Oscar Winners

Parity, Oscar Style

Writing the last piece for the year can be bittersweet. I have to put aside great films like The Fighter and The Social Network. This is the last real column discussing The King’s Speech and it’s merits as a winner. But it’s time to fully move into the 2011 films, after discussing the final awards show of the year.

Has parity entered the Oscars? We’ve talked for years about parity in the major sports leagues. This year a 7-9 team made the NFL playoffs. There have been a number of teams running with nearly the same records in the NHL and Major League Baseball. Now, parity comes to the Oscars.

The “big” winner, if you can call it that, is The King’s Speech. It took home 4 trophies including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. But it is only the “big” winner because of where the 4 awards came from.

Hard to believe, but another film took home 4 trophies the same night. Inception walked away with 4 of the awards in some of the “technical” categories. Best Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, plus Visual Effects and the coveted Cinematography award were also awarded to Inception. A film that many called the best of the year took home as many trophies as anyone.

And The Social Network, a film that I said should win Best Picture, didn’t. But that didn’t stop it from 3 of its own awards, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing.

The Fighter carried the Supporting categories with wins for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo.
Even Alice in Wonderland took home 2 awards before the evening was done.

A ceremony that saw the great Kirk Douglas steal the show. A ceremony that saw a grand experiment with James Franco and Anne Hathaway fall a little short. A ceremony that even found time for Billy Crystal and Bob Hope, was a bit underwhelming, to put it nicely.

Youth was supposed to be the theme of this show. But for a youthful audience tuned in for a special evening, the fact that The Social Network was beaten by a movie that trends to pure and simple Oscar stereotypes, was a blow. But maybe, just maybe, it will spur on the next great young stars. The King's Speech was a very good film, don't get me wrong, it just wasn't the best this year...at least according to me.

But should we be surprised that an Oscar race that never saw a true front-runner ended up split 4, 4, 3, 2, 2 in award distribution? It looks like voters spread the wealth amongst all of the films this year. Parity has come to the Oscars.