Oscar Turns 80

So it is the 80th annual Academy Awards which survived the Writer's strike to go ahead as planned. As host Jon Stewart quipped, Oscar turning 80, automatically made him the front runner for the Republican nomination in a dig at John McCain. He also cheekily asked which "Democrat everyone was going to vote for" and noted that the last time America had a black President, an asteroid took out the Statue of Liberty (think Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact).

I worked from home in order to watch the ceremony live and it was pretty entertaining. Jon Stewart proved quite a success as a host, making some well-timed quips, though he was threatened to be upstaged by a seemingly endless sequence of video montages (something he parodied in a video montage of Hollywood's best scenes involving people waking up from bad dreams).

So the pre-Oscar favourites did well for the most part, excepting a win for Marion Coutillard for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose beating out hot favourite Julie Christie's portrayal of an alzheimer's suffer in Away from Her. Given the general trend though this is hardly surprising. In the previous 10 years (including this year), only 2 Actresses have won the Best Actress Oscar in portraying completely fictional roles (Halle Berry for Monster's Ball and Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby). The others have all gone to individuals playing real life people - Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos, Nicole Kidman (and prosthetic nose) as Virginia Woolf, Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovitch and Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena. Add in Supporting Actress wins for Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I, Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Marcia Gay Harden as the wife of Pollock in the biopic of the same name and of course Cate Blanchett's brilliant turn as Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator and the trend becomes blindingly obvious - play a real person and win an Oscar. Going by that logic however, Cate Blanchett should have won for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. She was hotly tipped to win but lost out to Tilda Swinton.

My ability to judge whether awards are deserved is limited by the fact that I didn't manage to see many of the performances. I did manage to catch all the Best Picture nominees bar There Will Be Blood (which I intend to do very soon). While I thought they were all worthy films, the one I personally enjoyed the most and favoured was Atonement. No Country for Old Men was a brilliant technical production with fantastic acting all round (particularly for Bardem, whose Oscar was very much deserved). But I guess I am inherently biased towards Atonement which was a wonderful adaptation of a brilliant novel (the same can actually be said for No Country as well). Juno was quirky, funny, moving and real; and Michael Clayton was another movie with a fine ensemble cast and excellent production values. All in all, a fine list of best picture nominees.In the end, there was general thanksgiving that the ceremony could take place at all. The big winners were the Coen brothers for scooping best adapted screenplay ("we had a big advantage - we've only ever adapted Homer and Cormac McCarthy"), director and finally best picture. It is a deserved set of honours for a wonderful body of work and for never losing their roots in independent filmaking. The famously reticent Coens lived up to the reputation - when Joel won for Best Director, he stared at the audience for at least 10 seconds, mouth agape, before saying "thank you", then when he won for Best Picture he said: "I have nothing to add to what I said just now". A fitting representation of the 80th Academy Awards - general relief and thanks that it could go ahead at all.