Sunday, Feb. 24, marked the 85th Academy Awards, a night where Hollywood pats itself on the back for four hours. Hosted by Seth Macfarlane this year, the show broke many conventions from typical Oscar shows, such as its more crass humor thanks to host Macfarlane.
The awards show was hit and miss, with some jokes landing (such as Tommy Lee Jones’ sense of humor), and some completely bombed (Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy went down in flames). It was a night that proved that no one in Hollywood can agree on the correct spelling of “Les Miserables.”
At times, the show went in weird directions, and I’m specifically referring to William Shatner showing up as Captain Kirk. Bizarre. This year’s show was music-themed, so every 10 minutes or so we were bombarded with music in movies, including live performances from the cast of Les Miserables and Chicago.
Life of Pi won the most awards, with four including Best Directing for Ang Lee. It also took home awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, and Original Score. This is the first year that the Best Picture Winner (this year, it was Argo) didn’t win Best Director. In fact, Ben Affleck wasn’t even nominated. Some of the surprise wins came from Brave winning best Animated Picture, which just goes to show that when in doubt, go with Pixar. Django Unchained also pulled off two difficult wins, with Christoph Waltz winning Best Supporting Actor and Quentin Tarantino for Original Screenplay. Jennifer Lawrence snagged Best Actress and Daniel Day Lewis for Actor.
Overall, it was an enjoyable show capped off with an emotional acceptance speech from Ben Affleck. We got to enjoy a song about boobs, see Tommy Lee Jones laugh, and reminisce about a great year in filmmaking. 2012 will be missed, but let’s hope 2013 will be just as good.
