Sunday, March 3, 2013

Oscars 2013 pt 2

So earlier this week, I posted my thoughts on the Oscar winners in the categories of acting and screenwriting, and now I am going to get more into the ones that I took issue with. Starting with

Best Animated Movie

Who won: Brave
Who should have won: Frankenweenie or Wreck-it Ralph
Now, I'm not going to go into some anti-Pixar rant, because I am a huge fan of their work and while I did like Brave, I thought it was extremely underwhelming, especially for Pixar standards, and I thought that my two picks were far superior and underappreciated, especially Wreck-it Ralph. In fact, I was kinda shocked when I found out that it wasn't made by Pixar, that's how damn good I thought it was.

Best Director

Who won: Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Who should have won: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
I have nothing against Ang Lee, but his movie this year seemed to have alot of pretense to it, and to be honest, there were a few people who I felt got the shaft when it came to getting nominated. The 3 specific ones are Ben Affleck, Katherine Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino. If those 3 were nominated, I would be alright, if Spielberg had won, I would be okay because I was blown away by Lincoln and I have said numerous times that I think it ought to be shown in history classes.

Who got forgotten?

This is mostly in the acting category, because I thought that a number of people had some overlooked performances. Namely Michael Fassbender as the android in Prometheus and Tom Hardy for either Lawless or The Dark Knight Rises. Fassbender joked that he took the role of David because it gave him an excuse to turn in a wooden performance. But the thing is, he really made it work, and Tom Hardy had one of those performances as Bane that made me forget that he was acting, and I could accept that Bane was on the screen. Sure it helped that he had a mask, but the fact that he was able to deliver an emotionally powerful performance using only his eyes is really saying something.

As for Seth Macfarlane as host, I was really impressed. I often feel with Seth, there are times where he thinks he is funnier than he really is, or that it doesn't matter what he puts up there, because people will find it funny because it's Seth Macfarlane, and the fact that he has that kind of ego annoys me. But, when he hosted, I found myself rolling on the floor at some points and I really liked how he made fun of the actors, but not to the degree of Ricky Gervais where it just got mean after a while.

And another thing, I'm not going to get political on you guys, but I have to ask what was the point of having Michelle Obama announce the best picture? Nothing against the woman, I'm sure she's a nice lady, but I often get the feeling that the media is trying to build her up as the next Jackie. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it but either way, it seemed kind of unnecessary