first big commercial success in Germany was the 1981 film We Children From Bahnhof Zoo, the story of - another shocker...
...shouldn't tell any jokes and should instead open with a big musical number that references the recession. But every good concept we had we immediately killed because it reminded us of Billy Crystal. You would think that would be a good thing, since Crystal was the most beloved Oscar host ever and got the job eight times. But comedy writers are far more interested in impressing other comedy writers than in pleasing an audience. This is why most comedy sucks. If we thought we could have gotten away with an opening number that made fun of genocide, we would...
...soon became clear that not only was writing for the Oscars not the hardest job of my life, it wasn't even the hardest job of my week. We brought in a guy who wrote music, and six days later, the opening number was complete. It's not bad, and when Jackman sings it, it's great. Because while we weren't smart enough to write great jokes, we were smart enough to figure out that Oscar audiences don't remember jokes. They remember whether the host set the celebratory mood, as Crystal...