Monday, February 27, 2012

Oscars 2012 - A round up

After Dark Knight, Avatar and Inception failed to pick up Best Picture Oscars after my predictions in the past years, I decided not to write a pre-Oscar post this time. Not only that, I din't have any favorite movie to vouch for this year. Probable exception was Tintin for the Best Animated category, but damn those dumb academy members, it wasn't even nominated! Rango eventually won it.

The Oscars happened today and thought of doing a small write-up from what I observed.
The big winner of the day is "The Artist". Kudos to the team. It isn't easy to be so successful being a silent movie without no backing from the big studios (I believe). Jean Dujardin was at his charming best as the Best Actor. Though I would have been equally happy if Clooney or Brad Pitt had won the award.
Meryl Streep was nominated for an umpteenth time and won it for the 3rd time. Heard she was awesome in The Iron Lady, though the movie was a plain bore.


The host Billy Crystal was classy. Robert Downey Jr & Emma stone were funny, Cameron Diaz, J Lo & Penelope Cruz were lovely and beautiful! Other highlights were, Sacha Baron indeed turn up at the Red carpet as 'The Dictator' and Christopher Plummer's acceptance speech was neat "You're only 2 yrs older than me darling. Where have you been all this time?". He also became the oldest ever artist to win an Oscar. That's something. Also Pakistani 'Saving Face' won the Best Docu. It's about a plastic surgeon returning home to treat victims of acid burns.

Here is the final Oscar tally with the wins and the nominations:
Hugo - 5/11
The Artist - 5/10
The Descendants - 1/5
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 1/5
The Help - 1/4
Midnight in Paris - 1/4
Moneyball - 0/6
War Horse - 0/6

Though Hugo and The Artist were tied with 5 wins each, the latter took the cream of the awards winning The Best Picture, Director, Actor, Music score and Costume Design. Whereas Hugo largely won the technical awards - Visual Effects, Sound mixing/editing, Art direction and Cinematography.


The Descendants was expected to win a few more and the one of the biggest snub of the day has to be Moneyball failing to win none out of 6 nominations. Deathly Hallows failed to grab any in the technical categories. War Horse deservedly did not win any.

And finally, it was heartening to see Rahman at the Oscars donning the Keyboard. Since Slumdog Millionaire, there is no Oscars without Rahman :) He has made Oscars something Indians can relate to!