Academy Awards / Oscar 2012 Complete Winner List
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Short Film (Documentary): Saving Face
Short Film (Live Action): The Shore
Writing (Original Screenplay): Midnight In Paris
Writing (Adapted Screenplay): The Descendants
Music (Original Song): “Man Or Muppet,” The Muppets
Music (Original Score): The Artist
Visual Effects: Hugo
Animated Feature: Rango
Documentary Feature: Undefeated
Sound Mixing: Hugo
Sound Editing: Hugo
Film Editing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Makeup: The Iron Lady
Costume Design: The Artist, Mark Bridges
Art Direction: Hugo
Cinematography: Hugo
Midnight in Paris might win Oscar for Best Art Direction
Trailer:
Brief Review:
Midnight in Paris rated 7.8 on IMDB, 93% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, winning Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay in Jan 2012 is Woody Allen‘s romantic comedy film, nominated for coming Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction.
This movie is for people who like History, Music and Literature. The movie goes around a young successful but distracted Hollywood screenwriter getting married who is passionate about literature and writing a novel and explores the Golden Era by his magical experiences at Mid Night in Paris.
Nominations received in Academy Awards (4):
Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction
Bottom Line: The movies has no action or fights but old music, art, historical people and places and horse cabs to fascinate you -:)
Oscar Picks and Predictions: A Year of Few Surprises
It’s official — I’m clairvoyant.
Early this morning, on NBC affiliate KWQC-TV, yours truly successfully identified all 10 Best Picture nominees.
Before I get too puffed up with pride, I have to acknowledge that it was not too difficult to come up with this list, which is sort of a sad statement. Truth be told, I’d have liked to be wrong on one or two of these picks. I’d have been intrigued to see a “wild card” selection.
Perhaps this presages a year of few surprises at the Oscars, after a year of mostly lackluster movies.
I was never a fan of broadening the field of Best Picture nominees to 10 titles: at a time when many will acknowledge that fewer outstanding movies are seeing the light of day, it seems downright counterintuitive.
Although Oscar history offers plenty of examples of inferior movies getting the top prize, this field of 10 really illustrates how movies that would once have been judged solid or even just serviceable, are now, in a sort of perverse creative inflation, praised to the skies.
To my mind, the Best Picture nominees that meet the historical standard (discounting those glaring instances when Oscar gets it wrong) number five: The King’s Speech, The Social Network, 127 Hours, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone.
The other five may be wildly successful commercially (some even critically), but hardly Best Picture calibre.
Black Swan may be the most overrated of the bunch, in my view — a psycho-sexual thriller which offers only cheap thrills — though admittedly Natalie Portman executes a demanding role effectively.
The Fighter is a solid, highly diverting boxing picture, but let’s face it — no Raging Bull. Toy Story 3 is fun, but it’s a franchise that’s getting milked, with diminishing returns for the viewer.
Inception is a visually impressive but otherwise pretentious and incomprehensible sci-fi entry, while The Kids Are All Right is a smart, hip comedy — admittedly a rarity these days — but hardly in the realm of the few comedies that have taken Best Picture in the past (think 1934’s It Happened One Night or 1977’s Annie Hall.)
Some thoughts on the acting nominations:
Colin Firth should win Best Actor, and I think he will. As runner-up and potential dark horse, I would favor James Franco (his fearless turn in 127 Hours will make him a BIG star, I predict), over Jesse Eisenberg. Jeff Bridges certainly deserves the nod, but I doubt he’ll get it a second time.
For Best Actress, I vote for Annette Bening, whose heartfelt, pitch-perfect performance elevates Kids to a movie worth seeing. She will get heavy competition from Portman, who’s obviously blazingly talented. (I myself have yet to come down with the Portman bug, though I hear it’s catching.)
For Supporting Actor, I dearly hope Geoffrey Rush gets it — he underplays so beautifully next to Firth’s more showy portrayal of King George VI. Still, I think Christian Bale will likely take it for The Fighter, a role in which I thought he was miscast ( you see folks — as good as he was, I could feel him acting).
