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Concert update: Juanes live on Facebook today

Colombian rocker Juanes will make history today when he becomes the first entertainer to be interviewed in Spanish live on Facebook.

The talk will be at 4 p.m. our time.

It comes on the eve of rehearsals for his "P.A.R.C.E." tour, named for his latest album. The tour comes to the Coliseum on April 2.

Here's a link to the Facebook interview location:

facebook.com/event.php?eid=154465161277749

Oscar update 13: 'Speech' talks loudest

If you didn't know what movie was favored to win best picture this year, you might have ascertained it from the clip that led up to the award. It featured actor winner Colin Firth's halting war-time speech from "The King's Speech" as segments of all 10 nominated films played on the screen.

Director Steven Spielberg's introduction was both a pat on the back to the eventual winner and consolation to the so-called losers, noting that the likes of "Citizen Kane" and "Grapes of Wrath" didn't win in their years.

And the winner was "The King's Speech," of course, voted best picture by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a year when the 10-film field didn't have a weak one (as in no "Blind Side")  in the bunch.

I wouldn't normally feel so strongly about a movie about British royalty, but this was not typical. The movie, about Britain's King George VI and his battle to overcome his stuttering to make an important war-time speech over the radio, was deserving.

Of course, so were "The Fighter," "The Social Network," "True Grit," "Toy Story 3," well, you get the idea.

While most the awards were pretty predictable, the fast just-over-three-hours run of tonight's broadcast wasn't. It was refreshingly short for this sort of thing.

"King's Speech" swept three of the biggest awards, including picture, director and actor. It won four in all, which tied it with "Inception," which won four tech awards, for the most.

"The Social Network" took three, with fellow best picture nominess "The Fighter" and "Toy Story 3" earning two each, as did "Alice in Wonderland."

"Black Swan" got one, while the other three best picture nominees — "True Grit," "Winter's Bone" and "127 Hours" — were shut out.

James Franco and Anne Hathaway proved likable hosts, though she showed more personality than he did. She should come back next year, but maybe with another co-host.

And for those keeping score at home, I expanded my Oscar predictions column this year to include two other voices — Charles Horak, artistic director of the Plaza Classic Film Festival and a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association; and Felipa Solis, the Times' movie columnist and a member of BFCA.

They didn't make predictions in all of the categories, citing the fact that they didn't see all the entries in some of them. Chuck made predictions in 2o of the 24 categories and got 12 of them right. Felipa made predictions in 21 of the 24 categories and got 11 of them right.

I made predictions in all 24 categories (silly me), preferring to go with my gut and a few hunches. I got 18 right, which tends to be a bit easier in those years when they are fairly predictable.

What do I win?

 

Oscar update 12: Firth's eloquent (and jokey) speech

Jeff Bridges introduced the five actress nominees with eloquent and subtle tributes to each.

Not that goofy Sandra Bullock. Like Bridges, she was an acting award winner last year, thus her appearance introducing the five male actor nominees. She teased Bridges about yet another nomination. "How much is enough," she asked. She said she was "still waiting" for "The Social Network" star Jesse Eisenberg to friend her on Facebook.

Even winner Colin Firth, who was so good in "The King's Speech," joked after he won that "I have a feeling my career has peaked."

His jokey acceptance speech, including "Black Swan" references, was a refreshing change from that other first-time winner, Melissa Leo, whose scatalogical acceptance speech in the first half hour made me fear for how the show might turn out.

But it wasn't so bad, especially when a guy like Firth, such a gifted but often overlooked actor, cracks wise about being a "child sensation" 20 years ago and having "fleeting delusions of royalty."

Well, he played it pretty damn well.

 

Oscar update 11: Portman pirouettes with Oscar

Natalie Portman was no surprise winner of the best actress Oscar, though she sounded a bit surprised.

"It's insane," she said in her tearful acceptance speech.

She won for her bold performance as the ballet dancer who comes unwound in "Black Swan." She deserved it and a lot of the legion of prognosticators thought she would.

She was in a strong field, including another front-runner, Annette Bening in "The Kids Are All Right" (her fourth nomination, she hasn't won yet), young Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone," Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine" and Nicole Kidman in the little-seen "Rabbit Hole."

 

Oscar update 10: Hooper wins, so will 'Speech'

Tom Hooper, a veteran of British TV, just won the best director award for "The King's Speech," which is a good omen for his movie.

This was looking like a year when there'd be a split between best film and best director. Usually, they go hand-in-hand, but with 10 films in the field, and edgier work by the likes of Darren Aronofsky ("Black Swan") and David Fincher ("The Social Network"), a split seemed very possible.

But it didn't happen. Hooper's work was, like his film, more subtle and a lot less edgy. He directed an actor's film and that doesn't always equate with the gold, you know. Not these days. But it did this one.

Hooper credited his mom for discovering the play. "The moral is, listen to your mother," Hooper joked.

The award was preceded in the previous segment by an unannounced Celine Dion singing "Smile" as video clips of those film directors, editors, screenwriters, actors and others who left us in 2010, including Lesley Nielsen, Arthur Penn, Jill Clayburgh, Peter Yates, Lynn Redgrave, Blake Edwards and Lena Horne, praised by Halle Berry for being a pioneering black woman in what was a lily-white industry when the singer-actress signed her first studio deal in 1943.

