My 2011-2012 Oscar Predicitons – Part 5: The Results

It was nice having Billy Crystal back.  He really made it feel like The Oscars again.  I enjoyed seeing his opening montage back.  Great stuff.

Otherwise, even though we had good presenters (Chris Rock, Emma Stone), there weren’t a lot of features to get excited about.  I like how they used to do little things for the technical categories to get a little more buzz for them.  Oh well.

And how about their “Go to the cinemas” message being force fed to us the whole night?  Not that I disagree with the message; watching pirated films on an ipod touch is ridiculous.  But the people who do that probably aren’t bothering to watch the awards show anyway.

BEST PICTURE:

Winner: The Artist

My Pick: The Artist

There’s a lot to be said about momentum, and The Artist certainly had it.  Its clear that the Oscars wanted to go with a feel-good message this year, between all the awards The Artist and Hugo received.

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DIRECTING:

Winner: Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist

My Pick: Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist

And so paving the way for its Best Picture win.

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ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:

Winner: Jean Dujardin – The Artist

My Pick: George Clooney – The Descendants

I should have seen this, but oh well.  I recently became a fan of Dujardin after just seeing him in OSS 117: Lost in Rio, a hilarious French James Bond spoof.  So I’m very happy that he won.

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ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:

Winner: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady

My Pick: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady

What did I tell you?  Its been a long time since she had won.  I just couldn’t see her being passed over again this year.

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ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

Winner: Christopher Plummer – Beginners

My Pick: Christopher Plummer – Beginners

I had a feeling they’d give it to him, after all these years.  And they sure the hell weren’t gonna play the music for his speech.

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ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:

Winner: Octavia Spencer – The Help

My Pick: Octavia Spencer – The Help

This was one of the easier ones to predict.

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ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

Winner: Midnight in Paris

My Pick: The Artist

For some reason I didn’t think they were gonna give it to Woody Allen.  I was wrong.

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ADAPTED  SCREENPLAY:

Winner: The Descendants

My Pick: The Descendants

Whew.  At least I’m getting a few right.

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:

Winner: A Separation

My Pick: A Separation

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to be right.  This category seems to be a crap-shoot with the academy, but The Separation was highly acclaimed.  And bravo to the academy for giving the award to a country with has probably the least sympathy with most westerners.  And for avoiding the temptation to give it to yet another holocaust film.

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ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:

Winner: Rango

My Pick: Rango

This is turning out to be my most successful category.  I seem to always guess right.  Not that its usually that tough to figure out…

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ART DIRECTION:

Winner: Hugo

My Pick: Hugo

Yeah, once this won cinematography, everyone should have known that Art Direction was a lock for Hugo as well.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Winner: Hugo

My Pick: The Tree of Life

Hugo should have been easy to see coming.  Its hard not to cheer for Tree of Life though….

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COSTUME DESIGN:

Winner: The Artist

My Pick: Jane Eyre

My formula failed me!!!

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FILM EDITING:

Winner: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

My Pick: The Artist

I don’t think I was the only one surprised by this.  The editors themselves seemed pretty taken aback as well.  Good for them.  Being familiar with Dragon Tattoo’s source material, I have to commend them for their editing.  The  award was well-deserved.

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DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:

Winner: Undefeated

My Pick: Pina

Oh well, I was really just guessing.  Undefeated sounds pretty neat though.

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MAKEUP:

Winner: The Iron Lady

My Pick: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

I was not expecting this.  I thought for sure that they would throw the Harry Potter franchise a bone.  Guess not.  I guess after ten years and eight movies, they’re going to stay Oscarless.

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ORIGINAL SCORE:

Winner: The Artist

My Pick: Hugo

Man, I am getting my ass kicked this year.

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ORIGINAL SONG:

Winner: Man or Muppet – The Muppets

My Pick: Man or Muppet – The Muppets

I didn’t know Bret from Flight of the Conchords wrote it.  Awesome!
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SOUND MIXING:

Winner:  Hugo

My Pick: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I hoped Dragon Tattoo would win.  The sound was astounding.  But Hugo seems to be on a technical role, so there you go.
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SOUND EDITING:

Winner: Hugo

My Pick: War Horse

Not only did my Victorian-era movie-always-wins-costume formula fail me, my war-movie-always-wins-sound-editing failed me too!

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VISUAL EFFECTS:

Winner: Hugo

My Pick: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Its clear that I underestimated Hugo.

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DOCUMENTARY SHORT:

Winner: Saving Face

My Pick: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Yeah, I was just guessing.  The Tsunami film sounded like a good winner. Oh well.

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ANIMATED SHORT FILM:

Winner: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

My Pick: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Wait… did I guess a short nomination right? Sweet!

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LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM:

Winner: The Shore

My Pick: The Shore

Two short film winner right!  Wow, that’s unprecedented!  Its good, I needed these to help my percentage a little.

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MY SCORE: 12/24 = 50%

Not a good year for my predictions.  And its all Hugo’s fault.  Usually its the shorts which kill me, this year it was the technical awards.