Best Picture:
The Departed
I got this one right. Once it won the Eddie I figured it was a done deal. Although when Babel won Best Original Score (of all things) I felt a pang of "Oh no!"
Best Director:
Winner: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Thank god for that one and now, I bet, he does a Katherine Hepburn and just wins a couple more because they're really sorry. If his Rolling Stones documentary goes theatrical this year he could very well win for that!
Best Actor:
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Yeah, considering none of my favourites were nominated (to be honest though, Whitaker is the only one I have seen. Venus, Diamond and Happyness didn't interest me, and Half Nelson isn't out here yet) I suppose this is good. I just really hate that movie.
Best Actress:
Helen Mirren, The Queen
YAWN. Lame end to her speech, as well. How "I'm the king of the world" of her. Why did they show a clip of Penelope Cruz lipsyncing though! I think even Cruz herself thought it was a joke judging from her reaction.
Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine - unlike Best Actor I had seen all the nominees (bar Djimon Hounsou) and none of my favourites were nominated here either, but I can be happy for Arkin. He was good enough and I'm glad he has a statue, even though (and I've said it before multiple times) he deserved one three years ago for Thirteen Conversations about One Thing. Uh-huh.
Best Supporting Actress:
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Nothing to really say here. Seen all five and this was, I guess, my favourite. Meh. I wish they'd shown the "HERE I AM!!!" clip for Blanchett though.
Best Original Screenplay:
Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
And rightfully so, considering the nominees.
Best Adapted Screenplay:
William Monahan, The Departed
If it couldn't be the crew from Children of Men then I'm glad it was Monahan.
Best Cinematography:
Guillermo Navvaro, Pan's Labyrinth
This was disappointing. The voters obviously don't have a clue what cinematography is. Right? Most definitely the worst loss of the night. Just really, really disappointing.
Best Editing:
Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed
Seeing Marty Scorsese crying for Thelma was lovely. I would have (much) prefered the United 93 gang, but Thelma's a classy gal, so good for her.
Best Art Direction:
Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta, Pan's Labyrinth
And deservedly so.
Best Costume Design:
Milena Canonero, Marie Antoinette
Who am I to begrudge this win? She deserves it.
Best Original Score:
Gustavo Santaolalla, Babel
The third most ridiculous win of the night. I quick glance at the soundtrack listing on iTunes shows me that the most memorable pieces ("Only Love Can Conquer Hate", "Bibo no Aozora") weren't actually by Santaolalla. Oh well. One win for the movie was enough for Oscar voters, thankfully.
Best Original Song:
An Inconvenient Truth, "I Need to Wake Up" by Melissa Etheridge
I love Melissa, I really do, I just thought this song was extremely weak for her. Oh well. The song is better than the movie that it runs over the credits for.
Best Make-Up:
David Marti, Montse Ribe, Pan's Labyrinth
And deservedly so.
Best Sound Mixing:
Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer, Willie B Burton Dreamgirls
Yeah, I'm definitely okay with this one. They still snubbed the best sound work I heard all year for an eligible film (Miami Vice), so whatever.
Best Sound Effects Editing:
Alan Robert Murray, Bub Asman, Letters from Iwo Jima
As the only Best Picture contender, I don't know why more didn't predict it to win.
Best Visual Effects:
John Knoll, Hal T Hickel, Charles Gibson, Allen Hall, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
And deservedly so.
Best Animated Feature:
Happy Feet, George Miller
And here's where I hit myself over the head. I had been predicting Happy Feet all season. ALL SEASON and then at the very last minute I swapped it for Cars. Ugh. I'm a lunkhead. Why didn't I show my Aussie patriotism like I did in the Live Action Short category, even though I knew better. Ugh.
Best Foreign Language Film:
The Lives of Others, Florian Henkel von Donnersmark
I'm this (*squeezes thumb and index finger together*) close to predicting The Lives of Others, but I decided not to.
Again, I'm an idiot.
