Well, so much for going 18 of 18. Out of the 24 total categories, I made predictions on 18 and got only 8 right - Best Actor, Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Song, Visual Effects, Sound Editing (by way of an extremely rare tie), and the big one, Best Picture. Then again, judging by the reactions of everyone else that made predictions, they didn't do that much better either. There were plenty of surprises at the Oscars, but despite getting more wrong than right, I was still overall happy with the results. Argo, as I predicted, took home the Oscar for Best Picture which at least continues my streak since 2004 (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, The King's Speech, and The Artist) of accurately predicting Best Picture. In 2003, I predicted Gangs of New York to win, and wanted it to win as well, but we all know how that turned out. Speaking of Best Picture, I read an interesting article on the envelope that holds the Best Picture winner card inside. Judging from how everyone involved has to handle it, you'd swear they're dealing with Yellow Cake Uranium. Just think how much the Academy could save if they simply took a 3x5 card with the winner written on it, and stuffed it inside a plain white envelope. Then again, if Hollywood really gave a damn about saving money, would we really have had so many Rob Schneider movies?
For Best Supporting Actor, I predicted Robert De Niro to win, but Christoph Waltz ended up winning his second Oscar in three years for Django Unchained (Coincidentally, his first was also for a Quentin Tarantino film). DiCaprio may have stolen the show in the film, but there's no denying Waltz was excellent as well and very much deserving of the award.
For Best Actress, I predicted Jessica Chastain to win, but the lovely Jennifer Lawrence won her first Oscar in just two nominations. My choice was Naomi Watts, but I did say either Watts, Lawrence, or Chastain were all worthy of the award. Plus, despite a brief embarrassing moment when tripping on her way up to accept the award, Jennifer took it in stride and had a little fun with it by responding to the standing ovation with, "Please, you guys are just standing up for me 'cause I fell and you feel bad." She's only 22 years old, and already has won me over as a fan with just Winter's Bone and Silver Linings Playbook alone. I'm definitely looking forward to her next projects. Hopefully, she doesn't go down the Halle Berry/Charlize Theron route by filming some Catwoman/Aeon Flux crap respectively following an Oscar win.
Quentin Tarantino took home his second Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (his first was in 1995 for Pulp Fiction). I predicted Michael Haneke for Amour. My personal choice was Mark Boal for Zero Dark Thirty, but I'm still glad Tarantino won. He's been one of my favorite film writers for years, and his breakthrough film Reservoir Dogs along with The Godfather: Part I are the two films that ultimately influenced not just my taste in film but also how I view movies today. Django Unchained is part revenge thriller, part dark comedy, and even part romantic fantasy. It was a well earned Oscar for Tarantino.
The biggest surprise of the night came in the Best Director category. Like Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway who everyone had pegged for a lock in their respective categories, Steven Spielberg was expected to win hands down. I predicted him to win, and basically everyone and their brother did as well... but it was Ang Lee - who was my personal choice to win - that won for Life of Pi. If you haven't seen it, do so. It's not just a visual masterpiece but a moving story as well, and was so close to making my top 10 best list of last year.
The one award where I kinda went "Come on!" was in the Best Animated Feature Film category. Look, I ain't taking anything away from Brave. It was a great movie, and further proof that Pixar knows how to consistently produce quality animated features. That being said, Wreck-It Ralph more than deserved it. The fact is, Brave, while a great movie, was a more straightforward, traditional story than Pixar's normally used to doing where Wreck-It Ralph was cleverly original and the best animated film of the year by far. A part of me thinks the Academy gave the award to the Pixar name more than film Brave itself, and it shouldn't be that way. Let the best film win, and if that means Pixar has to go a year without an Oscar, then so be it. Doesn't mean it's a bad film.
As for the host, Seth MacFarlane did a fairly solid job. Some of the jokes fell flat, but I've seen far, far worse for Oscar hosts. He did manage to get get quite a few gasps at what was easily my favorite joke of the night, "Daniel Day-Lewis is actually the second actor to be nominated for Best Actor playing President Abraham Lincoln... but I would argue that the actor who got most inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes Booth... Really, people...? 150 years go by and it's still too soon?" Also, delivering some surprising humor was Daniel Day-Lewis in his Best Actor acceptance speech, poking fun at the idea of him originally being cast to play Margaret Thatcher before doing a straight swap with Meryl Streep who was Spielberg's first choice for Lincoln. He also took a jab at Spielberg mentioning Steven didn't have to do much convincing for him to play Honest Abe, but he had to do some convincing for Steven to not make it a musical, and even poked fun at himself. Being notoriously known for his intense method acting, he pointed to his wife and stated, "Since we've been together, sixteen years ago, my wife has had to live with some very strange men. They were strange as individuals and probably even stranger if taken as a group."
I was hoping for no eye-rolling political moments, and for the most part, there were none... Then the Best Picture nominations were about to be announced, and here comes Michelle Obama onscreen to announce them all. Why? Beats me. Maybe the Academy felt there wasn't enough brown-nosing that night. There was really no other purpose to do so, and I don't care if it's Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Millard Fillmore for that matter... But hey, it was at least five good minutes of her not bitching about how bad fast food is. Overall, though, it wasn't bad... aside from the 44.4% prediction rate. Of course, having recorded it while at work I was able to fast forward through all the "Okay, get on with it" moments, so that certainly helps. I do have just a brief memo to the Academy for next year. Go back to saying "And the winner is..." instead of "And the Oscar goes to..." It's more of that politically correct "no one gets excluded, everyone's a winner" crap. Are you planning on giving all nominees a trophy next year? "And the winner is... Hey, everyone!" If not, then last I checked there's only one winner.
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