Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Oscars 2014: My Review

Hello, Bloggers, I am a little late on this, but I figured I'd run down my review of the Oscars Sunday night and discuss what I thought of the ceremony and the winners. Here we go:

I'll start off with the ceremony. One thing that I loved about the ceremony was how nobody there took themselves too seriously. Like when Ellen had her pizza bit and when she posted the most retweeted selfie with all the stars in the photo. Plus, when Pharrell Williams performed the song "Happy", the crowd seemed to be into it and dancing along. So, while the awards themselves are pretty serious, the crowd looked to not take themselves too seriously and I liked that a lot. I also liked Ellen as the host. I thought her opening monologue was pretty funny, even the jab she took at Jennifer Lawrence with her tumble she took as she walked to the stage last year. The musical performances I thought were excellent. Just on a side note, whenever I talk about what I think of an awards show, I never pay much attention to the musical performances. But here, I really liked the performances, especially Pink's cover of "Over the Rainbow" and Idina Menzel's, or should I say Adele Dazeem's, performance of the song "Let It Go" even if it seemed a bit rush. Plus, I liked how they made special tributes to Heroes On Film. I thought that was very nice, and how the orchestra didn't play the winners off when they were making speeches, since that is one of my pet peeves with awards shows.

Now onto what I thought of the winners. This is one of the rare years where the Academy and I agree with the same choice for Best Picture. I loved that 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture. I hope that it holds up well five to ten years down the line, and it is not only a great movie, but it is an important film that I feel does for slavery what Schindler's List did for the Holocaust. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto expectedly won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor but those wins were well-deserved I would say. McConaughey has delivered interesting work over the past few years and has done a complete 180 with his career and his performance was amazing so his win was deserved. I am sure plenty of people were hoping for Leonardo DiCaprio but if he were to win an Oscar, he would maybe have to take the same route that McConaughey and even Brad Pitt has since Pitt won Best Picture as a producer at the Oscars and Indie Spirit Awards for 12 Years A Slave. Also, Jared Leto is an actor that I have always wanted to see get the kind of recognition for his character work that he has gotten now so his win was richly deserved. Lupita Nyong'o won Best Supporting Actress and I also liked that win and I hope that she goes places after her win. I can honestly say I was glad they didn't give it to Jennifer Lawrence because it would've been "too much too soon" for her. I wouldn't mind seeing her win a 2nd Oscar, but not now since she already had her previous win and has her box office clout, so she already has her cake and can eat it too. But, the great Cate Blanchett finally won Best Actress for Blue Jasmine and with her Best Actress and Supporting Actress win, she is now among the likes of Maggie Smith, Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, and Jessica Lange. So, congratulations to Cate the Great! One thing that actually surprised me was how American Hustle, which has 10 nominations, got shut out completely. I figured maybe it would upset Her for Best Original Screenplay or at least win Best Costume Design, but I was stunned since the movie got plenty of hype. However, on the flip side, Gravity won 7 out of 10 Oscars and those were richly deserved since most of them were technical awards. This reminds me of 1972 where the musical Cabaret won 8 Oscars yet The Godfather won 3 Oscars, including the top prize for Best Picture. Spike Jonze also won Best Original Screenplay for Her and I was quite happy about that since I am a fan of his work. The Great Beauty may have won Best Foreign Film over my pick The Hunt but I can't get upset for that win since I haven't seen it yet. But another win I was most excited about was 20 Feet From Stardom winning Best Documentary Feature. I normally am not fond of documentaries, but I really liked this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed the ceremony and I was quite thrilled with the winners. If you agree or disagree with me, please feel free to write in the comments section. Thanks for reading!

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