The 83rd Academy Awards are over, and aside from one genuine upset – Tom Hooper winning Best Director for The King’s Speech, instead of David Fincher taking it for The Social Network – things shook out pretty much as expected.
All four acting prizes went to the favourites – Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo. The King’s Speech and The Social Network took home Screenplay awards Inception nabbed four technical prizes, including Cinematography, Visual Effects and both Sound awards. Toy Story 3 was named Best Animated Feature.
Inside Job won Best Documentary Feature, denying the world the chance to see what Banksy would have done for an Exit Through The Gift Shop win. Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland won Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, demonstrating that a massive studio production can afford Oscar-winning talent. And The Wolfman trounced Barney’s Version for Best Make-up, meaning that Canada will declare war on ponytails once we’ve finished beating up Denmark, which had the temerity to snatch our Best Foreign-Language Film victory away from Incendies with Susanne Bier’s In A Better World.
That’s the news part of the story. The other, much more interesting aspect of this year’s Oscars was trying to figure out what the hell was going on behind the scenes. After the sort of opening montage that Billy Crystal perfected back in the day, rookie hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway ran through a delightfully awkward series of bits, acting like kids who’d crept into the Kodak Theatre when no one was looking.
The sense that they didn’t know quite what to expect made every moment potentially explosive when the camera cut back to the hosts after Melissa Leo’s stunning Best Supporting Actress meltdown, Franco’s goggle-eyed stare was downright bracing.
But as the night wore on, they started to flag, slipping into ordinary awkwardness. Hathaway fought valiantly to invest each new task with energy and bubbly charm, while Franco started channelling Head Wound Harry Osborn from Spider-Man 3, with a ridiculous grin plastered across his face.
Kirk Douglas’s appearance to present the Supporting Actress award walked a weird line between reverence for Old Hollywood and the exploitation of a frail old man. Maybe it’s just the way HD cameras amplify everything – Douglas was clearly up for the job, his timing still exquisite even after a debilitating stroke – but the moment felt exploitative rather than empowering. So did the appearance of a digitized Bob Hope, introduced by Billy Crystal, which served as a reminder that Hollywood’s expensive technology exists primarily to defile the memory of its greatest personalities.
It wasn’t just the old guard that struggled this year. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock were saddled with delivering those ridiculous praise poems to the acting nominees, stopping the show dead after two and a half hours to offer mealy accolades to people who really didn’t need another seven or eight minutes of waiting to hear whose name would be called. Matthew McConaughey and Scarlett Johansson said the word “sound” a lot while presenting the Best Sound award, apparently because someone thought it would be funny. (Someone was wrong.)
An emaciated Hilary Swank turned up to introduce Kathryn Bigelow, last year’s Best Director winner for The Hurt Locker – inadvertently reminding everyone that, once again, no women were up for this year’s award. And Jennifer Hudson stumbled so badly through her introduction of two Best Song nominees that I briefly thought it had to be a bit, setting up a surprise appearance from Cher or something. No such luck.
On the upside, Russell Brand and Helen Mirren – co-stars in The Tempest and the upcoming remake of Arthur – played off one another beautifully, and Trent Reznor was downright gracious in accepting the Oscar for his atypical Social Network score, something you wouldn’t have expected from his Nine Inch Nails days. Colin Firth and Natalie Portman were every bit as eloquent and graceful as they’ve been throughout the awards season, and even Christian Bale choked up a little when he thanked his wife at the end of his acceptance speech.
I could have done without the bizarre final flourish of a children’s choir, clearly unchoreographed, trotted out to sing Over the Rainbow while the evening’s winners crept up behind them. But in a way, that served to sum up the evening surprisingly well – they didn’t know what the hell was going on, so they just sang as loud as they could. Get Brand and Mirren to host next year’s Oscars, and we might just have something.
