The 77th Annual Academy Awards

I was a little concerned during parts of the show that it was going to be swept up by The Aviator, it seemed like just about every category was going to something from that movie. It is understandable since it is such a great film, but the competition for awards this year included an unusually high number of great films. The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Finding Neverland, and Ray all deserved the Best Picture Oscar, for example. And so did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by the way. Here's an interesting little factoid – Eternal Sunshine received six times as many votes by IMDb users for Best Picture than The Aviator!

Chris Rock delivered a completely unexciting performance as probably the most anticipated host the Academy Awards has seen in years, at least in terms of the potential for controversy. People were afraid he was going to do something obscene or vulgar, and all he did was get up there and make a lot of bland, dumb jokes like so many others before him. He had some moments, but I know that he is a much, much funnier man than the one we saw during the show. For much of the second half he seemed to disappear completely.

Pierce Brosnan was the only person forced to announce an award winner alongside a wildly unamusing animated cohost, which was one of the options that the IMDb gave in a daily poll that asked what event would make you immediately turn off the show. Interestingly enough, another option was if someone referred to Million Dollar Baby as some gigantic cliché like "a knockout," which strikes me as funny now because, in announcing the winners, the quote on the IMDb home page is "With a one, two, three punch Million Dollar Baby proved to be the one, the darling of the Academy as Clint Eastwood's boxing drama put the competition out for the count." Clever.

I was glad to see Eternal Sunshine awarded in the Best Screenplay category, although I think it deserved more. I also agreed with most of the main acting categories, which is rare, although I was surprised that Jamie Foxx won Best Actor, I was sure he was going to win Best Supporting Actor for Collateral, if only because I really think Don Cheadle deserves an Oscar for his performance in Hotel Rwanda, which was brilliant all around. But Foxx delivered an astonishing performance in Ray as well, and it was also good to see Morgan Freeman recognized for his work in Million Dollar Baby.

Troy should have won costume design over The Aviator, The Passion of the Christ should have won Best Makeup over A Series of Unfortunate Events, I, Robot should have won over Spiderman 2 for Visual Effects, and I really think SuperSize Me should have won Best Documentary, although I haven't seen any of the other nominees, so what do I know. These are just a few categories that I had other opinions on, but I really had a problem with the Best Foreign Film category this year. I haven't seen any of the films in the category, so I won't say that they don't deserve to have been nominated. I'm sure they do, in fact. But here are a few films that not even recognized – Hero, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Maria Full of Grace. What is that? The Motorcycle Diaries certainly deserved much more than recognition than Best Original Song. Catalina Sandina Moreno was at least nominated for Best Actress, but how about Hero for Cinematography or Art Direction? Anyone with me on this?

Oh, that's right. The Motorcycle Diaries wasn't exactly a foreign film, and Hero was originally released in 2002. But still.

Ah, nobody cares. The winners won and that's the end of it, I'm just another in an endless line of people who have to rant and rave about how it should have gone. But I should mention that while I disagreed with some of the awards this year, it's like that any year and I think that all of the winners this year deserved the Oscars that they were awarded. There were just so many other films and people that deserved so much more than they got. Just see them all, that's my solution.

A day or two after "The 77th Annual Academy Awards", I read an article in The Wall Street Journal about how Uruguay's new populist president Tabare Vazquez had just been sworn in. But it said that the thing on the minds of most Uruguayans was not their new president, but what happened at the Oscars: Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler didn't get to perform his nominated song "Al otro lado del rio", so he sang a few lines when he won.

Aside from that, I wonder just what Martin Scorsese has to do to win an Oscar. I mean, "Million Dollar Baby" was good, but Clint Eastwood had already won an Oscar. As for the whole thing about cutting people off before they have a chance to finish their speeches, what are you gonna do? And I do think that Chris Rock was a pretty good host (but I liked Jon Stewart even better the next year).

All in all, passable.

I Just

Saw It and it was very very very good.

It was better than last year

This year was good because it had some good movies nominated but others weren't that good. I think the movie that won best Picture shouldn't of. The actress should have the actor should have. and i thought that CLint Eastwood did deserve to win again which he did. Hilary Swanks win for Million Dollar Baby was predictable and deserving Jamie Foxx' too predictable win was deserving. A nice little buzz was guessing whether Clint or Martin would win. I was glad to see Clint walk away with the prize. Virginia Madsen also deserved her Oscar and so did Morgan Freeman. The original Screenplay was won by Charlie Kaufman for a movie that should have taken home Best Picture but wasn't nominated, Eternal Sunshine. The Best Adapted Screenplay predictably went to Sideways and The Incredibles conquered the animation Prize. so you can go to sleep knowing that my information is correct because I can see into the future.

Seriously the only good thing about this year ceremony were the winners.

Although the ceremony itself was pretty short it still was somewhat boring. I think it's seriously time to look for a new director and producers for the show, who can come up with something REALLY new. It's pretty obvious that they tried to make the show more 'hip' and appealing for a younger audience this year by letting Beyonce perform and letting P. Diddy and Prince present a category. Also letting Chris Rock be the presenter was an attempt to re-new the ceremony and make it more appealing. None of it really worked out.

Sure, Chris Rock is a funny guy but he wasn't really a good presenter. I really merely saw him as a guy who just talked every now and then in between of the different categories. His presence wasn't really as 'big' as for instance Billy Crystal's.

Also the handing out of the awards was pretty dumb at times. Not letting everybody come to the stage but also handing out some of the awards in the middle of the theater was plain weird.

Still, I can't remember being any more satisfied with the award winners. None of the movies really swept away the awards as the last couple of years always had been the case. So does that mean it had been a good year for movies with lots of competitive contestants? I don't think so. I think most of the movies will be largely forgotten in 20 years from now, with the exception of "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Passion of the Christ" maybe. Sure I don't agree with every single award that was handed out this year, for instance Caleb Deschanel should had won for best cinematography, not that I don't like Robert Richardson's work, he really did some amazing work for most of Oliver Stone's work but I really feel that Deschanel deserved the award way more. Also I would had liked seeing Jim Miller and Paul Rubell win for best editing and John Debney for best music. But oh well, there is no way the Academy Awards can please everybody of course, I understand that. There will always be people complaining about the winners.

It also was funny to see that most of the award presenters were way more nervous than the nominees and winners. Did Prince said any of the nominees names right at once? And were is Sean Penn's sense of humor? Al Pacino and Jeremy "I hope they missed" Irons were the best presenters of the night.

Overall a very forgettable show but with nice winners.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

1.Beyonce singing every nominated song was a bit irritating but then again you would be to if you had a voice like that...But her french was horrible"take some french lessons girl" 2.It was nice to see some DIVERSITY in the nominations believe race does matter in the academy.therefore it was great to see Jamie Foxx & Morgan Freeman walk away with the statues 3.It was high time the ever so great underrated Morgan Freeman get recognition and the brilliant Cate Blanchett as well 4.The lowest point was Hilary winning the best actress award,don't get me wrong she was great in the role but did she need a second Oscar especially for this role Imelda & Annette were way better in their performance than she is.Never had a false win made more angry than Nicole kidmans"The Hours" win over Julianne Moore"Far from Heaven" two years ago. 5.Chris rock rocked though