Awards Mania

It’s been nearly ten years since super-agent Swifty Lazar hosted his final, epic Oscar weekend bash. Thankfully, Lazar’s Grammy Awards counterpart Clive Davis is still going strong at age 79, set to welcome the crème de la Grammy crème on Saturday for another Beverly Hilton jam.

LA Times reporter Randy Lewis caught up with Davis earlier this week at one of the famed pink bungalows at the nearby Beverly Hills Hotel. Davis ran through the 2012 guest list, A to J, while pointing to another A-artist as a beacon in the record industry stormy night:

He’s particularly gratified by the success over the past year of British soul singer Adele, even though he wasn’t involved in the commercial and artistic breakthrough of her “21″ album, which has sold more than six million copies in the U.S. alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Behold the diametrical opposite to all that annual “it’s an honor just to be nominated” nonsense.

In a scathing YouTube video, Conan O’Brien‘s canine correspondent Triumph the Insult Dog rips apart the six nominees for the first-year Golden Collar Awards category of Best Dog in a Television Series. Namely because he isn’t on the list:

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The funniest portion of  the video that won Hofstra journalism students Jackie De Tore, Melanie Rubin and Beth Laschever the chance to cover the Academy Awards this year for KABC’s On the Red Carpet is their spoofing of some signature red-carpet banter.

After a fellow female student waltzes out of a college dorm elevator sporting a Snuggie, De Tore asks who the designer is. After a moment’s hesitation, her campus celeb replies, “As Seen on TV:”

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From To Kill a Mockingbird to The Accused, the Oscars have always loved a good courtroom drama. But the one framing the Academy Awards this year is casting a pall over the upcoming 84th ceremony.

In Manhattan bankruptcy court yesterday, CIM/H&H Media LP fired back at Eastman Kodak, arguing that the once mighty Rochester company must honor the final nine years of a $72 million naming rights deal:

Signs on the Kodak Theatre, as well as in and around the shopping center where it is located, on street signs, freeway off-ramps, maps, and brochures, make undoing the agreement impossible, according to the filing. With the 2012 Oscars less than three weeks away, “disassociating the Kodak name from the theater before the Academy Awards show, the major event, is not practically feasible,” according to the filing.

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A couple of years ago, the Recording Academy loosened eligibility rules for the category of Best Comedy Album. It’s OK now for the soundtrack of a TV program to be considered an “album.”

It’s only because of this rule change that Kathy Griffin is in the running again this weekend with 50 & Not Pregnant, a product put out by Universal Network Television. That does not sit well with Dylan P. Gadino, editor of Laughspin.com. He recently told LA Times reporter Deborah Vankin that Griffin does not belong in the category for a fourth straight year:

“You shouldn’t be able to take audio from a television show and call it a comedy album,” says Gadino. “Original intent, editing and production should come into play.”

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Hate how Best Picture at the Academy Awards often goes to films that are in no way, shape or form the best movie of the year? Well, there may be some solace for you if your film of choice gets jobbed. USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab has teamed with IBM and the LA Times to measure social media buzz relating to this year’s Oscars. Culling worldwide Twitter sentiment, the hope is to accurately identify the “people’s Oscar” winners in the major categories.

From the release:

The project relies on new sophisticated analytics and natural language recognition technologies to gauge positive and negative opinions shared in millions of public tweets.

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In the arcane, moneyed world of “For Your Consideration” ads, there are each year a number of pitches that rub Academy members the wrong way. But after a paid email blast was sent out this week by both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, TheWrap reporter Steve Pond is getting some blowback for suggesting that the transmission was only borderline AMPAS-legal:

Weinstein Company COO David Glasser responded: “We are surprised that a media outlet like TheWrap, which normally has journalistic integrity, would print the strange accusation of an anonymous competitor and use this as a direct broadside against Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.”

Can you guess who the anonymous competitor is? The email in question, paid for by Weinstein Co., featured the subject line “Meryl Streep Exclusive Video” and linked to a screening Q&A conversation between the actress and Deadline.com’s Pete Hammond. During the clip, Hammond exclaims that the 29-year gap in Streep winning an Oscar really needs to be rectified.

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In an intriguing piece of LA Times commentary, author Ernest Hardy reminds that it’s not just the Oscars that can be guilty of slighting an industry icon and then belatedly trying to make up for the oversights with a career nod. This weekend, it will be the Grammys’ turn to embrace the phenomenon of residual voter shame.

Hardy’s piece begins, simply, with the sentence “Diana Ross has never won a Grammy.” He notes that her Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony this Saturday will not be televised and frames this weekend’s “consolation prize” within a larger failure:

The Grammys aren’t the only place where 67-year-old Ross, a primary architect of modern pop culture over her five-decade career, has been undervalued. It’s long been fashionable to lampoon her in the media and in critical circles, to dismiss her voice and her trailblazing accomplishments–to cast her in the one-note role of incorrigible diva…

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The latest issue of Deadline.com’s awards season print magazine Awardsline is out. Distributed for free to AMPAS voting members and film execs, the February 1 edition is once again chock full of studio ads.

There is also some clever editorial sourcing of a panel held last December at a two-day industry event hosted by the PMC/Nikki Finke site. Alongside Relativity Media CEO Ryan Kavanaugh and Open Road CEO Tom Ortenberg, Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen shared stories about awards seasons past:

“Last year we had Biutiful, and were doing a campaign for Javier Bardem for Best Actor. [At the end of] last year, it did not get a Golden Globe nomination, it did not get a SAG nomination, it did not get a BFCA nomination, nothing. We thought we were dead, basically.”

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The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin picked up a big win for best male lead, but, other than that, it was all The Help at this year’s SAG Awards. Viola Davis won for best female lead while Octavia Spencer picked up the nod for best female in supporting role. The Help‘s cast also won for best ensemble award.

Meanwhile, on the TV side of things, Boardwalk Empire had a great night, picking up awards for best ensemble cast and best lead actor for Steve Buscemi.

Full list of winners after the jump:

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