Social Network, Inception Land Awards, but The King’s Speech Comes Out on Top

How does one go about judging the Oscars? For the casual viewer who is familiar with only a few nominees, presentation and intrigue may be what seals the deal on an entertaining or disappointing night. Not to sound like I’m throwing it in your face (which means I’m about to throw it in your face), but for someone like me who has taken a healthy interest in a majority of the films and actors nominated, it shouldn’t matter how the presentation looks or sounds, but rather if the awards handed out are handed out correctly.

So on an aesthetic or amusing level, the 83rd Annual Academy Awards were forgettable, and on a purely analytical level, they were decent.

The Hosts

Kicking things right off, the introduction of all ten nominees for Best Picture put to the music of The Social Network’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ In the Hall of the Mountain King was fun and entertaining. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the two limitlessly talented hosts for the evening, James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Perhaps it was the high expectations due to these two’s brilliance on screen that made their night such a letdown, but Franco and Hathaway were certainly nothing to write home about. Last year’s hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were much funnier, as they should be, I suppose. Franco and Hathaway’s opening skit started out clever and comical, but I lost interest as soon as they took a step into the world of Back to the Future. Now I’m a huge BTTF fan, but what is a film from 1985 doing in an Academy Awards’ opening bit? Especially when not all of the movies nominated for Best Picture didn’t even make the cut, why are good old Marty and Doc allowed to steal the show?

Then Franco and Hathaway completely lost the audience, and myself, during their opening monologue. It got a few deserving laughs, but the stagnant moments seemed to outweigh the humorous ones. Franco didn’t seem to know where he was all night, nor did he seem to care, and Hathaway changed outfits more often than she got laughs.

Franco at one point also appeared on stage in a dress. That’s low, really low.

The Awards

Alice in Wonderland took home the first award of the evening as Robert Stromberg and Karen O’ Hara won for Art Direction. There are no complaints from me on this one, although I did expect Inception to win it.

For best in Cinematography, Wall Pfister and Inception claimed its first award of the night. With such a visual masterpiece like Inception, there’s no need to explain how the academy gave Pfister the Oscar. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see The Social Network or Black Swan win this category either, though.

Then the iconic actor Kirk Douglas, now age 94, came out to present Best Supporting Actress. Whether you thought Douglas’ presence was epic, the best part of the show or just painful to watch, his name was apparently the most trending topic on twitter directly following his appearance. He presented the very deserving Melissa Leo with the award. She gave a very genuine speech, as evidenced by her gratuitous, yet lovely profanity while at the mic. Hailee Steinfeld really was the underdog with the chance to win it big, but she of course has a full career ahead of her to return to the Oscars again and again.

Christian Bale won Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Fighter. Geoffrey Rush from The King’s Speech could have just as easily won, but Bale is the more deserving one here. He has already had such a successful career, displaying his talents in a plethora of different roles. His portrayal of Dicky Eklund may have been the best acting performance of the year, in any category.

Then, a few sound awards were given out. Best Original Score went to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from The Social Network, while Inception won both sound editing and sound mixing. Reznor’s score was undoubtedly captivating, but none was more powerful and fitting for its movie than Hans Zimmer’s (Inception). It’s also the only one I’ve blasted on my car radio with the windows down.

Visual Effects went to Inception and Film Editing went to The Social Network, both award winners not a surprise.  The brilliant film editing is most notably on display in the scene of the rowing competition. The music and editing combine to make a seemingly pointless scene into arguably the most memorable of the film.

Randy Newman won the Best Original Song for “We Belong Together” in Toy Story 3. Do I really need to elaborate on that one? He’s Randy Newman.

And now for the good part- the awards that people know the most about, the actors and actresses we are most familiar with and the movies that only some people have actually seen but that more will claim to have.

In his first truly mainstream motion picture, Tom Hooper won Best Director for The King’s Speech. Among the nominees, the academy made the right choice.

