Oscar 2011: Post-Mortem

There you have it. The expected outcome of the night pretty much happened. While it may not have completely dominated the night, The Artist still managed to walk away with five Oscars for the evening, nabbing awards for Best Picture, Director for Hazanavicius, Actor for Jean Dujardin, Costume Design and Score. I had actually predicted the film to win six Oscars, but thought it would take Film Editing and Original Screenplay as well instead of Costume Design. The other big winner of the night was Hugo, which tied with The Artist's five wins. However, all the tech prizes the film won were meant to be the consolation prize for not winning the bigger awards.

And then there is Best Actress, where Meryl Streep actually managed to triumph over the quite favorited Viola Davis, and that that depresses me. I like Streep quite a bit, and even in that film, but this award belonged to Davis. It meant more for Davis to win this award than it did for Streep, and with it being the only award of the night I was emotionally invested in, it came off as quite a disappointment. I don't want to take anything away from what Streep did, but there's always going to be another opportunity to reward her. This industry shackles women like Davis all the time, and even if you have to take an artificial honor in order to break free, it'd still be nice to have it. Oh well, if anything this will give people even more incentive to reward Davis next time, being more overdue than before. Also, we can drop this line about "Streep hasn't won an Oscar in 30 years" and give someone else a chance at bat.

Outside of that, there weren't any major surprises. I did a measly 15/24, but most of the stuff I didn't get right were generally runner-up selections for me. The only real surprise was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo winning Film Editing, which took away from some heavy Best Picture contenders and made it the second consecutive award to be won by the Baxter/Wall team for a David Fincher film. The movie becomes the first film to win the award as its single prize since Bullit in 1968. But when your Oscar ceremony has only one major surprise and an upset that is emotionally disappointing, it hasn't been a very good night.

Below are a list of the winners, and I might have one or two more things to say about the Best Actress outcome this year, so perhaps expect something of that nature. As for now, the gears are already turning for Oscars 2013, and I'll have as much enthusiasm for those as I do for them now.

Best Picture: The Artist
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin - The Artist
Best Actress: Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer - Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer - The Help
Best Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants
Best Animated Feature: Rango
Best Art Direction: Hugo
Best Costume Design: The Artist
Best Cinematography: Hugo
Best Film Editing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Best Original Score: The Artist
Best Original Song: "Man or Muppet" - The Muppets
Best Makeup: The Iron Lady
Best Sound Mixing: Hugo
Best Sound Editing: Hugo
Best Visual Effects: Hugo
Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation
Best Documentary Feature: Undefeated
Best Animated Short: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Best Live Action Short: The Shore
Best Documentary Short: Saving Face