Best Documentary:
An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim
I've already discussed this category enough lately, but notice the name next to the title. Davis Guggenheim. Yeah. HE is the Oscar winner. Not Al Gore. Please stop calling Al Gore an Academy Award winner, or saying "Al Gore collected his Academy Award..." cause he's not one. His IMDb profile does not say he won an Oscar. The Oscar website does not say he won an Oscar. Enough.
Blah blah, short movies. I'm bored with this.
Overall, I got 15 categories correct. So, that's still pretty good for a year that was so crazy. I got the top 8 all right though. So that's conselation! I'm gonna do a next-year predictions thing, which will be hilarious uneducated.
6 comments:
I was pretty taken aback by the Happy Feet victory, considering Pixar has so many connections within the industry. Initially, I had no interest in seeing it, but now I'm really looking forward to it.
Yeah, and I'm with you on the stupid choice for Penelope's clip. It's a moving scene undoubtedly, but totally wrong for an acting showcase. It was like last year during the SAG ceremony, when the Ziyi Zhang clip just had her looking coyly at the bicycle boy. I laughed, because it ironically demonstrated how idiotic her nomination really was.
And boo to your Mirren criticism. I will not hear it Glenn!
VOTERS don't have a clue what cinematography is?
"Pan's Labyrinth" won the Golden Frog at Camerimage, and these are certainly people who know what this is about. Lubeski is a genius, but let's not turn against "Pan's Labirynth", which was undoubtedly deserving.
Pan's may have won the golden frog, but Children won the guild award, the BAFTA award, all the critics awards, and every other cinematography award that exists. The sad part is, the non-educated "I like movies to be pretty" part of me totally gets why Children lost. Same reason it wasn't nominated for art direction. Not traditionally pretty... and that's what they vote on.
I am also kicking myself for not predicting Happy Feet when I KNEW Cars didn't have this locked up. I knew there was a race. I think people are just bored with Pixar finally (at least enough not to give it automatic wins), and what probably put Happy Feet over the top was all the famous actors in fun roles. Actors of course vote for this oscar, but not for the globe, the Annie, etc.
God, Happy Feet is SO f**king weird. Just all over the place and then some. It's like they put a kid with severe ADD in an animation studio and just went, "go!" Haha. I enjoyed it, though. You don't see films like that every day.
And I absolutely agree that Mirren's "ladies and gentlemen, the queen!" bit was stupid. Very James Cameron in 1998. A shame, too, cause the rest of her speech was so good, and she's usually so effortlessly witty. I mean, what was she doing? She was holding up the oscar, not the queen. I just don't get what she was trying to do. There was no queen there. She could be the queen, but she was not gesturing to herself. And the whole point, I think, was to redirect the praise away from herself. But it just made her look stupid. I could rant for hours on how that bit made no sense to me, but I'll stop now.
"You don't see films like that every day."
Truer words have never been spoken. Okay, they have, but what you said was very very true.
Anon, I really liked the Pan's Labyrinth work (it's currently my #6 cinematography of the year), but Lubezki's Children of Men work was so above everything else this year (and it would seem most people agree with that statement) that it's strange it lost.
I don't think I'll ever get my head around the Academy's "payback" schemes. They'll give an oscar to someone who's lost a few times yet there are people like Kate Winslet (5 noms) Lubezki (4 noms), Thomas Newman (8 nom), Peter O'Toole (8 noms), who they just seem to refuse to give statues too. And they'll give first times statues even when they're not as deserving.
Crazy.
But that's why we obsess over them so much.
Ali! OMG, don't mention that! I was laughing for 10 minutes after they showed Ziyi's clip! I was crying I was laughing so much. Even my friends who hadn't seen the movie were laughing (essentially because I'd given them my impersonation of it and then they just went ahead and showed the silliest part). How dumb.
I just want to go on record by saying that The Departed's four big wins where the biggest travesties in the history of the Academy Awards.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Considering what was nominated, they coulda done worse!!
Post a Comment