2010 Oscar Winners

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2010 Oscar Winners

So the 2010 Oscar ceremony is over. I'm full of mixed feelings. Regarding the show, I wasn't expecting much of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, and I got about what I expected. I'm just glad they recognized their own lack of talent and asked Neil Patrick Harris to come in and do the big opening number. All Martin and Baldwin did was stand there and insult the nominees. There was no big showbiz talent in the perfomance like Billy Crystal or Hugh Jackman. Though I did like the actor and actress nominees being introduced by their former costars. But I didn't like the dance numbers for presenting the original score category, dance moves that didn't even seem to fit. And the pacing repeatedly felt rushed, through skipping over nominee clips and cutting off speeches, as if there was a bomb that would go off in the theater at the three hour mark.

Onto the results. Overall there weren't too many surprises other than in the short categories and Precious winning adapted screenplay. So my bold prediction of Inglourious Basterds winning picture didn't come true. After the film lost original screenplay to Hurt Locker I would have changed my picture prediction to Locker, but it was too late. I am a little disappointed Hurt Locker got so many awards, many of which it wasn't so deserving of. But my biggest moments of ecstasy came from seeing Kathryn Bigelow shatter the glass ceiling for female directors, and for Jeff Bridges FINALLY winning the Oscar he had 38 years in the making.

So I accurately predicted 17 out of the 24 categories, same as last year. Three of those incorrect ones came from the unpredictable short categories, and the other four were my alternate picks. So overall I'd say I didn't do too bad, but then there weren't too many surprises, so a lot of people probably did better. But I did predict Avatar for cinematography while most were saying Hurt Locker, and I did predict Locker for sound mixing while most were saying Avatar.

So my thoughts about the individual categories are below. The winners are in BOLD and my personal pick is in Italics, and they are ranked by how I was predicting them.

Best Picture
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Avatar
4. Up in the Air
5. Precious
6. Up
7. The Blind Side
8. An Education
9. A Serious Man
10. District 9 Well I was wrong, and I probably wasn't even close to being right. I guess what we can learn from this is that most voters do not abuse the preferential voting system unlike how some bloggers overhyped. And apparently, even the lowest-grossing best picture winner ever can still win best picture. I guess this will teach me to go with the stats and not with the guts, something I normally do anyway. It just seemed like in such an odd year it would make sense to make such an odd choice. And I think the fact that Avatar lost proves my theory that Hollywood is still not willing to accept other types of films, despite how much the movie-going public loves them. The article I wrote on that holds true.

Best Director
1. Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
2. Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
3. James Cameron (Avatar)
4. Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)
5. Lee Daniels (Precious)
I hear glass shattering. Must have been the ceiling. I'm proud to see a woman win the best director category and all it took was 82 years. Makes you wonder why there aren't more female directors out there. And she deserved it on merit alone since I believe the quality of The Hurt Locker can be attributed entirely to her directing style (not so much the screenplay). This also breaks the five year trend of this category going to the super-not-overdue (Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker, etc).

Best Actor
1. Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
2. Colin Firth (A Single Man)
3. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
4. George Clooney (Up in the Air)
5. Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
For me, this was probably the high point of the evening. Over the last few years I've gotten so ecstatic when super-overdue actors like Kate Winslet, Alan Arkin and Morgan Freeman finally win their overdue Oscars. Bridges is the exact same. Now we can cross him off the list and try to reward Albert Finney, Ed Harris or Julianne Moore.

Best Actress
1. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
2. Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)
3. Carey Mulligan (An Education)
4. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
5. Helen Mirren (The Last Station) Though I still think Meryl Streep would have deserved it more, I was very happy seeing Sandra Bullock winning her first Oscar. It may not have been the best female performance of the year, but it is one that touched a lot of people, and Bullock is the kind of person who deserves an Oscar on personality alone. Great acceptance speech too. And it was a nice touch seeing the real Touhy family in the audience there. However this win will probably be remembered the same way Julia Roberts' win for Erin Brokovich is remembered, which isn't all positive.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
2. Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
3. Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
4. Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
5. Matt Damon (Invictus) Well this was one of the most obvious and most deserved prizes of the night. I also think that this contradicts the stereotype that the supporting actor category is always used to reward the long overdue. Lead and supporting actor seem to have switched that role this year.

