Cinema Rant

Welcome to the sequel! Last time here on the blog I gave my predictions for the 2013 Oscars. Now they’re over and the results are officially in!

How did I do? I’ll tell you in a moment, but first let me just congratulate the Oscars on once again being a totally mixed bag of awesome, awful, and awkward. Seth McFarlene’s jokes were best described as “hit and miss” but some were delightfully witty and sufficiently rude. The audience was terrible; hardly laughing at all, and Seth…my man…you really shouldn’t giggle so much at your own gags. It looks really desperate, especially when everyone else in the room is just quietly ‘ooo’ing and ‘aww’ing.

I lost count of how many times I cringed at little mistakes. There were some few but noticeable examples of mispronounced words, false notes, and worst of all; pointless moments. Why did we need to see a live rendition of songs from Chicago and Dreamgirls, who cares about the long pauses between Melissa McCarthy and Paul Rudd, and how weird was it when Mark Wahlberg needed to assure the crowd that his announcement of two nominees tying was “no B.S.”? Still, stranger things have happened at the Oscars than just that and Jennifer Lawrence tripping over her dress.

For Best Costume Design I placed my bets on the costumes in Les Miserables winning. How did that go?

Alright, off to a bad start. The actual winner was Jacqueline Durran for Anna Karenina. Well, I wasn’t expecting a 100% success rate anyway, so it’s not really bad news yet.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same action twice and expecting different results…so this time I went for Les Miserables again!

…and it payed off! Aha! Who looks crazy now Rita Mae Brown? Mwahahaha!

So…Best Art Direction is apparently actually listed at the Oscars as Best Production Design. So, right off the bat, it’s a fail for the title. Still, I predicted The Hobbit would win…so who knows, I could still be…

…damnit! Lincoln won. Bastards.

And I suppose I’ll fail the next one too…

Ey? Interesting. Best Sound Editing was a tie between Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall. I’m…going to go ahead and count it as a win.

Alright, things are looking up now. Surely my Best Sound Mixing bet for Skyfall couldn’t possibly be beaten by…

…aaaaahhhhgh! Screw you Les Miserables!

I was a little worried about this one. After predicting Life of Pi, I started to think that The Avengers could really take the statuette at the last second.

But thankfully I stuck to it and I was right! (queue moonwalk!)

The editing in Life of Pi was so impressive, so spectacular, and so creative that it couldn’t possibly lose to something like…

…Argo? Really? Don’t get me wrong, I like Argo a lot, but Best Editing?

Fine, Life of Pi clearly isn’t winning all the technical awards. So, Best Cinematography? I don’t know…Skyfall?

No…of course not. Now it’s Life of Pi. Typical!

I had only seen two of the documentaries in this category, so I wasn’t entirely certain of this…but I placed my bets on Searching for Sugarman. You really have to see it to know why I said that…it’s just so undeniably good.

The Academy, like me, clearly loved it!

I really didn’t know about this one, nothing stood out to me. I picked Anna Karenina because the score incorporated real-world sounds, like many of Joe Wrights other films.

The real winner was Life of Pi. I’m starting to see a bit of a pattern here.

But Life of Pi, despite being set in India (and at sea), cannot win the Best Foreign Language Film. It was pretty obvious which one would.

Congratulation to Michael Haneke.

Right, now this one really pisses me off. Clearly Wreck-It Ralph was the most deserving winner. Great animation, a wonderful story, and it was full of important messages both for kids and adults.

Which film really won? Brave! Is The Academy mental? What’s wrong with you people? What a snub!

Honestly, I really thought Lincoln was going to pick up the Best Adapted Screenplay oscar. It seemed like such a safe bet. It was historical, patriotically american, important, and simply fantastically written.

The winner was Argo. I guess, in hindsight, it won for all the same reasons. How did I not pick up on that?

Here is my masterpiece! My best prediction of the night! No one seemed to know what was going to happen in this category, but I did!

Yeah! I’m not so certain that it really is the best original screenplay of the year, but I f-ing knew that The Academy would think it was. Now I’m just going to lay here in my self-loving soup of arrogance. Mmmm sooouup!

And I totally knew who was going to win this one as well. It was definitely going to be…

What? Who did win? Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained? That’s amazing! He already won once before for a very similar role. Ok, now I know…The Academy is mental.

But as mental as they may be…

…they were never going to get this one wrong.

Nor this one…

I mean, come on, they were obvious. I can’t take much credit for getting them right.

This one, however, was hard as hell. There were so many women who deserved to win that it could only be described as a free-for-all. I thought that the winner would be chosen politically, with the golden man going to either the oldest or the youngest person. In the end I chose the oldest.

But no, it was Jennifer Lawrence! How exciting! She’s shot right to the top in just a few years, from Winter’s Bone…to The Hunger Games…to Silver Linings Playbook. I’m so happy for her, and her little trip on the way up to the Oscar stage only made her more human and loveable. Well done, Jennifer! I’m not even totally upset that I got this one wrong…not totally.

Oh no. Oh boy. Oh jesus. I don’t know what to say here. No one had any idea who was going to win this one. That’s my defence! I took a stab in the dark…

…and  I totally missed. Ang Lee won for Life of Pi, which I think is fair considering that Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated.

Still, to make up for Ben Affleck’s indefensible director snub, the winner of Best Picture was…

It could have been Les Miserables, but it wasn’t…and here’s the reason.

The entire society of filmmakers out there love to, incorrectly, think that their work is somehow changing the world; that a great film will shift the tide of human history. That’s why when a movie like Argo comes out, which depicts filmmaking actually playing an important role in humanitarian and political aid, it automatically get’s a standing ovation from The Academy. Movies about moviemaking, and specifically about how amazing moviemaking is, will always get a huge boost.

Regardless of the motives, I do still think Argo was the best film in the category. It earned the oscar fair and square, but enough about the Oscars…

…what about me? How did I do? Do I win the award for Best Oscar Winner Predictor, or will I have to “quit the biz” to save my honour? What’s the final score?

No no, don’t worry! I’m not going aaaaaanywhere!!! I’m going to stay right here writing this blog, probably forever, yaaay!

I said I hoped to get at least one third of my predicted wins correct, and that I did. Well done me! Oh, why thank you, me!

– Oscars Over!