Pics the best from the rest

It was that time of year again when the finest and fittest of Hollywood’s A-list celebrities made their way down the red carpet at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the 85th Academy Awards.  This year the awards where hosted my one of my favourite comedians, Seth MacFarlane creator of television’s Family Guy (1999-).

In past years one film has usually been topped to sweep up and this year Lincoln (2012) was the one to beat and luckily one of the nominees I had actually got round to seeing.  It was up for twelve awards, but also had close competition in the form of Les Misérables (2012) with eight nods, Argo (2012) with seven and Django Unchained (2012) with five.  I had only seen two of these films so I will not harp on about which I thought should have won more awards but didn’t.  What I will say is that it was a good spread.

Lincoln picked up two gongs with Daniel Day-Lewis getting best actor, the third of his career and the first in history to have received this award three times.  His speech was one of humility as he thanked his fellow nominees with grace, and humour as he shared with us how Meryl Streep had been considered to play Lincoln and him the Queen.  It did however miss out on best picture and had to settle for production design instead.  Les Misérables won three awards stealing best supporting actress for Anne Hathaway, makeup and hairstyling and sound mixing.

Django Unchained took two statuettes with best supporting actor for Christoph Waltz and best original screenplay for Quentin Tarantino.  The night however belonged to Argo taking the coveted best picture oscar and presented by the first lady, Michelle Obama direct from The White House itself.  A few surprises did arise with Jennifer Lawrence taking best actress for her part in Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and Ang Lee fending off the likes of Steven Spielberg to claim the best director oscar for The Life of Pi (2012).

All in all it was good to see everyone getting a taste of what Hollywood was dishing out instead of one film gorging itself as we have seen so many times in the past (yes Titanic (1997) and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) I am talking to you).  I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Hugh Jackman did not get best actor but you can’t have everything.  In the words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.

Coming Soon: Cloud Atlas (2012) and Arbitrage (2012).  Stay tuned, same blog time, same blog channel.