The Oscars, formally known as the 85th Academy Awards, will be held tonight and I for one am very excited. The show is going to be hosted by Seth MacFarlane who, if the nominations announcement was anything to go by, will be hilarious. He discussed Amour being a better collaboration between Austria and Germany than their last co-production, Hitler. Having the guts to make such a comment in a room full of Hollywood Jews, you have to give him props. I loved the banter between him and Emma Stone and I think he had a good mix of satirical humour without crossing the line too far. If Family Guy and Ted are any indication he is no stranger from making fun of celebrities and movies so I am looking forward to him hosting tonight.
I will be staying up till the early hours to watch it and my brothers and myself as usual have predicted who we think will win. After the ceremony has aired I will update the post with the winners and we can see how many we got correct. I think that everyone will be surprised if Argo does not take home Best Picture and if Daniel Day-Lewis does not get another Best Actor Oscar. That said I think the Best Actress is more open than usual with the two main contenders being Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence with Emmanuelle Riva coming up from behind with her recent Bafta win. Personally I like all three and think they all deserve it but I have been so impressed with Jessica Chastain over the past few years and she gave everything in her performance of Maya in Zero Dark Thirty. Similarly it would be a crime if Anne Hathaway did not walk away with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar as she blew me away in Les Miserables. I'd love to see Quentin Tarantino win another Oscar as he hasn't won since Pulp Fiction and based on past award shows he looks like the front runner. A less likely desire of mine to come true is for John Williams to win again for Best Original Score but come on the man is a genius and has given us such iconic film music, there is a reason why he was nominated almost every single year in the 70s and 80s.
I do find it sad that all the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty has taken the steam out of its Oscar hopes. When the film was first released it was being praised and winning all sort of critic awards then the controversy regarding the scenes of torture have made it virtually impossible for it to be another success for Kathryn Bigelow at this years Oscars. Having seen the film I do not really understand what the big deal is as I have seen more shocking scenes in other movies. That said, the torture scenes are hard to watch and horrifying, as they should be, as torture is horrifying and therefore filmic representations of torture should reflect that. I do not pretend to know much about American politics regarding these issues but I do find it hypocritical for the people involved to have the nerve to condemn Bigelow. I may not know much but I am not an idiot, what do the Senators think was happening in Guantanamo Bay all those years, it was not exactly a holiday camp. I have yet to see Argo but I do wonder if the film would have had such success if all the controversy had not drowned out any hope for Zero Dark Thirty. It may not have made any difference in the long run as although I thought Zero Dark Thirty was great I did think The Hurt Locker (2008) was a better movie and Argo was Roger Ebert's film of the year. I am looking forward to seeing Argo and I am sure I will love it and if it does win it will be a well deserved victory but I do wonder if things would be different if Zero Dark Thirty had not been overcome with controversy.
Read on after the jump to check out the nominations and our predictions for who we think will take home the Oscar and be forever introduced as Academy Award Winner...
