Oscar wrap up

It was a pretty good oscar show overall I'd say. I didn't even come close to winning the pool (I think I only picked 11 right), but I'm not bitter - I swear...

Best Documentary/ Short film/ Foreign film
I actually had the opportunity to catch a screening of all of the nominated short and animated films. That lost out to an intense Rock Band session though. The documentaries/foreign films just weren't widely available enough to view in a timely manner. As such, these categories were guesstimated, as usual, and I lost no sleep over the choosing of the eventual winner.

Best Picture
This choice was no surprise. No Country was a great movie, with only one or two minor flaws. A fine choice given the competition.

Best Director
This usually goes to the Best Picture winner. It didn't hurt that it was the best directed picture anyway. Pretty much a lock.

Best Actor
I called this one, too. He had won in just about every other awards show, and he is well respected by the academy. I'm still not sure how I feel about Danny as a person though. Like, I don't think I'd wanna share a beer with him over lunch. Still think Viggo could've won this as well, though.

Best Actress
Biggest upset of the night, I think. Marion did put in a heck of a performance, but it had been the general consensus of those in the industry that Julie Christie would win, especially considering her previous award wins this season. Maybe Hollywood is trying to go more international and wanted more people on stage with unintelligible accents.

Best Supporting Actor/Actress
Javier blew me away in this role, mainly because I had never heard of him before. His win was most appropriate. And I haven't gotten the chance to see Charlie Wilsons War quite yet, but I hope sometime in the movie they explain Philip Seymour Hoffman's appearance. I bet they don't though...

My previous declaration of a Michael Clayton shutout was pretty close to occurring before Tilda came along. The thing is, after further thinking I realized she probably did have the best performance given her competition, and I actually picked her. Go me. I'd put Amy Ryan as second in this category, over manCate.

Best Screenplays
This is another category in which my initial feelings were defeated by my common sense. The characterization in Lars was still excellent, in my opinion, but that may have been more because of the acting than by the script compared to a Juno, so I correctly made this pick as well.

The Coen sweep was completed by the Adapted category. Really wasn't hard choice if you thought about it for a second.

Best Animated Film
Ratatouille. Nuff said.

Best Special Effects
I was watching a time delayed Tivo broadcast of the awards, while conversing on various message boards. At one point I noticed a topic declaring that "Transformers was robbed", and my heart sank. I refused to click on the topic and I refused to fast forward the show, in hope that the internet world existed in some alternate dimension where travesties such as this could transpire. Alas, this proved untrue. Another piece of me died inside when I saw that it was The Golden Compass that had beaten the mighty autobots, and not At Worlds End. The academy should be ashamed.

Best Score/Song
More categories in which my original picks won out. Before the nominations even were released I felt I knew what the winners should be. The 3 songs from Enchanted kind of annoyed me, too. I'm sure they came off well in the movie because of the whole spoof angle, but when performed it just seemed cliche.

Best Costumes

*sigh*

C'mon academy. Are you serious? Do the voters just look for the movie with the biggest dress and funniest hat? I mean they've been using these same costumes for every period piece since the 70's. There's no originality there, no creative thought whatsoever.

Best Makeup
I had no interest in this category either. But I guess there's a whole industry of people out there that do this so they've got to include it. Yay for them?

Best Cinematography/Art Direction
For these I depended a little too much on critics and not enough on my gut. I haven't seen the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but heard good things (which effectively screwed me).

Even with that failed pick, I knew There Will Be Blood should win one of these categories, I just picked the wrong one.

Best Sound Mixing/Editing
These two categories overlap so much its hard to differentiate between them. Either of them can be done during the process of the other; its just all so silly. Anyways, Transformers should have gotten one of them because I said so. Maybe Hollywood just hates Michael Bay for some reason.

Best Film Editing
Another misguided Diving Bell pick. I'm really going to have to stop taking one persons fascination with a movie as a be all end all critique. Oh well.


P.S. - Congrats on the win, Jose.