Wel, well, well! This year's Oscars were quite a revelation, although they went well over time, locking in well over 3-and-a-half hours, ending after midnight on the East Coast.
Here are some of my thoughts on the biggest surprises and most interesting results of the night:
1.
They Really Don't Like Steven Very Much, Do They? Steven Spielberg's
Lincoln was the big loser of the night, coming in with 12 nominations and only winning 2, for Best Actor (
Daniel Day-Lewis) and Best Production Design, which really must be considered something of a fluke. It was clear that there was no groundswell for
Lincoln from the very first award of the night when a very shocked
Christoph Walz won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for
Django Unchained, surprising almost everyone, denying
Lincoln's
Tommy Lee Jones. When
Life of Pi (which came in with 11 nominations and went home with 4 Oscars) continued to pick up wins in the important technical categories like Best Cinematography and Best Score where it was competing against both
Argo and
Lincoln one really started to wonder about the message the Academy was sending to America's most talented filmmaker. Once
Ang Lee won his 2nd Best Director Oscar instead of Spielberg, the message became clear: We Like Your Movies And The Profit You Generate, But Not You So Much! Spielberg's first nomination came in 1978 for
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (he wasn't even nominated for
Jaws, despite the fact that movie invented the notion of a summer blockbuster film). He has since been nominated for
Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich and
Lincoln. A total of 8 times with only two wins. And he has been snubbed (not nominated) for such classic films as
Jaws, Empire of the Sun and
Minority Report. Now Ang Lee,
Clint Eastwood and
Oliver Stone have as many Best Director Oscars as Spielberg! It should be noted that only one other person has been nominated more times for Best Director:
William Wyler. And only Wyler (3),
Frank Capra (3) and
John Ford (4) have more wins. I think he is developing a
Meryl Streep problem where in order for him to win, it is going to have to be something outstanding compared to his already excellent body of work.
2.
Michelle Obama Announces Best Picture Oscar for Argo from the White House. This was a truly surreal moment when just a handful of minutes before midnight 3-time Oscar winner
Jack Nicholson introduced First Lady
Michelle Obama who gave a (somewhat trite but inclusive) speech about the importance of the arts to all Americans and then cut back for the announcement of the nine Best Picture nominees. They then amazingly cut back to Obama holding an envelope who then opened it and announced
Argo had won. Nicholson was also holding an envelope which he gave to the producers of the winning film: Affleck,
George Clooney and
Grant Heslov.
3.
The Tarantino Effect. For the second time in as many films
Quentin Tarantino wrote an amazing part for
Christoph Walz and the multi-lingual actor won an Oscar for animating Tarantino's words. The surprising strength of
Django Unchained in the big categories was one of the highlights of the night for me with wins in Best Original Screenplay for Tarantino (only his second after his 1995 win for
Pulp Fiction) and the 2nd win for Walz. This was another example of the out-of-control Directors' branch snubs (of
Kathryn Bigelow for
Zero Dark Thirty,
Ben Affleck for
Argo and Tarantino for
Django) resulted in surprising wins as the rest of the Academy tried to ameliorate the damage.
4.
It's All About Editing) In the end with 3 wins
Argo joins the dubious club of
Rocky and
Crash of winning Best Picture without a director's nomination and only three wins overall. Interestingly, the unbroken string that
every Best Picture winner has always had a Best Editing nomination and that almost every film that has won Best Picture has won Best Editing (including
Argo, Rocky and
Crash) continues. (Quiz: Which Best Picture winner(s) did not win Best Film Editing?)
5.
(Almost) Everybody Gets A Prize! The
really big story of the night was the even distribution of the wins throughout the 24 categories. The totals were
4 Wins: Life of Pi (Director, Score, Cinematography and Visual Effects);
3 Wins: Argo (Picture, Editing, Adapted Screenplay), Les Miserables (Supporting Actress, Makeup, Sound Mixing)
2 Wins: Skyfall (Song, Sound Editing), Lincoln (Actor, Production Design), Django Unchained (Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay)
1 Win: Zero Drak Thirty (Sound Editing), Anna Karenina (Costume Design), Amour (Foreign Language), Silver Linings Playbook (Actress)
Films with multiple nominations that went home empty-handed (
0 Wins) were
Beasts of the Southern Wild (4), The Hobbit (3), The Master (3), Flight (2), Snow White and the Huntsman (2).
It will be interesting to see how the Academy reacts to the fact that it changed it's nomination deadline to before many of the Guilds had weighed in so that this led to surprising (some would say, uninformed) nominations that in turn led to surprising wins.
As for the show itself, I thought
Seth McFarlane did a very good job, although there was too much singing for my taste, but it was part of the show's theme of a tribute to musicals. For the most part Seth's humor was on point, with some notable exceptions. (Making a joke about the assassination of a President is not edgy or funny, it's just dumb.) Openly gay producers
Craig Zadan and
Neil Meron did an amazing job with the Obama surprise and
Dame Shirley Bassey belting out
Goldfinger at age 76 was breathtaking.
Other highlights of the show for me:
Meryl Streep announcing the Best Actor winner instantly by opening the envelope off camera while the nominations video was playing;
Jennifer Hudson and
Adele (Adkins) singing; the Best Documentary Short Subject winners for
Inocente and
Channing Tatum and
Charlize Theron (two of the most beautiful people in Hollywood) dancing with McFarlane to open the broadcast; for the first time since the Best Actress tie of 1968 (between
Barbra Streisand and
Kathleen Hepburn) there was another tie, this time in Sound Editing between
Zero Dark Thirty and
Skyfall--
Mark Wahlberg was the announcer and he handled the moment well.
Let the race for the 2014 Oscars begin! (
August, Osage County anyone?)
