84th Annual Academy Awards Recap

Well another year is history! The 84th Annual Academy Awards were Sunday night on ABC and overall I would give the show a solid B rating. The show moved fairly quickly and smoothly and had the best host in several years, with veteran Billy Crystal returning for the 9th time and making us forget the James-Anne debacle from last year. He was obviously a very safe choice but he also played it well with a few strong zingers throughout (but do we REALLY need to see his Sammy Davis Jr again, it has never been that funny). Hardly new but safe with a few strong zingers peppered throughout (his Kodak Theater lines were particularly funny).

Here is the complete list of winners from the evening:
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/oscars/oscar-winners-list-013051337.html

I scored 19 out of 24 categories, not too bad for a shaky start (1-3 the first fours awards) and a Best Actress shocker when Meryl Streep upset favorite Viola Davis for Meryl's 3rd win but first win in 30 years. I liked Meryl's performance but didn't much for "The Iron Lady" overall, as did many critics; true Meryl was likely overdue but Viola was robbed for a truly great performance and one of the most memorable of 2011. This is the one award that will have people talking for years to come.

2011 was a weak year for films; there were many good films but a lack of truly fantastic knock-your-socks-off ones. "The Artist" isn't a bad choice (and like last year's winner "The King's Speech," a very safe one) and certainly not the worst one of recent memory, but the novelty of it being all silent and being made by the Weinstein studio catapulted it to the top spot. "The Help," "War Horse," "The Descendants" or even "Moneyball" would've been better (and much more populist) choices in my opinion. "The Artist" and "Hugo" both ended up with 5 awards, the most of the evening, and while both are good films, they won't rank as my favorite Oscar winners.

Overall, a solid Oscar show with a handful of good moments. They included:

• Octavia Spencer's win for Best Supporting Actress-the most satisfying win of the evening.
• "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's" upset win for Best Editing-"The Artist" had been favored.
• I went 3-0 in the short film categories, the FIRST time I have ever done that.
• Will Ferrell and Zach Galifanakis and two cymbals-very funny especially right in front of Brad Pitt.
• Another great win: Christopher Plummer for Supporting Actor-Captain von Trapp finally wins an Oscar and the oldest actor ever to win.
• "Undefeated" winning Best Documentary Feature-"Pina" or "Purgatory" had been favored.
• The "Bridesmaids" introducing the short film awards - hiliarious (especially Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph's bit, no pun intended).
• JLo's cleavage-baring dress.
• Chris Rock's very funny take on Animated films. 
• Woody Allen winning Best Screenplay once more...and not showing up.
• Super-skinny Angelina Jolie.
• The cute dog from "The Artist," the best thing about that movie.
• Too many "short films" with actors going on about their favorite movies/moments.