And the Winner Is . . .

This year's Oscar winners:

Best Picture: The Artist
Actor in a Leading Role: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Actress in a Leading Role: Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Actor in a Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
Actress in a Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer (The Help)




Animated Feature Film: Rango
Cinematography: Hugo
Art Direction: Hugo
Costume Design: The Artist
Directing: The Artist
Documentary Feature: Undefeated
Documentary Short: Saving Face
Film Editing: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Foreign Language Film: A Separation (Iran)
Makeup: The Iron Lady
Music (Original Score): The Artist
Music (Original Song): "Man or Muppet" (The Muppets)
Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore
Short Film (Live Action): The Shore
Sound Editing: Hugo
Sound Mixing: Hugo
Visual Effects: Hugo
Writing (Adapted Screenplay): The Descendants
Writing (Original Screenplay): Midnight in Paris

While I have no ill will towards Hugo which was a great little movie I was dismayed to see that Harry Potter was missing from any of the awards and in fact from most of the nominations. In fact the final film received only three nominations, all in technical areas. I was shocked when the nominations came out that it didn't receive a nomination for Best Picture, Lead Actor or even Adapted Screenplay even though in my eyes it was as good in all three areas as the nominated films and players. An actress in a bawdy comedy like Bridemaids gets a nod but Emma Watson who has acted the same character for 8 films with skill unseen even in some actresses twice and three times her age is ignored. It seems almost like the Academy was so sure that everyone would assume they were voting for Potter because it hadn't won in 8 films that they knee jerk decided to ignore it and avoid any rumors of some kind of bias. Or perhaps like the fervor over the NYT bestsellers lists, the Academy didn't want to insult anyone by saying that a silly little kid's movie is better than a 'real' film.