Oscar reaction.

Okay, last posting about the Oscars until a year from now.

Overall, a fairly bland event with few surprises. I was in a "Oscar pool" if you will and took some chances and just got absolutely beaten down. Anyways, just thought I'd make some comments on the awards since I completed my goal of seeing every Best Picture nominee as well as all of the nominees in the acting categories.

No surprises in the Supporting Actor/Actresses categories, Mo'Nique was intense and Christoph Walz was a no brainer, even in a category of solid performances.
NOTE: Check out Stanley Tucci in the Lovely Bones, absolutely creepy, also Christopher Plummer in the Last Station was fantastic.
Moving on, Jeff Bridges was the consensus pick, myself I was hoping Clooney would get it, not that Bridges wasn't deserving or due, just thought Clooney was great in Up in the Air. Crazy Heart is the real deal though. As for the Best Actress, I really wanted Meryl, and I was hoping that albeit the heavy favoritism of Sandra Bullock, that the Academy would look past Bullock's one hit wonder and award the deserving Streep.

I agreed with one columnist who stated that Meryl Streep's drought has been an embarrassment for the Academy. Nominated for a staggering 16 Oscars, she's only taken home two statues, and not since her fourth nomination in 1982. The thing I don't understand is the argument that an actor is due for his statue. Correction, I do understand this to an extent, Bridges was on his fourth nomination without a win, same with Morgan Freeman when he won for Million Dollar Baby, and Kate Winslet was long overdue when she finally won on her sixth nomination last year for The Reader, which in my opinion wasn't even her best performance from that year (see Revolutionary Road). But in a year where everyone knew that Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Carey Mulligan (An Education) were going to wash out due to their age and first nominations, when Helen Mirren turned in a great performance in a film no one saw (The Last Station, p.s. I saw it!) and had recently won for The Queen, it seemed like a two horse race between Bullock and Streep.

Now, if I'm an Academy voter (http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/about/voting.html), you'd think this would a good time in a down year to hand Meryl a long overdue statue, when you probably wouldn't lose any sleep by overlooking Sandra Bullock. Yet, Sandra takes home the trophy for a great performance in an overblown, overhyped, below average, stereotypical, cheese fest known as the Blind Side.
Now don't get me wrong, Julie & Julia was no life changer either, on the contrary to be honest. The Julie scenes were pretty bad and uneventful, but the half that Meryl carried was just as you'd expect and turns a subpar film into something worth watching. Now, if Winslet and Bridges were overdue for their Oscars, how is Streep who's been shut out 26 years through a dozen nominations not? Doesn't really make sense to me.

Also, was hoping that Inglourious Basterds was going to take home the Best Original Screenplay statue, and that Up in the Air wouldn't get completely shut out like it did, but apparently some people in Hollywood aren't fans of Jason Reitman. Oh well. Hopefully next year will have a few more surprises and will go back to only five nominees for Best Picture.

I was looking through my DVD/Blu-Ray collection and noticed that I own only a handful of Best Picture nominees, let alone winners. Slumdog is in there, The Departed, No Country for Old Men, Crash, LOTR: ROTK, Unforgiven, and so on. It made me think of how many of this nominees I felt are worth adding to a collection. The Hurt Locker was just great, even with the potentially inaccurate depiction of a few of the combat scenes according to the US military. Avatar was massively entertaining despite it's thin, recycled plot. I already have Up, Inglourious Basterds, and District 9. Precious is not something I'd really ever need to see again. A Serious Man was hilarious but too Jewish for me to really catch all the jokes or to appreciate it on the level that it could be. (Need some help there Pasha!) An Education was really, really good just not something I'd thrown in on a wimb. And I loved Up in the Air, so that's definitely going to make it in there. If you've read up to this point you know how I feel about the Blind Side. So that would make six out of ten nominees, including Crazy Heart. I've been enjoying adding quality films to my collection and weeding out the riff raff.

So there's my Oscar blog/rant/whatnot. Go see Shutter Island.