My Annual Oscar Rant

OK, so it wasn't that bad this year. Grudgingly I'll admit that the Academy achieved at least pass marks this year and there wasn't anything to really jump up and down about in absolute disbelief. They could hardly go wrong with the actor and actress prizes and Christian Bale was a deserving winner in Supporting Actor. It was also good to see Aaron Sorkin winning Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network - deserved recognition for one of the best in the business. As to Best Picture, well it was a fairly even field and if The King's Speech just pipped The Social Network nobody's going to complain.

But its no fun to just congratulate, so here's where I think they got it wrong:

Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo is a fine actress - she was superb in Frozen River (for which she was deservingly nominated) but her performance in The Fighter (hampered by a dreadful caricature of a character) was not the best in the field. Heck, it wasn't even the best in The Fighter. In fact, she was probably the poorest of the five nominees.

Best Director The King's Speech is a fine film, brilliantly acted, well written, but I can't help feeling that Tom Hooper has got the Oscar based on the other elements of the film. In terms of direction you would be hard pressed to argue that he did a better job than Fincher (The Social Network), Aronofsky (Black Swan) or The Coen Brothers (True Grit). An example a film getting a bit of a bandwagon momentum and sweeping awards it maybe didn't deserve.

Cinematography - OK - both Inception  and True Grit  would have been worthy winners, but this means that Roger Deakins (one of the very best in the business ever - look at the man's CV for a list of some of the most beautifully shot films of the last two decades) has now been nominated 9 times and never won! It also meant that whilst Inception and The King's Speech got 4 statues a piece, The Fighter  and Toy Story 3 got 2 each and Black Swan got one, the really good True Grit left empty-handed. Heck, Alice in Wonderland got 2 Oscars and Wolfman 1, but nothing for True Grit???????????