The best-director segment ended with a number of other honorees who were awarded at other ceremonies, including director Francis Ford Coppola and actor Eli Wallach.

 

Oscar update 9: Songs get short shrift

Randy Newman was right.

They couldn't find a fifth song to nominate for the original song Oscar?

They don't even let the performers do full versions of the nominated songs. What's up with that?

Even those young downloaders with short attention spans the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences try to attract with the awards show want to hear the full songs!

Well, anyway, Newman won his second Oscar for original song, but first for a "Toy Story" movie. His "We Belong Together" won it. His other was for "If I Didn't Have You" from "Monsters, Inc.," one of six Pixar films on which he's worked.

The other two nominated songs were performed in truncated form, which really doesn't do them justice. Florence Welch of Florence in the Machine, making her second major awards show appearance in a month, barely got to cut loose on A.R. Rahman's "If I Rise" from "127 Hours."

And statuesque Gwyneth Paltrow barely got to take it home on "Coming Home," from her "Country Strong," but that's OK. It's pretty generic middle-of-the-road country pop and as strong as her voice is, it's also pretty colorless on that song.

Still, they could cut some of the silliness (like the auto-tune bit) and let these artists do full renditions of their songs. That's even more criminal than only nominating four.

 

Oscar update 8: Hope, Crystal, Downey, Law, FX

We're two hours in and as much as I like James Franco and Anne Hathaway — they have such likable personalities — it seems like the producers of this year's show are just trying to cram in as much as they can.

It was nice having eight-time host Billy Crystal pay tribute to 18-time host Bob Hope, and that they got a few of his one-liners in (Oscar night at the Hope house was called "pass over"), but the juxtaposition of Bob on archival film and Billy in real time was an elaborate way to introduce the visual effects and film editing awards.

No surprises there. "Inception" won visual effects for its very imaginative and difficult achievements that fit the in-your-dreams storyline to a T, and "The Social Network" got it for the crisp editing of Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, the latter of whom insisted on a "hug up" before their short speeches.

Best part of this segment was the repartee between presenters Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, the latter of whom joked about one of Downey's busts with a call girl, only to be corrected about the year and costume.

There way of paying tribute to the attention to detail of what Law called the "wizards of technological mastery."

 

Oscar update 7: docs, auto tunes and welcome words

We're in the middle of this thing called the 83rd annual Academy Awards.

How can you tell?

They're giving out the documentary and short film awards.

But this part always provides some interesting moments.

Like when live action short winner "God of Love" director Luke Matheny, a tall, bushy-haired, lovable goof, said he "should have gotten a haircut" before he won.

Or when Charles Ferguson, who directed documentary film winner "Inside Job," about how greed fueled the 2008 financial crisis happen, noted it had been three years since the crash and "not a single has gone to jail and that's wrong."

You've got to love the passion. Too bad our news media doesn't keep the kind of trouble information out front.

There was a fun bit of auto-tune revelry where dialogue from scenes in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1," "Toy Story 3," "The Social Network" and the last "Twilight" movie were auto-tuned into songs. 

 

Oscar update 6: Gross wolfmen, curiouser costumes, song stories

We're now 90 minutes in, a fast 90 minutes I might add, and some of the less sexy Academy Awards (read: technical) are getting spit out like sunflower seeds.

Presenter Cate Blanchett said "gross" when the clip of the makeup special effects from "The Wolfman" was shown. Of course, it won the Oscar for best makeup. Co-winner Rick Baker has mastered these kinds of transformations for decades. I loved what his co-winner, Dave Elsey said.

"It was always my ambition to lose an Oscar to Rick Baker. This is better."

These things tend to go to the more gimmicky, flashier stuff. So it was no surprise that "Alice in Wonderland" took its second Oscar, this one for Colleen Atwood's kaleidoscopically psychedelic outfits that Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helen Bonham Carter, among others, wore in the movie.

It was her third win and she came prepared. Atwood had a written speech from which she read.

To introduce the best original song nominees, producers prepared a clip of men and women on the street waxing poetic about favorite movie songs, culminating in President Barack Obama, not exactly an average man or woman, saying his has to be "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca."

Then Kevin Spacey, who joked he was George Clooney, introduced 20-time nominee Randy Newman, who performed his "We Belong Together" from "Toy Story 3" (his nasal voice was down too low in the mix) and Mandy Moore, who duetted on "I See the Light" from "Tangled," whose co-writer Alan Menken is, like Newman, an Oscar fave.

 

Oscar update 5: NINetwork, double 'Inception'

So far, the Oscars seem to be going according to script. And, by the way, a couple of execs announced that the awards will stay on ABC until 2020, so there's one less thing to stress over!

The money was on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to win the best original score award for their haunting "The Social Network" music, and they did. What was a surprise to see was the tuxedoed and bearded Reznor, once the king of rage, make such a classy acceptance speech, referring to the win as "humbling and flattering beyond words."

Who'd of thunk it. Melissa drops a four-letter word on the Academy Awards show and the once-angry Nine Inch Nails frontman doesn't?

"Inception" took the awards for sound editing and mixing, and it should have. In their acceptance speeches, the winners thanked their director, Christopher Nolan, who was criminally overlooked in the best directing category, for being, as mixer Ed Novick put it, "the creative force behind every decision that was made."