That’s a wrap! The Academy Awards have come and gone yet again, with the usual assortment of celebs, stumbles, and surprises. The Loop’s Kiva Reardon and Jonathan Doyle reported live on the proceedings and you can re-live all the big wins and highlights below.
Kiva: Creating an elaborate ruse to circumvent his criticisms, William Shatner as Captain Kirk was beamed in from the future to warn Seth MacFarlane of all the impending negative reviews. Going on to use all this “bad material” as his open act anyway, he sang a song that reduced the leading actresses of our time to their mammary glands, used sock puppets, and then danced around as the audience sat in what sounded like relative silence.
Jon: In a really impressive field, Christoph Waltz wins his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for a Quentin Tarantino film. It’s a bit of a stretch for him to be nominated in this category—it could be argued that he’s the real star of Django Unchained—but he did give an incredibly memorable performance. He devotes most of his speech to a Quentin Tarantino tribute, while disappointed fellow nominee (and former Tarantino collaborator) Robert De Niro looks on. Jack Nicholson also briefly turns up during the speech—for no apparent reason.
Kiva: Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy stumbled around making animation jokes and tapping on the mic as they set up giving the Best Short Film (Animated) Oscar to Disney’s Paperman. Moving things along—What is this? Efficiency at the Oscars? They gave Best Animated feature to Brave.
Kiva: Life of Pi just beat Gollum for Best Special Effects. Gollum could eat that tiger for sure. Precioussss.
Jon: Life of Pi‘s Claudio Miranda wins Best Cinematography, which means Skyfall D.P. Roger Deakins just lost for the 10th time! Miranda did very impressive, eye-popping work, but Deakins and Django Unchained‘s Robert Richardson were arguably more deserving. In a strange coincidence, Miranda and Richardson have nearly the exact same hairstyle.
Kiva: Makeup and hair, the lifeblood of film! Les Misérables took home the prize for Best Makeup and Hairstyling over The Hobbit. Hairy feet just weren’t enough this year.
Jon: Channing Tatum and Jennifer Aniston talk about waxing each other–or something. Anyway, Anna Karenina wins Best Costume Design, a sort of consolation prize for all the nominations it thought it had coming, but never got.
Kiva: So much hoopla over this Bond montage to honour the franchise turning 50. Shirley Bassey showed up and showed everyone what live performance is really all about! Belting the theme of “Goldfinger,” this will surely go down as the best moment of the night. You might even say it’s golden.
Jon: Curfew wins Best Live Action Short and Inocente wins Best Documentary Short. If you guessed these correctly in your Oscar pool, you now have the edge on everyone else. The tribute to music just keeps coming: Searching For Sugar Man deservedly wins Best Documentary. Unfortunately, the film’s now-legendary subject Sixto Rodriguez is not in attendance.
Kiva: Best Foreign Language film was pretty much a lock this year. As was expected, Michael Haneke was finally accepted into the warm bosom of the Academy with Amour.
Jon: Best Sound Mixing goes to Les Misérables and Best Sound Editing is a tie—seriously, “no B.S.” (Mark Wahlberg, 2013)—between Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall.
Kiva: Anne Hathaway took home the Oscar for Best Suporting Actress in Les Misérables. Her acceptance could have been far worse (though she did talk to and cradle her Oscar like a newborn babe), but the statuette should have gone to Amy Adams, who is great in The Master. Fact: Adams has been nominated four times and never won.
Kiva: Look, Adele is freaking great. She’s a powerhouse diva who seems really nice and actually writes her own music. “Skyfall” is a legitimate jam that’s great to sing in the shower. So, that basically means it deserves an Oscar. Adele killed it tonight, literalling sparkling in a classic black and silver sequin gown, punctuating the dramatic song with even more dramatic hand gestures.
Jon: Argo wins Best Editing over the more striking, flashy editing of Zero Dark Thirty. Worth noting: the winner in this category has gone on to win Best Picture in seven of the last 10 years.
Kiva: Production Design goes to Lincoln. Which means someone really studied their history books.
Jon: Finally, a genuine legend just got involved, namely Governors Awards winner D.A. Pennebaker, director of Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop, and The War Room. Additional winners include Jeffrey Katzenberg, Hal Needham, and George Stevens Jr. Note: I have no idea what this award signifies, but it has something to do with lifetime achievement (I think).
Kiva: In Memoriam. This is where things get sad. It seemed like 2012 was a particularly dark year: Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Celeste Holm, Adam Yauch, Andrew Sarris, Tony Scott, Nora Ephron, Chris Marker, Ray Bruadbury… all massive losses. George Clooney, the epitome of class, introduced the segment and Barbra Streisand capped it off with a rendition of “The Way We Were.”
Jon: Canada’s Mychael Danna wins Best Original Score for Life of Pi, his reunion with longtime collaborator Ang Lee—who abandoned Danna’s score on their last collaboration.
Kiva: Skyfallllllllll for Best Original Song!
Jon: Chris Terrio wins Best Adapted Screenplay for Argo. On his way to the podium, he gives fellow nominee Tony Kusher a hug then he proceeds to pay tribute to director Ben Affleck’s screenwriting Oscar from 15 years ago. Quentin Tarantino wins Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained. He makes special mention of this year’s stellar screenwriting nominees—in both categories—and makes the point that presenter Charlize Theron is his neighbour.
Kiva: Nothing makes me happier than Ang Lee getting Best Director for Life of Pi. I don’t even really like Life of Pi all that much, but at this point in the night there is no other person whose speech I would rather sit through. Composed and generous, Lee thanked everyone in the cast, the Indian and Canadian crew, his wife of 30 years, and his sons. He was also the first non-Caucasian to win Best Director (for 2006′s Brokeback Mountain) and has now doubled the feat.
Jon: Jennifer Lawrence wins Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook. In a refreshing departure from Oscar tradition, she manages to give a brief, unsentimental speech then takes off before embarrassing herself.
Kiva: Accepting his Oscar for Best Actor in Lincoln from Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis joked that he had originally been cast as Margaret Thatcher in the Iron Lady. Now that might’ve been an amazing film. Kidding about persuading Steven Spielberg that Lincoln shouldn’t have been a musical, Day-Lewis thanked his wife and “the mysteriously beautiful mind, body, and spirit of Lincoln.” Then he wrapped things up in the best way possible: thanking his mother. Also: first guy to win three Oscars for Best Actor.
Jon: Jack Nicholson introduces Michelle Obama to present Best Picture, which goes to Argo. Lots of bearded actors (Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov) winning awards for producing. Standing between Affleck and Clooney, Heslov says, “I know what you’re thinking: three sexiest men alive.” Affleck quietly addresses the controversy by thanking Canada then concludes his speech with a choked-up salute to his kids.
