-Christopher Plummer
There's nothing new about the Best Supporting Actor category being used to bestow a better-late-than-never career honour upon a respected veteran actor, but rarely is the coinciding performance of such high quality that it could have won the award on merit alone. Such was the case this year as Christopher Plummer, at 82 years young, became the oldest Oscar winner ever for his graceful, emotionally pure performance in Beginners. Given that it was such an under-seen, understated little gem of movie with no other nominations, for Plummer to do so well by it is a small, but very satisfying, miracle.
-Foreign Language curse broken
I wasn't very smart in my prediction for Best Foreign Language Film, where I skeptically laid back on the category's history of shafting the critical favourite in favour of typical Academy bait. But if ever there was a film to buck the trend, it was A Separation, legitimately the best foreign film of 2011, and of the many predictions I missed this year, its Oscar win was the one I was happiest to get wrong.
-Muppets have an Oscar!
Hard to believe in retrospect that "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie lost Best Original Song back in 1971, making it evident that the Academy might consider themselves to be just a little bit above those TV-based puppets. But even if it has to come with the asterisk of this year's dubious Best Original Song crop, it's still gratifying to see a Muppet film finally win an Oscar, and I personally was pleased to, for the first time, hear Jim Henson thanked in an Oscar speech.
-Smooth recovery from the Ratner fiasco
Brett Ratner's media fuax-pas back in November seriously threatened to become the major talking of the season, but the Academy's swift resolution (bringing on Brian Grazer as replacement producer and Billy Crystal as host) ensured that the whole messy affair soon became nothing more than a distant memory. The show they subsequently put on may not be the most special in Oscar history, but it was exactly what I'd have expected and wanted from that creative team, and not once did the proceedings feel like they were lingering in the shadow of the previous scandal. Sometimes a dose of familiar shtick really is the best remedy.
That's just about all there is left to say about this past Oscar season as far as I'm concerned. At some point in the coming months I'll start compiling some early predictions for next year. Speaking of early predictions, how well did I do predicting this year's nominees from a year back? I correctly anticipated 3/5 Best Adapted Screenplay nominees, 3/5 Best Art Direction nominees, 3/5 Best Sound Mixing nominees, 5/9 Best Picture nominees, 4/5 Best Cinematography nominees, and (if you count predicting Viola Davis in Supporting) all five Best Actress nominees! Looking forward to trying to improve that for next year!
Ta, for now.
