2008 Oscar Wrap-Up: There Will Be Disappointment
First off, all the nominees and winners, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Secondly, if you can’t tell by the title, There Will Be Blood did not win Best Picture. I was slightly bummed about that. On the other hand, The Bourne Ultimatum was the second-biggest winner of the night. That was awesome.
No Country for Old Men, not surprisingly, was the biggest winner. Best Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Director(s), and Picture.
Jon Stewart was a totally awesome host, constantly pulling out good jokes, and being a part of the classiest move in Oscar history. After Once won Best Song, the guy (Glen Hansard) talked for a while, and when the girl (Markéta Irglová) went to speak, the GTFO music started playing. It was cold. But after the commercial break, Stewart brought the girl back on so she could give her acceptance speech. Luckily, she didn’t take long.
Not much to say about the presentation of the show, other than the three performances of songs from Enchanted being terribly painful, the presenter jokes being forced like always (except for Seth Rogan and that fat kid from Superbad), and women looking gorgeous.
Getting to the actual awards, The Golden Compass winning for Special Effects was pretty damn embarrassing. Transformers should’ve ran away with that. No matter what you think about Michael Bay’s direction and the ludicrous script, he had absolutely huge robots blowing shit up in a convincing fashion. I can’t say much about Juno winning Best Original Screenplay because I haven’t seen it, but from most things I hear, it’s sickeningly quirky. But I didn’t exactly love Michael Clayton, and I’ve actually seen that. I’m just glad Juno didn’t win Best Picture, like I’ve heard thrown out there a few times. Yet some people say Diablo Cody — who looks like she’s a MySpace chick — winning an Oscar was even worse.
The inevitable Bourne Ultimatum Blu-ray will be able to state that it won 3 Academy Awards. The voters felt it was the best edited film in both sound and film, and it also won for sound mixing. So, the Blu-ray will also be able to state “Technically the best movie of the year!”
Getting to the major categories, there was one big surprise that came early on. Some gorgeous French actresses won for Best Actress. Can’t speak much on the category, or the Supporting Actress category. I guess I’m a misogynist. Javier Bardem was the front-runner for Supporting Actor and won. I think Daniel Day-Lewis was the biggest lock I’ve ever seen. Even he knew he had Best Actor wrapped up.
In the minds of most film-lovers, No Country and Three Will Be Blood were going to fight it out for Best Picture and Best Director. Turned out that the Coen Brothers drank up Paul Thomas Anderson’s milkshake. I just don’t think the Academy likes PTA. Or maybe it’ll just take 20 years for him to win a Best Director Oscar. That seems to be the prevailing pattern. At least There Will Be Blood won Cinematography, but The Assassination of Jesse James probably should have won that category, like Children of Men should have last year.
Overall, I guess I can’t be too disappointed with the choices. I don’t even know why I care about a Hollywood circle-jerk anyway. Time is always a better judge than the Academy anyway. I truly believe There Will Be Blood will be looked back upon with more reverence than No Country. We’ll see in 10 years.
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