February 27, 2012

Oscar 2012: Post Mortem

Well... that happened.

Make it rain!

One of my ambivalent awards seasons has closed its doors, and, for the most part, it was business as usual. To no one's surprise, The Artist was the big winner, taking home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Score. It tied Hugo for most wins, with the Scorsese film racking up an impressive amount of technical awards. Indeed, there was a fair amount of suspense early on the ceremony, when it seemed like every single award was going to Hugo. But, the charms of George Valentin proved to be too much to resist.

Midnight in Paris and The Descendants each won their solitary awards in the writing department, and The Help scored a sole acting win, which brings me to the biggest surprise of the evening.

Meryl Streep beat Viola Davis to claim the Best Actress oscar for The Iron Lady. A few months ago, I would have responded to that statement with a resounding, "duh", but as the season wore on, and people starting hating on The Iron Lady, Davis' chances seemed all but assured. She did win the SAG, after all. But no. Meryl is no longer the most "due" actress in Hollywood now. It's alright, because in her den of excellence and budding stardom, Rooney Mara is plotting sweet, justified revenge.

By the way, was I the only who was thrilled with the clip the Academy chose when they announced Mara? That's her best scene, and I was really hoping they would pick it, but I suspected they wouldn't, you know, because of the naked man and the torture. Imagine my delight.

In the other big surprise of the evening, Hugo took the Best Visual Effects trophy, beating out the heavily favored Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Shocking to say the least, especially since ROTPOTA looked completely photo realistic, and the stuff I've seen of Hugo, well... doesn't.

Moving on, I thought Billy Crystal was pretty bad as a host. He was definitely better than Franco and Hathaway (though, that's not exactly a challenge), but he was vastly subpar, especially compared the other times he's hosted. Indeed, this was a pretty wit free oscars. The best part came on the red carpet when Sacha Baron Cohen, in full on Dictator mode, "accidentally" spilled Kim Jong Il's ashes on Ryan Seacrest. Man, that guy is fearless.

Love it!

Also, Angelina Jolie's leg now has a twitter account. Follow that shit!

Oh well. I'm just happy that this awards season is over and we start looking forward to more interesting things... like predicting the 2013 race.

Anyway, my final score was 15/24. How did you do?

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