The 85th Annual Academy Awards

For the second time I decided to punish my body and mainly my mind by staying up all night to enjoy one of the best galas that are broadcast live on TV. Before the night itself arrived, I tried to get an idea of the movies, actors, actresses, directors and musicians who were nominated and I must say that I somehow managed to do that. Also, for probably the first time, I managed to see the winning movie before it was announced, which really helped me remember it fondly throughout the night. I must also admit that the broadcasters on HBO weren’t as annoying as last time, when they were feeding me one clever line after another. This time they stuck with purely interpreting what was being said and every now and then, they added an interesting factoid. I wasn’t really paying close attention, but I did catch Fuka saying something about Babovřesky. It’s interesting to see that even during Oscar night, they can’t stop thinking about Zdeněk Troška. But it’s true, when there were shots of the red carpet, I was interested in the interviews with the actors and actresses, but they were yapping on about something else. I didn’t care for their yapping, so I switched to the original English version and I got to listen to George Clooney talking about booze. Anyways, after the red carpet the translation got a bit better. The ceremony itself was great. It seemed to me it was alluding to last year, when The Artist was the winning movie. You see the entire night had this decent old-school atmosphere and the whole thing was treated a bit like a musical, which was definitely pretty interesting. The best part about it all was definitely Adele, who I hoped would win an Oscar and she did. The Goldfinger song, or the musical numbers by Barbra Streisand or Catherine Zeta-Jones were also pretty great. Even Seth MacFarlane himself seemed to be having a blast and I enjoyed his jokes, or the movie Flight as portrayed by puppets, or the boobs song were all pretty great bits. I was also satisfied with the results. Be it Adele, whom I have already mentioned, or the winning movie Argo or the incredible likeable and honest speech by Ang Lee – the all made me really happy. I mustn’t forget the emotional thank you speech by Ben Affleck, or the speech by Daniel Day Lewis, who is now a real legend with a total of three Oscars. I may have wanted Phoenix to win Best Actor a bit more because his acting qualities are definitely on a whole different level. I cannot shake off the feeling that, judging by his initial reaction, he wasn’t too happy about Lewis winning. God knows, it’s all speculation. Nevertheless, I must say that I had a good time even though the whole thing took a bit longer what with all the commercial breaks, I managed to survive at work the next day. And that was despite the fact that shortly after the end of the ceremony, I put my clothes on and ran to catch the bus. So hopefully, we’ll meet again next year. It was nice to see the actors in an unusual situation after a year. (02/25/2013) (less) (more)