And the Oscar Goes To…..

79th Annual Academy Awards

The academy awards this year somehow felt devoid of the drama that usually accompanies it. It is hard to be excited about it when you almost know for sure the winners for most of the categories. The only thing that kept me interested was to see if Scorsese would win the awards this year or not. We had a new host too, Ellen Degeneress, this year and she was a bit toned down compared to Chris Rock last year. The most memorable of her lines was “If there weren't blacks, Jews and gays, there would no Oscars. Or anyone named Oscar, if you think about that”.

Having said that, the awards did throw up some surprises along the way. The biggest of them all must surely be Alan Arkin, winner for best supporting actor for ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. He beat out everyone’s favorite Eddie Murphy who had won most of the awards leading up to the Oscars for his portrayal of James “Thunder” Early in ‘Dreamgirls’.

In another surprise the German movie ‘The Lives of Others’ won over Mexico’s ‘Pan's Labyrinth’, which was widely favored to win the award. Nevertheless Pan’s Labyrinth won 3 awards including cinematography, makeup and art direction.

The major categories all went according to plan. Hellen Mirren for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen” must have been the surest nominee ever to win the best actress award. It was a foregone conclusion that she would pick up the award and which she duly did.

Forrest Whitaker, who started off as a favorite early on faced some sentimental competition from the veteran Peter O’Toole. However Whitaker’s role of Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland” prevailed over Toole’s portrayal of an elderly actor in love with a young girl in ‘Venus’ . “Little Miss Sunshine” a popular road comedy about a dysfunctional family won 2 awards for the night including best original screenplay to add to its supporting actor win.

Jennifer Hudson, the favorite to win the supporting actress category, brought in the only Oscar for “Dreamgilrs”. The American Idol reject was visibly overcome with emotion during her speech after receiving the award. But it was a surprise to see “Dreamgirls ” lose out to Melissa Etheridge’s song “I Need to Wake Up” from “An Inconvenient Truth”, despite having 3 of its songs nominated.

Babel picked up its only Oscar of original score for Gustavo Santaolalla, despite having several other nominations including best picture. Gustavo said during his acceptance speech that his goal was to write a score that doesn't sound like a National Geographic soundtrack.

Among the other notable awards, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was given to ex-Paramount chief Sherry Lansing. While a special Oscar was given to Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Best remembered for the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly's haunting theme song.

But the biggest winner of the night was undoubtedly Martin Scorsese. His crime drama ‘Departed’ not only won him his first Oscar in six attempts, it also went on to take the most awards (4) of the night including best picture. It won in the best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay and best editing categories. It was a long time coming and the Academy didn’t let go of the chance to make it special either. The moment three his greatest contemporaries came on the stage to give the best director award we were sure it had to be Scorsese’s night. He received the award from Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Oscar definitely has corrected its past injustices towards him.

And the oscar goes to...the wrong movie !

And the oscar goes to...the wrong movie !

Its that time of the year again when scantly clad people come running and crying for the giveaways.No silly i am not speaking about the Somalians running after U.N food allotments,that happens all year around. this is about the showbizz.supposedly the 'olympics of movies' as some hindi fimmaker likes to call it(clue:he is bald,obviously likes cricket and one of his movies got into this 'olympics').

Well,the fact is that it aint no olympics and it certain as hell aint no nadir of movie quality.what it is,yes i am talking about the oscars or the academy awards as the guys in tails liked to call it originally, is a really cozy get together of the most glitzy personnel in the hollywood movie industry for the sole purpose of showing off their teeth and cleavages if you have any.movies is just about the last thing they have in mind.the proof? the movies themselves. look at those that got heavy 'tags' this year.

Martin scorsese has finally gone completeley mad and remade the hong kong flick into a slick hollywood version complete with jack nicholson in tux. well, maybe they are trying to redeem their past failure to notice the short in stature scorsese.but hey!guess what,this aint no church!this is an award ceremony that many look up to.a place for appreciating the best movies of the year and their creators.

But no matter which movie gets the high trophy this year,be it 'the departed' or 'babel' which incidentally had started the debate about whether the movie speaks four or is it five languages?,the wrong movie is going to win the oscar this year as well,as it has been like for the past few years.

The only reason for this is that the better movies of this year happened to be made not by heavy weight studios like 20th century 'hungry' fox or warner 'shuteye' brothers who are almost always blind to the good films. this year the better movies like 'inland empire' or 'driving lessons' are made by low key players and so they get sidelined.Oscars is not about the movies,its about the money and glamour. the higher the budget of a movie, the larger the number of oscars it gets.add in a really great director of the past like scorsese into the mix and u sure as hell would have more than a shot at that pretty knight.

I know there is not much point in telling any of this to you guys.you are all gonna watch this ridiculous corporate show all the same since hey! who can resist nicole kidman in that 'is it a see-through or is it not?' dress .

but then again...