So this years Oscars had everything from fabulous and not so fabulous dresses to songs from the best movies of the year, The Flying Nun, sock puppets and Captain James T Kirk.
The day as always started with the Red Carpet and true to form there were hits and there were misses, although not as many as expected. Everyone seems to have been quite conservative this year and embellishments were the trend. Twitter has voted Jennifer Lawrence as the best dressed of the day, but I’m not convinced. On the Red Carpet I didn’t think her gown was bad but I didn’t think it was great either. But when she stepped on stage to introduce Adele the gown looked like it was eating her alive from the feet upwards. My pick for best dressed was Alicia Vikander in a beautiful blue Elie Saab Haute Couture gown –simple and stunning. I said in my live posts that I thought you couldn’t go past Helena Bonham Carter for worst dressed but on second thoughts I think I might have been a bit quick to judge. We expect her to be quirky so she was right on track. IMHO a truly worst dressed is someone that we expect more from and this year I think that is Real Housewife Brandi Glanville, there was just way too much cleavage. I feel sorry for anyone who had to interview her or sit next to her as it would have been hard to be distracted. I really can’t think of anyone who would have been able to pull off this gown successfully.
From the glitz and glamour of the Red Carpet we moved inside for the award show proper. I think everyone, especially the show producers, were a little nervous as Seth MacFarlane took the stage. Things started out predicably with Seth taking jibs at Daniel Day-Lewis, Quentin Tarantino and Tommy Lee Jones to name a few, but before things could get completely out of control, in beamed Captain James T Kirk, live from the deck of the Enterprise, after a trip to the future. He proceeded to show Seth how the show was going to pan out and what he was going to do that would lead to headlines the following day naming Seth as the “Worst Oscars Host Ever”.
This included a song about actresses showing their “boobs”, to which Naomi Watts seemed less than impressed and some, well many, ill-advised jokes. The highlight of this flash back/flash forward had to be the recreation of Denzel Washingtons’ “Flight” with alcohol swilling, drug sniffing sock puppets. But as Seth didn’t technically do any of these things, he may possibly be known as one of the Best Oscar Hosts Ever.
This year the Oscars, for one of the first times that I can remember, had a theme, Music in Film. Dame Shirley Bassey’s performance of Gold Finger was amazing and showed, in this era of factory produced artists, what a real singer sounds like. She was then followed by a medley of songs from cinema musicals including Chicago, Dream Girls and of course Les Miserables – all outstanding. However, I do note that Jennifer Hudson and the cast of Les Miserables got standing ovations while Catherine Zita Jones for her performance of All That Jazz failed to get the crowd to their feet. Finally were performances by Adele and Barbara Streisand.
Once the awards started, things seemed to go as predicted. Life Of Pi started out strong taking out 2 for 2 for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects and then after a bit of a rest went on to take out 2 more awards including the coverted Best Director for Ang Lee. The favourites went on to take out most of the awards with the ceremony concluding with Jennifer Lawrence taking out best Actress and Daniel Day-Lewis taking the award for Best Actor.
As always the final award was for Best Picture. I don’t think I can put it better than I did in my live update when I talk about the Best Picture award. The Academy had snubbed Ben Affleck and his direction of Argo but the film took out Best Picture and gave Ben the chance to take to the stage and give a speech. Some years the Best Picture winner is a little controversial but I think this year Argo was truly a well deserved winner.
So the final tally is:
On three awards for the day:
Les Miserables; and
Argo, whose awards included Best Picture.
On 2 awards was:
Lincoln including Daniel Day-Lewis’ award for Best Actor;
Django; and
SkyFall.
On one award, which is nothing to be scoffed at was:
Silver Linings Play Book;
Paperman;
Anna Karenina;
Curfew;
Inocente;
Searching for Sugarman;
Amour; and
Zero dark Thirty.
I think today can officially be called a success on all fronts but I am sure we will see much comment over Gowns and award winners and losers for the next 12 months.
