Academy Awards 2011

Academy Awards 2011

 A Quick Wrap Up

The Oscars this year came with few surprises.  There were a few promising dark horse pictures like 127 Hours (2010) or the touching comedy The Kids Are All Right (2010).  A few artistic pictures were in the mix as well such as Black Swan (2010) or Winter's Bone (2010).  Despite these promising films the major awards went to the top dogs that everyone knew were going to win big.  The King's Speech (2011) swept up the awards like Best Picture, Actor, and Screenplay as well as taking Best Directing.  No surprise since The King's Speech was nominated for every award it could qualify for.  Inception (2010) was my personal favorite in the running and it had its share of nominations.  It won Sound Mixing and Editing which makes sense.  That movie had some of the best foley effects I had heard in a long time.  Inception also took best Cinematography and Visual Effects.  It was the only big special effects movie to be nominated for multiple awards so it is no surprise that it swept these categories.  The last big winner was The Social Network (2010), which I still have not seen despite everyone telling me how great it is.  It was nominated in all the major categories and took home a few that surprised me like Best Adapted Screen Play, it was up against a Coen brothers remake of True Grit (2010) and the greatest 'under the radar' movie of the last year 127 Hours.  It also won awards for Film Editing and Music Original Score.

Another big film that had its share of nominations was The Fighter (2010).  It took only a few awards, but did well considering the technical juggernauts of The Social Network and Inception and the heart strings powerhouse of The King's Speech.  It won for both Actor and Actress in a Supporting Role.  Toy Story 3 (2010) won best animated to no one's surprise.  The biggest dark horse winner was Alice in Wonderland (2010) which won best Costume Design and Art Direction.  It deserved both, with the only other real contender being Black Swan for Art Direction despite it not being nominated in that category!  Speaking of Black Swan Natalie Portman did take home Best Actress in a Leading Role.  Best Shorts and Foreign nobody but myself and a few film critics care about so we can ignore those categories, but there was an upset in Foreign Language Film.  The last thing of note to me and my geeky friends is that the awesome werewolf costumes and make up from Wolfman (2010) took best make up!  Rick Baker does an awesome werewolf.

Well that about wraps it up.  Few big surprises and very little excitement, but that is the Oscars!