Sunday Top Ten: Pet Peeves of the 2011 Oscar Season

Here's an early installment of what I hope will be a successful feature on the site this year. Didn't make sense to wait 'til May before unleashing this one. Best get this therapeutic bout of bitching out of the way early, so I can move on to some more positive thinking!

#10: Late releases
Nominees released in 2010 were terribly back-ended this year. True, this is basically the case every year, but there were so many good ones I couldn't see until February, and it just made the awards-watching season all the more hectic.

#9: The King's Speech marketing
Oh, that Harvey Weinstein. This is the third season in a row his Best Picture pony has irked me by its mere inclusion in the lineup. Granted, The King's Speech is far better than Inglourious Basterds and The Reader, but the type of advertising campaign it got was way beneath it, from that lame, poorly photoshopped poster to this hammy trailer that "reminds us we're all human".

#8: Dull show
I was so miffed by the 2010 Oscarcast that both it and its producer Adam Shankman soared to the top of last year's list of seasonal pestilences. But that didn't give this year's show a free ticket, and indeed, producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer managed to disappoint. Some of the blame could be laid on the predictability of the winners, but lazy writing, poor hosting, and a severe lack of focus ensured that this year's Oscars were a snooze.

#7: Spousal snubs
In a year that saw some terrific tandem acting from performers playing husband and wife (or wife and wife), it was such a shame that only one half of each whole was represented by the nominations. Julianne Moore was sidelined all season long (save for the Golden Globes) in favour of her Kids Are All Right costar Annette Bening, Aaron Eckhart gained no traction whatsoever despite giving a gut-wrenching performance opposite Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, and Blue Valentine's Ryan Gosling was tragically left out of the Best Actor race while Michelle Williams eked into Best Actress. There's just not enough room for all the greatness.

#6: Lee Smith snub

There's one every year. Two years ago it was the rude exclusion of Bruce Springsteen's “The Wrestler” from Best Original Song, last year it was the unjustifiable omission of District 9 from Best Makeup, and this year it was the unfathomable snub by the editors branch of Lee Smith for arguably the finest film editing achievement of 2010, Inception. What can I say? It's nothing less than a complete and utter embarrassment.

#5: The Social Network vs The King's Speech, offline
I tell ya, it's kind of uncomfortable sitting down to Christmas dinner with your entire extended family and being the only person at the table who didn't LOVE The King's Speech. I liked it, sure, and yet nearly everyone I've talked about it with has accused me of damning it with faint praise, simply because I wasn't as over-the-moon as they were. Conversely, being the only person around the water cooler who thought The Social Network was the year's best movie made it an awfully lonely season out in the real world.

#4: The Social Network vs The King's Speech, online
Normally, I take comfort in the fact that if my regular human contacts don't share the same taste in cinema as me, at least there's an enormous community of film aficionados on the Internet with whom I can commiserate in The Social Network ultimately falling short to The King's Speech. And yet, what I found online was far uglier and more oppressive than the one-sided but polite discussions that vexed me offline. Depending on who you read, you may have avoided some of it, but the noise of Social Network fans cruelly and unfairly besmirching The King's Speech was still deafening.

#3: Melissa Leo

One of the season's biggest talking points by far. Some people found her crazy award show antics endearingly eccentric, and that's their right. Just like it's my right to find them vain and tacky. From her self-centred acceptance speeches to her gaudy personal ad campaign to her accidentally-on-purpose use of the dreaded F-word on Oscar's stage, to me, it all reeked of arrogance. And to be honest, I thought the performance was good – not Oscar-good. Costar Amy Adams would have made a much more deserving and welcome winner.

#2: Alice in Wonderland
Somebody shoot me in the head. I hated this movie as soon as it hit the 30-minute mark when I first saw it last March. I wrote a quick pan and prayed that I wouldn't have to write about it for the rest of the year. Apparently, that was too much to ask. Its overcooked, uncoordinated, domineering, in-your-face design elements had no problem coasting through the season by sheer “virtue” of their retina-battering conspicuousness, eventually scooping two Oscars (a number infinitely more than it deserved), reinforcing the theory that the Academy is almost always more impressed by quantity than they are by quality.

#1: Deakins still Oscarless
Months ago, when the trailer for True Grit came out, certain bloggers boldly predicted that this would finally be Roger Deakins' year. I wanted to believe them, and I was even convinced to the point of predicting it myself after nominations, but deep down I knew their premature predictions had jinxed it. So here's a prediction for you:

Roger Deakins will NEVER win an Academy Award.

If he can't get one for the most typical of movies to win Best Cinematography, what's it going to take? The worst part is, I really want to be happy for Wally Pfister, who himself was overdue, but not by nearly as many years as Deakins. I was unable to enjoy what should have been a reason to cheer. This year's Oscar ceremony was ultimately a night I wouldn't mind forgetting, and this early catastrophe certainly set the appropriate tone.