Even if you were hoping for the timeliness of The Social Network to upset the staidness of The King's Speech at Sunday's 83d Annual Academy Awards, the ABC telecast provided drama until the end -- and lots of nice moments, and story angles, and even some welcome changes to carry over for next year...
Regarding the awards themselves, they were spread around rather liberally. King's Speech claimed four, all big ones: Best Picture, Actor (Colin Firth), Director (Tom Hooper) and Original Screenplay (David Seidler). Social Network got three, headed by Aaron Sorkin winning his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
As for the other major acting awards, Natalie Portman won Best Actress for Black Swan, and The Fighter claimed both Supporting Actor (Christian Bale) and Supporting Actress (Melissa Leo).
In other award categories, Inception won four (Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Visual Effects), Alice in Wonderland two (Art Direction, Costume Design), and Wolfman one (Makeup). Toy Story 3, which won for Original Song, also won as Best Animated Film.
Regarding the Oscar show itself, which was co-hosted by Anne Hathaway and James Franco, most of the best touches came last.
Instead of repeating last year's time-wasting, momentum-killing trick of bringing out a quintet of actors to toast the various Best Actress nominees, and a similar number of actresses to toast the nominated actors, this year's show relegated those duties to last year's winners.
Jeff Bridges, therefore, last year's Best Actor winner for Crazy Heart, had something nice (and sometimes funny) to say about this year's Best Actress nominees. And Sandra Bullock, last year's winner for Best Actress for The Blind Side, had something funny (and sometimes nice) to say about this year's Best Actor nominees. It's an approach that worked nicely -- and next year, I hope we'll get to see and hear how Colin Firth and Natalie Portman will handle similar duties.
I also adored Steven Spileberg's introduction to the Best Picture category. It's worth repeating, and --especially if your favorite film did not win -- worth remembering.
"In a moment," he said, "one of these 10 movies will join a list that includes On the Waterfront, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather and The Deer Hunter. The other nine," he added, his voice rising with excitement, "will join a list that includes The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, The Graduate and Raging Bull.
"Either way, congratulations. You're in very good company."
Loved it. And I found other things to love, too, including these scenes from my 2011 Oscars photo album:
When David Seidler won his first Oscar, for his decades-long labor of love King's Speech screenplay, his opening joke about his father predicting he would be "a late bloomer" was funny.
What was touching, though, was that Seidler himself, like the subject of his film, stuttered as a young man -- yet accepted his Oscar, on live TV, with a grace the King himself would have envied.
When Tom Hooper won his Oscar for directing that same film, he thanked his mother -- but for a much more specific reason than usual. She had attended, in Australia, the very first reading of The King's Speech when it was being workshopped as a play, and called her son to tell him she may have just found his next movie. Amazing.
And the moral of the story, as he explained to about a billion people worldwide: "Listen to your mother."
Luke Matheny, the NYU graduate student who won the Live Action Short Film Oscar for his God of Love short, thanked HIS mom -- "who did craft services for the film." That got a big laugh from the black-tie crowd -- as did the bushy-haired, lanky young filmmaker's opening remark, "I should have gotten a haircut."
There was a strange sort of reverse-field synergy going on when Jennifer Hudson, the American Idol singer turned Oscar-winning actress, introduced Gwyneth Paltrow, the former Oscar-winning actress who was there to sing one of the nominees for best song.
And speaking of best song, Randy Newman made me laugh, accepting his award after performing his "We Belong Together" number from Toy Story 3. It was his 20th nomination, but only his second win -- and when his acceptance speech threatened to run long, he apologized for always screeching the show to a halt, and added sarcastically, "I want to be good television so badly." This time, he was.
Good television, that is.
Other unexpected treats: After presenter Kirk Douglas hijacked the Oscars temporarily by pausing before announcing the winner and saying, "You know..." and taking a big pause, one of the next presenters, Justin Timberlake, impishly said the same thing and paused and smiled, making Mila Kunis laugh loudly. Me, too.
Co-hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway earned a split decision: Loved her, wasn't overly impressed by him. Her solo song, an attack on former Oscar host Hugh Jackman, was a belt-to-the-rafters winner.
And she was even better in the seven-minute film-parody opening, especially with her Boston accent for The Fighter and her "brown duck" costume for Black Swan.
And as a TV historian, two things made me especially warm. One was the salute to Oscar's most prolific host, Bob Hope, with accompanying clips. The other was Sorkin, whose TV work for The West Wing remains some of that medium's best screenwriting, proudly accepting an Oscar for writing The Social Network -- especially since, as he pointed out, a TV writer named Paddy Chayefsky had previously won an Oscar for another movie with Network in the title. (AS the title, actually.)
Nice nod to history, and to the past. Which reminds me of one final Oscar moment I liked this year: the annual obituary film reel, for once, was NOT interrupted by applause, which in previous years always had made that segment feel like one final, funereal popularity contest.
I don't know how producer-director Don Mischer got the live audience to sit on its hands -- but I applaud their lack of applause, and hope THAT becomes another annual Oscar tradition.