Always a heavily anticipated frenzy in the film industry, the Academy Awards attempts to award the best of the year in all of film. The Oscars of 2012, highlighted by movies such as The Artist and Hugo, were met with mixed reviews.
Hosting for the tenth time was Billy Crystal, who opened with a song to introduce the nominees, and followed a familiar punchline based routine. I think that, as a whole, the older crowd probably appreciated his hosting job more due to a tradition aspect, since he has hosted so many times before. While funny and entertaining, Crystal most likely isolated some younger viewers that would have rather seen a more currently recognizable host. Personally, I thought Crystal did a great job considering his circumstance as a solo host, but I think the Oscars flow better with more than one host, like when Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin co-hosted in 2010.
The 2012 Oscars also showcased quite a few familiar faces, such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt (nominated for Best Actor) and Meryl Streep (nominated for Best Actress). Another common nominee present was Martin Scorsese, who won five Oscars out of 11 nominations for his film, Hugo. Possibly the most talked-about film of the night was Michael Havanavicius’s The Artist, intriguing due to the fact that it was the first silent film up for an award since the first ever Academy Awards. As expected, it took home the award for Best Picture, but also took four other awards, including Best Actor for Jean Dujardin and Best Director for Havanavicius. The most surprising was the film’s Best Director win, because big names like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick were favored.
Meryl Streep received her first Oscar win in over 20 years for Best Actress in The Iron Lady. Streep has been nominated seventeen times (a record), and is widely considered the best actress of our generation, and possibly of all time. Her role as Margaret Thatcher perfectly demonstrates her ability to fully immerse herself in a character, taking on the mannerisms and accent of the character perfectly. Another veteran actor, Christopher Plummer, also took home a trophy, winning Best Supporting Actor for his role as an old man that comes out to his son. Plummer has been in over 100 movies, and received a standing ovation from many Academy members after winning his Oscar.
Octavia Spencer won the award for Best Supporting Actress, which was expected. As a whole, every award winner seemed fairly predictable (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but may have dulled down the actual show. With all of these magazines and celebrity television shows forming predictions, people all around the nation are told what to expect, and a sense of drama is lost. However, despite a few letdowns and dull moments, The 2012 Academy Awards definitely met my personal expectations. They just didn’t exceed them as they had in the past.
Photo: By BDS2006 (English: I created this work entirely by myself.) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
