Yeah, The Hurt Locker get what it deserve. For me, The Hurt Locker is what people call 'the cleaner' - when you do your job right, people didn't notice it. Except for people who do care, and they would say 'this place is really clean'.

Everything is almost perfect. I still remember the line:

"son, what is the right way to go doing this thing?"
"the way you don't die, sir."

AWESOME. It deserve it's Oscar in screenplay :-)

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Am I the only one who thinks Coraline was done gross injustice last night? And it wasn't even nominated for Best music (which is just criminal).

Probably [grin]

I think Tarantino was robbed for screenplay - in English, French and German and he rewrote history with dialogue so thick you could chew it - and he didn't win?

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I really loved Bullock's acceptance speech - it was totally obvious she hadn't even considered herself winning for a single moment. I love it when that happens to people whose job in life is to keep themselves together and not waver, and then, in front of something like 1 billion viewers, they break down. She did it with grace, though (whereas Geoffrey Fletcher (best adapted screenplay for Precious) just went blank). Too bad a video is not up yet.

Really? I didn't think her speech was completely ad-libbed.

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Speaking of Precious - it was a wonderful surprise; personally I didn't expect it at all. PS - why do they say "based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire" every time they mention the name of the movie? It's not like it's any different from other adaptions in that respect. Or is it?

The Oscar's are becoming a rehash of the Golden Globes.

I don't know why they added that "based on" tag line, probably for legal reasons. I agree that it's annoying. In her acceptance speech Mo'nique said something about winning for merit not politics, but I can't help but wonder if there was some politics at work with the success of Precious. The frequent "based on" tag line suggest it.

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To me, Jeff Bridges was a bit of a suprise as well, TBH. Although seeing as he's been nominated five times (the first one being in 1972) I suppose he had it coming. Hopefully, next year they'll get a chance to resolve the Scorsese situation.

None of the acting awards were surprises.

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Too bad I haven't really discovered a way to see the shorts in advance (at least here in Europe) as usually they get me really going during the ceremony and then I just forget about them.

That's interesting because most of them appeared to be European! The animated short that won, Logorama, was French, or at least in French.


Overall, the show needed a lot of work. Too much time was spent on early on, so when the show ran late they began skimping on the presentation - except for the two lead acting awards which they stretched out to 20 minutes each.

For example, when presenting the awards for cinematography and film editing, they didn't show any scenes from the nominated films. They just read out the names and announced the winner. They almost did that for the award for visual effects too (but they didn't). They did do that for Best Picture. Tom Hanks stepped up to the microphone opened the envelope and announced the winner and that was it. The clock had just passed 9 pm, the show was beyond 30 minutes over budget and it had to be wrapped up immediately. Nevermind announcing all ten nominees, it was time to go!

Lessbread

I have to agree on the time thing for the Oscars. I can't believe what they did for best picture! They didn't even show a clip! Not even a second of footage!

On a side note, the Hurt Locker only grossed 21 mil while Avatar grossed 2.5 billion dollars! Wow, huge difference there eh? At least the Oscars ignored that fact and gave the movie that deserved best picture the award. The Hurt Locker was truly a good movie!

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Speaking of Precious - it was a wonderful surprise; personally I didn't expect it at all. PS - why do they say "based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire" every time they mention the name of the movie? It's not like it's any different from other adaptions in that respect. Or is it?

The Oscar's are becoming a rehash of the Golden Globes.

I don't know why they added that "based on" tag line, probably for legal reasons. I agree that it's annoying. In her acceptance speech Mo'nique said something about winning for merit not politics, but I can't help but wonder if there was some politics at work with the success of Precious. The frequent "based on" tag line suggest it.

Maybe I'm just not cynical enough, but I think they might have called it that because Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is actually the name of the movie.

I'm not sure, though.

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Ugh.
AvatarPocahontas-in-space only received 3 oscars total, half of what 'The Hurt Locker' got. :(
I'm disappointed it got that many.

Fixed.

