This year's Academy Awards were both uneventful but also surprising. Uneventful, in that we were served yet another overly long, drawn-out telecast, with only a few interesting flourishes from host Chris Rock. But it was also surprising in that there were some real upsets in some of the categories.
Some were quite surprised that the film at the end of the night winning the most awards (with six wins out of 10 nominations) was the action/adventure "Mad Max: Fury Road". The film with the most nominations, "The Revenant" finished with the second most wins --three in total.
Last week, I did my annual Oscar predictions list, and expanded my guesses to include nine categories: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay and Cinematography. Of those nine, I correctly predicted six of the wins, getting three wrong -- one kind of off, but two way, WAY off!
I correctly predicted that "Spotlight" would win Best Original Screenplay. And I predicted that Adapted Screenplay would come down to a battle between "The Big Short" and "Room". "The Big Short" dig eke out a win, and I'm going to count that as a correct guess.
Also, as predicted, eight-time cinematography nominee Emmanuel Lubezki did indeed secure his third consecutive win for "The Revenant" following up on his success with "Gravity" and "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)".
And Alejandro G. Inarritu did make history Sunday night, becoming one of only three directors, and the first since 1950, to win back-to-back Oscars for "The Revenant" (following his win last year for "Birdman").
The easiest category to predict was Best Actor. There was little doubt that Leonardo DiCaprio would finally win an Oscar for "The Revenant". And as predicted, and to borrow a phrase from Sam Smith's Oscar-winner for Best Original Song, the "Writing's on the Wall" -- and had been for quite a while -- for Brie Larson's win for Best Actress for "Room".
The challenges came with the Supporting categories. I did say that the "Best Actress in a Supporting Role" category would be the most difficult to predict, and that the race would be between three actresses -- Alicia Vikander in "The Danish Girl", Rooney Mara in "Carol", and Kate Winslet in "Steve Jobs". They were all excellent, but I thought Winslet might have had a bit of an edge after her Golden Globe win, and especially as hers was more of a supporting actress performance, in the traditional sense; the others were much more like lead actress performances. It just seemed a bit unfair.
In any event, Vikander's win is certainly quite welcome, and capped off what was a spectacular year for the young Swedish actress. The biggest shocker of the night came in the Best Supporting Actor category. The only thing that would have been more shocking than Mark Rylance's win for "Bridge of Spies" would have been a win for Mark Ruffalo ("Spotlight").
I had predicted that sentimental favorite Sylvester Stallone ("Creed") would win over the actor who gave the best performance of all in that category, Tom Hardy ("The Revenant"). But Rylance and his subtle and subdued turn as a Soviet spy became the biggest upset of the night. I'm still in shock, actually.
And then finally, there's "Spotlight". The momentum for this based-on-a-true-story account of the journalists who exposed a massive scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston had been building over the past few weeks. It had some major wins of late, including the Screen Actors Guild and Critics' Choice Awards. And while I think it is a decent movie, it in no way packed the cinematic punch of "The Revenant" or "Room".
But it is a politically correct choice, and a very important movie in the big scheme of things. As I said before in my review of the film, "Spotlight" is definitely a movie that needs to be seen. So while I'm not entirely enthused about some of the choices, I must give the Academy Awards kudos for not being entirely predictable.
o Dwight Strachan is the host/producer of " Morning Blend" on Guardian Radio. He is a television producer and writer, and an avid TV history and film buff. Email dwight@nasguard.com and follow him on twitter @morningblend969.
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