2010 Oscars

So late night was the Oscars and for me it was a night filled with triumph and defeat. I had four movies that I really hoped would do well and they were Inglorious Basterds, District 9, The Hurt Locker, and Avatar. Meanwhile I had not seen Precious, Up In The Air, and An Education. Excited to see all three but when the only way to see a movie is to pay 9 bucks to see it in the theaters I must be picky with what I decide to see.

Some of my highlights of the night are as follows.

My personal pick for Best Picture was Inglorious Basterds. The opening scene in France was simply amazing and something I will never forget. I would have been pretty upset if either Up, A Serious Man, or The Blind Side won. Up had a great opening montage, but anything with talking dogs is just clearly not Oscar material. The Blind Side was a fun, heartwarming movie and I honestly enjoyed it, but Oscar material it was not. A Serious Man was just horrible and boring, it is one of those movies that just panders to the Oscars and is too weird to be enjoyable to anyone not trying to impress others for how "cool" and "artsy" they are. The Hurt Locker won which was fine with me. Kept Avatar from winning which was nice. Avatar was epic but was also just to weak on the script to win.

Best Actress. Oh good gosh. Sandra Bullock should not own an Oscar. I keep hearing people say she nailed a strong, southern woman. Can't anyone? I see many strong southern women every single day, why not just hire one of the to play the part. But, at least Meryl Streep didn't win for her annoying portrayal of Julia Childs. I have never seen Julia Childs but she must have been really grating. Again, people keep saying she did such a great job of being Julia Childs that she even had her mannerisms down. Don't they do that on SNL every Saturday for other people. Not impressive. Haven't seen the other movies so I really don't know who I would have rather won than Bullock, but man oh man there had to be someone better than her to choose!

Best Supporting Actor. Christoph Waltz! Yay! He was brilliant and was easily the most memorable character from this year. Glad to see Inglorious Basterds recognized for at least something. If Quentin is only recognized for one thing it should be his characters anyways. He has created some of the most memorable characters of all time.

Animated Feature Film. I know I am in the minority here but I was just not a fan of Up. My wife and I even saw it at the theaters in 3D so we got the full experience. Toy Story, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall-E were all more enjoyable to me than Up. It just wasn't that amazing. My pick would have been Coraline just because it was original, beautiful and it was wild how much time they put into it.

I was glad to see Avatar win so many awards for its art and visual effects but at the same time I was sad to see District 9 snubbed at every turn. Avatar was a spectacle, but when I watched District 9 I fully believed the prawns were real creatures. So believable.

The Oscars did a pretty good job this year. Extending the Best Picture nominees to ten instead of five seemed like a brilliant move to me. Not sure who they would have picked had they only picked 5 but it was nice to see all of my favorite movies at least up to win even if some stood no chance. Now I just have to wait for a few of the movies to come to DVD so I can Netflix them and make sure there were no surprises that I actually liked better.