Best Supporting Actress
1. Mo'Nique (Precious)
2. Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
3. Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
4. Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
5. Penelope Cruz (Nine) Well this was unexpected but deserving. Though I'm not always a fan of giving Oscars to newcomers making what is essentially their film debut with no deserving performances before. But Mo'Nique did give the best supporting performance of the year by a wide margin, so I strongly believe this to be the right choice. And I like the point she made about the performance outweighing the politics. I knew it was true.

Best Original Screenplay
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Up
4. A Serious Man
5. The Messenger I'm quite disappointed in the result. I would have rewarded Hurt Locker for its directing and Inglourious Basterds for its screenplay because it was those aspects that made each film great, not so much the vice versa. At least Quentin already has an Oscar for Pulp Fiction. I wonder if Mark Boal would have still won if the screenplay lawsuit against him had come out earlier. It was after this early on category that I realized that my best picture prediction of Basterds would not be coming true.

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. Up in the Air
2. Precious
3. District 9
4. An Education
5. In the Loop This is the BIGGEST surprise of the night. Up in the Air swept the entire precursor circuit for adapted screenplay, then with no suspicion at all, Precious swoops down and takes it. This was supposed to be Jason Reitman's compensation for losing director for this film and for Juno. It's now quite disappointing that Jason Retiman remains Oscarless, and that Up in the Air got nothing. It was a great film so it deserved something. And you could tell from the acceptance speech that Geoffrey Fletcher was just as surprised as we were. (Note: He becomes the first African-American screenplay winner)

Best Art Direction
1. Avatar
2. Sherlock Holmes
3. Nine
4. The Young Victoria
5. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus So Avatar becomes the first film to win art direction for what is almost entirely CGI sets. I was a little hesitant as to whether the voters would warm up to the idea, but looks like they went for it. They'd better because it's the new frontier.

Best Cinematography
1. Avatar
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. The White Ribbon
5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Some were skeptical that an almost entirely CGI film couldn't easily be rewarded for its cinematography since there's no real camera or lighting. Well they were proven wrong. And like I said with art direction, cinematographers better get on board because sooner or later, they'll all be done like this.

Best Editing
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Avatar
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. District 9
5. Precious I suppose this film more or less deserved it. No surprise. And the trend continues of this category often going to the best picture winner. At this point in the ceremony, Hurt Locker had won four awards, making it more than a sure thing to win best picture.

Best Costumes
1. The Young Victoria
2. Nine
3. Bright Star
4. Coco Before Chanel
5. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus So for the fourth year in a row this category goes to a film about period European monarchy. But it makes me glad that Sandy Powell addressed this in her speech stating that the Oscars should recognize more contempoary films for costumes. I agree. Hopefully they might consider it more next year, but not likely.

Best Makeup
1. Star Trek
2. The Young Victoria
3. Il Divo Actually, I think a more deserving winner might have been Ben Stiller's Avatar makeup when presenting the award. But of those that were nominated, I suppose Star Trek deserved it. But I hope next year features a better slate of nominees. This category seems to be getting weaker every year.

Best Visual Effects
1.Avatar
2. District 9
3. Star Trek This was obviously an easy call to make. But you know, with Avatar, it feels to me like visual effects technology has officially peaked. We were all impressed with Avatar's effects. Will we ever be impressed again, or is there nothing else that will dazzle us and all future winners in this category won't be much more impressive than what we have now?

Best Sound
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Avatar
3. Star Trek
4. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
5. Inglourious Basterds Though I predicted this I still think it's a rather poor choice. This is one category where I wish the Academy would stop rewarding best picture frontrunners with moderately good sound mixing, and reward a big film with a really complicated mix like Avatar or Transformers. One day perhaps they'll learn.

Best Sound Editing
1. Avatar
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Star Trek
5. Up This was a bit of a surprise, and a disappointing one. Usually the voters get the sound editing category right more often than the sound mixing and choose really challenging sound effects. But once again they have to choose the best picture frontrunner. How unfortunate.

Best Score
1. Up
2. Avatar
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
5. Sherlock Holmes I'm glad for Giacchino. All too often this category recognizes newcomer composers whose careers haven't really earned an Oscar. But Giacchino had earned it through other films like The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But they still have yet to reward Alexandre Desplat, Danny Elfman, and Thomas Newman.

