I didn't do badly in my predictions, 16 out of 24, but that's not great either.
Here's the rundown:
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
I SAID: "Open Heart"
IT WAS: "Inocente"
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
I SAID: "Paperman"
IT WAS: "Paperman"
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
I SAID: "Asad"
IT WAS: "Curfew"
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
I SAID:
Life of Pi
IT WAS:
ife of Pi
BEST SOUND EDITING
I SAID:
Skyfall
IT WAS:
Skyfall...and
Zero Dark Thirty (A tie! I believe this is the first tie - in any category - since 1969, when Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand both won Best Actress, the former for
The Lion in Winter, the latter for
Funny Girl. I guess that's how you make the Sound Editing category interesting.)
BEST SOUND MIXING
I SAID:
Les Misérables
IT WAS:
Les Misérables
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
I SAID: "Skyfall" from
Skyfall
IT WAS: "Skyfall" from
Skyfall (There was no pretense that any of the other nominees had a chance, either - a portion of "Suddenly" was performed during the
Les Mis medley, but the others were given the clip treatment. Here's the first Bond theme to win, and hooray!)
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
I SAID:
Life of Pi
IT WAS:
Life of Pi
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
I SAID:
Les Misérables
IT WAS:
Les Misérables
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
I SAID:
Anna Karenina
IT WAS:
Anna Karenina
BEST ART DIRECTION
I SAID:
Anna Karenina
IT WAS:
Lincoln
BEST FILM EDITING
I SAID:
Argo
IT WAS:
Argo
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
I SAID:
Life of Pi
IT WAS:
Life of Pi
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
I SAID:
Amour
IT WAS:
Amour
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
I SAID:
Searching for Sugar Man
IT WAS:
Searching for Sugar Man
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
I SAID:
Wreck-It Ralph – Rich Moore
IT WAS:
Brave – Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman (Well, I didn’t think Tim Burton would win for
Frankenweenie, and he didn’t. I really liked
Brave, but it was the third best animated feature of 2012, not the best. Of course, it’s all subjective, but this was one of those rare years in which the best animated feature was not made by Pixar.)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
I SAID:
Lincoln – Tony Kushner
IT WAS:
Argo – Chris Terrio
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
I SAID:
Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal
IT WAS:
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino (DJANGO!!! This was my favorite moment of the night, the happiest I was during the show. I knew it was a contender, I said it was a contender, but it felt like it was between
Zero Dark Thirty and
Amour. Nothing against
Zero Dark Thirty, it’s terrific, but I’m so glad I was wrong and it was
Django.)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
I SAID: Anne Hathaway –
Les Misérables
IT WAS: Anne Hathaway –
Les Misérables
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
I SAID: Tommy Lee Jones –
Lincoln
IT WAS: Christoph Waltz –
Django Unchained (I underestimated
Django. Again, I knew it was a contender here, I knew Waltz had more of a chance than Hoffman or Arkin, but I thought it had come down to Jones or De Niro. Waltz certainly doesn’t have as many clip-ready moments as Jones. But again, I was really glad I was wrong. It’s a brilliant performance, and very deserving.)
BEST ACTRESS
I SAID: Jennifer Lawrence –
Silver Linings Playbook
IT WAS; Jennifer Lawrence –
Silver Linings Playbook (I wasn’t interested in seeing
Silver Linings Playbook when it opened, but I am now, even though I don’t think it looks great. I wish Chastain had won, though, because she’s so damn good in
Zero Dark Thirty.)
BEST ACTOR
I SAID: Daniel Day-Lewis –
Lincoln
IT WAS: Daniel Day-Lewis –
Lincoln
BEST DIRECTOR
I SAID: Steven Spielberg –
Lincoln
IT WAS: Ang Lee –
Life of Pi (Biggest surprise of the night. I did not think there was enough love for
Life of Pi to carry Lee to a win, but here you go. I thought if it wasn’t Spielberg, it’d be Russell.)
BEST PICTURE
I SAID:
Argo – George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Ben Affleck
IT WAS:
Argo – George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Ben Affleck
As for the show…
-I wasn’t sure how Seth MacFarlane would do, but I think he did a good job. The opening was very funny (I answered my initial, “Why is Shatner here?” with a clear, “Why not?”
