by Jeff Bayer, published on February 28, 2011 - 6:28 pm The 83rd Annual Academy Awards have put the best of the 2010 movies to bed. Heres a list of the winners. Below, youll find my commentary, as well as a link to the 9th Annual TSR Movie Awards. BEST PICTURE The Kings Speech BEST ACTOR Colin Firth, The Kings Speech BEST ACTRESS Natalie Portman, Black Swan BEST DIRECTOR Tom Hooper, The Kings Speech BEST SONG We Belong Together, Toy Story 3, Randy Newman BEST EDITING The Social Network, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Inception, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb BEST DOCUMENTARY Inside Job, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT God of Love, Luke Matheny BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT Strangers No More, Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon BEST COSTUME DESIGN Alice in Wonderland, Colleen Atwood BEST MAKEUP The Wolfman, Rick Baker and Dave Elsey BEST SOUND EDITING Inception, Richard King BEST SOUND MIXING Inception, Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick BEST ORIGINAL SCORE The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale, The Fighter BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Melissa Leo, The Fighter BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM In a Better World (Denmark) BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY The Kings Speech, Screenplay by David Seidler BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Social Network, Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin BEST ANIMATED FILM Toy Story 3 BEST ANIMATED SHORT The Lost Thing, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Inception, Wally Pfister BEST ART DIRECTION Alice in Wonderland, Robert Stromberg, Karen OHara Final Thoughts: The Oscars are over. The awards are over. Its all over. Im not a film critic who complains about two months of film awards. Heres the thing, my main reaction is to shrug my shoulders and move on. The James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosted Oscars started with a movie montage. I love these things. They work on me every time. It definitely feels done though. The oddest part was the flat ending with Back to the Future being thrown into the mix. After that, it was time for some easy jokes and the awards. I have no idea if Franco cared. I just know it didnt seem like he cared. His answer and delivery to everything seemed to be, Fine, but can we hurry? Ive got twenty other things to do tonight. Hathaway picked up on this and amped up her perkiness by at least five times. Doesnt she strike you as a mom already? Not only that, shes the type of mom whose kids would constantly be saying, MaAAAaaaammmmmm, quit embarrassing me. Fracno normally has an infectious joy in the roles that he plays on the big screen. It just never came through on the small screen. I always hear people say, There were no upsets. Like that is a bad thing. This makes no sense to me. If there is an obvious BEST, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman for example, it would be stupid if anything else won. In the case where there are a couple of greats, then its cool that it could be anybodys game, and you hope the love is spread around a little bit. Just think if Colin Firth (who I loved) would have won last year for A Single Man. Suddenly its Jeff Bridges versus the young guns of James Franco and Jessie Eisenberg. The one category that really needs to be looked at is Best Director. The three directors with the highest degree of difficulty were Christopher Nolan (not nominated), Danny Boyle (already a winner) and David Fincher. One of them should have won. With Kings Speech, Tom Hooper did not have a difficult task, subject or location. He did a great job with his role, but it wasnt difficult. That needs to be looked at. Since you are already declaring a best picture, the director awards most important feature should be Degree of Difficulty. A film where a guy is stuck under a rock? A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream? A movie about a website and two court cases? Are you kidding me? Maybe no one else noticed, but the director should have been fired. You probably dont know this, but someone is actually DECIDING on what should be on the screen. Its not just a monkey pushing buttons, although last night it seems like it could have been. Here are two perfect examples 1. Oprah. Shes telling you how great documentaries are (because she is trying to show tons of them on her new TV station). At some point the director thinks, Look, the Coen brothers are deathly bored. Quick, take camera 24! 2. Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem come on stage in white tuxedos. They move toward each other and decide to have a quick danc oh wait, nope we have to look at Penelope Cruz as she gets to watch her husband dance, but we dont. Quick note to the director, it is ALWAYS a better idea to let the audience at home watch the event instead of watching people at the event watch the event. Make sense? Lets move on. Its poor taste to only use dialogue from The Kings Speech as you are showing the montage for the Best Picture nominations. Now onto the question of, Do the Academy Awards realize they need to go back to having a stand up comedian run things because it helps move things along? Probably not. Thats why I have the next best thing. Kevin Spacey should host next year. Quick tangent. I always though the greatest Oscar host (and most crowd pleasing) would be Johnny Carson after he retired. He never wanted the one-night comeback, but guess who does a really good Carson? Spacey. Plus, he seems to like David Letterman, so Letterman could even join in for a sketch and they could make fun of Jay Leno. Spacey seems to love being the center of attention, he can sing, dance and his comedy aint too shabby. Plus, its safe, which the Academy still wants. Otherwise, the most talked about event ever could be having Louis C.K. unleashed on the awards (and the world) in the most honest, comedian undressing of all time. Having Kevin Spacey host will also allow us to remember that hes really talented and funny. Thats a good thing since hes having trouble doing that in movies right now. Source: thescorecardreview.com |