Monday, February 25, 2013

And the Oscar goes to...

A lot of people we expected to win as well as a couple of surprises. Lots of love for Ben Affleck tonight as Argo lives up to its frontrunner status by claiming the Best Picture trophy. This despite the fact that Affleck himself wasn't nominated in the Best Director category. That award went to Ang Lee for his film The Life of Pi. He was a surprise winner over Steven Spielberg who was expected to win for his work on Lincoln.

That said, Lincoln did take home a couple of awards. There hasn't been anyone to upend Daniel Day-Lewis in the major award-giving bodies, and that continued tonight as Daniel becomes the only man to win three Best Actor trophies (Jack Nicholson has three but that includes a supporting actor trophy and Walter Brennan won for supporting actor three times; the overall acting record is of course held by Katharine Hepburn with four wins). Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway also continued their winning ways. The Supporting Actor category was the only acting category where all nominees had already won an Oscar in the past, but Christoph Waltz from Django Unchained who took home the Oscar.

The biggest surprise of the evening though even caught the presenter off-guard. As Mark Wahlberg opened the envelope to read the winner for Best Sound Editing, he announced that there was a tie between Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall. There have been a few ties in the past, but the most memorable one so far was in 1969 when Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn were both hailed Best Actress for their performances in Funny Girl and The Lion in Winter.

I'm really happy that Brave won Best Animated Film. I was actually okay with either Brave or Wreck-It-Ralph winning but there was some talk before the awards season that ParaNorman might be the one to beat. It's also cool that Adele won the Oscar for Best Song for Skyfall, which she co-wrote with Paul Epworth. Pretty cool that she's won 9 Grammys and now an Oscar as well. And while she wasn't nominated this year, it was great to see Meryl Streep hand the trophy for Best Actor to Daniel Day-Lewis.

Congratulations to all the artists who took home the Oscar and hope we get to see more amazing films and performances this year.

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