Welcome, one and all, to The Mancunion’s first ever annual Academy Awards booze up. We’re extremely proud to announce that we’ll all be getting drunk while watching this year’s Oscars ceremony this coming Sunday, and we sincerely hope that you, dear student , will join us in our laudable quest to honour the year of film that has just passed us by. And what a year it has been! There’s been drunken castration in the Inebriation Game; wavy cinematography in The Grand Brewdapest Hotel; blood, sweat and single tears in Whipsmashed; alcohol fuelled paranoia in Beerdman; jingoistic, trumpet blaring idiocy from Bradley Cooper in A Very Large Snifter; inspirational perseverance in The Theory Developed on Everclear; arguments between hammered customers and barmen in Sell-me; and who can forget those underage purchases of malt liquor in Boy-from-da-hood? By the time it’s all over, you probably won’t care anyway. Here be the rules:
1. Make written predictions on the winners of the main categories (or all of them, if you’re an idiot) before the show starts and do a shot for every one you get wrong.
2. Salute the Daily Mail by downing your drink when someone complains about the lack of privacy for actors and everyone nods.
3. Beers for Tears: Down a half-pint every time someone starts crying on stage.
4. Grimace, then swig your drink whenever a camera pans to Brad and Angelina.
5. Down your drink if Will Ferrell makes an ‘unscheduled appearance’.
6. Take a shot whenever an actress is asked who they are wearing instead of a question of actual worth.
7. Down your drink and take a bow when somebody gets their speech cut short by the ‘GTFO the stage’ music.
8. When Boyhood wins Best Picture, call your entire family and organise a massive piss up to celebrate the beauty of life.
9. If John Travolta mispronounces another name, take a shot of De Kuyper Blue Curacao, Courvoisier or (god forbid) Angostura bitters – or basically any other spirit that is difficult to utter correctly.
10. If Oscars host Neill Patrick Harris spews forth his HIMYM catchphrase (“Legen –wait for it-dary!”), spend the next seven years of your life drinking cheap beer in a hipster bar as you try to forget.
Don’t forget to send us pictures as you play along with our Oscars drinking game rules @mancunionfilm, accompanied by the hashtag #WreckedCarpet.