Sunday, March 2, 2014

2013 POST-OSCARS ANALYSIS! "12 YEARS A SLAVE", "GRAVITY" BLANCHETT, "...HUSTLE" 0 for 10! and FRAUD AT OSCAR POLL! In-Depth Investigation of the Conspiracy to make sure my Accurate Oscar Predictions were shattered!



It is a giant shame to announce that the A.M.P.A.S. has blood on their hands this evening, after the purposely rigging the results to make sure that my predictions weren't 100% accurate. Oh, it's true; when I said that I never miss a prediction, I haven't yet. They would like you to think that the giant surprise of "Get A Horse!" losing the Animated Short Oscar to "Mr. Hublot", was just one of those litltle "Upsets". (Shakes heads.) No, no, no. I know some might not believe that, such a significant group like the Academy, would fix their most important night, just to make a local small-time blogger look humiliated for getting, the EDITING, COSTUME DESIGN, ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY, and 2 SHORT CATEGORIES wrong, just to supposedly ruin his until now, PERFECT VOTING RECORD, but of course, we all know, that's what makes their action THAT MUCH MORE DESPICABLE! So, SHAME, SHAME on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for your sickening attempts to make me disreputable. SHAME!

(LAWYER'S NOTE: David Baruffi and "David Baruffi's Entertainment Views and Reviews" doesn't make any claim to having a perfect Oscar Voting Record, nor claim any voting record for the Academy Awards, or any other award show exists. Nor do they claim that the A.M.P.A.S. has any part in any scheme or supposed scheme to rig or falsify the voting results of the Academy Awards, or any other awards for any reason, much eliminate David Baruffi's "perfect predicting record" irrelevant, eliminated or non-existent, nor do they reg/falsify any results for any reasons, much less to disrupt others prediction voting records.)

Well, the truth about the Awards will come out soon, so stay tuned as this story develops. In the meantime, the Oscars themselves, were incredible and fun. With all the Heroes of Cinema Tributes, I can't wait 'til next year when we celebrate the greatest Villains in Film or the year after when they honor the great Conscientious Objecters of Cinema, that will be great. I was Live Tweeting all Oscars, btw at @DavidBaruffi_EV, although I didn't realize that TWITTER itself had been SHUT DOWN, because everybody else stole my idea to tweet during the Oscars. You come up with something original, and suddenly everyone, huh.

(LAWYER'S NOTE: David Baruffi and David Baruffi's Entertainment Views and Reviews" makes no claim to having inventing live tweeting to any event awards or otherwise, including the Academy Awards.)

Well, the show was great, and Ellen DeGenerous was quite a good host. Funny in the beginning and really keeping a good fun vibe throughout the year. Despite the best attempts, many of the Awards did go as expected, and despite the "interference" (wink) from the Academy, I did go 19/24 for the Oscars, a good record. The only real shocks were in the Shorts categories. As expected "12 Years a Slave" took the Oscar for Best Picture, but Cuaron became the first Mexican to win the Best Director Oscar! There were a lot of first and rarities. Steve McQueen, became the first black person, (Grenadian-Brit) to direct a Best Picture winner for "12 Years a Slave". Brad Pitt got an Oscar for Producing as well. "Gravity" won seven Oscars overall, and Cuaron won both Directing and Editing. The first time someone won those categories at the same awards since James Cameron did it for "Titanic". Lupita Nyong'o winning Supporting Actress making her only the first Kenyan actress to do so. Catherine Martin, won both her Oscars tonight, for Production and Costume Design, now having done that feat, twice, after she did it for "Moulin Rouge!" previously. Cate Blanchett's win earned her her 2nd acting Oscar, for Lead Actress for "Blue Jasmine", the newest member of that club, and one of the few Aussie's to have that honor. Robert Lopez for co-writing the Award-winning "Let It Go" with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez, became the youngest EGOT Winner of all-time, having won an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Emmy in his lifetime.

Also, for the first time in years, all the Best Song nominees were performed including performances by Idina Menzel, who was great if nervous, plus Pharrel Williams, Karen O, and U2.

There were some great speeches by many of the winners, Blanchett's great speech about the popularity of female-led films and to Woody Allen for writing them was great, even if the Woody Allen reference got only a scattered, scared applause. Ellen ordering actual pizzas for the group, was a nice touch, one of the funniest and funnest bits around. Overall, this was a FUN Oscars. Nothing too dark or too breezy, blowing out Twitter, and really treating the ceremonies like it is, a nice celebratory get-together and fun party for all to enjoy. Occasional light ribbing, with one sharp joke about whether or not voting for "12 Years a Slave" was racist were funny, albeit, possibly out-of-place, but there was no real jab at the Academy, which, is good, the way it's supposed to be. The only real shock was "Get a Horse!"'s loss in Animated Short.

"Gravity" walked away with 7 Oscars overall, being the big winner, with "Dallas Buyers Club", "12 Years a Slave" winning 3 each, biggest Best Picture/Most wins split since "Cabaret" won 8 Oscars while "The Godfather" won 3 including Picture. "The Great Gatbsy"  and "Frozen" winning 2, the only ones they were nominated for, coincidently. "Her"'s Spike Jonze took the Best Original Screenplay Award, the only other film that seemed to win anything other than "Blue Jasmine".  "20 Feet from Stardom" also won in a very competitive Best Documentary race, and Rock'n'Roll Hall of Famer Darlene Love, wonderfully belted some gospel for her acceptance speech, a reminder of why we love the film ourselves. The biggest loser, "American Hustle", going 0 for 10! Last time that happened was "True Grit" a couple years ago, and that's one behind the "The Color Purple" and "The Turning Point"'s record of 0 for 11.

It's an hour afterwards and now that the results are in the book, I'm still pretty giddy over the ceremony in general, and that's a good thing. This was a great upbeat Awards for a great upbeat, positive year of films, and just like the Pharrel Williams song to open, everybody overall was "Happy". And that's the way they should be. A wonderous celebration of films where the biggest concern for that evening is the rain. The only real missteps was the "The Wizard of Oz" tribute, not that there's anything wrong with it, but it seemed arbitrary, especially since they could've celebrated 1939 in films, which was the Golden Age of cinema, and not just that one movie, that didn't win Best Picture. ("Gone with the Wind" did, which also deserves it's one celebration.) And Bette Midler's performance post the "In Memoriam", which itself, is partially disappointing, since we really don't need these extra performances to these things anyway, and just the montage of the sad names like Harold Ramis and Philip Seymour Hoffman that we lost this year, are really the appeal of those segments. Reminders of great films gone by, on screen, and of the great future and presents of the stars there tonight.

A good Oscars, for a good year. That's more than good enough, for me.

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