Best Song
1. Crazy Heart ("The Weary Kind")
2. Nine ("Take it All")
3. The Princess and the Frog ("Down in New Orleans")
4. The Princess and the Frog ("Down in New Orleans")
5. Paris 36 ("Loin en Paname") I suppose the Crazy Heart duo deserved it. Although I remain disappointed that clips of the films were just shown as opposed to having the song performed on stage. That was always one of my favorite parts of the ceremony. But then again, since the slate of songs aren't as high quality as they used to be, I sort of understand the decision.

Best Animated Film
1. Up
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
3. Coraline
4. The Princess and the Frog
5. The Secret of Kells Well this makes three straight years of Pixar winning this category. Question is whether Toy Story 3 will do it next year. But I am glad Pete Doctor won an Oscar. He was practically the only team member at Pixar without one.

Best Foreign Language Film
1. The Secret of Her Eyes
2. The White Ribbon
3. A Prophet
4. Ajami
5. Milk of Sorrow Yes! This is my first time accurately predicting the inevitable surprise in this category. I guess my strategy of listening to whatever Kris Tapley says about this category actually worked. And it proves once again that even a film that got other Oscar nominations, like White Ribbon, won't necessarily win foreign film.

Best Documentary Feature
1. The Cove
2. Food Inc.
3. Burma VJ
4. The Most Dangerous Man in America
5. Which Way Home
Of course I haven't seen any of these films so it's hard to judge. But I support the win for The Cove since it's clearly a moral film as opposed to a political film, the kind they like to award so many times. But they still nominated Most Dangerous Man to fulfill their liberal bias obligation. And the guy who held up the sign saying "Text 'Dolphin' to ..." should have known he was going to get cut off due to legal red tape reasons.

Best Documentary Short
1. China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
2. The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
3. Rabbit a la Berlin
4. Music by Prudence
5. The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner I liked the intro they did for these short categories showing how those who directed short films went on to be successful feature film directors. But this category was still a surprise, at least as big of a surprise you can get from these short categories which are unpredictable to begin with. And I didn't even realize that the winners were stealing the microphone from each other until I read about it the next day. Maybe this will cause more people to actually pay attention in this category.

Best Short Film
1. Kavi
2. The Door
3. The New Tenants
4. Instead of Abracadabra
5. Miracle Fish Normally I get at least one of the short categories right. Sadly not this year. And I think very few people if any had New Tenants predicted, so at least I'm not alone.

Best Animated Short Film
1. Wallace and Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death
2. Logorama
3. French Roast
4. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
5. The Lady and the Reaper I had a feeling Logorama was going to win, and I wish I went with it. I just found it hard to believe that Wallace and Gromit could lose after winning so many times before. But Logorama is totally deserving for its creative design and animation, not to mention a willingness to take risks on copyright infringements.

