The 76th Annual Academy Awards

Is it that time of the year already? Well, sort of, they have come a month early this year in an effort to cut out the whole nasty marketing campaign that was seen in the last few years. Whether or not this was needed in the year when I suspect no amount of smouzing would have stopped Return of The King from collecting Oscars covering all three instalments.

As it was, there were almost no real surprises at all - certainly not in the main categories. Each of these were made up of two likely winners and three `the nomination is enough' type nominations (City of God, Johnny Depp, the girl from Whalerider etc). Did anyone doubt that LOTR would get Director and Best Picture? Or that Penn would get actor with Robbins the only sure fire supporting Oscar. Zellweger was not a worthy winner on this role alone but she was always going to get it and with her makeup, weight gain and performance, it was always going to be Theron. The only surprise to me that was that LOTR managed to sweep every single nomination it had.

So as an awards ceremony I didn't really find any controversy or any major talking points, but (thanks to fast forward) I did enjoy the show. Crystal is the best host the show has had in the past decade or so. He is witty, imaginative and very funny. His traditional opening of being edited into films was not quite as good or sharp as it has been before - only Michael Moore declaring the hobbit's was `shameful and fictitious' got a big laugh from me. However, his songs and his gags were all pretty good and only occasionally fell flat. `Seabiscuit' to the tune of Goldfinger was hilarious and singing `Mystic River' in the style of an old spiritual was just inspired. The show is great with him and the host is the main reason I watch it.

Everyone accepted their awards with good grace and everything was pretty clean and obvious; only Sean Penn dropped a little dig about WMD's apart from Crystal's scripted digs. Overall this was a good show despite the usual problems of it being too long and having absurdly long commercial breaks all through it. Crystal makes it worth seeing but it is a shame that the main awards were so very obvious - I tried to get a combination bet on the 5 main awards but no bookie's would allow me to do that combination and the individual odds were just a waste of time (1-16 for Jackson to be director?!). Aside from this it was a good show - but I would never watch it live, I need the fast forward!

This year's Oscars were a return to normalization as far as I am concerned. The Academy at least had the dignity to "show" where it had been going wrong in the last past years and nominated a bunch of indie movies in all kinds of categories which I thought was excellent and above everything else just! Keisha Castle-Hughes may just have an incredible acting career in front of her and I was actually happy she didn't win. The acting she blessed "Whale Rider" with was simply amazing and although I haven't seen "Monster" yet I thought that at her early age an Oscar would be more of a burden than a blessing. Bill Murray was shockingly the night's sore looser which only proved that even he(who in the past weeks so repeatedly insisted he despised actors who let these kind of nominations get to them and sometimes bring out the worst in them) could make a fool of himself over an award. I love you Bill (although in my mind your performance wasn't worthy even of a nomination, let alone of you having the feeling you were robbed of any award for it) but hey, I thought it was more of an Academy's way of saying "Hey, we don't want to be the stiff and boring ones anymore, so let's nominate Johnny Depp and Bill and Diane Keaton to show people that comedy CAN win". No offense to any of them, it was just too apparent and undeserving to me to have any of these three walk up the isle that night. The person among the acting nominees I missed the most was Alison Lohman for "Matchstick Men". Her amazing performance wasn't even nominated among the supporting actresses which made annoying Renee's Oscar win even more painful to watch. Billy Crystal's return this year was quite good although I remember his opening movie clips actually being funny, hilarious even, and not just a three minute filler. But he commended himself immediately with the funny and silly songs for each of the best picture nominees. Jack Black and Will Ferrell's song also made a strong point and I hope future winners will at least try to be different and not as BOOOOORING. And I've quickly come to the end of it all, nothing left but the grand winner of the night. Perhaps to some it was worth the wait, I say it was more than deserving to pick up every single award it was nominated for. Maybe I'm being short-sighted, but in a couple of decades I still think we won't have the privilege of seeing a motion picture of such grand epic and unprecedented proportions. Next Christmas we'll be sobbing over the end of Peter Jackson's immaculately perfect depiction of Tolkien's work and none of the movies will (perhaps even in the whole of my lifetime) be quite as grand and as big as events as "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. Peter Jackson with cast and crew managed to bring back the true meaning of Blockbuster and their fantastic fantasy voyage will be passed onto generations and generations of movie-lovers without ever loosing a speck of its raw power. I was witness to true movie history in the making and mark my words, these three movies will be talked about for A very very long time so all of the haters should start thinking about moving to lonely remote islands. This years Oscars were a nice start for re-building the culture of past nominees, MAY THE BEST WIN, and not the ones that have the most money or are the most politically correct. 8/10

It all began so well with Billy Crystal's amazing opening number but after that nothing spectacular happened. What happened to all the musical and dance numbers the Oscar ceremony always used to had?

