2010 Oscar Winners

The King’s Speech and Inception rule at the Oscars with 4 Oscars each.

Not exactly the results that I would have expected or hoped for. None of the films that were nominated got an overwhelming amount of Oscar love.

The King’s Speech with 12 nominations only won 4 Oscars but it won in all of the important categories including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay. Remember it was voted the People’s Choice award this past September at The Toronto International Film Festival. Toronto audiences again showing that they are the early predictors of the Oscar winning best film.

True Grit with 10 nominations very surprisingly won no Oscars at all. It reminded me of the year that Gangs of New York was nominated for 10 Oscars and also won nothing. But I thought that True Grit was a much better film and many predicted it would win an Oscar for Roger Deakins' Cinematography which he lost to Inception. This was his 8th nomination for Cinematography.

Inception did very well winning 4 of its 6 nominations in the technical categories of Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Cinematography.

127 Hours which got very high praise this year and is the 7th highest rated film of the year, just behind The King's Speech, but didn't win any of it's 6 nominations.
 
Black Swan which was highly critically praised, getting on to many top 10 lists and the 2nd highest rated film of the year, only won 1 of its 5 Oscar nominations, winning for Best Actress Natalie Portman.

Most surprising was The Social Network which was the number one highest critically acclaimed film of the year, winning almost every Critics Choice Award in North America and at the top of every Critics list (see previous blog post below) only won 3 of its 8 nominated Oscars, winning for Best Editing, Adapted Screenplay and Original Score. David Fincher was widely expected to win for best Director but lost to The King's Speech director Tom Hooper.

The Fighter won 2 of its 7 nominations, winning for Supporting Actor Christian Bale and Supporting Actress Melissa Leo.

Toy Story 3 also won 2 Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song “We Belong Together” by Randy Newman who has been nominated 20 times and won twice. His Uncle Alfred Newman was nominated 54 times and winning 9 Oscars including for The King and I. Randy also had one of the funniest acceptance speeches of the evening.

For a complete list of winners see side bar link to Oscar ballots 2010.

JP