Home

Best Picture 1. Inglourious Basterds 2. The Hurt Locker 3. Avatar 4. Up in the Air 5. Precious 6. Up 7. The Blind Side 8. An Education 9. A Serious Man 10. District 9	Well I was wrong, and I probably wasn't even close to being right. I guess what we can learn from this is that most voters do not abuse the preferential voting system unlike how some bloggers overhyped. And apparently, even the lowest-grossing best picture winner ever can still win best picture. I guess this will teach me to go with the stats and not with the guts, something I normally do anyway. It just seemed like in such an odd year it would make sense to make such an odd choice. And I think the fact that Avatar lost proves my theory that Hollywood is still not willing to accept other types of films, despite how much the movie-going public loves them. The article I wrote on that holds true.
Best Director 1. *Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)* 2. Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) 3. James Cameron (Avatar) 4. Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) 5. Lee Daniels (Precious)	I hear glass shattering. Must have been the ceiling. I'm proud to see a woman win the best director category and all it took was 82 years. Makes you wonder why there aren't more female directors out there. And she deserved it on merit alone since I believe the quality of The Hurt Locker can be attributed entirely to her directing style (not so much the screenplay). This also breaks the five year trend of this category going to the super-not-overdue (Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker, etc).
Best Actor 1. *Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)* 2. Colin Firth (A Single Man) 3. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) 4. George Clooney (Up in the Air) 5. Morgan Freeman (Invictus)	For me, this was probably the high point of the evening. Over the last few years I've gotten so ecstatic when super-overdue actors like Kate Winslet, Alan Arkin and Morgan Freeman finally win their overdue Oscars. Bridges is the exact same. Now we can cross him off the list and try to reward Albert Finney, Ed Harris or Julianne Moore.
Best Actress 1. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) 2. Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia) 3. Carey Mulligan (An Education) 4. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) 5. Helen Mirren (The Last Station)	Though I still think Meryl Streep would have deserved it more, I was very happy seeing Sandra Bullock winning her first Oscar. It may not have been the best female performance of the year, but it is one that touched a lot of people, and Bullock is the kind of person who deserves an Oscar on personality alone. Great acceptance speech too. And it was a nice touch seeing the real Touhy family in the audience there. However this win will probably be remembered the same way Julia Roberts' win for Erin Brokovich is remembered, which isn't all positive.
Best Supporting Actor 1. *Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)* 2. Christopher Plummer (The Last Station) 3. Woody Harrelson (The Messenger) 4. Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones) 5. Matt Damon (Invictus)	Well this was one of the most obvious and most deserved prizes of the night. I also think that this contradicts the stereotype that the supporting actor category is always used to reward the long overdue. Lead and supporting actor seem to have switched that role this year.
Best Supporting Actress 1. *Mo'Nique (Precious)* 2. Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) 3. Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart) 4. Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) 5. Penelope Cruz (Nine)	Well this was unexpected but deserving. Though I'm not always a fan of giving Oscars to newcomers making what is essentially their film debut with no deserving performances before. But Mo'Nique did give the best supporting performance of the year by a wide margin, so I strongly believe this to be the right choice. And I like the point she made about the performance outweighing the politics. I knew it was true.
Best Original Screenplay 1. Inglourious Basterds 2. The Hurt Locker 3. Up 4. A Serious Man 5. The Messenger	I'm quite disappointed in the result. I would have rewarded Hurt Locker for its directing and Inglourious Basterds for its screenplay because it was those aspects that made each film great, not so much the vice versa. At least Quentin already has an Oscar for Pulp Fiction. I wonder if Mark Boal would have still won if the screenplay lawsuit against him had come out earlier. It was after this early on category that I realized that my best picture prediction of Basterds would not be coming true.
Best Adapted Screenplay 1. Up in the Air 2. Precious 3. District 9 4. An Education 5. In the Loop	This is the BIGGEST surprise of the night. Up in the Air swept the entire precursor circuit for adapted screenplay, then with no suspicion at all, Precious swoops down and takes it. This was supposed to be Jason Reitman's compensation for losing director for this film and for Juno. It's now quite disappointing that Jason Retiman remains Oscarless, and that Up in the Air got nothing. It was a great film so it deserved something. And you could tell from the acceptance speech that Geoffrey Fletcher was just as surprised as we were. (Note: He becomes the first African-American screenplay winner)
Best Art Direction 1. Avatar 2. Sherlock Holmes 3. Nine 4. The Young Victoria 5. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus	So Avatar becomes the first film to win art direction for what is almost entirely CGI sets. I was a little hesitant as to whether the voters would warm up to the idea, but looks like they went for it. They'd better because it's the new frontier.
Best Cinematography 1. Avatar 2. The Hurt Locker 3. Inglourious Basterds 4. The White Ribbon 5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	Some were skeptical that an almost entirely CGI film couldn't easily be rewarded for its cinematography since there's no real camera or lighting. Well they were proven wrong. And like I said with art direction, cinematographers better get on board because sooner or later, they'll all be done like this.
