So the night has finally passed and we all finally know who won what at the 2010 Academy Awards. But who were the real winners and losers last night? For those of you who didn’t manage to stay up during the wee hours to watch last night’s ceremony or for those who don’t have the luxury of cable here’s our analysis of all last night’s major occurrences at the 82nd Oscar awards night.
Bigelow vs Cameron
The battle of the exes came to its major conclusion last night and the clear winner was Kathryn Bigelow, winning 6 Awards in total for The Hurt Locker over James Camerons 3 for Avatar. As expected after picking up similar awards elsewhere The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing and Best Editing. Meanwhile all Cameron was left with to collect was Best Visual Effects, Cinematography and Art Direction, no big surprises that these were all for the films visual style and achievements whereas Bigelow received awards for her films riveting story and overall style.
Surprise Winners
There were two main category surprise winners. The most major surprise was Precious’ win for Best Adapted Screenplay. In all other awards with the same films in competition for this prize the award has gone to Up in the Air so this win surprised all last night. The Secret in Their Eyes, the foreign language film that no one had really heard of before the nominations was also a surprise winner in its category, Best Film not in the English Language, as the expected winner here was Michael Hankeke’s The White Ribbon. However aprt from these two categories most of the awards were quite predictable in the major categories.
Obvious Winners
Most of the major awards had obvious favourites to win, usually because the nominees have already picked up so many awards against the same candidates. In fact the odds on all four major acting categories last night for the four eventual winners were so slim they had a low range of 1.04 – 1.25 and there were no lucky winners at the bookies for those who gambled against them. Sandra Bullock’s received the Best Actress for The Blind Side, Jeff Bridges got Best Actor for Crazy Heart, Mo’Nique received Best Supporting Actress for Precious and Christopher Waltz Best Supporting Actor for his role in Inglourious Basterds in what was the most predictable year in the acting categories for years.Ups win for Best Animation was another predictable choice, as it outshines all its fellow nominees by a mile and it also managed to pickup the Best Original Score gong to add to Pixar’s Oscar’s cabinet.
Other wins
Star Trek won the Best Make up award in the only category that oddly only has 3 nominees so was a clear cut favourite here and The Cove picked up Best Documentary, again another film that had already won similar awards across the globe. The Young Victoria also picked up Best Costume Design for its Victorian ruffles and Crazy Heart’s The Weary Kind received the Best Original Song for its country theme tune.
So altogether there were no major surprises at this years awards, as each year the number of ceremonies held before the Academy Aawrds increases, and as winners are picked from similar nominees for similar prizes each year the race for the Oscars become more and more predictable. The major disappointment will probably be felt by Jason Reedman who received 6 nominations for Up in the Air but failed to pick up any awards including the expected win for Adapted Screenplay
Short film categories
British animator Nick Park lost out last night as Wallace and Gromit’s latest caper was beaten to the finishing line by Logorama. Logorama is an interesting choice for the academy as it is probably the most offensive film to ever win an award – this animation from French collective H5 is a satirical look at corporate branding as its set in a world full of literally hundreds and thousands of logos and is full of extreme violence and swearing. In the live action short category the favourite was Miracle Fish but the race wasn’t nearly as clear cut as the major awards so it’s not such a huge shock that it lost out to The New Tenants.
The Ceremony
This year there has been much debate about the changes in format to the ceremony, from the removal of the usual performances of the original song nominees to the expansion of the best film nominees category list from 5 to 10 films. Along with a serious of younger presenters, these changes have all come about to try and improve the awards declining audience figures so we’ll find out soon if it achieved this. There were also some controversial bans – Nicolas Chartier, a Hurt Locker producer was banned from attending the ceremony by the Academy due to a violation of Oscar rules after he sent an e-mail to Academy members, asking them to vote for his film for Best Picture. A planned sketch by Sacha Baren Cohen was also pulled at the last minute. However Ben Stiller still went ahead with his part of the duos skit, as he presented the Best Make Up Award dressed as a Na’vi from Avatar.
The Presenters
Hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin presented the show, with plenty of gags and they even put on 3D glasses to welcome James Cameron to the stage. However all their jokes seemed to revolve around celebrities and they were given far too much stage time. Some of the award presenters outshone them by far, especially Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. who got to hand out the original screenplay award and had a nice debate routine over the importance of writers vs actors. There were no embarrassing speeches or guffaws as the ceremony went very smoothly, even if it did drag on a bit too long.
The special tribute to the late John Hughes was the ceremonies most touching hour as clips of his films and actors he discovered where shown and his two sons stood up to remember their father.So thats it – its finally over folks.. only another year to go before we can have all the fun and hype again!
