So here’s the full list of Oscar winners, grabbed from HuffPo, in case there’s anyone out there who relies on this site for news.  I was in a hospital while the awards were telecast live and the hospital’s TV didn’t have the channel showing the awards.  All I could do was watch CNN, “breaking news” about something political in Australia that I could care less about, the crawl on the bottom gradually listing off the award winners.

Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson, “Hugo”
Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schavo, “Hugo”
Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges, “The Artist”
Best Makeup: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland, “The Iron Lady”
Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”
Best Editing: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
Best Sound Editing: Phillip Stockton and Eugene Gearty, “Hugo”
Best Sound Mixing: Tom Fleischman and John Midgley, “Hugo”
Best Documentary: “Undefeated”
Best Animated Feature: “Rango”
Best Visual Effects: “Hugo”
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Best Original Score: Ludovic Bource, “The Artist”
Best Original Song: Bret McKenzie, “Man or Muppet”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, “The Descendants”
Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
Best Live Action Short: “The Shore”
Best Documentary Short: “Saving Face”
Best Animated Short: “The Fantastic Flying Books Of Mr. Morris Lessmore”
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Best Picture: “The Artist”

So look, I don’t think The Artist deserves the award for best picture, but it’s fully in line with the Academy’s history to bestow an award on a film like this.  It’s a very old story, frequently told before, but it’s a film that took some guts to make and the end result is an audience pleaser.  I suppose it took a lot of guts and vision to make a film in 2011 that was mostly in black and white and only had about 2 lines of dialogue – The Artist is most definitely not a silent film, as its award for best score should certainly indicate.  There is music and sound effects and a little bit of very well-placed and critically important dialogue.  It is probably as perfectly realized as it could have been.  It makes audiences feel good and it makes the Academy members feel good for voting for it.

It almost feels odd to fault this film for lack of ambition and yet, I do.  It’s not just a matter of waiting for plot twists that never came, for some spin on the Star Is Born story to revitalize it, it just feels that way after having seen Hugo and Tree of Life.  Tree of Life is wildly ambitious and it may not always succeed but it was truly unique.  Hugo was, as I’ve said, an out and out winner start to finish for me, a marvelous return to form in a completely new genre for Scorsese.

But that’s how the Academy rolls.

BTW, Streep may now have three Oscars (in a minor upset over Viola Davis) but Woody Allen now has four (three for writing, one for directing)(you didn’t think he had one for acting, did you?).  Hard to believe that Christopher Plummer only now is getting his first one, he’s been so good in so many things for so many years.

Also kind of difficult to believe that people are upset over Billy Crystal wearing blackface to do a Sammy Davis Jr impression, something he’s been doing for about 30 years.  It was never racist, and it was never “blackface,” not like the blackface minstrel shows from a hundred years ago.  And if you want to say it’s not funny, that’s fine but it’s not as if this was his first time doing it or as if people didn’t love Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder so I’m not sure where it’s coming from.  It’s political correctness carried way over the top. There’s lots of stuff out there far more worthy of being upset over than this.

 

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