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Issue #7:

The Aftermath

So due to a freak occurrence (literally) I couldn't post my final predictions online Sunday afternoon as I had originally planned. Here they are, side by side with Sunday night's big winners:

Tallies:

3 wins:

Crash (Picture, Original Screenplay, Editing)
Brokeback Mountain (Director, Adapted Screenplay, Score)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design)
King Kong: (Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing)

1 win:
Capote, Walk the Line, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, Wallace and Gromit, Tsotsi, March of the Penguins, Hustle & Flow, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the three shorts

Commentary:

Well it was the year of no big wins. The first year in recent memory when the Best Picture winner won less than four awards. A year where the Picture, Director, and four Acting Oscars all went to different films. And a year of no big surprises except the biggest award of the night.

How did I do? 19 out of 24. Roughly 80% -- right in between the last two year. not bad at all. (My highest since I've started doing this is still 21/24 from the Return of the King year.) After I went 11/11 last year in top awards and got slaughtered in the technicals, this year I went 10/11 in the major awards and did...very slightly better in the technicals. I picked one upset - Memoirs of a Geisha's score over Brokeback Mountain's. If the category had been Cinematography I would've been spot on, but I didn't and the wins were switched. I also got Documentary Short wrong, but who cares about that. There were two bigger surprises.

First, "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" won Best Song. That was the one legitimately annoying occurence of the night. The Academy apparently likes rap, after this and Eminem's "Lose Yourself" a few years ago. But unlike that song, you could not under any circumstances suggest that "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" was the best of the nominees. For me, the superior song was clearly "In the Deep", a beautiful song from Crash. But no, the Academy decided it wanted to prove its hipness, or maybe just thought it would be funny, who knows. It was a blatant mistake. (At least their acceptance speech was sincere.)

The big surprise was clearly the win of Crash for Best Picture, which was seen by many as a distant second place to Brokeback Mountain, until Jack Nicholson read the name. In retrospect, of course, there were a couple of subtle hints. Crash picked up Best Editing, which Brokeback Mountain wasn't even nominated for, and the Picture and Editing categories have a fairly solid history of matching up. Then Brokeback lost Cinematography, but balanced it out by winning Score. We were right-on about one thing, though: even if there was an upset for the top prize, Ang Lee was a lock and a half for Best Director.

Now as for the ceremony itself. Due to those freak accidents I was actually on a train for a significant chunk of the first half and wasn't able to watch. I remedied this by calling my sister and my girlfriend and having them place the phone next to their television speaker, which actually works pretty well, if you ever need to try it. Jon Stewart's opening monologue was exactly what I would call "solid". Most of the jokes hit, but barely any were home runs. He had a solid persona, though: relaxed, easygoing, some nice ad-libbing but not too much, and a hint of the smugness (and I mean that as a compliment) he brings with him sometimes to the Daily Show. The truth of the matter is, he was a tad too close to boring. But you know what? That's what the Academy wanted. Chris Rock last year managed to be tasteful and respectful while speaking his mind and being hilarious, and I'm reading some things now that call him a flop because some people apparently didn't like that he said Tobey Maguire wasn't a "real star". So who knows what they'll say about Stewart a year from now.

The night managed to be relatively short (3 1/2 hours) compared to some years past (4+). But everything was pretty much like it had been. Clips of old movies. A montage of the deceased. Etc. Etc. We had the obligatory "two people win and the first person takes up the whole time so that the orchestra cuts the second guy off" moment. All the announcers were pretty good. Lame awards show banter reared its head, but watching Jennifer Garner almost fall was fun. Robert Altman had a great speech for his honorary award, although the whole metaphor about the sand castle was a bit odd. And there were a pretty good balance of good speeches and boring speeches. George Clooney's was pretty excellent and kicked off the night well

Overall it was a pretty typical Oscar night punctuated by the surprise that was Crash's Best Picture win. Some people are already voicing outrage and saying Crash was the worst film of the year. Or that the Academy's homophobic. Or they made the right decision. Could it be that they just plain liked Crash a bit better? Whatever your personal preference is, it was a surprise. And that's what keeps us watching.

Tune in next year...

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