For Supporting Actress, I’m rooting hard for Melissa Leo — she did for The Fighter just what Bening did for Kids.
For Best Screenplay, I think either The King’s Speech or The Social Network will prevail, and you can bet Inception will clean up on awards relating to visual effects and sound.
And what about Best Picture? Personally, I hope it’s The King’s Speech, but I believe The Social Network will take it. It powerfully captures the Zeitgeist of our times, while Speech will inevitably strike some voters as a first-rate but somewhat dusty period drama. I do hope I’m wrong.
I’ve enjoyed being clairvoyant for this short period. Now that I’ve raised the stakes on myself, I fear I’ll be brought back down to earth very soon — because in the end, no one can totally understand the mysterious ways of Oscar.
But it sure is fun trying.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-farr/oscar-nominations-few-surprises_b_813604.html
Random thoughts on Oscar Nomination
The actual ten Best Picture nominees were pretty much as predicted a couple months ago (eight of the ten films made either my Best of 2010 or Overrated of 2010 lists). You have two mainstream blockbusters (Inception and Toy Story 3), two mid-summer arthouse favorites (The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone), the one Oscar-bait critical darling that didn’t quite catch fire at the box office (127 Hours), the presumptive front-runner (The Social Network), and the four uber-popular, audience-pleasing bits of late-year Oscar bait (Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, and True Grit). It’s a solid cross-section of nominees and proof that the ten-nominee gimmick is a pretty great idea. Not only did the best damn film of the year get in (Toy Story 3), but five of the ten films were released prior to the official Novemeber/December Oscar-bait season. I’m still pulling for a Pixar upset, but right now the four front runners (the films with Picture, Director, Acting, and Editing nods) are The Social Network, Black Swan, The King’s Speech, and The Fighter.
I could spend a column whining about what shouldn’t have been nominated (everything about True Grit save Halee Steinfield), and I won’t mention that I see not a single minority in any of the major nominees lists. But I will only make mention of the fact that Helen Bonham Carter, having spent the last two decades playing all manner of weird and unique characters, gets an Oscar nom for playing the cliched ‘supportive, nurturing, stand-by-your-man wife’, a character with little to do and almost no dialogue. But let’s move on to positive developments. Melissa Leo is now a two-time Oscar nominee and I can’t wait to be able to type the sentence: “Melissa Leo is an Oscar-winning actress”. Christian Bale received his first (!) Oscar nomination for The Fighter, and he’s still the front-runner (only Geoffrey Rush can beat him). Natalie Portman of course was nominated for Best Actress for Black Swan, and at this point she still seems unbeatable (barring a ‘career-award’ upset from Annette Bening).
John Hawkes pulled off a somewhat surprising (and completely pleasing) Best Supporting Actor nomination for Winter’s Bone. Best Actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence justifiably got most of the media buzz, but Hawkes’s supporting turn truly dominates the third act of the terrific little drama. Jackie Weaver snagged a Best Supporting Actress nod for Animal Kingdom, which means the DVD I have from Blockbuster is will probably be watched this evening. Javier Bardem got a somewhat surprising Best Actor nod for Best Foreign film nominee Biutiful and Michelle Williams snuck in for Blue Valentine. Nicole Kidman got a deserved nod for Rabbit Hole, as it’s nice to see people talking about her acting instead of her alleged botox treatments, and/or the shocking fact that films like Rabbit Hole don’t play like Happy Feet or Batman Forever. Whatever my issues about The Social Network (its truthfulness, its alleged cultural impact), Jesse Eisenberg gives a genuinely brilliant performance, so I’m happy he was not lost amidst the press given to director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin.
The Illusionist made the cut in the Best Animated Film Category joining Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon while beating out more mainstream releases like Despicable Me and Tangled. I sincerely hope that the voting block doesn’t engage in Pixar-backlash and deny Toy Story 3 the Best Animated Film win that it so clearly deserves, but that’s certainly possible. There were few surprises in the various technical categories, although I’m somewhat happily surprised that Tron: Legacy missed out in the Best Visual category. Good on the terrific action picture Unstoppable getting a deserved Best Sound Editing nomination, and yay for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I getting notice for its often-invisible Visual Effects and its moody Art Direction.
