Monday, February 25, 2013

¤ The 85th Annual Academy Awards / The Oscars ¤

What a night! Full of great performances from Adele to Barbra Streisand to Shirley Bassey. Dedicated to movie musicals, this years Oscars were classy and glamorous (apart from Seth MacFarlane's boob-song)

 
AWARDS


FULL LIST OF WINNERS

The night was filled with expected wins and few very surprising ones. One of the biggest surprises was Best Director, which went to Ang Lee for Life of Pi. He totally deserved it though; Life of Pi was one of the most visually stunning films of 2012. He previously won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain in 2005. Life of Pi was also the award magnet of the evening, winning total of four awards; Director, Original Score, Cinematography and Visual Effects.


Second biggest surprise was the tie between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty for Best Sound Editing.  It is only the sixth tie in the whole Oscar history. It also made the technical Oscars much more interesting, since no one expects that kind of surprise.

Christoph Waltz won his second supporting actor award, giving him a pretty good track record (2 nominations and 2 wins). I think it could be officially said that Quentin Tarantino really knows how to pull the best performance out of Waltz. Tarantino won Oscar for original screenplay, proving that he academy still likes him (he previously won Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction in 1995).

Daniel Day-Lewis, to no one's surprise took home the Best Actor award making him the only person who has won that trophy three times. Usually Best Actor category is something everyone really looks forward to, but this year the winner was so clear that I'd rank it among one of the most boring categories of the evening. Though Meryl Streep made it a lot more interesting.

Adele seems unstoppable. She nailed the performance and took home the Oscar for Best Original Song. Skyfall is also the first Bond theme ever to win and third to be nominated.

SHOW

I didn't have that big of expectations for Seth MacFarlane as host. Especially after the Golden Globes where Tina Fey and Amy Poehler established themselves as the go-to hosts of any award show. MacFarlane did ok, but not phenomenal. I think his opening monologue wasn't great but his small introductions were great and topical. And he balanced well between classy and rude.


As this year was dedicated to movie music, we saw a lot of great performances. Shirley Bassey performed her signature Goldfinger after an homage to James Bond music. She was the epitome of classic glamour. As was Adele who later in the show recieved the golden Oscar statue to go with her golden pipes.


We also got to relive few of our favourite musical moments from the big screen. Catherine Zeta-Jones performed All That Jazz from Chicago and Jennifer Hudson belted out And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going from Dreamgirls. The cast of Les Miserables also performed a small medley from the film.
 

No show is ever perfect. I think it was a very poor decision to cut people off using the theme from Jaws, especially during the Visual Effects Oscar when the winners were talking abut the poor financial situation of some VE studios. It also seemed that the teleprompter was bit hard to read, since many of the presenters had trouble reading the texts.

Also worth mentioning was the fall of Jennifer Lawrence when she went up to accept her totally deserved award ( <3 J-Law). Good thing she has quick wits and she started the speech "You all gave me an standing ovation just because you felt bad that I fell down". Classic Oscar moment!

Seth MacFarlane closed the show with Kristen Chenoweth making fun of those nominees that didn't win this year. Chenoweth is just so adorable that it was great. Best line was "Pick up your jaw Bradly Cooper, you'll get to do Hangover 4"

Overall I really enjoyed this years show. Mainly because all the nominees were so superb. 2012 was truly one of the greatest years in cinema.

RED CARPET

I seem to be doing this post a bit backwards, but who cares. You can see great pictures from the carpet at NYmag. And if that wasnt enough, enjoy these pictures from the Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

Here are my favourites:


From top left: Sally Field, Salma Hayek, Daniel Day-Lewis with his wife Rebecca Miller, Jane Fonda, Jessica Chastain


Hopefully you enjoyed reading this and watching last nights Oscars as much as I did. New weekly post coming later this week after I get my new laptop working.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

¤ Pre-Oscars ¤

Hey guys! Hopefully you are all as excited about this evening as I am. It's time for the 85th Annual Academy Awards in just a bit over 6 hours. Actually I should stop calling them 85th Annual Academy Awards since producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan have decided to call them just The Oscars to appeal to a younger democraphic. Here is one of the official posters:



Here are my predictions:

Best Picture: Argo
Best Director: Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio (Argo)
Best Animated Feature: Wreck-It Ralph
Best Foreign Language Film: Amour
Best Documentary - Feature: Searching for Sugar Man
Best Documentary - Short: Mondays at Racine
Best Live Action Short Film: Curfew
Best Animated Short Film: Paperman
Best Original Score: Mychael Danna (Life of Pi)
Best Original Song: Adele - Skyfall (Skyfalla)
Best Sound Editing: Argo
Best Sound Mixing: Les Miserables
Best Production Design: Anna Karenina 
Best Cinematography: Life of Pi
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Hobbit: Unexpected Journey
Best Costume Design: Anna Karenina
Best Film Editing: Argo
Best Visual Effects: Life of Pi

Those are how I think the awards will go, but not nessecarily how I want them to go.

Hopefully you'll have fun watching the Oscars tonight. I'll try to post about the awards tomorrow after school.

Remember to Like AMPAS/ The Oscars in Facebook for quick updates (and a preview of the red carpet)