Jumping for Joy: Recapping The Oscars

Well, just like I thought, the 86th Annual Academy Awards definitely delivered! Thankfully, my worst fear didn't come true, because if Jennifer Lawrence had won for Best Supporting Actress we would have been deprived of Lupita Nyong'o's genuinely shocked! reaction and her heartfelt speech after winning, which was, for me, 

the Moment of the Night. 

Because J-Law didn't win, and "American Hustle" didn't win in any of its other 9 nominated categories, as I correctly predicted, it is now tied with 2 other films for the 2nd most nominations without a win in Oscars history. Speaking of my predictions, I only missed two of the categories for which I saw at least one of the nominated films(I didn't predict for Foreign Language Film, Documentary, Documentary Short, or Live Action Short). I mistakenly predicted that Mickey Mouse's 72-year Oscar drought would end, as "Get a Horse" lost in Animated Short Film to "Mr. Hublot"(You know the one). I was basically guessing on that one since I hadn't seen any of the other nominated shorts. Also, because I believed that "12 Years a Slave" deserved more than 3 total wins, I went with my heart and picked it over "The Great Gatsby" for Costume Design, assuming that it would lose Best Actor and that this would be its 4th Oscar. At least I correctly identified "Gatsby" as the favorite here, and it ended up winning, so ... Do I get half a point at least??? That was the toughest pick of the night for me, as I mentioned in my Viewer's Guide.

Enough about the misses. My heart served me well in the end as I was able to correctly predict "12 Years a Slave" for Best Picture over "Gravity". Even my go-to movie source, Entertainment Weekly, got it wrong. It was that close folks. I felt on top of the world yesterday! I believed that even if "Slave" ended up with only 3 wins, the historical and cultural significance of this film would catapult it over another historically significant film with 7 total wins. Ellen Degeneres put it best, in one of her few edgy jokes of the night: "Possibility #1, 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Possibility #2, you're all racists!" It just had to win. The Academy can tolerate being called homophobic(cough...Crash...cough). But racist? Never! With "Gravity's" loss there's still only been 2 films winning Best Picture without a Screenplay nomination in the last 65 years, and only 7 total in Oscars history. The end result reminded me of two films from the 1970's that are in my Top 5 Favorite Films of All Time. In 1977, "Star Wars" won 7 total Oscars(same as Gravity), but lost Best Picture to "Annie Hall"(not in my Top 5, but still an All-Time Great). In 1972, "The Godfather" won Best Picture with 3 total wins, losing Best Director to the film with the most wins of the night(Cabaret), same as "12 Years a Slave". At least Francis Ford Coppola got his much deserved Best Director Oscar 2 years later for "The Godfather: Part II". Let's see if Steve McQueen can come up with a sequel to "12 Years a Slave"(kidding, of course). Now, how in the world did Al Pacino not win an Oscar for what might be the greatest screen performance I've ever seen, TWICE?!?

Last night we didn't have any such catastrophic mistakes. The only category that didn't go how I would've voted was McConaughey over Ejiofor for Best Actor. But that was a very close race and McConaughey was very deserving(he also gave a great speech). Up until 2 nights before I posted my Viewer's Guide, I was gonna pick Ejiofor for Best Actor. That day I read an anonymous poll of 5 Academy members on how they were voting in the major categories, and all 5 had McConaughey for Best Actor. That's 5 for 5, or 100% for the non-finance majors out there. That changed my mind pretty quickly. Aside from McConaughey, I also predicted Dallas Buyers Club's 2 other wins for Jared Leto in Supporting Actor and for Hair & Makeup, where Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa had a serious chance at an upset.

Another tough call I correctly predicted was "The Great Gatsby" winning for Production Design over "Gravity", the only technical category it didn't win. "Gravity" faced some tough contenders in Cinematography, Editing, Original Score, and both Sound categories, but I correctly predicted it would win each one. The Visual Effects category, however, was the easiest pick to make of the 24 awards handed out last night. "Gravity" was in a different orbit, pun intended(1st time!), from the other 4 nominees. The Academy should rename this the 'Gravity Achievement Award for Visual Effects'. Alfonso Cuarón, the genius behind "Gravity", had already won for Best Editing when he also won for Best Director, becoming the first Hispanic to win the award in its 85-year history(my favorite fun fact of the night). I liked that he mentioned Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro in his speech. Plus, the joke about the "wise guys" at Warner Bros. was pretty funny too. Cuarón tied with "Gatsby's" Catherine Martin for the most wins of the night with 2. "The Great Gatsby" turned out to be the only summer movie from 2013 to win an Oscar. 

