Awards Season - And the Oscar Goes To...

March 7, 2010

The Oscars are being handed out as we speak and I will be updating our list of nominees with some of the winners as they happen. So far we've seen a few awards handed out, but no surprises.

The categories and winners are...

BEST PICTURE

DIRECTING

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST WRITING - ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST WRITING - ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

BEST DOCUMENTARY - FEATURE LENGTH

BEST DOCUMENTARY - SHORT FILM

  • Music by Prudence
SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

  • The New Tenants
SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

  • Logorama
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SCORE

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SONG

Notes and Reactions...

  • The first award of the night goes to... Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. This category was one of the least competitive of the night, so there's no surprise here.
  • Up wins for best animated film, which again should surprise no one. On a side note, Pixar has now earned more than half of the Best Animated Picture Oscars (and I still think Monsters, Inc. and Cars were robbed).
  • The favorites have gone three for three with Crazy Heart picking up the Best Original Song Oscar for "The Weary Kind".
  • Mark Boal won Best Original Screenplay for The Hurt Locker, which is not a surprise. However, for me it was a disappointment, as I was hoping Up would win.
  • Logorama won for Best Animated Short, which I predicted. It's a car chase movie through the streets of Los Angeles, but all the building are replaced with corporate logos. I figured the L.A. connection would give it an edge.
  • Music by Prudence won for Best Short Film: Documentary, which is again what I predicted, even if our readers choose The Last Truck instead.
  • The New Tenants won for Best Short Film: Live Action, which is the first surprise of the night. But since the short film categories are the least predictable, it's not much of a surprise.
  • Star Trek won for Best Make Up. I was surprised the other two were even nominated. But I guess SFX make up was replaced almost entirely by CG effects this past year.
  • We have an upset, as Geoffrey Fletcher won Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious over the heavily favored Up in the Air. If you are part of the 20% who picked that upset, your chances of winning our Oscar Prediction Contest just got a whole lot better.
  • Precious won another Oscar, but this time it was not a surprise, as Mo'Nique won for Best Support Actress.
  • Avatar won its first Oscar for Best Achievement in Art Direction. This isn't a surprise and it won't be the film's last Technical Award.
  • The Young Victoria won for Best Costume Design. No surprise there. It had earned more than 60% of our readers' votes.
  • The Hurt Locker upset Avatar for Best Sound Editing, which is a huge upset.
  • And now The Hurt Locker has won Best Sound Mixing. It appears The Hurt Locker will be the big winner tonight, which means a lot of people are out of the running for our Oscar Prediction Contest, me included.
  • Avatar wins another Oscar, this time for Cinematography, but it is merely splitting the technical awards and not sweeping these categories like I, and many others, thought it would.
  • Yes! Michael Giacchino won the Oscar for Best Original Score for Up. I wanted it to win, but I wasn't convinced it would.
  • Avatar won for Best Visual Effects. I seriously doubt that many people were surprised by that result. In fact, according to our readers, that was the most predictable result.
  • The Cove won for Best Feature Length Documentary, which is another mostly predictable result. (Food, Inc. was the only other nominee with anything more than a nominal chance to win.
  • It's The Hurt Locker's night with another technical award, this time for Editing. As someone who thought Avatar would sweep the technical awards, this comes as a surprise.
  • The Secret in Their Eyes won for Best Foreign Language Film. It wasn't the favorite for this category, but this one is notoriously difficult to predict.
  • Jeff Bridges won his first Oscar for Crazy Heart, which was the least unexpected result out of the four acting categories.
  • Sandra Bullock won Best Lead Actress for The Blind Side, which is not a surprise since she was picked up 75% of our readers.
  • Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars. And with that, The Hurt Locker is now the overwhelming favorite to win Best Picture, as it is not often they split the two awards between films, and it has already been winning more awards than many people predicted.
  • And The Hurt Locker wins. Last night it was a toss-up between that film and Avatar and while I was personally rooting for Up, this is still a deserving win.

-

Filed under: Awards Season, Up, Star Trek, Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, The Cove, The Young Victoria, The Blind Side, Precious (Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire), Avatar, Crazy Heart