I didn't write anything about the Oscars pre-ceremony, mainly because wasn't much suspense in any big category except maybe Best Actress. There's been no frontrunner that got derailed by last-minute precursor awards. Why bother making predictions that are probably going to match everyone else's?
There also hasn't been much passion behind any movie released last year - 2011 saw a number of very good movies, to be sure, but not the fistful of great ones to come out the year before.
In my opinion, The Tree of Life was the best movie of last year. Some agreed, plenty more didn't - its reviews were generally raves or pans. One of the so-called suspenseless categories was Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki had won just about everything there was to win, and enough Academy voters saw the movie to give it Picture & Director nods, so it seemed only logical, no? Apparently no.
Apart from Cinematography, Actress and Editing (even the winners didn't seem to see that one coming), the only surprise for me was the number of wins rolled up by Hugo. The only real difference between people's predictions was on the size of The Artist's tailcoats - would it just win a few big prizes or take in a few technical ones too? Given what happened with other so-called smaller films that got a lot of unexpected year-end buzz followed by a Best Picture win (Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker), I was expecting a bucketful for the silent film. One category where it did come through was on Score, which was one category that I wasn't sure it would take: just about every negative review of the movie (and a lot of positive ones too) jumped on the use of the Vertigo score, but the voters obviously didn't care.
I guess Oscar voters did this year what they used to do decades ago: give lots of nominations (and then wins) to a big film that needed some help at the box office. After all, The Artist has already more than made back its budget and will probably make a pile more. Perhaps this outcome will get more people to see Hugo - I certainly hope so.
Also on the good side of the ledger, Billy Crystal was back at last - maybe not as funny as he was twenty years ago (I could say the same for his movies too), but still better than just about everyone else; the lack of musical numbers didn't hurt either - that stuff really plays better in person than on TV.
