After five years of wins to "independent films" The Artist, The King's Speech, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men, it was time for a big studio to return for the final gong of Oscars night.
That it was Warner Bros, which last won in 2006 for The Departed, didn't matter so much. What mattered was Universal, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Columbia and Sony were back in the game with best picture nominees.
Not that this was a token lurch back to the mainstream by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All nine best picture nominees had, in their own ways, serious merits as the best picture of the year.
But they represented a shift towards some sense of quality within
Hollywood after so many years in which it felt as if the major studios
were playing safe with familiar sequels, bland high concepts and
bombastic or earnest comic book adaptations. Independent filmmakers
continued to hold up the bottom end of budgets and the smaller cinemas,
as we hope they always will, while the studios deserted the middle, that
area of filmmaking that supports the Argos, Silver Linings Playbooks and Zero Dark Thirtys.
Not
that they are cheap films but they sit in the multiplex in a place that
doesn't seem reserved for 15 to 35-year-old males. The success for a
number of this year's best picture nominees augurs well, one would hope,
for more production of smart, interesting adult dramas by the US
studios. At least until we're swamped by Iron Man 3, Star Trek 2, The Hangover III, Man of Steel and The Wolverine this winter and we'll all forget these Oscars ever happened.Nevertheless, the game is shifting. Of the best picture nominees, all of them, perhaps other than Lincoln, will be considered commercial successes of one degree or another. And Life of Pi is another case altogether.
Ang Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's novel, which was widely considered unfilmable, has earned $US113 million in the US and another $470m globally. Once the ratio of international box office returns relative to US returns was always 50-50. The hunt is now on for more global tales.
Life of Pi's four Oscar wins was a mild surprise with Lee again upsetting the usually snubbed Steven Spielberg. (Lee won his first Oscar in 2007 in this category for Brokeback Mountain, defeating Spielberg for Munich.)
Spielberg was favourite in the director category, particularly after Argo's Ben Affleck and Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow weren't nominated. Spielberg has been nominated seven times as best director for two wins (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan).
The spread of awards reflected the merits of the major contenders. Some technical categories offered minor upsets but, overall, in total the numbers were about right. Les Miserables won three awards, including the lock for supporting actress Anne Hathaway, and Django Unchained won two major awards including one for screenwriter Quentin Tarantino. Christoph Waltz's supporting actor win -- his second -- was on the cards but contentious given he is the lead actor in the film. The highly successful James Bond film Skyfall also won two awards, including best original song for Adele and Paul Epworth, and best picture nominees Zero Dark Thirty and Amour picked up one each.
Spielberg's heavy but accomplished Lincoln had two wins, including the best actor prize for Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis was lifted into his own pantheon, becoming the first person to win thrice in the lead actor category (previously for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood). Day-Lewis should win a separate award for a sustained period of novel and entertaining acceptance speeches through what is now a relentless blitz of cinematic self-congratulation from December through to February. The actor remains an easy butt of awards ceremony jokes for his method acting yet he repeatedly deliveres warm and insightful acceptance speeches while other winners hurriedly garble a tedious list of thank yous to mum, dad, Harvey Weinstein, the director, co-stars, my agent and publicist, though not so much to God any more.
Day-Lewis joked that "before (presenter Meryl Streep and I) decided to make a straight swap, I was committed to play Margaret Thatcher and Meryl was Steven's first choice for Lincoln". By the end of another insufferably long Oscars ceremony, a touch of levity from Day-Lewis was required.
The academy received what it signed up for with host Seth MacFarlane. The creator of Family Guy and last year's unlikely smash comedy Ted (and an Oscar nominee in the song category) delivered a wobbly show full of pop cultural references and the gay, sexist, fattist and racist jokes his fans expect and love. Yet he tempered it with an obvious respect for old Hollywood and cloying attempts to convince us he was a credible crooner. His singing was able, his jokes polarising. His over-long opening routine was typical, all sequins and tuxedoes with dancing from Charlize Theron, Daniel Radcliffe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt before he resorted to type with the puerile song We Saw Your Boobs and a fitfully amusing sock puppet version of Flight. He was saved by the ceremony's theme: music. It provided the ceremony's razzle-dazzle highlights and only a few queries.
The 50th anniversary of James Bond was celebrated by Shirley Bassey smashing out the theme from Goldfinger and later Adele delivered a stirring rendition of her Oscar-winning Skyfall.
An always emotional In Memoriam segment was topped by Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were.
Missteps included Catherine Zeta-Jones miming to Chicago's All That Jazz and Jennifer Hudson's over-wrought song from Dreamgirls. The cast from the film Les Miserables, including Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, reminded us why the musical is so brilliant on stage. But it was a wonder anyone could sing in key given the orchestra was beamed in from a studio kilometres away.
Also beamed in, this time from the White House, was first lady Michelle Obama, who wowed the room by announcing the best picture winner, Argo.
There were some faux pas. Two of the The Avengers cast, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr, had a minor on-stage spat while presenting an award, and Life of Pi's visual effects winner Bill Westenhofer was aggressively played off by the orchestra while acknowledging the 250 people laid off by the film's visual effects firm, Rhythm and Hues. The theme from Jaws wasn't the best choice.
That early warning set the tone for the night. Even Hathaway and Tarantino delivered mercifully brief acceptance speeches.
If you watched the telecast and suffered, spare a thought not for the losing nominees but only for Greg P. Russell. The Skyfall sound mixer missed out on an Oscar again -- for the 16th time.
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