Monday, February 25, 2013

Thank The Academy For The 85th Annual Oscar's

     The 85th annual Academy Awards are over and they were nothing short of spectacular. Hosted by Seth MacFarlane at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood; it was a good night for the Academy; not so good for the people who can't sit in a chair for over 3 hours straight, aka anyone with a butt. The ceremony scored 40 million viewers.
     There were 24 awards given out. From Best Picture to Best Makeup to Best Seth's Personal Insult (not really). Lincoln was nominated for 12 awards, Life of Pi was second with 11, Les Mis and Silver Linings Playbook had 8, and Argo was next with 7. Life of Pi won the most awards with 4.
     Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for his work in Django Unchained and Anne Hathaway won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Les Miserables. See, you don't have to be front and center to steal the show. Anne hands down stole the show, and the show stole her hair. Waltz was the comic relief for Django. He would deliver regular sentences, but he delivered with perfect wit and sarcasm.
     Life of Pi, Lincoln, Anna Karenina, Argo, and Les Miserables took home the eye candy awards. Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography went to Life of Pi. Les Mis took home the award for Best Makeup, Anna Kareninia took home Best Costume Design, Argo won the award for Best Editing, and Lincoln took home Best Art Direction.
     The ear candy awards went to Les Miserables, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty (in a tie, what??), and Life of Pi. Best Original Song went to Adele for "Skyfall", Best Original Score went to Life of Pi, the tie was for Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound went to Les Miserables. When you make a theater full of people cry just by singing, then you need to win Best Sound. The last tie was in 1968.
     My favorite categories, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay went to Quentin Tarantino and Chris Terrio, respectively. Tarantino won for Django Unchained and Terrio won for Argo. That's a great accomplishment for Argo, since part of the movie was inspired from a magazine article. Good job fleshing that out, Terrio.
     Size doesn't matter at the Oscars. The smaller films couldn't be overlooked; the documentaries and shorts. Searching for the Sugarman took home the award for Best Documentary, Curfew took home Best Live Action Short, and Paperman from Disney took home Best Animated Short. English isn't the language of love, Austrian is; Amour won the award for Best Foreign Language Film.
     Pixar yet again took home Best Animated Picture with Brave. Personally, I was pulling for Wreck-It Ralph, which is better according to me, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDB, and various other previous awards shows, but either way, the Mouse House won.
     The most prestigious awards of the night, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Film were well deserved. The Best Director award went to Ang Lee for Life of Pi. I personally didn't see that coming, nor did I see Life of Pi, but Ang Lee is a great director and Life of Pi is a great movie. You don't have to see it to know it's great. Ang also gets bonus points for the cool name.
      Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for his work as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln. Day-Lewis has now won 3 Oscar's as a leading actor, a record.
     Jennifer Lawrence surprised when she beat out 9 year old Quvenzhane Wallis (try saying that fast 5 times, or saying it at all), 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva, and reported frontrunner Jessica Chastain for Best Actress for her work in Silver Lining's Playbook.
     Argo was the real deal as it beat out all of the movies I've already mentioned 20 times to win Best Picture. Directed by Ben Affleck, Argo is the highest critically rated mainstream movie of the year. Argo was released on October 12th (a week after my birthday; sorry had to say it) and it is still going strong in theaters. Despite being released on home video last week, Argo dropped only 16%. It has amassed $130 million domestic and $207 million worldwide on a $45 million budget and after winning BP, its life in theaters should be prolonged, again. A well deserved win for Affleck and Co.
      17 of my 23 predictions were right. Jennifer Lawrence surprised by winning Best Actress and I was wrong on Best Editing, Cinematography, and Art Direction, which I saw going to Zero Dark Thirty (though I just put something down there), Skyfall, and Life of Pi, respectively. I also had Steven Spielberg for Best Director.
      Superlative awards are as followed; Best Personality went to Kristen Stewart. No, wrong, I meant Jennifer Lawrence and Quvenzhane Wallis; gotta love them. Best Inspirational Speech went to Ben Affleck; gotta love him. Longest Speech went to Bill Westenhofer, who was cut off by the Jaws theme and ABC. Some think the chime is rude, but they have to air those commercials they were paid for. Most Offensive Joke, the Lincoln joke. 150+ years and it's just still too soon.
      So which one of these actors, actresses, directors, movies, writers, etc. will win at the 2013 Kid's Choice Awards in March? Will Argo win Best Picture? What about Django? Or does Zero Dark Thirty appeal best to kids? Tune into the Kids Choice Awards on Nickelodeon next month to find out.

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