Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the winner of them all?

Well, here we all are pendientes as the Spanish say, in this case pendientes the results of the Oscars. I’m sure everyone is on tenterhooks, desperate to find out who walks away with a statuette this year, what the actresses are wearing (the actors are of no interest really as there’s not much you can do with male formal attire), who is going to cry, who will be drunk when s/he makes her/his acceptance speech and so on.

OK, I exaggerate. You have to create a bit of atmosphere but it does seem that once again there is a fairly large Spanish-speaking contingent up there in the nominations.

The Peruvian Claudia Llosa’s film “La teta asustada” is nominated for best foreign language film. The title of her film, which has already won the Golden Bear award in Berlin 2009, translates as “The frightened tit”. In an interview she described how she was amazed to discover that she was not allowed to say the word teta (or presumably its English translation) on American television. This caused some difficulty, as you can imagine. In about 15 interviews she was unable to mention the title of her film. She said that at the end of her day of interviews she was tempted to shout, “¡Teta, teta, teta!” She did not give in to that temptation but admits to having given in to a bit of feminine vanity, changing her outfit for each recorded interview so that it looked as though she had been interviewed over a number of days. Ah, the pressure to look good! I shall return to that later.

Then there is the Argentinean Juan José Campanello, also nominated for his film “El Secreto de sus Ojos”, and Malaga’s own Antonio Banderas. He has been acting as a kind of godfather for a young man from Granada, Javier Recio, and their short animated film “La Dama y la Muerte” is up there in the nominations. These two declare that if they win they will have to go out and get drunk!

And, of course, we have the ever so successful Penelope Cruz. Winner of best supporting actress last year for her role in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, she is nominated this year for best actress for her role in the musical “Nine”. She declares herself convencidísima that she won’t win. Well, they have to say that, don’t they? However, a lot of people’s money seems to be on Sandra Bullock for her role in “Soccer Moms” or newcomer Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious”.

Mind you, even if Pe doesn’t win the Oscar this time, she has already been declared winner in the dress competition. I did say I was coming back to that topic, didn’t I? Entertainment Weekly has apparently put her at the top of the list of the 20 best-dressed actresses at the Oscars in the last 20 years. In a pink dress by Vesace she was voted number one, ahead of the likes of Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts. So there you go, there are some compensations in life!