A note on the 2010 Academy Awards
In general I thought the awards were fine.
For the best actress award, Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side wasn't as good as Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia, but then
Streep was in only half of her film. This was sort of a life-time achievement award for Bullock,
plus she also gives nice acceptance speeches. She was a particularly good sport in actually going
the the Razzie awards
ceremony the previous day to pick up her worst actress award for All About Steve.
The Hurt Locker was a worthy best picture choice among several equally worthy films. It was good to see a woman,
Kathryn Bigelow, win best director for the first time. Avitar was certainly deserving for how great it looked and
how much time and effort went into making it. District 9 was deserving for being a similar story to Avitar,
but more done empathetically and no doubt on a fraction of the budget. Up in the Air was a really good film, too;
I think this might have been my favorite film of the year. A Serious Man,
An Education, and The Blind Side were all fine, but not quite Academy Award quality films.
A Single Man should have been nominated before these three. I didn't see Precious,
Inglourious Basterds, and Up. In general, I liked having ten rather than five best picture nominations.
Jeff Bridges as best actor was a nice choice for a life-time achievement award, and he was fine in Crazy Heart and
did an excellent job singing.
However, the other four nominees were also excellent. This was the tightest race in terms of high level performances
by all the nominees, i.e., George Clooney in Up in the Air, Colin Firth in A Single Man,
Morgan Freeman in Invictus, Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. I think probably the best performance was by
Colin Firth, although Jeremy Renner was almost as good.
And Clooney and Freeman were perfectly matches to their roles.
The televised awards ceremony worked pretty well, I think.
[2010-03-08]