the Informer

Watching this year’s Academy Awards left me with an incredible sense of closure. The best movies won, the best actors won and there was nothing anyone could say about it.

The biggest shock and triumph at the awards came in the battle between “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar.” Expected to battle it out in many of the night’s biggest categories, “The Hurt Locker” made a clean sweep, capturing Best Director and Best Picture as well as technical categories in Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Best Original Screenplay.

Many of those awards included nominations for “Avatar.” The high budget movie, which now holds the all time box office record, took home just three awards in Art Direction, Cinematography and Visual Effects. Despite a profound respect for “Avatar” and its achievements in filmmaking, the better movie was “The Hurt Locker” and it was great to see the Academy honor the year’s best movie.

The two biggest letdowns in the awards portion of the show were “Inglorious Basterds” and “District 9.” Both movies were well backed in Hollywood and yet won just one Oscar (Best Supporting Actor to “Basterds”). These two underrated movies showed the wealth of good movies this year but were left without awards in the major categories.

The rest of the show had its highs and lows. Among the lows was a modern dance arrangement honoring the year’s best Original Score. While impressive in choreography, the dance was completely out of place at a show honoring movies.

Some of the night’s best moments came from slight pieces of comedy by the presenters. One of the funniest moments of the night came from Ben Stiller presenting awards dressed as a character from “Avatar,” complete with the tail. The other moment of awesome comedic grace came from Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. as they presented the writing awards. Their natural interaction on camera makes me hope that Downey will make an appearance on “30 Rock” sometime in the near future.

One letdown in the show was Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, the night’s hosts. Although their interactions and introductions were incredibly funny, there were simply not enough of them. They were on screen for a very small amount of time and with so many great jokes between them, we were left wanting more.

Here’s to the Academy Awards. Last year I ripped the show for being mundane, boring and not appealing to the general public. This year’s show was a huge improvement and nothing makes the show look better than getting the award winners right!

To read more from Harris Decker, visit his blog, The Truth About Music!!