¨And the
Oscar for Best Picture goes to Argo¨
Last night
the 85th Academy Awards were celebrated in a big way. Hollywood´s
top actors made their way through the red carpet with a lot of glamour. I´m not
a fashion expert so I won´t comment on who was wearing what, but I can say that
everyone looked beautiful. The ceremony began with a monologue from first time
host Seth MacFarlane who got some laughs out of the audience with his song ¨We
saw your boobs¨ and with a sock puppet version of Flight while he was
interrupted by Captain Kirk (William Shattner) who came from the future to warn
him about his terrible hosting gig. He showed us some glimpses of what went
wrong and MacFarlane tried to make amends by following Captain Kirk´s advice.
The jokes were funny although not that irreverent as the Family Guy and Ted
director has us used to. I still enjoyed his opening and I think he did a
decent job hosting the Oscars, which once again ran about three and a half
hours long. I know many people complain about the length of the ceremony, but I
really enjoy this once a year event and loved every minute of it.
Despite
opening with a surprise win for Christoph Waltz for best supporting actor, the
Oscar were pretty predictable and the heavy favorites won. I loved Waltz´s
performance, and he was my favorite in that category but I didn’t think the
Academy would give him his second Oscar in three years. I was wrong, and I was
happy about that. I was 17 for 24 in my predictions, but I knew some of the
categories were going to be close races between one or two picks. So close in
fact, that in one category we had a tie which hadn’t happened since the 1960´s.
Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall shared the Oscar for Sound Editing. The biggest surprise
of the night was Ang Lee´s victory over Steven Spielberg in the best director
category. Life of Pi was one of my favorite movies of the year so I was very
pleased once again with the Academy´s decision. The other categories I didn’t
predict were both writing categories which did go to the favorites: Argo
(adapted screenplay) and Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino). I loved Tarantino´s
acceptance speech and this was his second win after Pulp Fiction. It was a long
awaited win, but he finally got his moment. Brave beat Frankenweenie in the
Best Animated category (a film I really didn’t like too much), Lincoln beat
Anna Karenina in the Production Design category, and Inocente beat my pick Open
Heart as the best short documentary. Those were my only misses; everything else
went on as predicted.
Argo finally
won for Best Picture and Ben Affleck got his redemption for not being included in
the best director category since he was one of the producers of the film along
with George Clooney. He gave one of the best speeches of the night and reminded
the audience of how young he was when he won his first Oscar for writing Good
Will Hunting. He never thought he would be back, but he made it and has proved
to be one of the best directors of this last decade. Daniel Day Lewis won the
Oscar for his portrayal of Lincoln and also gave a gracious speech. He is the
only actor to have won 3 Oscars in a leading role. He made a joke about Meryl
Streep who presented the award to him and his acceptance speech felt natural
and authentic. Jennifer Lawrence was also a big winner as she won for her role
in Silver Linings Playbook. She tripped while climbing up the stairs and also
made fun of herself while accepting the award. She was gracious enough to
congratulate Emmanuelle Riva on her 86th birthday and was very
classy. Anne Hathaway won for her performance in Les Miserables in the
supporting role. Amour received love in the Foreign Language film category, and
Searching for Sugar Man won best documentary (one of my favorite moments of the
night because I really loved that doc). Adele was also a big winner for her
song Skyfall which she got to perform live on the show. There was also a
tribute for the 50 years of the James Bond franchise, and a tribute to musicals
as well as we saw some of the cast from Chicago, Dreamgirls, and Les Miserables
perform.
The awards
were pretty much scattered throughout as there wasn’t one movie to take home a
lot of awards as it usually happens. This is because there were a lot of strong
contenders this year. Life of Pi was the big winner of the night as it took
home 4 Oscars (Director, Visual Effects, Cinematography, and Original Score),
Argo 3 (Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Editing), and Les Miserables also took
home 3 Oscars (Actress in a Secondary Role, Sound Mixing, and Makeup) and Lincoln
only managed to win 2 (Lead Actor and Production Design) out of the 12
nominations it had. Django Unchained won two as well (Original Script and Best
Supporting Actor). Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook each took home
one Oscar, so the only Best Picture nominee to leave empty handed was Beasts of
the Southern Wild, but that small independent film was a winner simply by being
nominated.
It was pretty
much an even race, but Argo won the biggest prize of the night in a ceremony
which I really enjoyed. I thought it was one of the best in recent memory. I
don’t know why people watch the Oscars if they always complain about how bad and
long it is; I watch them because I really enjoy them. My favorite moments were
the big acceptance speeches from Ben Affleck, Daniel Day Lewis, Quentin
Tarantino, Chris Terrio, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Lawrence, and Ang Lee. If
you missed them then perhaps you might want to look them up in YouTube. I also
loved the musical performance from Les Mis cast, from Adele, and from Barbra
Streisand who sang during the touching memorium tribute. We can´t leave out the most expected star of the show: Ted who entered with his co-star Mark Wahlberg and made some funny remarks. I thought the was a great show and hopefully next year I
will improve my score, but for now satisfied with the overall picks.
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