Oscar 75: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Well, of all the things people can say about the Academy, after the choices made last Sunday night, one can't say that the Academy is out of touch or making poor choices based on popularity or other reasons. The 75th Annual Academy Awards given out last week were filled with one surprise after another, and even though some of my favorites did not win, I can't say I was disappointed in any of the choices they made, except for two, which I'll get to shortly. They ended up loving The Pianist a lot more than most had predicted, although I did see the Adrien Brody choice coming. For the first time in decades, a foreign film takes a Screenplay prize, as Talk To Her was able to be honored. And Eminem winning Best Song???? Wow, talk about a surprise there. So at the very least, the Academy made incredibly solid choices this year during one of its most difficult years to have to put on their annual show.
Ok, let's begin with a look at how good I did predicting based on my predictions 2 articles back. Well, once again, I did my usual average, I predicted 14 correctly out of 24 categories. With so many surprises, who saw Roman Polanski, Eminem, and The Pianist for Screenplay coming? My best pick was probably Adrien Brody, which most people saw as a battle between Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson.
So let's analyze this year's Academy Awards as a contrast between The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. There's always great things about the Oscars, and completely ugly things at the Oscars ... that's what makes them so fun. I usually will discuss them separately, but as a twist, I'll go back and forth counterpointing each one as to what was good and what was bad.
THE GOOD: Adrien Brody and how to give a good speech during war-time. I'll start right with Brody. First, it was great to see the Academy make a bold choice to give 29 year old Brody the Oscar, making him the new record-holder as the youngest man ever to win the Best Lead Actor Oscar. Showing how crazy and excited Oscar winners can be, he mouthed "Oh, shit" upon hearing his name, and then arrived on stage to surprisingly take presenter Halle Berry in his arms, and passionately kiss her! Who can blame him ... like he said, when you have the chance ... Then, Brody went on to deliver what was clearly the best and most emotional speech of the night, contrasting how much he'd like to celebrate such a precious moment, but it was hard to with so much strife going on in the world. And instead of a political attack, he made an impassioned plea for the war to end soon and the troops return safely. Incredible moment, definitely the highlight of the night for me.
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