And as for the awards, nothing unexpected happened and it wasn't even tense since all the winners were already as good as known weeks before the ceremony. The only category that was tense was the one for best performance by an actor in a leading role. Bill Murray and Sean Penn were favorites but there also was a chance for Johnny Depp to win. Sean Penn won and most likely he deserved it to win and oh boy, Bill Murray looked mad and disappointing. Billy Crystal responded brilliantly with saying: Common Bill we love you! And he was right at that. Anyway Bill Murray deserved to win an Oscar years ago for his role in "Rushmore" but that's a whole other issue. I just hope he will get nominated again. No doubt that he then will win his long deserved Oscar.

And then the big winner of the night: "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King". It won 11 Oscars, in other words it won everything it was nominated for. Finally justice will most people say but as a movie critic you can hardly call it justice. Sure I understand why it won, it was a tribute to the ending of one of the best trilogy's in movie history and a compensation for the last two years when the previous two movie hardly won any Oscar's of importance. But I don't think it's really fair to give just only the last movie all the awards, they should have awarded all the three movies since they are all part of a trilogy that should be seen as one big whole movie. And really did they have to win really every award they were nominated for? It wasn't really fair and it didn't do any justice to all the other movies that were nominated and it surely didn't do any good to the tension but at least the fans are happy now.

The presenters were nothing special this year, except for Robin Williams and Adrien Brody that were at least a bit interesting. The "thanks speeches" were as always not interesting and nobody even cried although some came close to. But at least there was luckily hardly anything political said.

All in all; nothing spectacular or exciting this year. And thank God that "Lord of the Rings" will not be a contestant next year! The only reason why it was watchable was because of Billy Crystal, the "in memoriam sequences" and the honorary award for Blake Edwards who in my opinion really deserved it.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I always watch with immense pleasure The Oscars as they proved to be the most important and influential event in the film business. Producers, directors, screenwriters, actors all around the world wait for their work to be acknowledged as a sign of recognition of their talent, commitment and inspiration!

TALENT, COMMITMENT AND INSPIRATION!...Key words! They are the essence of true art; it's like Soderbergh so nicely put it (on winning the much coveted Oscar)that we should first of all thank all those who take a pencil and create a piece of canvas or write a script before thanking friends and relatives.

You can imagine my surprise with last year's Oscar Ceremony:Lord of the Rings won 11 out of 11 nominations... a film that otherwise lacks both talent and inspiration but unfolds as a continuous futile effort to shock and amaze!!

Nevertheless I have to give Peter Jackson credit for his commitment(the only key word that applies for the production)to put an end to this long, long sometimes too long struggle to adapt(very poorly!) a book which conquered the hearts of millions of children and adults worldwide!

But is this the true purpose of The Academy? Do we still have to praise films which are beautifully "dressed" like an artificial Christmas Tree with impressive decorations but eventually lacks branches!

I'm not Minghella's number one fan but "Cold Mountain"was the best of 2004! Not by far though! Perhaps Cold Mountain's best merit would be that it respects truthfully the golden rule of Hitchcock's films: the real villain is never shown! We can sense it in this raw and brutal environment, we can feel the presence of ravens floating above the reddish snow but we are never told precisely what forces govern the destiny of two main characters! (Well done for Law, Kidman and Zellweger)

Anyway here are MY Oscar winners for 2004:

Best Picture: Cold Mountain

Best Director: Fernando Meirelles (City of God)

Best Actor: Sean Penn (21 Grams)

Best Actress: Charlize Theron (Monster)

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins (Mystic River)

Best Supporting Actress: Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River)

Best Foreign Language Picture: Good-bye Lenin

Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo

Nevertheless a poor year for the Oscars! My vote for the 2004 Ceremony 7/10

Wow, what a loooooonnnnnggggg ceremony, but still we watch it! I'm personally very glad Billy is back - he is one of the best presenters ever. The video montage at the beginning was very funny, but enough naked presenter already... The speeches were way too long too, I thoroughly agreed with Jack Black's song - "You're BORING..". Does anybody know where to find the lyrics to Billy Crystal's Oscar opening song? I couldn't hear half the stuff he said! There must be a website or somewhere one could find it. Thanks, Marietha