oscar round-up

 Everything at the Oscars turned out exactly like I expected.

I was disappointed in the people chosen for the acting wins though just because they were terribly predictable. Except for Natalie, I probably wouldn't change them, though I thought Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were really amazing. Annette Bening was lovely in her movie, which was otherwise crap.

I definitely didn't think Natalie was the best out of all those actresses. Especially Jennifer Lawrence, who blew me away in Winter's Bone. I like Natalie, I do, but her acting felt so flat until the final moments. I felt like she could be plucked out and replaced by almost any actress in her mid-20s. For a best actress winner I want to feel like no one else could have done the role as well as her.

When the oscars expanded to have 10 best picture nominees I was hoping that would mean we could get some better movies up there. And instead we got nominations like Toy Story 3. I loved the movie, it was cute, it was sad, blah blah but if you want a movie to win best animated, nominate it for best animated movie, not both. The nomination of The Kids Are All Right was such a joke. It was not a good movie for a lot of reasons.

How I ranked the movies, oscar-wise:

1. The King's Speech: 10/10, my favourite movie of the year and my pick for best picture
2. The Social Network: 9.5/10; great score, great acting, great screenplay 
3. Inception: 9/10; great action movie, not my pick for any acting or major awards but I love that it was there because it is at its heart a smart action movie and I love it for that.
4. Winter's Bone: 8/10; this movie was carried on Jennifer Lawrence's back. It was a gritty and depressing movie and would never win best picture because it didn't have the money or the buzz that things like The King's Speech and Black Swan had.
5. The Fighter: 8/10; such an Oscar-bait movie. The acting was great and I could recognize it as a great movie but I wasn't wowed by it.
6. True Grit: 7/10; I've literally seen it before but I was incredibly impressed by Hailee Steinfeld
7. Black Swan: 7/10; I found Black Swan to be the most overrated movie of the year. The acting was meh, the story boring and done and it definitely felt like it was trying really, really hard to be edgy and controversial and the hipster's choice.
8. 127 Hours: 8/10; good movie, just not strong enough for any award wins
9. The Kids Are All Right: 6/10; good acting; interesting idea, boring execution. Something just seemed off.
10. Toy Story 3: 8.5/10; shouldn't have been nominated twice

Of course I'm mostly into awards shows for the pretty ladies in dresses and the lovely speeches made by cinematographers and the like. I really do prefer television to movies.