26 February 2009

Oscars 2009

Sooooo….I was wrong. Spectacularly wrong, it would seem. Not only did I get called on my ‘Heath Ledger will never win an Oscar’, but I also got totalled ousted on Iron Man winning best visual effects! In Bruges also didn’t get Best Original Screenplay, which was sort of disappointing, and Frost/Nixon lost out to Slumdog for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Reader_BestActress_WinsletK Forunately, though, quite a few of my other predications were seen to be correct – Slumdog won Best Picture and snagged Danny Boyle a fully deserved Best Director award. Sean Penn won for Milk, and Kate Winset for The Reader. Wall-E was Best Animated Feature, thank Christ, and one of the few ‘minor’ awards that I called: The Dark Knight won for Best Sound Editing. Sooo….6/10 correct predictions isn’t bad, right?

236x368_hostBio_hughJackman_v2 As for the Ceremony…I was in two minds about it, in all honesty. On the one hand I there were the thoroughly enjoyable moments – Ben Stiller ripping into Joaquin Pheonix, Jack Black ripping into Dreamworks, Will Smith being himself and thus fantastically amusing, Hugh Jackman being strangely affable – but on the other hand, there were some absolutely horrendously staged bits – particularly the moments where five previous winners each had one nominee to yak about, and then there was Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker’s horrifically stilted delivery of the artier of the awards.

That and the fact that The Dark Knight and Wall-E were snubbed for Best Picture nods, I don’t know whether I have a bitter taste in my mouth or not.

But there we go – not exactly the most satisfactory of Oscar years, but it was nonetheless bizarrely entertaining. Here’s to next year – mayhap the Academy may grow a pair and actually let a comic book movie into the mix.

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