Thoughts on the Oscars

The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture. James Cameron never got a chance to get up on stage, the King has been replaced with a Queen. There were ten very deserving nominees for Best Picture, any one of them could have taken home the gold. The Hurt Locker is a great movie, and fits in perfectly with the 81 other films that have won Best Picture.

I predicted 17 out of 24 categories correctly, same as last year. Some great speeches, some surprises. I’m very disappointed that Up in the Air went home empty handed.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were both very funny, but the best joke of the night has to go to Tyler Perry, who said, “People keep coming up to me saying ‘I loved you in The Blind Side’, uh, no, that wasn’t me.” There were the predicted dance numbers, and they were all pretty good, except for the moment when they started robot dancing to the beautiful score of Up...

Very happy for both of Up’s wins, score and Best Animated. Pete Docter and Michael Giacchino were both wearing Grape Soda bottle caps - I wore mine as well.

There was a good tribute to horror films - some good, some otherwise. Wait, is New Moon a horror film? Was I the only one that saw that brief clip?

I loved the tribute to John Hughes, and the In Memoriam segment. James Taylor was amazing. Touching. moving and beautiful. So many great talents lost - may they rest in peace.

Overall, it’s been a great night. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners. You can see my full thoughts on all the winners here.

-John C.

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Oddly, the same as last year, I again predicted 16 out of 24 correctly - 2/3 of the categories. That is the same percentage, approx. 67%, as wins-to-noms for the winner The Hurt Locker tonight. I guess I'll try to hit 20, or approx 83% next year...

Overall, I am happy with most of the awards, although was kind of surprised to see Avatar win Cinematography. I am really happy with both of the music winners, The Weary Kind for Best Song, and Up for Best Score. Both categories had great contenders in them, although out of the Best Score, I think Avatar was my least favourite - it just wasn't memorable to me. It was interesting to see Avatar go home with only 3 awards, speaking of which, I have tallied the percentages of awards won by each film that picked Oscars up tonight below:

In the main categories where most films garner more than one nomination, the winner percentages are as follows (their percentage rankings are to the left of the winners name):

Tied for 1. The Hurt Locker - 6/9 - 67%

Tied for 5. Avatar - 3/9 - 33%

Tied for 5. Precious - 2/6 - 33%

4. Up - 2/5 - 40%

Tied for 1. Crazy Heart - 2/3 - 67%

9. Inglourious Basterds - 1/8 - 12.5%

8. Star Trek - 1/4 - 25%

Tied for 5. The Young Victoria - 1/3 - 33%

3. The Blind Side - 1/2 - 50%

Percentage wise, they are ranked quite differently as you can see. Congratulations to Crazy Heart for winning the same percentage of nominations as The Hurt Locker. ;)

The Hurt Locker was clearly the winner of the night, and Avatar has to share 5th place, for percentage of noms won, with two other films... And I suppose my over-catergorizeation is getting rather obsessive right now, so I shall save you the rest of my different ways of ordering the films... Interesting line-up though. And to think in all 43 films were nominated... Wow.

And in the categories that usually have films only nominated once, so they win 1/1…

Tied for 1. Foreign Language - El Sevreto de Sus Ojos - 1/1 - 100%

Tied for 1. Documentary Feature - The Cove - 1/1 - 100%

Tied for 1. Documentary Short - Music by Prudence - 1/1 - 100%

Tied for 1. Short Film Live Action - The New Tenants - 1/1 - 100%

Tied for 1. Short Film Animated - Logorama - 1/1 - 100%

There's really no fun ordering the percentages there... They all tied out at 1.

And that just about wraps up the season for another year. Hope you all enjoyed it, and I'll probably update this post in the morning with a few more thoughts, since it's kind of late now. Good night!

- Erin V.