That’s all I have for the moment. I’ll offer my predictions for who or what will win in what categories when time permits, but that’s enough ranting for now. Who do you think got robbed and/or undeservedly nominated? Which nominations made you happiest? Feel free to check in. Oh, and full nomination list is below.
Scott Mendelson
Scource: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/oscar-nominations-mostly-good-news_b_813620.html
The best moments in the Academy Awards history
IT’S OSCARS time again on Monday, so we look back on the best moments in the Academy Awards‘ history.
KING OF THE WORLD (1998): An 11-win clean sweep put Titanic director James Cameron on a high. He may have spent up on the big-budget film, but no one was worried about the bucks on Oscar night. As he collected his Best Director award, he threw his arms into the air and famously cried: “I’m king of the world.”
POITIER’S WIN (1963): Sidney Poitier was the first black person to win Best Actor, one of the few times Oscar has marked a moment in broader culture. The win for Lilies of the Field made him Hollywood‘s hottest property for a short time.
GWYNNIE’S GUSH (1999): Tears, tears and more tears flowed when shock Best Actress winner Gwyneth Paltrow collected her little gold man for Shakespeare in Love. In a voluminous baby pink silk Ralph Lauren gown, she looked the picture of overwhelmed vulnerability.
IT’S A TIE: Ingrid Bergman got to announce the result that’s only happened once in the awards’ history, a dead heat for Best Actress between Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn. “It’s a tie!” she cried as she opened the envelope. Each got a statuette.
THE DUKE (1979): An ailing John Wayne received a standing ovation when he strode on stage to present Best Picture. “Oscar and I have something in common. Oscar came on to the Hollywood scene in 1928. So did I. We’re both a little weather-beaten, but we plan to stick around for a whole lot longer,” he said. He died two months later.
ALI v ROCKY (1976): Sport and film collided – literally – when the greatest boxer of the real world, Muhammad Ali, met the greatest boxer of the movie world Rocky Balboa … er, Sylvester Stallone. The pair got into a mock fight; the audience went wild.
SUPERMAN RETURNS (1996): The crowd applauded as Christopher Reeve motored on to the stage in a wheelchair after a paralysing horseriding accident. He made a speech about social responsibility and there was barely a dry eye in the house.
THE YOUNGEST (1934): Little Shirley Temple was given an Honorary Juvenile Award in 1934 “in grateful recognition for her contribution to screen entertainment”. She was six.
WOODY’S FIRST (2002): After September 11, many wondered if the Oscars would go ahead. They did but quietly, the Academy paying tribute as best it could: Woody Allen making his first appearance to present a tribute to films about New York.
WIND IT UP (1943): Greer Garson is probably responsible for modern-day winners being chased off stage by the orchestra. When accepting Best Actress for Mrs Miniver, she rambled for more than six minutes – the longest acceptance speech in Oscar history.
LAYING AN EGG (2001): In a sea of elegance and class, Icelandic oddball Bjork arrived dressed in a dead swan, then left a trail of golden eggs along the red carpet.
FINALLY … (2007): Martin Scorsese had been nominated for Best Director six times before at last getting his hands on the little gold man for The Departed. That he’d never won one in a career spanning 30 years was a stain on the Academy.
THE STREAKER (1974): Host David Niven was all class when one of his segments was interrupted by streaker Robert Opel, flashing a peace sign. “The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping … and showing his shortcomings,” Niven quipped.
PUSH-UPS (1992): After accepting his award for Best Supporting Actor in City Slickers, Jack Palance hit the floor for some one-handed push-ups. He was 73.
HEATH LEDGER (2009): Having missed an Oscar in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain, Aussie Heath Ledger seemed on the way to greatness before he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment in January 2008. He was awarded a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award for his role as the maniacal Joker in The Dark Knight.
ma LiFe ma Blog 