By Julie Griffin
The most elegant and best Academy Awards ceremony presented yet, since the first May 16, 1929 gala honored the past, and embraced the present, the entertainment and the film clips from every single film nominated for an award, even by far presently outshines even some of the past five year presentations of the actors and the films themselves. The style of the ceremony and the perfection of each interim performance seemed so very reminiscent of the awards ceremonies of a more classical 1950's, and so nostalgic a perfection as to redesign the very essence of a better rhetoric. Naturally, Meryl Streep, the same timeless and elegant actress of Out of Africa, announced Daniel Day Lewis who won his second Oscar for Actor In A Leading Role for his portrayal of a real Lincoln. He thanked his wife, mother, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner and friends. Daniel left the stage taking the hand of Meryl Streep gracefully. Bradley Cooper, who played Patrizio "Pat Jr." Solitano, a teacher who lost everything due to a mental illness, a result of his wife cheating on him, widow and friend Tiffany played by Jennifer Lawrence comes alongside him with her desire to try out a secret dream for dance. The two end up falling in love. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor along with winner Christoph Waltz of Django Unchained and Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master, Cooper played a dynamic role as a man who eventually finds hope and true love with a girl facing the same kind of challenges. Once nominated for Winter's Bone, Lawrence won Best Actress in a leading role for her part in the film about the couple, Silver Lining Playbook. Lawrence incidentally played a surprisingly authentic role as a mentally ill woman whose husband had died. Her fall on the altar of the stage on her way to accept her eye on the prize, not the first time for one of us other women. Lawrence made a brilliant adlib, and like a saavy Olympic skater picked herself up quickly and went on to obtain the gold. She looked simply gorgeous with her white bridal-like gown, tiers of crepe gathered layers flowing behind her receptive finesse.'
Michelle Obama, First Lady of the White House congratulated all of the attendants of the film industry awards, commending each film member for a year of fantastic films and very hard work. Michelle opened a sealed envelope which announced Argo as the winner of Best Picture of the year. Jack Nicholson, although he usually plays extreme and wicked bad boy roles, actually a sophisticated and sauve personae and actor made his presence known on stage. If Director Quentin Tarantino did not win the best writing Oscar for DJango, as Best Original Screenplay, it would have seemed that the devil had scored unfairly. Especially after Life of Pi, Best Director Ang Lee looked up to the heavens and thanked the movie god for his Oscar.
As an aside, Barton Fink, a film about a writer who has as his friend and confidante, John Goodman looks upon his hotel desk stationary, which reads, A Day Or A Lifetime. Every detail for the writer is important. This is only part of why he studies the familiar peeled away paint on the ceiling of his cheap L.A. hotel room. A place where he has gone to seek the sometimes elusive quiet place with no distractions of mind or of soul to write. Old paint and 1930 linoleum, a safe old friend to the writer, as long as it does not speak during mid-thought or ask to be petted, held, fed or watered at the precise moment of the kick-in of inspiration's flow. The strangest part of the film is that the writer character named Bill seems so much like once Hollywood writer William Faulkner, so much so that the year ahead seems almost either filled with stories such as The Sound And The Fury, the end of which Johnnie Depp's Dark Shadows embodies, as the family stands around the burning mansion and prays they will endure. Perhaps this is why most fans believe a Dark Shadows II. on the uprise. And then there is Absalom, Absalom.
The Academy Award Oscar for Best Film Of The Year, a very difficult choice indeed included nominations for Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lincoln, Les Miserables, and Amour, all films which illuminate serious social problems which require great political attention for a solution. The youngest Oscar nominee ever, nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, starred as a happy-go-lucky little girl named Hushpuppy, a girl of the backlands of Louisiana in Beasts of the Southern Wild. William Neeson helped announce the nominations for Best Picture, as well as Zero Dark Thirty with Jessica Chastain. Claudio Miranda won the Oscar award for Best Cinematography for his film expertise work on Life of Pi, which also won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The recipients of the Life of Pi Oscar for that category, Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott Jacquelline, Jacqueline Durran, and Anna Kareninahe won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for Anna Karenina. Les Miserable Lisa Wescott and Julie Dartnell won the Oscar for Best Make-Up and Hairstyling.