Best Editing 1. The Hurt Locker 2. Avatar 3. Inglourious Basterds 4. District 9 5. Precious	I suppose this film more or less deserved it. No surprise. And the trend continues of this category often going to the best picture winner. At this point in the ceremony, Hurt Locker had won four awards, making it more than a sure thing to win best picture.
Best Costumes 1. The Young Victoria 2. Nine 3. Bright Star 4. Coco Before Chanel 5. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus	So for the fourth year in a row this category goes to a film about period European monarchy. But it makes me glad that Sandy Powell addressed this in her speech stating that the Oscars should recognize more contempoary films for costumes. I agree. Hopefully they might consider it more next year, but not likely.
Best Makeup 1. *Star Trek* 2. The Young Victoria 3. Il Divo	Actually, I think a more deserving winner might have been Ben Stiller's Avatar makeup when presenting the award. But of those that were nominated, I suppose Star Trek deserved it. But I hope next year features a better slate of nominees. This category seems to be getting weaker every year.
Best Visual Effects 1.Avatar 2. District 9 3. Star Trek	This was obviously an easy call to make. But you know, with Avatar, it feels to me like visual effects technology has officially peaked. We were all impressed with Avatar's effects. Will we ever be impressed again, or is there nothing else that will dazzle us and all future winners in this category won't be much more impressive than what we have now?
Best Sound 1. The Hurt Locker 2. Avatar 3. Star Trek 4. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 5. Inglourious Basterds	Though I predicted this I still think it's a rather poor choice. This is one category where I wish the Academy would stop rewarding best picture frontrunners with moderately good sound mixing, and reward a big film with a really complicated mix like Avatar or Transformers. One day perhaps they'll learn.
Best Sound Editing 1. Avatar 2. The Hurt Locker 3. Inglourious Basterds 4. Star Trek 5. Up	This was a bit of a surprise, and a disappointing one. Usually the voters get the sound editing category right more often than the sound mixing and choose really challenging sound effects. But once again they have to choose the best picture frontrunner. How unfortunate.
Best Score 1. Up 2. Avatar 3. The Hurt Locker 4. Fantastic Mr. Fox 5. Sherlock Holmes	I'm glad for Giacchino. All too often this category recognizes newcomer composers whose careers haven't really earned an Oscar. But Giacchino had earned it through other films like The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But they still have yet to reward Alexandre Desplat, Danny Elfman, and Thomas Newman.
Best Song 1. *Crazy Heart ("The Weary Kind")* 2. Nine ("Take it All") 3. The Princess and the Frog ("Down in New Orleans") 4. The Princess and the Frog ("Down in New Orleans") 5. Paris 36 ("Loin en Paname")	I suppose the Crazy Heart duo deserved it. Although I remain disappointed that clips of the films were just shown as opposed to having the song performed on stage. That was always one of my favorite parts of the ceremony. But then again, since the slate of songs aren't as high quality as they used to be, I sort of understand the decision.
Best Animated Film 1. Up 2. Fantastic Mr. Fox 3. Coraline 4. The Princess and the Frog 5. The Secret of Kells	Well this makes three straight years of Pixar winning this category. Question is whether Toy Story 3 will do it next year. But I am glad Pete Doctor won an Oscar. He was practically the only team member at Pixar without one.
Best Foreign Language Film 1. *The Secret of Her Eyes* 2. The White Ribbon 3. A Prophet 4. Ajami 5. Milk of Sorrow	Yes! This is my first time accurately predicting the inevitable surprise in this category. I guess my strategy of listening to whatever Kris Tapley says about this category actually worked. And it proves once again that even a film that got other Oscar nominations, like White Ribbon, won't necessarily win foreign film.
Best Documentary Feature 1. *The Cove* 2. Food Inc. 3. Burma VJ 4. The Most Dangerous Man in America 5. Which Way Home	Of course I haven't seen any of these films so it's hard to judge. But I support the win for The Cove since it's clearly a moral film as opposed to a political film, the kind they like to award so many times. But they still nominated Most Dangerous Man to fulfill their liberal bias obligation. And the guy who held up the sign saying "Text 'Dolphin' to ..." should have known he was going to get cut off due to legal red tape reasons.
Best Documentary Short 1. China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province 2. The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant 3. Rabbit a la Berlin 4. Music by Prudence 5. The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner	I liked the intro they did for these short categories showing how those who directed short films went on to be successful feature film directors. But this category was still a surprise, at least as big of a surprise you can get from these short categories which are unpredictable to begin with. And I didn't even realize that the winners were stealing the microphone from each other until I read about it the next day. Maybe this will cause more people to actually pay attention in this category.
Best Short Film 1. Kavi 2. The Door 3. The New Tenants 4. Instead of Abracadabra 5. Miracle Fish	Normally I get at least one of the short categories right. Sadly not this year. And I think very few people if any had New Tenants predicted, so at least I'm not alone.
Best Animated Short Film 1. Wallace and Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death 2. Logorama 3. French Roast 4. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty 5. The Lady and the Reaper	I had a feeling Logorama was going to win, and I wish I went with it. I just found it hard to believe that Wallace and Gromit could lose after winning so many times before. But Logorama is totally deserving for its creative design and animation, not to mention a willingness to take risks on copyright infringements.