The Oscars 2012

Couple of words about the Oscars 2012. Overall, I think this was the fairest distribution of the prizes on my memory. The Artist and Hugo were my favourites, and I am glad they were both given considerable amount of Oscars. The Artist got the important ones, whereas Hugo got the technical ones, but this is perfectly justified. And this dog, Uggie, is now a legend!

I am also glad that the Descendants won almost nothing - it was well below the level of the other movies nominated. And yes, Muppets got the Oscar as well! Nevermind it is for the best original song only, it is still such an achievement for generally not-for-oscars movie.

Rango was also my clear favorite to win the best animation, especially considering the other nominees.

So, overall, that was a very good, and, in my opinion, just ceremony. I can only hope that the tradition of giving the Oscars to the movies that can be understood by wider audience is going to be continued in the future.

P.S. Sacha Baron Cohen was as provocative as usual.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Dictator

After being banned from attending the Oscars ceremony as the Dictator character, Sacha Baron Cohen filmed this awesome reply - worth watching, he makes sure we don't question his sense of humour.


P.S. "Planet of the Rapes" - how does he manage to come up with these jokes?!

The Descendants

Matt King (George Clooney) is the chairman of the family trust which owns massive piece of land on Hawaii. After his wife suffers from the boat accident, he tries to overcome the pain and re-connect with his two daughters.

As somebody correctly put it, this movie is the living evidence of how flawed the new concept of the Oscars is. Previously, each category had only 5 nominees, strictly, whereas now they include “between 5 and 10”. This resulted in movies being nominated, which are clearly not up to speed with the rest of the nominees, and that only highlights their mediocrity. And yes, the Descendants is one of those movies.

The Muppets

The old Muppets’ theatre is in danger: greedy oil businessman Tex Richman wants to get control over it to dig for oil reserves that are under the theatre. Walther, who is on the trip to LA with his brother, accidentally hears the plan, and now it is the race against the time: Muppets have to reunite to raise $10,000,000 to save the theatre.

When I first saw the trailers for the Muppets, I was amazed. Finally, good old-fashioned parody is coming along, with nice little subtle jokes about almost just everything on Earth! “The Immigrant Song” trailer was probably even better than the original one. However, the actual movie lacks this grit, and it is easy to understand why.

Shame

Brandon is a 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life. After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon's world spirals out of control… And this is it. The whole storyline of the movie can be summarized in 2 short sentences, and trust me, you cannot add much to the description – and that is probably the biggest shame of the whole film.

Moneyball

The Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane finds himself in a very unfortunate position of losing the three star players to other teams. Now he has to assemble a new team on a limited budget, and he employs young Yale graduate Peter Brand to employ statistical analysis to find the undervalued players.

The story is based on the real events and tells us about the real Billy Beane, making it almost semi-documentary. The case study of Moneyball technique is pretty common in business schools and in general on economic courses, and thanks to the book by Michael Lewis it became known to wider audiences.

Oscar nominees 2012

So, here we go again. The Oscars 2012 are going to be hard-contested, competitive and fabulous. This year's ceremony is miles away from 2011, when there were only two real good movies which were actually up to the benchmark. This time there were many very good movies, and in particular it will be hard to decide between Hugo and the Artist.

I am personally delighted that Hugo got 11 nominations, closely followed by 10 for the Artist. Hugo was the best picture I saw in 2011, but apparently it was little understood and watched. We will see whether the justice will be served. It was also refreshing to see Moneyball in nominations - the movie is pretty distinct from all the others, but I will blog about it in detail a bit later. However, the best actor of the year, I believe, is Gary Oldman. His Smiley is one of the most distinct characters of the year, and the iconic scene recreating the talk between two spies is absolutely brilliant.

The showdown between the Artist and Hugo will be an interesting one, don't miss it on 26th February!