The 76th Annual Academy Awards

"Lord of the Rings - Return of the King" was NOT what won all 11 awards, now was it. EVERYBODY who made a speech in accepting an award talked about ALL the movies. So...why didn't they just hold up on the first two, not include them in those award nominations for the last two years, and then allow the whole trilogy to be nominated this year, since that is, in fact, what really won those awards. And, I, not being a fan of the books (Oh, Heavens, a heathen in our midst!!!) did not find the movies to be engrossing. After talking to so many people, including those in my own family, I truly believe that it is those people who loved the books, who loved the movies, and wanted them to win. I WAS BORED! "The Return of the King" was especially boring without the first two movies. All it was, was one computer generated graphic battle scene after another. At least in the first two you had the interesting bits with the two wizards. Personally, I would have preferred to see any of the other four pictures win, and I didn't even see all of them. And I liked "Cold Mountain" and would have liked to see that one nominated. I want a movie with a story to win. "Titanic" had a story. The movie was masterfully done, so there is no comparison to it's awards.

But hey, at least "LOTR-Return of the King" didn't have any acting nominations. Why do you think that was??? The only one that would have even deserved a nomination out of the 3rd movie was Sean Astin. I was so GLAD to see all the actors that were nominated, and the ones that did win. All the comments so far have hardly mentioned any of them in a positive light. "Mystic River" should have won Best Picture. "Lord of the Rings" should have won some specially made up award for endurance that would have applied to all three movies. I also really, really liked "Master and Commander". I learned a lot about a lot of things. Sword fighting on a small ship for instance. How you can learn from nature and apply it to warfare or anything else. And THAT movie really built a real ship to work on, and had REAL battle scenes that were not computer generated. WOW!! What a novel idea! Oh well, I guess Buster Keaton had that idea first, when he did his own real stunts off of real trains, and clock towers and all kinds of things. And that was in the "silent era" of movies. People were really clever then. NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH should the final LOTR have won all those awards for all three movies in one year, unless they had asked to be allowed to do that to begin with. Many of those technical awards should have gone to "Master and Commander", "Seabiscuit", "Pirates of the Caribbean", etc., etc. Any other year they would have. Who votes on these things anyway??? Some somebodies need to get a grip. That is all.

At least that's what host Billy Crystal said in the commercials leading up to the 76th Annual Academy Awards. On the contrary, the 2004 version of the Oscars was probably the most predictable and surprise-free show in the Academy's history. The only thing surprising about the ceremony was just how predictable it would be; in particular, the perfect 11-for-11 award night for "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." Even the awards to the actors were predictable as odds-on favorites Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Charlize Theron, and Renée Zellweger took home Oscars. If only there were any surprises like a Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, or a Johnny Depp win. Nevertheless, the standing ovation for Sean Penn was nice and respectful (even though I didn't really care for his jab at the President, but he deserves recognition for his fine film career).

Despite its monotony, I still somewhat enjoyed the ceremony. Billy Crystal was as good as ever and never lost a beat throughout the three-hour-plus event. His opening video sequence was great also, especially with controversial Michael Moore being squashed in a Lord of the Rings spoof. However, the most hysterical moment went to Will Ferrell and Jack Black as they sang "You're Boring," the unknown lyrics to the music that comes on when winners go a little long on their acceptance speech. Even director Blake Edwards added some humor in his Lifetime Achievement Award, by speeding his wheelchair through a wall and making a very nice speech about all the people that contribute to Hollywood from actors to writers to that one janitor guy!

So the three-hour event did have its moments. There was some good comedy thrown in, some nice music (not exciting music, but nice music), and at least I was able to root for at least one film in each category. Too bad I haven't seen "Return of the King" yet, or it may have been an even better night!

My IMDb Rating: 7/10

This year's Oscars were a return to normalization as far as I am concerned. The Academy at least had the dignity to "show" where it had been going wrong in the last past years and nominated a bunch of indie movies in all kinds of categories which I thought was excellent and above everything else just! Keisha Castle-Hughes may just have an incredible acting career in front of her and I was actually happy she didn't win. The acting she blessed "Whale Rider" with was simply amazing and although I haven't seen "Monster" yet I thought that at her early age an Oscar would be more of a burden than a blessing. Bill Murray was shockingly the night's sore looser which only proved that even he(who in the past weeks so repeatedly insisted he despised actors who let these kind of nominations get to them and sometimes bring out the worst in them) could make a fool of himself over an award. I love you Bill (although in my mind your performance wasn't worthy even of a nomination, let alone of you having the feeling you were robbed of any award for it) but hey, I thought it was more of an Academy's way of saying "Hey, we don't want to be the stiff and boring ones anymore, so let's nominate Johnny Depp and Bill and Diane Keaton to show people that comedy CAN win". No offense to any of them, it was just too apparent and undeserving to me to have any of these three walk up the isle that night. The person among the acting nominees I missed the most was Alison Lohman for "Matchstick Men". Her amazing performance wasn't even nominated among the supporting actresses which made annoying Renee's Oscar win even more painful to watch. Billy Crystal's return this year was quite good although I remember his opening movie clips actually being funny, hilarious even, and not just a three minute filler. But he commended himself immediately with the funny and silly songs for each of the best picture nominees. Jack Black and Will Ferrell's song also made a strong point and I hope future winners will at least try to be different and not as BOOOOORING. And I've quickly come to the end of it all, nothing left but the grand winner of the night. Perhaps to some it was worth the wait, I say it was more than deserving to pick up every single award it was nominated for. Maybe I'm being short-sighted, but in a couple of decades I still think we won't have the privilege of seeing a motion picture of such grand epic and unprecedented proportions. Next Christmas we'll be sobbing over the end of Peter Jackson's immaculately perfect depiction of Tolkien's work and none of the movies will (perhaps even in the whole of my lifetime) be quite as grand and as big as events as "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. Peter Jackson with cast and crew managed to bring back the true meaning of Blockbuster and their fantastic fantasy voyage will be passed onto generations and generations of movie-lovers without ever loosing a speck of its raw power. I was witness to true movie history in the making and mark my words, these three movies will be talked about for A very very long time so all of the haters should start thinking about moving to lonely remote islands. This years Oscars were a nice start for re-building the culture of past nominees, MAY THE BEST WIN, and not the ones that have the most money or are the most politically correct. 8/10

