My favorite MacFarlane joke of the night. After Daniel Day-Lewis won (more below), MacFarlane comes on screen and says, "In order to prepare for this incredible role Daniel Day-Lewis really got inside the 16th President's head. No one has gotten that far inside Lincoln's head since John Wilkes Booth." I laughed hysterically but the crowd did not. MacFarlane's comeback was great as well. "Too soon? Is 150 years not enough time to let that joke fly?" Loved Sethy M and I'll defend his greatness against everyone on the internet.
Apparently hosting the Academy Awards is like being the head coach of the Oakland Raiders: no matter you do you're going to be terrible, you get one year max (two if you're lucky), and everybody remembers and pines for the good old days.
2) As for the Oscar ceremony itself, yeah, that was pretty bad. But that was the fault of the shows producers and not because of MacFarlane. Having two tributes to Chicago, Jennifer Hudson sing a "poppy" version of that song from Dreamgirls, and an originally-out-of-tune Shirley Bassey sing Goldfinger was just unncessary and too much.
By the way, how do you have a Bond tribute performance and not have scantily-clad women and backup dancers on stage?! The idea of a Bond tribute was a little shaky to begin with but it could have executed correctly I feel like. Bassey sang three classic Bond themes so maybe a medley of all three song and a huge song and dance performance seemed like the obvious and more preferable route.
3) Argo fuck yourself Lincoln! Lincoln only walks away with one major award- Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis- while Argo takes home three Oscars including Best Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and most importantly- Best Picture. Ben Affleck now has two Oscars and neither one of them is for acting.
Argo absolutely deserved this win and was the favorite going into the ceremony to win it all. I really don't want to see Argo on future lists of movies that didn't deserve to win along the likes of Crash, Forrest Gump, and How Green Was My Valley. While I didn't think Argo was the Best Film of 2012, (I thought Looper and Wreck-It Ralph were better) Argo was the hands down best picture out of the 9 nominations.
4) Speaking of DDL, how amazing was his speech? He knew he was going to win and he's done this song and dance before so he came to play. Even though I thought Joaquin Phoenix and Bradley Cooper easily deserved the award over DDL, his win was almost worth it just to hear that speech.
5) Life of Pi is the big winner last night taking home four Oscars including Best Score, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, and most "shockingly" Best Director for Ang Lee. Steven Spielberg was declared the prohibitive favorite to win this award but with Ben Affleck taking home everything in sight leading up to the 85th Academy Awards really Best Director was up in the air. There was a strong push for Life of Pi and Ang Lee leading up to the Awards which caused me to change my prediction that Ang Lee was going to going to take home the big prize (that and I choose quality over everything and Life of Pi was just infinitely better than Lincoln).
6) The real shocker though at the Oscars was Django Unchained. Christoph Waltz kicked off the night winning Best Supporting Actor and Quentin Tarantino won for Best Original Screenplay. I guess Waltz' win shouldn't be that big of a surprise considering 1) He was amazing in the film and 2) He had won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor (Django wasn't eligible for the SAGs). Tarantino's win was a HUGE shock to me considering I was convinced he was not going to win. Despite the fact that Tarantino has an Oscar (for writing Pulp Fiction), it still felt like the Academy hated him. He didn't win for the far superior Inglourious Basterds and no Tarantino film between Pulp Fiction and Basterds earned an Oscar nomination.
My favorite joke of the night that I made on Facebook: "It was only three years too late but Quentin Tarantino finally won an Academy Award for writing Inglourious Basterds"
7) Brave won Best Animated Film and that enraged me to no end. Even though the other film that I personally saw in the category was Wreck-It Ralph, I know Brave did not deserve to win. For starters, Wreck-It Ralph was an amazing film and one of the best animated films ever. Secondly, Brave was an extremely weak and underwhelming film. The animation itself was beautiful but the story was pretty terrible. At least the animation categories weren't completely tarnished as the beautiful and charming Paperman wins Best Animated Short (see the film here).
8) Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for singing two songs in Les Miserables. She was essentially a lock to win the award (as joked about with The Flying Nun MacFarlene and Sally Field sketch in the beginning). So why was she so surprised when she actually won? How do you not prepare something?!
BTW, there was a shot of her husband during her acceptance speech and for a second it looked like Anne Hathway was married to Ryan Gosling
9) Adele is just amazing. Both her performance and the fact that only Adele could perform a Bong song that is the franchise's lone Best Song win. Just please keep being awesome.
10) Speaking of awesome women, Jennifer Lawrence wins the Oscar for Best Actress. She was incredible in Silver Linings Playbook and it's a shame writer/director David O. Russell almost didn't even let her audition because he thought she was too young. Every actresses worst fear is tripping over their dress while accepting the award and Lawrence's fear came true. But in true Jennifer Lawrence fashion she laughs it off and it's all good. My only complaint about J-Law? That her dress was not on fire.
What did you think of Seth MacFarlane as host for the 85th Academy Award Ceremonies?
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