I just finished watching the oscars and I want to share a few things:
First, Billy Crystal did a wonderful job hosting the oscars and the overall show itself was probably the best one I have seen since I started watching the oscars when Billy Crystal last hosted. The theme about paying tribute to the theater was very appropriate and well done.
This was probably my best year predicting award winners as I correctly predicted 17 of the 24 winners and I was really surprised by only one winner, Hugo when it won the first award for cinematography. I picked Tree of Life and thought that War Horse was the second choice with Hugo a distant third. I personally felt that War Horse was the best, but after winning a previous cinematography award, I believed Tree of Life would win.
I was confused several times by the oscars logic in awarding winners in some of the categories. Once Hugo won for cinematography, I knew I would be wrong and Hugo would win for Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. It still surprises me that there would be a rout in these categories when there was no evidence that there was going to be one. War Horse and Rise of the Planet of the Apes traditionally would win the respective categories and were poised to do so by previous award wins. Makeup went to Iron Lady over Harry Potter because it fits the tradition of previous oscar winners, but then it goes against its tradition and just selects the better movie in editing with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo over The Artist. A complete head scratcher to me was choosing Undefeated over Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory in Best Documentary. I was not surprised because it had been getting a lot of news coverage in the last few days, but I still do not understand how the oscars have in the last few years failed to to give the award to the movie that was clearly the best in the Documentary category.
Finally, the best actress award was given to Meryl Streep over Viola Davis in the greatest travesty of the night. Not to say Meryl's performance was not worthy or that I was surprised, but I believe this was wrong because it seemed like this was Viola's night and she was robbed of her moment. Meryl had this happen to her when Sandra Bullock won for her role in the Blind Side a few years ago. The voters fell for the trap that Meryl has ONLY won twice in her 17 nominations and her last win was for Sophie's Choice many years ago. I felt Viola was not only the best, but she also would have had a lot more to bring to the show with her acceptance speech. When Meryl's name was called, you could see her say, "NOO!!" because she wanted Viola to win as well. What made it harder for me to understand was that earlier George Clooney lost the actor award to Jean Dujardin when I felt Clooney was the best, but I did not pick him because I judge the acting category by two criteria: momentum and winning the SAG award. Clooney had both against him and I ended up with the right choice. Viola had won the SAG award and I felt had enough momentum to win. Obviously, I was wrong but this isn't the first time this happened. Alan Arkin beat Eddie Murphy for Supporting Actor years ago even though Murphy won at all the previous awards ceremonies. The oscars wanted to give Arkin his first award for all his years he came up short.
What are your thoughts about the oscars? I enjoyed this year and look forward to the next year. Good night and good luck.
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