2013 Oscar Winners and Reactions

The 85th Academy Awards have come and gone, and this year featured many surprises and a disappointment here and there(at least for me).  The overall show was pretty good; Seth MacFarlane did a great job hosting and actually managed to hold back but still stay true to his brand of comedy.  The show itself was quite a success, with the exception of a pointless appearance by Michelle Obama. Now onto the awards themselves.

Best Picture:
Winner: Argo
I don't want to say this was a surprise, but in some ways, it was.  Argo didn't win any of the other Big Five awards and wasn't even nominated for Best Director.  Despite this, it managed to take home the grand prize as the Academy's best movie of the year.

Best Director:
Winner: Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Probably the biggest curve-ball of the awards, I don't think many people expected Ang Lee to beat out Steven Spielberg for Best Director.  Ang Lee has had quite a diverse career and hopefully this will get him more recognition in America and have him be known for more than that terrible first Hulk movie.

Best Actor:
Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln
No surprise here.  Presenter Meryl Streep didn't even have to open the envelope for this award.  I really liked the fact that despite all of the praise surrounding Day-Lewis' performance, he still sounded very humbled in his acceptance speech.

Best Actress:
Winner: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook
The second biggest surprise of the night, Jennifer Lawrence has made quite a name for herself in this past year alone.  Hopefully, this Oscar will give her an extra boost in the future of her career.

Best Supporting Actor:
Winner: Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained
A big and much needed win for Christoph Waltz.  Hopefully he'll be able to get some better roles outside of Quentin Tarantino films following this award.

Best Supporting Actress:
Winner: Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables
Again, no surprise on this one.  Anne Hathaway picked up yet another award for her excellent performance as Fantine in Les Miserables.

Best Cinematography:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Editing:
Winner: Argo

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Winner: Argo

Best Original Screenplay:
Winner: Django Unchained

Best Foreign Language Film:
Winner: Amour

Best Animated Feature:
Winner: Brave
This is the only winner that I'm actually upset about.  Don't get me wrong, I liked Brave(I even own it), I just thought that the other nominees were much more deserving.  Wreck-It-Ralph and Frankenweenie had more creativity and originality in them than Brave did.  Brave was just put together using pieces of many other, and better, Disney movies.  Again, I liked Brave, it just didn't deserve to win in my opinion.

Best Documentary Feature:
Winner: Searching for Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short:
Winner: Inocente

Best Costume Design:
Winner: Anna Karenina

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Production Design:
Winner: Lincoln

Best Original Score:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Original Song:
Winner: "Skyfall" from Skyfall

Best Animated Short Film:
Winner: Paperman

Best Live Action Short Film:
Winner: Curfew

Best Sound Editing:
Winner: Tie between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty

Best Sound Mixing:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Visual Effects:
Winner: Life of Pi
This would be kind of expected from a movie people are hailing as "the next Avatar".

In the end, while Argo may have won the big award, Life of Pi swept the show, picking up four awards.  Argo and Les Miserables followed with three awards each.  Lincoln, Django Unchained, and Skyfall all took home two awards each.  Bringing up the rear was Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, and Zero Dark Thirty each taking a single award.  The 2013 Oscars were much better than last year's with many more surprises than I was expecting.  I'd say it's time to look forward to the movies for next year's show, but with the movies that are out right now we may have to wait a little while.  In the meantime, I've got some catching up to do with these movies.