A self-described movie going newbie has won this year’s Malibu Times Oscar contest. Malibu resident Diane Carter picked 14 of 20 Oscar winners this year. The 20-year resident picked more winners than all other entries in The Malibu Times’ annual contest, crowning her Malibu’s latest “Movie Guru.”
It’s just in the last two years that Carter has been frequenting the cinema. Saying she was too busy to go before, she finally made the time to start seeing films more often after The Malibu Times columnist Burt Ross invited her to the Malibu Film Society. Carter says she became hooked.
“It’s a great community thing,” she shared. “In the past, I never really had the time to go to the movies a lot. MFS is convenient, so I started to go and I realized how much I love going to the movies. I started to see them and had thoughts about what I saw and that made me vote this year.”
Carter said she probably saw half of the movies up for Oscars this year. Her strategy picking the winners, she said, was not exactly scientific. “Obviously, some of them are good guesses, but I did see ‘Roma.’ I did see ‘Green Book.’ I voted for ‘Roma,’ but I really thought ‘Green Book’ would win,” she said. “That was my favorite, but I voted based off of what I thought was going to win. So that’s how I made my choices.”
Carter and a small group of friends watched the Oscars telecast at a friend’s house and started viewing before the ceremony to catch the red carpet entrances. Her group made dinner and a night out of the glamorous evening. “We made a seven-hour party out of it,” she said. She added she wasn’t even thinking about her own ballot for TMT contest—“not at all.”
When asked about winning, she was surprised, saying, “I never win. So, this is something that’s new to me. My reaction is—are you serious? I’m a newbie to the movies. Here I live in Malibu and I picked the majority of the winners.”
Of the ceremony, Carter said she loved Lady Gaga’s performance along with her costar of “A Star Is Born,” Bradley Cooper. It was one of the most talked about moments of the evening when the two megastars performed “Shallow,” their Oscar-winning song from the movie.
“It was absolutely incredible,” Carter said. When asked what she thought of the host-less event, Carter replied, “I thought it was outstanding. They don’t need a host. I thought it was one of the best productions I have ever seen. Very well done.”
Carter surprisingly did not choose the winners in either the best actress and actor categories—a first in the 19 years TMT has been running the contest. The upset of the evening in the best actress category threw a lot of people—Carter, too, who commented, “I knew that Glenn Close was expected to win, so that was a huge upset, I thought. People were not expecting that, but I thought Olivia Colman was fantastic and her humor was—well, she just nailed her character. We all thought Glenn Close was going to win, but that wasn’t what happened. Kudos to Olivia.”
Carter also voted for Viggo Mortensen for best actor, although it was Rami Malek who took home the prize for his starring turn as Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
As the 2019 Malibu Times Movie Guru, Carter will receive a one-year membership to the Malibu Film Society, two movie passes to American Cinemateque (good at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica or the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood), and gift certificates to The Hungry Cat in Hollywood and The Malibu Burger Company. According to Carter: “To have a membership to the Malibu Film Society is top drawer.”