Is it that time of the year already? Well, sort of, they have come a month early this year in an effort to cut out the whole nasty marketing campaign that was seen in the last few years. Whether or not this was needed in the year when I suspect no amount of smouzing would have stopped Return of The King from collecting Oscars covering all three instalments.

As it was, there were almost no real surprises at all - certainly not in the main categories. Each of these were made up of two likely winners and three `the nomination is enough' type nominations (City of God, Johnny Depp, the girl from Whalerider etc). Did anyone doubt that LOTR would get Director and Best Picture? Or that Penn would get actor with Robbins the only sure fire supporting Oscar. Zellweger was not a worthy winner on this role alone but she was always going to get it and with her makeup, weight gain and performance, it was always going to be Theron. The only surprise to me that was that LOTR managed to sweep every single nomination it had.

So as an awards ceremony I didn't really find any controversy or any major talking points, but (thanks to fast forward) I did enjoy the show. Crystal is the best host the show has had in the past decade or so. He is witty, imaginative and very funny. His traditional opening of being edited into films was not quite as good or sharp as it has been before - only Michael Moore declaring the hobbit's was `shameful and fictitious' got a big laugh from me. However, his songs and his gags were all pretty good and only occasionally fell flat. `Seabiscuit' to the tune of Goldfinger was hilarious and singing `Mystic River' in the style of an old spiritual was just inspired. The show is great with him and the host is the main reason I watch it.

Everyone accepted their awards with good grace and everything was pretty clean and obvious; only Sean Penn dropped a little dig about WMD's apart from Crystal's scripted digs. Overall this was a good show despite the usual problems of it being too long and having absurdly long commercial breaks all through it. Crystal makes it worth seeing but it is a shame that the main awards were so very obvious - I tried to get a combination bet on the 5 main awards but no bookie's would allow me to do that combination and the individual odds were just a waste of time (1-16 for Jackson to be director?!). Aside from this it was a good show - but I would never watch it live, I need the fast forward!

The 2004 Academy Awards show was was pretty plain this year, with no surprise winners and this year lacked tons of nominations. The Best Picture this year went to the obvious third sequel "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" with eleven wins tying with "Ben Hur" and "Titanic". Billy Crystal was fine as the host, he usually has a good sense of humor, but this year as the Master of Ceremonies probably wasn't his greatest compared to the 1997 Oscar show. The Best Director went to Peter Jackson for "Lord of the Rings", and Sofia Coppola won the Best Screenplay award. Blake Edwards took the Lifetime Honorary Achievement Award for his long career as a comedy director. The acting awards were kind of odd, I was hoping Bill Murray would win the Best Actor Oscar for "Lost in Translation", but he lost to Sean Penn for Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River", Tim Robbins won the Supporting Actor for "Mystic River" and Renee Zellweger took the Supporting Actress award for "Cold Mountain". Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Oscar as real life serial killer Aileen Wuornios for "Monster" the film's only nomination and win. Another odd thing about the acting awards this year was the International stars that didn't win. We have New Zealand born actress Keisha Castle-Hughes for "Whale Rider". Hughes was the youngest ever nominated in the Best Actress category. Japanese actor Ken Watanabe was nominated for "The Last Samauri", African American actor Dijimon Honseu was nominated for "In America" as was English actress Samantha Morton and Iraq born actress Shohreh Aghdashloo for "The House of Sand and Fog". Other known nominees for acting included Diane Keaton for "Something's Gotta Give", Johnny Depp for "Pirates of the Caribean", Alec Baldwin for "The Cooler", Ben Kingsley for "The House of Sand and Fog" and Holly Hunter for "Thirteen". Academy President Frank Pierson did a terrific job at presenting the In Memoriam segment of the show, which was very long this year to pay tribute to the many stars that died this year. They included Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, Hope Lange, Wendy Hiller, Charles Bronson, directors Elia Kazan and John Schlesinger, Buddy Hackett, Buddy Ebsen, Art Carney, Jeanne Crain, Guy Rolfe, Ron O'Neal, Hume Cronyn, Karen Morley, Robert Stack, John Ritter, Ann Miller, Donald O'Connor, Gregory Hines, Michael Jeter and a very special memorial to screen legend Katharine Hepburn.