They always screw up with timing. It's like:

a) they never learn
b) they think that, ok we failed, but we'll do better NEXT year
c) they look back at the previous year and think, last year's director really screwed up big time - let's see if we can do even better!
d) they are THE most profitable show ad revenue-wise in the US after Superbowl and they don't really care

A quick mini-rant here:

One small bit of arrogance that really makes me sneer, though, goes something like this: "ok - we have this show that people will watch. no, seriously - we have a show that, not matter what we do, people WILL watch. this is brilliant - because then we can see what we can do to make it as uncomfortable as humanly possible for people everywhere but here to watch it. obviously, step one, after preliminary analyses which reveals that the second largest/most relevant viewer audience is europe, is to establish a kind of mutual understanding and organize the show so that it starts at 1:00-3:00 in the frickin morning there, depending on which european time zone you're in. of course, it doesn't really matter which time zone you're in because the show is 3.5 hours long and we'll overshoot that by at least 20-30 minutes, so we can be absolutely sure people are genuinely become comatose before the curtain call. aight now, we know from step one that no matter where people are or what they do or who they are, they will watch the show. since we've already established that europe will be in the twilight zone when we go live, why don't we push the envelope and put the show on a fricking sunday evening so places that are ahead of us - like greenland, nairobi, nepal, upper volta and, oh, europe, will feel the full wrath of our brilliance because - get this, because this is bloody hilarious - everyone will have to take a day off the following day because the following day is a work day! this is brilliant! oh, oh - I know! - let's do something even more brilliant - and this is absolutely awesome. let's have a foreign language film category to give them frickin hope!"

okay,

">I stole that. but it's true.


>> On a side note, the Hurt Locker only grossed 21 mil while Avatar grossed 2.5 billion dollars!

This is a brilliant example of what the general viewer audience is like. It's also an indication as to how and based on what merits "Best Picture" (it's funny how Hollywood seems to avoid the word 'film', which is almost like an avant garde term for posh people) is chosen. At this point, aside from whining, one can only take a step back and recall that there's Cannes for weird artsy stuff that makes no money (where quite a few Hollywood bigshots, most notably in recent years Tarantino, are frequently a means of connecting the two worlds), Oscars for stuff that costs actual money, but either makes (a most likely fake) attepmt at being genuinely artsy, but much more likely is simply political, and at the far end of the spectrum, not much short of the Golden Raspberry, there's the MTV Movie Awards where films like Twilight and Avatar can really excel.

In other words, if the $2.5 billion profit margin makes or breaks a film then sadly the above chain of priority is true, because that $2.5 billion is proof in itself where the film belongs on the "good vs bad landscape" and how good it is in a very specific way. Of course this all very ambivalent and only works if you fill in the blanks yourself (subjectively) - which you can do any way you like - which, in turn, means that both of the following can be true: Avatar is a better movie than The Hurt Locker, and, The Hurt Locker is a better film than Avatar. Case closed.

Quote: Original post by kryotech
I have to agree on the time thing for the Oscars. I can't believe what they did for best picture! They didn't even show a clip! Not even a second of footage!

To be fair, it's worth pointing out that they spread the clips from the best picture nominees throughout the show. For example, Travolta introduced "Ingorious Basterds". What I found wrong was that Hanks didn't restate the names of the nominees before announcing the winner (at least that's how I recall it). It seemed to me like they were behind on their schedule and trying to wrap things up quickly and decided to sacrifice some formality for what should have been the most important award of the night.

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Avatar is a better movie than The Hurt Locker, and, The Hurt Locker is a better film than Avatar.

That's a good way of putting it.


The show related scandals making mention with the scandal mongers today include the guy who got "Kanyed", Bullock's slight of Meryl Streep, and the absence of Farah Fawcett, Henry Gibson and Maude (I don't remember her real name) from the "In Memoriam" segment. With regard to that, it seems to me that the memorial as the Oscars is for people who were involved in films, not television, and I don't recall Farah Fawcett or Maude appearing in any movies. Henry Gibson played one of the Nazis in the Blues Brothers (iirc).

I'm really upset Up In the Air didn't win any oscars. Any other year it probably would have won at least 2.

If they released runner ups, I wouldn't be surprised if it was 2nd in almost every category it was nominated for.

I was really rooting for Up In The Air as well and was a bit surprised when Clooney didn't win Male in a Leading Role. I really think he did an above fantastic job there.

About the in memoriam section - is it me or was Patrick Swayze missing from it as well?