Natalie Portman and Colin Firth won the Oscar for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively. These two gave the most well-thought, genuine acceptance speeches of the night. Maybe that’s because they were clear locks to win their awards, and had plenty of time to think about who they should thank. That’s not meant to be a blow to Portman or Firth, either- their performances were absolutely Oscar-worthy.

Finally, Steven Spielberg presented the award for Best Motion Picture. Once again, there were no surprises with this award either, as The King’s Speech claimed the big prize. It was nominated twelve times, and although it was victorious only one-third of the time, its awards were some of the biggest the academy has to offer. There was really no question that The King’s Speech was going to win. It came down to a two-team race between that and The Social Network, which seems like an unfortunately political decision to me. The academy members, known for being quite old in age, narrowed the options down to either picking the movie which takes place during a time when they were alive, or a movie that appealed to the younger generations and told the tale of how the world was recently revolutionized. They picked the former, a movie which was somewhat unheard of just a few months ago, and now is basking in the glory of four Oscars.

Snubs

Christopher Nolan was not nominated for Best Director, nor did he win for Best Original Screenplay. The camera caught glimpses of Nolan a few times during the night, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. He is absolutely brilliant, and so far does not have an award of his own to show for it. Anyone who has come across me in the past few months knows how big of an Inception fan I am, but I am really an even bigger fan of Nolan. I will listen to your argument on why Inception shouldn’t have been considered one of the best films of 2010, but I won’t listen to the argument that says Nolan didn’t at least deserve a nomination. The way I look at it is- no Nolan, then no Inception. Unfortunately for the cast and crew of Inception, the massive snub to Nolan meant that the movie had no real shot at winning Best Picture. Eight movies in total didn’t have much of a shot, really.

Leaving Julianne Moore off the ballot for her work in The Kids are All Right was a questionable call by the academy. Not to knock Annette Bening’s work (she is fantastic in everything), but I felt as though Moore played a bigger and more demanding role in the movie, and therefore deserved the nomination over her co-star.

Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine) for what would be Best Actor and Aaron Eckhart (Rabbit Hole) for what would be Best Supporting Actor were also snubbed this year. They were tremendous alongside their co-stars, Michelle Williams and Nicole Kidman, who were both nominated for Best actress. Upon watching these films, I felt as though the two couples should have been just that- couples; if one was to be nominated, so would the other. Gosling and Eckhart seemed to play just as challenging roles, but missed out on being nominated.

The Town was snubbed in several categories, most notably Best Picture. Ben Affleck’s crime-drama was a masterful thrill ride which seemed to be forgotten. To see Jeremy Renner nominated for Best Supporting Actor was almost shocking; the academy recognized his performance, but not Affleck’s great directing or the entire movie’s multi-layered entertainment?

The Extras

The attempt at pleasing the younger crowd by auto-tuning memorable scenes in last year’s movies was really weak. Auto-tuning is of course very popular as of late, but the songs that the Oscars tried pulling off were only somewhat amusing at best.

A note to award winners- at this point, most everyone watching is aware that there is a timer counting down to when the music starts playing you off. It’s been like that for years, and as long as it’s been around, winners have made jokes or referenced how they barely have any time left or how they’ll keep talking over the music. We get it. We’ve heard it before, and by blabbing on about the timer, all you’re doing is cutting into your own time. Way to be counter-productive.

I did love the appearances by Kevin Spacey and Oprah. Spacey is always enjoyable to watch either on screen or on stage and Oprah always just makes things better. Additionally, the homage to Bob Hope was a nice touch. While I’m too young to really appreciate Hope and his comedy, I did laugh quite a bit during the monologue and can understand how generations before mine appreciate him.

All in all, I have to say that I was a little surprised about how unsurprising this year’s Oscars were. Basically all the award winners were mapped out beforehand and there was nothing all too shocking with acceptance speeches. Whether that’s a positive or negative thing for the Oscars is up to the people involved to decide, but I suppose it’s a job well done when nothing really went wrong. It’s just that nothing was really very good either.

Daniel Feingold can be reached at minaret.sports@gmail.com.