85th Academy Awards Postmortem

I did alright. My will win or could win was right in almost every category. Granted, having a "could win" is a cheat, and for how many movies I'd seen, studying I'd done, and experts I'd read, you'd think I would've done better than a casual movie watcher who got a little lucky.

Best Picture  - Argo [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Animated Feature - Brave [COULD WIN]
Best Foreign Language Film - Amour [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Documentary – Feature - Searching for Sugar Man [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Actor  - Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) [WILL WIN]
Best Actress - Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) [COULD WIN]
Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables) [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Writing – Original Screenplay - Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) [COULD WIN]
Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay - Argo (Chris Terrio) [WILL WIN]
Best Live Action Short Film - Curfew
Best Documentary – Short Subject - Inocente
Best Animated Short Film - Paperman [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Original Score - Life of Pi [WILL WIN]
Best Original Song - "Skyfall" (Skyfall) [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Sound Editing - Skyfall [COULD WIN] [SHOULD WIN] & Zero Dark Thirty [WILL WIN]
Best Sound Mixing - Les Misérables[WILL WIN]
Best Director - Ang Lee (Life of Pi) [COULD WIN]
Best Production Design - Lincoln
Best Cinematography - Life of Pi [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Makeup and Hairstyling - Les Misérables [WILL WIN]
Best Costume Design - Anna Karenina [COULD WIN] [SHOULD WIN]
Best Film Editing - Argo [COULD WIN]
Best Visual Effects - Life of Pi [WILL WIN] [SHOULD WIN]

To recap, I got 14 of 22 (2 abstains) correct for will win, 7 could wins (combined 21/22 for could or will), and surprisingly, 11 should wins.

 Liked:
-Most of the acting wins. It's great to see Anne Hathaway get her win if only because it gets that monkey off her back. Louisville's own Jennifer Lawrence has a statue and handled the whole awards season like a champ. It was even nice to see Daniel Day-Lewis get into the three win club.
-Life of Pi got some tech love but not too much. Ang Lee's movie is a technical marvel, but at the same time, I feared that it would, like Hugo last year, become the de facto winner of all the awards that most people don't care about. Thankfully, it got Cinematography, Visual Effects, Score, and Director but stopped there.
-Skyfall got some love. True, it was all in song and sound, but this is the kind of movie that normally gets a couple nominations and no one actually votes to have it win anything.

Disliked:
-Brave winning best animated feature. I'm a fan of Pixar and all but it's starting to be a lazy man's choice to win. Wreck It Ralph and ParaNorman were both superior movies and I haven't seen Frankenweenie, but I hear that it makes a stronger case too,
-The Django wins. Not that I have some strong feelings about it and I suppose I like spreading the wealth like this, but other than being filled with lines that you know the actors loved delivering, I don't see how the screenplay stacked up against the competition, most notably, Amour. Also, Christoph Waltz was great and all, but we've seen this performance before in his last Taratino movie and I'd've picked anyone in the field to win instead.
-Anna Karenina not getting the win for production design. Lincoln wasn't a horrible choice, but I certainly think Anna Karenina was 90% artistic direction, so I don't get how it lost.

I am so glad the awards season is finally over though. As always, it's been too long, too predictable, and this year we can even add too political to the mix. Time to get back to watching movies for better reasons like "there's nothing else in theaters" and "well, it's made a lot of movie".