Oscar Aftermath: The Horror, The Horror

Note to the reader: In the future when I write about the Oscar Nominated Shorts and I spew venom about the ones I liked the least, those are the ones that you choose in your Oscar pool. I found the wins for "Paperman" and "Curfew" disappointing and safe, but was pleasantly surprised by the acknowledged dark horse "Inocente" beating out "Open Heart" and especially "Mondays at Racine" for the short documentary award. Add in Searching for Sugar Man as the doc feature winner and it's apparent the Academy was having a very arts/music focused year.

As for the show, I thought Seth McFarlane was a serviceable host. Jokes were hit and miss -- to be expected -- with the Sound of Music gag being the humor highlight. He seemed pretty at ease and delivered crass and class in equal measure, never going too far below the belt without also taking a shot at himself in the process. The musical milieu was a bit tedious, delivering some solid moments (Jennifer Hudson, Shirley Bassey, Adele) along with some stinkers (Catherine Zeta-Jones's distracting lip synching; The PBS-Fund-Drive-approved Les Mis chorus's decent arrangement, erratic singing, and atrocious mixing). Working in all of those numbers ate up a lot of time, however, and the last four or five categories felt incredibly rushed. The rest of the show was relatively forgettable.

Pickwise, the Academy really spread the wealth around this year. I'm scoring myself at 16 out of 25. Yes, I realize there were 24 categories. I'm giving myself two points for my cowardly split vote for Sound Editing resulting in a tie between my two picks, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty.

"I got your Goldfinger right here."
"Fair 'nuff, m'lady."

So that's nine misses, three in the short films as discussed above. Should have stayed with my original Supporting Actor pick for Waltz, and I'm happy to see Tarantino and Ang Lee each pick up statue number two in what were essentially toss-up categories.

A little annoyed by Lawrence's win over Riva, but I should have figured it was coming. I don't hate her, and appreciate her candor, was just lukewarm on Silver Linings Playbook and immensely floored by Amour and Riva in comparison.

Not sure I like the Anna Karenina costume precedent, basically winning on the idea of "Hey let's throw 1950s Chanel gowns into 1870s Russia. That will look dashing!" Then to perhaps contradict myself, instead of Lincoln's historical accuracy in production design, I really preferred Karenina's inventive work, incorporating moveable sets that must have required exhausting choreography with the DP and lent a dizzying layer of spectacle to an otherwise tepid adaptation. Apart from that, things played out pretty much as I expected.

We'll return to regularly-scheduled programming now that the show's over, and I'm hopefully back in the flow of things. I encourage anyone to feel free to make comments and share your thoughts on the films I've covered, or submit a request if you have something you'd like to see reviewed. Stay tuned!