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The 83rd annual
Academy Awards gave us few surprises, but many worthy
and deserved winners.
Although
The Social Network
fans will claim the Academy members demonstrated their
traditionalism and high average age by awarding the
classical British royal drama
The King's Speech
the best film award ahead of David Fincher's Facebook
film, I myself choose to conclude that people now, when
the fuzz now has silenced a bit, realize that The
Social Network isn't the class act that many critics
claimed in the early frenzy. The King's Speech is
a worthy winner, even if I would have preferred
Black Swan.
Three of
the four actor categories resulted in predictable but
highly deserved favourite wins. Colin Firth and
Natalie Portman both
gave extraordinary performances, in my opinion the best
in their categories since
Kevin Spacey in
American Beauty (1999) and
Susan Sarandon in
Dead Man Walking (1995)
respectively.
Another
brilliant actor who was finally recognized by the
Academy is
Christian Bale, for his
awe-inspiring performance in
The Fighter. I say
finally, because the young Welshman had been snubbed for
many years, arguably deserving nominations for films
such as
American Psycho and
The Machinist.
Melissa Leo won best supporting actress in a little more
open contest, before bursting out the f-word in a
memorable acceptance speech.
Although I
maintain that The King's Speech was a worthy
winner, due to a brilliant script and singular acting, I
do believe Tom Hooper can count himself lucky to have
ran away with the director's Oscar. He did a fine job,
but without the unique vision of Darren Aronofsky or
Danny Boyle (who was not nominated, incidentally). Many
wanted David Fincher for The Social Network, but
I don't really see what his achievement was with that
film. In that case, Christopher Nolan would have been
just as interesting a choice for his flamboyant (but
flawed) work in
Inception.
There were
a number of fine films this year, but as a show, the
83rd Academy Awards will not be remember as one of the
best. The two new hosts, James Franco and Anne Hathaway,
looked and sounded out of place. It goes to show that
two young and beautiful young actors make a tame
substitution for a Billy Crystal or even a Steve Martin.
Franco and Hathaway are both talented thespians, but the
two seemed tired and nervous, respectively. Crystal's
got the crowd going more in his two-minute cameo than
did the hosts during the entire show. In my opinion, the
sanctimony Hollywood stars would have been better off
putting up with the hilarious Ricky Gervais for a few
hours than having to suffer through this trite
self-glorfication.
But heck,
we still love the spectacle...
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