Halle Berry opened up the 50 Years of James Bond segment of the program, and Shirley Bassie sang Goldfinger, the most likely recognized of all of the James Bond film and song. "The man who beckens you to enter his world. "But don't go in. His heart is cold. He loves only gold." And his kiss is the kiss of death. Rumor has it that Denzel Washington, Flight may play the next James Bond. Less lengthy film artists who won the Oscar, and no less than the largest creator, Shawn Christenson won his first Academy Award for Curfew, a Best Live Short Action Film. Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine won an Oscar for Documentary Short Subject, a second award, for Inocente, and the first being War Dance, which won a 2010 Emmy, a documentary film about children living in a Uganda refugee camp, by Professor Dr. Susan MacLaury of Kean University. Searching For Sugar Man, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Shortly after the Les Miserable performance, Ted made a brief appearance to announce his conversion as a born again Jewish bear, and to introduce the nominees and the winner of Best Sound, which Les Miserables, again took home with ease. Paul N. J. Otison, for his work on Dark Thirty, and Karen Baker, Skyfall both tied for the Academy Award for Sound Effects.
Amour from Austria, won the Best Foreign Language Film which Jessica Chastain, & Freedom Writers star, Erin Gruwell helped to announce. John Travolta introduced a choreography from All That Jazz, and a song from Dream Girls about the best man a girl ever had, which seemed appropriately aimed toward love. Anne Hathaway made a stunning performance of one song from Les Miserables, along with the main cast of the film about her beautiful illegitimate daughter who lives with, "An unscrupulous man and woman, the Thénardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen) and their daughter Éponine (Natalya Angel Wallace). Sending money to her daughter secretly, she heinously fired by an underhanded foreman. Fantine (Anne Hathaway) goes to work as a prostitute. Arrested for self-defense after an abusive man tries to beat her, Valjean,as chivalrous savior has her hospitalized." With her first Oscar win as Best Actress In A Supporting Role now in place, Anne Hathaway certainly deserved an award for all of her hard work on the Les Miserables set, as it seems that she truly desires that, "The misfortune in Fontaines, will be found only in stories, and not in true life." Her proclamation more stunning even than her physical beauty, she spoke as a woman who did not just play a part. She lived it. Also nominated for the Oscar award, Sally Field, (Lincoln), Anne Hathaway, (Les Miserables), Jacki Weaver, (Silver Linings Playbook), Helen Hunt, (The Sessions), and Amy Adams, (The Master).
Sandra Bullock, a woman who seems to grow more beautiful with time, among other awards won an Oscar for Best Actress as Leigh Anne Tuohy in the film, The Blind Side, a film about a woman who adopts an unwanted homeless boy, a role she plays well as philanthropist of some Louisiana interests as a giver. She presented the winner of the Oscar for Film Editing to William Goldenberg for Argo, the director of whom had no idea about the completely surprising big win ahead. Adelle appropriately sang of waiting for this moment all of her life from Skyfall, Skyfall which won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and of course singing that while only the right one may own her heart, and that being said, then that is who you want to be with until the sky falls.
Nicole Kidman said that DJango, which gave us a moral code, or in short, a morality film, also spoke of a woman who needs a hero to save her. DJango star, coined it so well. "Does a hero rise?" And the woman in question, a very sophisticated and yet humble Kerry Washington quoted as saying, "I am so proud to be a part of this film. I don't know if I've fully wrapped my head around it." But Christopher Waltz who won an Oscar for his brilliant display of acting as a good bounty hunter, as Best Supporting Actor, probably did, and that presenters Daniel Radcliffe and Christen Stewart followed up the information, and with every second of the awards ceremony, the two talented announcers preceded an exciting tempest of surprising twists and turns, just as promised. The two also announced the Oscar award winner of Best Production Designer as Rick Carter; Set Decoration: Jim Erickson on Lincoln.
Of the other categories, Salma Hayek, who starred as South American artist, Frida Kahlo in a film of the same name, helped presented just before a film clip displayed a cast of past writers and directors and producers, along with George Clooney, such as Tony Scott, Louis W. Smith, and songwriter Hal David, who said,"When a song comes into my mind, I just can't sleep." Ray Bradbury, "The ability to fantasize is the way to grow." Barbara Streisand gave a soliliquy through song of the memories of the Way We Were, more about her past on screen film marriage to actor Robert Redford, as she played his wife in the movie, The Way We Were. The highly sentimental film recorded an ingenious emotional diary of the relationship of two lovers throughout the years of their life. The honest star gave some brilliant philosophy through the lyrics of the song, in that what is too painful to remember in most relationships, people eventually forget, and in old age remember only the memories of the laughter.
Richard Gere, who gained initial fame for his role as An Officer And A Gentleman, also starring Debra Winger, while poetically calling a great musical score a breath of life, helped to present the Award for Best Musical Score went to of Life of Pi, Canadian composer, Mychael Danna which also included the victory of the win of a Golden Globe only just about a month before. Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda, daughter of 1937 screen star, Henry Fonda, most recently associated with On Golden Pond, which also starred the infamous African Queen, Audrey Hepburn, also made a brief appearance onstage. Other winners of the Oscar include Brave, the Best Animated Film, and Best Film Editing, William Goldberg for Argo.
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