Talking Oscar Night

So it has come and gone.  Arguably the most important night in Hollywood, the 85th Annual Academy Awards.  And what a night it was.  Overall I'm happy with whom the Academy chose as the winners and I although I managed to see only four of the nine nominated films for Best Picture, Argo was one of those four and needless to say I was happy to see it take home the top prize.  It was nice to see Ben get a lot of the recognition considering his Best Director snub.  I'm somewhat surprised that he spoke so quickly during his speech though.  I'm just saying, if I won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, I would take my time with the speech.  After all, there's no higher honour than Best Picture.

Other notable mentions were Quentin Tarantino taking home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  Nobody deserved it more, especially after his speech where he humbly thanked the cast that delivered his words on screen perfectly.  Christoph Waltz managed to once again snag the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, which was again well deserved as he has now proven that he is one of the absolute best actors working today. We also got to witness my future wife, Jennifer Lawrence make her fall up the stairs to receive her Academy Award for Best Actress, which proved to be one of those moments that was bound to happen considering some of the dresses those ladies were wearing.  She recovered gracefully however to accept her award.  Of course, Daniel Day-Lewis winning in the Best Actor category was a shoe in, especially after seeing Lincoln earlier that day.  He truly embodied the spirit and body of good ol' Abe.  Lastly, Anne Hathaway was able to scoop up her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Les Misérables.  I have yet to see the film, but from the clips I've seen, Anne seems to have truly put on her best performance and deserved the recognition for it.  If it wasn't for her turn as Catwoman, I'm glad it was for her playing a French prostitute.

I also liked how this year had the theme of music in cinema.  I'm a huge believer that music adds so much to film.  If you were to take out some of the musical scores to some of our most beloved films, they wouldn't be nearly as good as they are perceived to be.  Scores from horror films such as Jaws, Halloween, and Psycho define the unsettling tone of the movie.  The heart-pumping scores from so many of the actions films that are released today provide us with that sense of excitement when we see James Bond fighting a thug on top of a train or seeing Batman chased through the streets by dozens of police cars.  Film scores are some of the most underrated pieces of music. They can often be inspiring, exciting, frightening, etc...  I was very happy that some recognition was finally aimed toward them.  How awesome was it that people got played off the stage to the theme from Jaws?

How about Seth MacFarlane as host?  I get that a lot of people don't seem to care for Seth's humour, but I love it.  Understandably he had to tone it down to an incredible degree for the Oscars but he still managed to get a few dark humoured jokes in there.  That Lincoln joke was amazing.  I also thought it was a nice change of pace to open the show right up with Seth, followed by that skit with William Shatner.  Lets face it though, no matter who hosts,  nothing can be worse than when Anne Hathaway and James Franco took the stage in 2011.  Anne tried her best, but Franco definitely wasn't feeling it.  I'm hoping that Seth is asked back for next year as he managed to provide an entertaining and fresh sense of humour to a night that at times can be kind of boring.  I'm looking at you technical awards.

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