Other categories I correctly predicted were Cate Blanchett for Best Actress, both Screenplay categories(Spike Jonze gets an Oscar at last), and both "Frozen" wins for Animated Feature and Best Original Song, which made songwriter Robert Lopez just the 12th person ever to join the prestigious EGOT club(my 2nd favorite fun fact of the night). Now, I didn't like Mr. Lopez's speech one bit, Frozen 2? Seriously?? Have you seen Cars 2??? but once you enter a club of entertainment royalty you can basically do whatever you want.

Aside from all the night's big winners, the show was full of many unforgettable moments, some good and some bad. Here is a rundown of the night's events.

2nd Best Moment of the Night ...
Bill Murray pays tribute to Harold Ramis by mentioning the timeless classics for which he was never nominated. Shame on you Academy!

2 Worst Moments of the Night ...

-Kim Novak, yeeeshhh! If you've never seen "Vertigo", I definitely don't want to spoil it. Let's just say it has something to do with the undead walking amongst us and Mrs. Novak reprised her role perfectly. After this moment, Mr. McConaughey definitely deserved to win something, anything.

-And the 'Kim Novak Award for Facial Paralisis' goes to ... John Travolta! WTF?!?

Great Musical Performances ...
The 4 Best Original Song nominees all gave excellent performances, but they were outdone by Pink's beautiful rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for "The Wizard of Oz's" 75th anniversary tribute. That dress!

Not-so Great Musical Performance ...

Bette Midler singing "Wind Beneath my Wings" 25 years too late at the Academy Awards. The sight of Bette flapping her "wings" immediately after the In Memorian segment totally shifted the focus from the artists we lost, to her. Plus, she gets a full song, and we get a chopped up version of "Let it Go" that Idina Menzel(or Adele Dazeem as Mr. John Travolta knows her) had to speed through?! Come on Academy!

3 Best Ellen Moments ... 

   1) The Selfie - Instant Classic. Even Lupita's brother managed to get in there.

   2) On Jonah Hill: "You showed something in that film that I haven't seen for a very, very long time."

   3) "Amy Adams, you went to college, right?" ... "No" ... "Ok, never mind."

3 Worst Ellen Moments ... 

   1) Liza Minelli joke - Who knew Ellen could channel Ricky Gervais so easily? Poor Liza, on a night 

       her mother's most iconic film was being honored.

   2) June Squibb is old - Ha ha ... NOT! This sounds like a joke I would make, and no, I'm not a 

      professional comedian.

   3) The Hunger Games joke - Totally fell flat. Even the audience at the Dolby Theatre is tired of 

      Jennifer Lawrence. Which leads us to ...

Jennifer Lawrence Fatigue Section - Part II ...

-She fell again. Shocker! Forget about Gravity for Visual Effects, I should've made this my sure-thing prediction of the night. 

-When she got on stage to present Best Actor she seemed upset at someone in the audience, plus her face looked like an unnatural shade of red. Bad tan, bad makeup, what was that? I'm gonna have to see the new X-Men film this summer to regain some love for J-Law because right now I'm all out.

The Montages ...

For some reason, the Academy decided to honor "Heroes" this year by giving us the worst montages imaginable. They were already honoring the "Heroes" who made 2013 an incredible year for movies, so why did we even need these montages? Each montage was worse than the one before. At least for the first one on Animated Heroes we got Jim Carrey as a presenter and you can never go wrong with that. Do you know how many Animated movies have been nominated for Best Picture in Oscars history? Only 3. Frozen was snubbed this year, in my opinion. 

And now a quote from one of my All-Time Favorites, Ratatouille, also a Best Picture snub in 2007: 

"I hate false modesty. It's just another way to lie." After this we got another montage on "ordinary, everyday heroes" like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Abraham Lincoln. What?!? Who came up with this concept?

That's it for my recap. I hope you enjoyed my Oscars coverage. Let's hope 2014 gets somewhere close to the fantastic year in movies that was 2013. That's probably wishful thinking, but I guess the only way to find out is to watch as many movies as possible this year, right?