2010 Academy Awards

Aaah, time again for Hollywood’s annual back slapping contest. On the back of declining ratings hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway were drafted in to help attract a ‘younger, trendier audience', and two better looking people you couldn’t wish to meet. Fortunately both are also very funny, and extremely talented. Franco’s dry, sardonic humour was balanced nicely by Hathaway’s bubbly charm, and together they brought some comic gold to the stage – Franco’s announcing the technical awards winners with the line ‘congratulations nerds’ being a highlight. However the constant advertisement breaks (four within half an hour at one point) meant they weren’t quite able to get a good rhythm going

The presenters also provided more than a few laughs; Justin Timberlake proclaiming to be Banksy, Jude Law mocking Robert Downey Jnr’s 2001 arrest and Cate Blanchett’s reacting to the Wolfman creature transformation, calling it ‘gross’ (or maybe she was talking about the fact that the Wolfman won an Oscar, whereas Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club and Blade Runner between them have none). The award for best presenter of the night has to go to ninety year old Kirk Douglas though. You could only make out every third word he was saying but it was enough to understand he was hitting on anything in a skirt, berating Hugh Jackman and basically hogging the stage, even during Melissa Leo’s acceptance speech

Speaking of Melissa Leo, probably the most talked about moment of the night came from the The Fighter’s matriarch when she deservedly picked up Best Supporting Actress. Shocked, or doing a very good job of pretending to be shocked (she campaigned hard in the run up to the awards), she blurted out the F word live on television in front of a billion people. Twas fucking genius, her profile has been raised a thousandfold. Really something you’d expect from Christian Bale, who got through his equally deserved acceptance speech rather gracefully. He surprisingly became a little teary, and then appeared to forget his wife’s name whilst thanking her

Bizarrely, Marouane Fellaini appeared to win an Oscar for Best Short Film. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor won for his brilliant score for The Social Network, and Randy Newman won his second Oscar on his twentieth nomination for his song ‘We Belong Together’ from Toy Story 3 (which also bagged Best Animated Movie), despite a strong challenge and a haunting performance from AR Rahman and Florence Welch on 127 Hours ‘If I Rise’. Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t as bad as expected in her singing performance, not that you’d know it by looking at her but the girl has lungs.

The Most Talented Man In The World Aaron Sorkin won Best Adapted Screenplay for his sublime Social Network script. Outrageously, this was his first nomination. If I’d known that before I’d have gone on hunger strike and watched Bid UpTV instead. The first shock of the night (and a huge blow toy sweepstake) came when Tom Hooper edged out David Fincher as Best Director for The Kings Speech. Now I loved the Kings Speech, but Fincher’s work directorially on the Social Network was technically superior. Fincher remains one of the best directors in Hollywood never to have won an Academy Award.

It was a great night overall for the Brits. As well as Bale and Hooper’s victories, there were several winners in the technical and design sections for British talent, mainly for Inception and Alice In Wonderland. Scribe David Seidler took home Best Original Screenplay for The Kings Speech, which also, somewhat surprisingly, edged out The Social Network for the coveted Best Picture prize. Colin Firth became the most predictable (at the shortest odds in Oscar history) winner as he picked up Best Actor for his magnificent turn in The Kings Speech, and subsequently provided one of the best speeches of the night of his own. Speeches on Oscar night are always a potential banana skin for the best of them (Hanks, Berry, Paltrow spring to mind), but Firth and a heavily pregnant Natalie Portman, who won Best Actress for her disturbed swan queen in Black Swan, managed to retain their dignity whilst at the same time charming the pants off everyone in the audience. Portman somehow managed to keep her composure despite the undoubted mixture of hormones and victory, and we’ll no doubt see her back up on this stage collecting another Oscar sometime in the future

While the Oscars are a nice event and provide a chance for movie geeks such as myself to spend a night sat up ‘til 6am, eating junk food and watching the silver screens top talent schmoozing around, the awards are of course complete nonsense. Any ‘best of’ 2010 awards show that fails to recognise the work of Chris Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Andrew Garfield deserves a slap in the face, not on the back