The Scorecard Review

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Oscar Winners for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards and Bayer's Final Thoughts

Jeff Bayer

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards have put the best of the 2010 movies to bed. Here's a list of the winners. Below, you'll find my commentary, as well as a link to the 9th Annual TSR Movie Awards. BEST PICTURE The King’s Speech

BEST ACTOR Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

BEST ACTRESS Natalie Portman, Black Swan

BEST DIRECTOR Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech

BEST SONG “We Belong Together,” Toy Story 3, Randy Newman

BEST EDITING The Social Network, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Inception, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb

BEST DOCUMENTARY Inside Job, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT God of Love, Luke Matheny

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT Strangers No More, Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon

BEST COSTUME DESIGN Alice in Wonderland, Colleen Atwood

BEST MAKEUP The Wolfman, Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

BEST SOUND EDITING Inception, Richard King

BEST SOUND MIXING Inception, Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale, The Fighter

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Melissa Leo, The Fighter

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM In a Better World (Denmark)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY The King’s Speech, Screenplay by David Seidler

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Social Network, Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

BEST ANIMATED FILM Toy Story 3

BEST ANIMATED SHORT The Lost Thing, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Inception, Wally Pfister

BEST ART DIRECTION Alice in Wonderland, Robert Stromberg, Karen O’Hara

Final Thoughts: The Oscars are over. The awards are over. It's all over. I'm not a film critic who complains about two months of film awards. Here's the thing, my main reaction is to shrug my shoulders and move on. The James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosted Oscars started with a movie montage. I love these things. They work on me every time. It definitely feels done though. The oddest part was the flat ending with Back to the Future being thrown into the mix. After that, it was time for some easy jokes and the awards. I have no idea if Franco cared. I just know it didn't seem like he cared. His answer and delivery to everything seemed to be, "Fine, but can we hurry? I've got twenty other things to do tonight." Hathaway picked up on this and amped up her perkiness by at least five times. Doesn't she strike you as a mom already? Not only that, she's the type of mom whose kids would constantly be saying, "MaAAAaaaammmmmm, quit embarrassing me." Fracno normally has an infectious joy in the roles that he plays on the big screen. It just never came through on the small screen.

I always hear people say, "There were no upsets." Like that is a bad thing. This makes no sense to me. If there is an obvious BEST, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman for example, it would be stupid if anything else won. In the case where there are a couple of greats, then it's cool that it could be anybody's game, and you hope the love is spread around a little bit. Just think if Colin Firth (who I loved) would have won last year for A Single Man. Suddenly it's Jeff Bridges versus the young guns of James Franco and Jessie Eisenberg. The one category that really needs to be looked at is Best Director. The three directors with the highest degree of difficulty were Christopher Nolan (not nominated), Danny Boyle (already a winner) and David Fincher. One of them should have won. With King's Speech, Tom Hooper did not have a difficult task, subject or location. He did a great job with his role, but it wasn't difficult. That needs to be looked at. Since you are already declaring a best picture, the director award's most important feature should be "Degree of Difficulty." A film where a guy is stuck under a rock? A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream? A movie about a website and two court cases? Are you kidding me?

Maybe no one else noticed, but the director should have been fired. You probably don't know this, but someone is actually DECIDING on what should be on the screen. It's not just a monkey pushing buttons, although last night it seems like it could have been. Here are two perfect examples ... 1. Oprah. She's telling you how great documentaries are (because she is trying to show tons of them on her new TV station). At some point the director thinks, "Look, the Coen brothers are deathly bored. Quick, take camera 24!" 2. Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem come on stage in white tuxedos. They move toward each other and decide to have a quick danc... oh wait, nope we have to look at Penelope Cruz as she gets to watch her husband dance, but we don't. Quick note to the director, it is ALWAYS a better idea to let the audience at home watch the event instead of watching people at the event watch the event. Make sense? Let's move on.

It's poor taste to only use dialogue from The King's Speech as you are showing the montage for the Best Picture nominations.

Now onto the question of, "Do the Academy Awards realize they need to go back to having a stand up comedian run things because it helps move things along?" Probably not. That's why I have the next best thing. Kevin Spacey should host next year. Quick tangent. I always though the greatest Oscar host (and most crowd pleasing) would be Johnny Carson after he retired. He never wanted the one-night comeback, but guess who does a really good Carson? Spacey. Plus, he seems to like David Letterman, so Letterman could even join in for a sketch and they could make fun of Jay Leno. Spacey seems to love being the center of attention, he can sing, dance and his comedy ain't too shabby. Plus, it's safe, which the Academy still wants. Otherwise, the most talked about event ever could be having Louis C.K. unleashed on the awards (and the world) in the most honest, comedian undressing of all time. Having Kevin Spacey host will also allow us to remember that he's really talented and funny. That's a good thing since he's having trouble doing that in movies right now.