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| Would you join this Oscar orgy? |
So, last night was eventful and quite surprising in some respects. It was fun, despite not all gelling, but that’s what the Oscars are all about. Here are a few thoughts (ten) that I had while watching the telecast. These are not in the order in which I had the thoughts, just the order in which they came to me this morning.
1) Every time the screen panned over to Quvenzhané Wallis she looked as if she had NO IDEA what the hell was going on. I love her, she’s adorable and she looks like she’s twice the age she was when she shot Beasts of the Southern Wild, but seriously, these awards things are way over her head. She was just as confused the night before, at the Spirit Awards (her reaction to Beast It was hilarious), and it just made me love her more. She ain’t no Dakota Fanning. She wasn’t groomed for this. She’s so genuine.
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| I wish he could keep it! |
2) The boost for Amour and Silver Linings Playbook on nomination morning meant absolutely nothing since both films won exactly ONE award, the award they were expected to win from the beginning (Foreign Film and Lead Actress respectively). This leads to another thought, that of the fact that while Haneke accepted the award for Foreign Film, he didn’t actually win an Oscar and that pisses me off. Instead Tarantino and Lee won SECOND awards (for Screenplay and Director respectively) and that just aggravates me. I haven’t seen Amour or Django Unchained yet, but I was blind rooting for Haneke to actually WIN AN OSCAR. He got to give a speech and he’s been receiving the best notices of his career and this was a giant boost for him in general, but he deserves to have an Oscar!
3) Pixar is such a lazy win. I haven’t seen ParaNorman or Frankenweenie, but both Wreck-It Ralph and The Pirates were better films than Brave. Brave got mediocre reviews at best and really survived on the strength of the studio, and while I really liked the film it didn’t do anything remarkable. It would have been great to see Disney back up there or even to see Tim Burton win an Oscar since this was probably the only chance he’d ever have.
4) A TIE!!! That hasn’t happened since 1968, when Hepburn and Streisand won in Lead Actress, and before that the only time was in 1931, when March and Beery won in Lead Actor. So, the tie in Sound Editing this year (between Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall) is a rarity indeed and marks history as the first time a tech category garnered an Oscar tie*.
*this is all wrong...don't listen to me...there have been other ties...
*this is all wrong...don't listen to me...there have been other ties...
5) Is it just me or did Jennifer Lawrence kind of say “Fuck you Emmanuelle”?
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| "Happy Birthday, Emmanuelle!" |
6) Seth MacFarlane didn’t do THAT bad, but he didn’t do that well either. He’s a showman and so he sold his numbers, but they didn’t all gel the way they should have. In fact, this ode to musicals didn’t gel as well as it should have. Zeta-Jones was obviously lip-synching, which was distracting and Jennifer Hudson got a tad shrill when she lost all the weight. The Les Miserables number was amazing and Streisand was fantastic and so was Bassey, which was a delight since usually when these shows bring back legends to perform it comes out hideous since age wares on the vocal chords apparently. That being said, the tribute to 007 was retarded since they open up saying it’s going to be all about the music and they played exactly TWO variations of the score and then had Bassey sing Goldfinger. Like, how is that a tribute to the music? They did try too hard to force the musical angle. The opening numbers were too nonsensical (why are Tatum and Theron dancing? Are they dating now? Did I miss something?) and that closing number dedicated to the losers was lazy and poorly put together. It was also boring and tame and should have been a lot tackier but instead just kind of laid there, rather flat.
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| What the fuck was this about? |
7) The world needs to stop trying to make the Obamas the ‘cool Presidential family’. Like, I get that they are young and black or whatever but they don’t have to have their hands in everything. Why the hell was the First Lady introducing the nominees and then announcing the winner? I understand that the internet moaned when Jack Nicholson was announced as a presenter, because we knew he was going to announce Best Picture…AGAIN, but the First Lady? It just seemed so…
8) I totally forgot that Naomi Watts was nominated for an Oscar this year.
9) Ben Affleck won his Oscar. I love how his snub for Best Director is still the most talked about thing on these awards shows. I actually thought the opening joke about the director of Argo being so top secret he was unknown to the director’s branch was hilarious, but the follow up of “they know they messed up” brought it to an uncomfortable place. Also, the doting of the third producer (the one who is ‘hot by association’) about Ben being THE DIRECTOR was just tacky. Like, we get it…he would have won the Oscar had he been nominated but he wasn’t nominated and that snub happened over a month and like five awards ceremonies ago. We can talk about something else.
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| I love you girl, but this was seriously the best you come up with? |
10) This may be totally sacrilegious at this point, and I love it as a winner because I love listening to it, but ‘Skyfall’ is kind of a dumb song when you actually listen to the lyrics.
Oh yeah, and here are the winners (with an * next to the ones I correctly predicted):
Picture: Argo*
Director: Lee/Life of Pi
Film Editing: Argo*
Adapted Screenplay: Argo
Original Screenplay: Django Unchained
Lead Actor:Day-Lewis/Lincoln*
Lead Actress:Lawrence/Silver Linings Playbook*
Supporting Actor:Waltz/Django Unchained
Supporting Actress:Hathaway/Les Miserables*
Costume Design: Anna Karenina*
Cinematography: Life of Pi
Art Director: Lincoln
Makeup: Les Miserables*
Visual Effects: Life of Pi*
Original Score: Life of Pi*
Original Song: ‘Skyfall’/Skyfall*
Sound Mixing: Les Miserables*
Sound Editing: Skyfall* & Zero Dark Thirty
Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man*
Foreign Film: Amour*
Animated Film: Brave
Short (Animated): Paperman*
Short (Live Action): Curfew
Short (Documentary): Inocente
