Monday, February 23, 2009

The Oscars: A Review

Well, a big-time Slumdog sweep... almost. The only award it lost was Best Sound Editing which went to The Dark Knight. Other than that, it was pretty much Slumdog's night. Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Song, Score, Sound Mixing, and Editing. My big hope did not come true: Mickey Rourke's brilliant performance within The Wrestler did not take home the Best Lead Actor award; but it surely helps that it loses to such a fine performance from Sean Penn in Milk (it's really splitting hairs to choose between those two). Kate Winslet wins her first Oscar for The Reader--Ricky Gervais was right about Holocaust films. Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger won the supporting acting categories. WALL-E won Best Animated Film, but that's all it was limited to, as Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay for Milk. For a full list of ALL the winners: click here.

As for the show itself, surprisingly entertaining. Hugh Jackman's opening number was spectacular and funny--though we seemed to never see much of him after that. He did well accordingly. I'm a big softie for the film clips at the Oscars, but I appreciate the way they showcased the acting categories, bringing former winners in to present each nominee. Something about this show felt pretty breezy, never too boring as is usually the case, and thank God Academy president Sid Ganis chose not to numb our brains with a long, arduous speech about nothing in particular. Overall, a great show to make up for the mediocre nominations.

That's all, now we're on to 2009. Surely, the end of next year will come with "Best of the Decade" lists. And you better believe I'm looking forward to that. It should be exciting.

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