James' Oscars blog 2011The 83rd annual Academy Awards. Hosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway. A night of some big surprises, a few sad errors in winners and a night for Britain to triumph!
The 3 hour marathon began with hosts Franco and Hathaway sending up some of the best films of the year in a funny montage - nice to see Inception being the main theme for this. The presenters seemed very natural - well, Hathaway was any way - Franco looked a little wooden for the majority of the time. The important thing was that fresh young blood revitalised this year's Oscars and made for one of the less tedious awards ceremonies in memory.
Original screenplay went to The King's Speech - the big contender in this category being Inception; adapted screenplay went to the film that has put Facebook back on the map - The Social Network, a film that would go on to scoop 3 of the awards at the ceremony.
Inception, joint with The King's Speech in winning 4 awards, bagged the technical awards - Nolan's snub as director is still bewildering - Visual effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Wally Pfister's cinematography all triumphed for arguably the best film of the last 12 months. It was a great shame to see Roger Deakins walk away empty handed, and True Grit in general, for a beautifully shot film.
Short live action film was won by God of Love, short animated film though it should have been the quite excellent Day and Night from Pixar was actually awarded to The Lost Thing. The 4 nominated Best songs were all performed excellently during the ceremony and Randy Newman took the award for the heartfelt We belong together from the brilliant Toy Story 3. The animated masterpiece also rather unsurprisingly bagged the best animated film - any other year without Pixar's influence the sublime How to Train Your Dragon would have won this. John Powell's stunning score lost out to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' irritating experimental score for The Social Network. This was one of the only awards of the night where I found myself getting angry.
Makeup was awarded to Rick Baker for his realistic work on The Wolfman, Foreign language film went to the Danes for In a better world. The Social Network picked up Best Editing - no real surprise there. Strangers no more took Documentary short subject and the infamous Banksy lost out in Documentary feature to Inside Job.
Costume design bagged a second Oscar for Tim Burton's mish mash of a film, Alice in Wonderland. Its other award of the evening was for Art Direction, an award I thought would certainly have gone to The King's Speech.
Onto the biggest awards of the night, Melissa Leo picked up Best actress in a supporting role for her role in The Fighter - her speech contained the only "Fuck" of the night! Actor in a supporting role went to Christian Bale also for The Fighter. Shame to see Geoffrey Rush not winning this for The King's Speech.
Everyone expected David Fincher to get Best Director for The Social Network but I'm happy to say that Tom Hooper received the award for The King's Speech. It wasn't until the last 20 minutes of the ceremony that The King's Speech found its feet. For a moment it was looking as if The Social Network might bag most of the big awards.
Actress in a leading role went to a fairly heavily pregnant, emotional and beautiful Natalie Portman for her haunting performance in Black Swan. The Oscarshave done away with the sycophantic nomination process of getting 5 actors and actresses to come out on stage and sing the praises of the nominees. This time Mr Cool Jeff Bridges awarded Natalie Portman with the golden statue. Actor in a leading role was the biggest given of the ceremony. Colin Firth triumphed for Britain with his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech bagging the award. His speech as always was one of the highlights. Sandra Bullock awarded Colin with the Oscar.
Finally, after a night of lots of glamour and some beautiful stage scenery with backdrops from classic Oscar winning films, The King's Speech beat the odds and won its 4th award - the most important - for Best Picture.
Overall, a night of surprises, loads of glamour and some great achievements for two of the most deserving recipients - Inception and The King's Speech.