, and he actually made me laugh out loud several times – first with his first line, something like, “And the quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh begins now.” (Jones actually chuckled at that!) My two biggest laughs were his line about the mission
Argo depicts being so top secret that the director of the film was unknown to the Academy, and, the one that no one in the crowd seemed to notice but I certainly did, the reference to
Argo being an “entertaining film, but despite that, it was nominated for Best Picture.” MacFarlane always had a smile on his face delivering his own material, which I’m sure annoyed some people, but I didn’t think he lapsed into too much smugness or made it about himself too much, and I was kind of afraid he would. He was a solid host.
-This was a bad year for the people who hate music at the Oscars – the, “This is the Oscars, not the Grammys!” people. I was fine with it, and happy to not have to sit through a Cirque du Soleil performance.
Dame Shirley Bassey! Now, I don’t like the stage version of “Goldfinger” as much as the one that’s in the film, but this was really cool. The performance was a little rocky at first, but she probably hasn’t sung the song in a long time. She turned it around, though, and what was really impressive was not that she could hit that last note, but that she could still
kill that last note.
The performances from the best (or so Travolta said) movie musicals of the last decade were fine, but none of them really worked for me as well as they should have. It would have been nice if the very best movie musical of the last decade,
Sweeney Todd, had been represented, but oh well.
Adele was great, “Skyfall” is a great song, but the music was drowning her out. It’s not her fault, it’s not the song’s fault, it was the orchestra’s fault.
That orchestra also used the
Jaws theme to play someone off early on, and man, was that a dick move. People get played off all the time – they even tried (and failed) to play Tarantino off – but the way it was done that time felt particularly harsh.
Barbra Streisand wasn’t drowned out when she performed “The Way We Were” after the In Memoriam montage, though. It’s a good thing, too, because if she had been drowned out, she’d have been impossible to hear. It wasn’t such a strong performance, and the way she made the moment all about her and her relationship with the late great Marvin Hamlisch felt distasteful.
I like Kristin Chenoweth, I like that they did something different by doing a song to the losers over the end credits, and it was pretty funny. I was probably the only one who sat through it.
-There was a refreshing lack of montages for the sake of montages. The only one I can remember is the Bond tribute, and that was well done. I know there are some people disappointed that the rumored reunion of every actor who’s played Bond didn’t happen, but I didn’t think there was any way they’d get Connery for that, and “every Bond minus Connery” would have been disappointing anyway.
-The reunion of
The Avengers made for a funny bit, but, fanboy that I am, I was disappointed that Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johansson weren’t there – just because it meant that not all of the Avengers were there. It was kind of awkward to have them presenting Best Visual Effects – the only category in which
The Avengers was nominated – to
Life of Pi, even though
Life of Pi was a lock anyway.
-That commercial with Tim Burton in it was funny, but I couldn’t stop thinking, “I like this, it’s funny, but I’d rather have seen Tim Burton in the show itself, receiving an Oscar for his fantastic movie.”
-They just had to have Dan Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart present together, huh? Sure, let’s keep linking Harry Potter and Twilight, even though they’re different in many, many more ways than they’re alike. And hey, Kristen Stewart? Hi, how are you? Because you look awkward and/or miserable all the time. You’re a movie star! I know this is your thing, but it’s not cute. Act like you’ve been there, and act like you wanna be there again.
-It was a pretty good year speech-wise, with Chris Terrio, Jennifer Lawrence, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Ben Affleck giving particularly nice ones. It’s unfortunate that Lawrence tripped up the stairs on her way to accept her Oscar, but charming too, and she even wished Emmanuelle Riva a happy birthday, which was a really classy move. Affleck turned his speech around after a weird moment when he talked about his marriage being hard work (I mean, relationships are that, but dude, it’s a victory speech, now is not the time). Tarantino turned his around, too, after what was coming off as arrogant (‘I’m here because I hired great actors – damn it, I’m good at casting!’
; he pretty much always comes off as a bit arrogant, though, and that’s only okay because his work is great enough to compensate/justify that.
I thought it was a good show – not a great show, but a good show. I’m sure that 99% of people who watched have already called it the worst Oscars ever. Because that’s what happens every year.
t:
It was funny how she told him he was being rude and he just continued to get his letch on!
