By Max Kyburz
To the surprise of almost nobody, The King’s Speech was the big winner at the 83rd Academy Awards on Sunday, tying with Inception with four wins. As predicted, it scooped up Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.
Also in not-so-news: Natalie Portman won Best Actress for Black Swan, Christian Bale won Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter (but didn’t accept it in his Batman voice, which was kind of disappointing), and Aaron Sorkin won Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network. In terms of winners, the Oscars can barely find away to keep the show the least bit interesting.
In terms of pure entertainment value, however, this was the most exciting Oscars I had seen in years. It was all thanks to the dastardly awkward humor (intentional and unintentional) rampant throughout the evening. Many missteps were made along the way, including making the Oscars’ stage the most elaborate screen-saver ever, recruiting Kirk Douglas to present an award, and awarding Melissa Leo with Best Supporting Actress. It was a much needed improvement over the last year’s abysmal ceremony starring a disappointingly unfunny duo of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
Beginning with an epically epic montage of films nominated for Best Picture, and following up with a gut-busting sequence of Hathaway and Franco crashing every nominee that wasn’t Toy Story 3, the show was already off to a great start. Alas, it was one of the few moments that they worked well as a duo, considering how Ms. Hathaway was heavy lifting and remaining adorable most of the show while James Franco was busy being a stoned, aloof Twitter celeb (just look how many Tweets he made mid-show!). Yep, between Franco, Leo, Jeff Bridges, and Best Animated Short winner Andrew Ruhemann, it was a good night to be wasted in Hollywood.
Back, of course, to that moment everybody’s talking about: Melissa Leo. Considering Kirk Douglas’ bizarrely adorable, often awkward presentation (which, in turn, became a metaphor for the ceremony itself), I doubt anyone could’ve topped it. Enter Ms. Leo, who was in full Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart mode. Her appallingly put-on “shocked” performance, followed by her emphatic f-bomb, and her overly dramatic speech most likely had all Academy voters scratching their heads, regretting that they ever considered her in the first place. Of course, I can hardly complain – it was one of the more entertaining (if not painful) moments of the evening. I’m sure she still has Kirk Douglas’ cane.
Things I learned this year: Wrap-it-up music is polite as long as its epic as hell. Memorial montages are good reminders to smile when you’re dead. Also, if you are a key game changer in the world of cinema, you’re only worth enough time to stand up on stage to smile and receive well-deserved applause. Wanna say something, Francis Ford Coppola? How about you, Eli Wallach? Well, too bad. Just remember that the Academy only pretends to care about you.
The biggest disappointment of the whole evening? Oprah Winfrey not pointing to random members of the audience and yelling, “You get an Oscar! And you get an Oscar! Everybody gets an Oscaaaaaar!,” making America the real loser of the evening. I guess there’s always next year.
