Exactly. Colin Firth deserved to win best actor but other than that it shouldn't have won a thing.
They got a few things wrong last night I think.
How to Train your Dragon should've won best animated film over Toy Story 3.
David Fincher should hands down have gotten best director.
Best film, well probably The Social Network, but definitely not The Kings Speech.
Because the idea of Meryl Streep's arms getting longer and longer every year until she becomes a terrifying-acting-marionette-monster-thing is unappealing.
Thought Black Swan was a lot better than The King's Speech, which nearly bored me to death. Even though Black Swan was clearly trying so hard to be artsy I almost ended up watching it as a parodee of itself.
Have literally no interest in watching The Social Network. It looks really shit.
Not that many genuinely enjoyable and clever films knocking about at the moment really. Inception didn't live up to the potential it had.
I'm a sucker for originality, and watching Black Swan I felt like I was seeing a film I hadn't seen before, which automatically adds a star or two to my rating. (I've heard that Red Shoes is very similar from way back, but I haven't see it).
Not really bothered about watching Social Network either. The book was really dull. Credit to Fincher if he managed to craft a good film out of it.
The other two you said, maybe, but at least they were kinda split on the public and critics point of view...why should HTTYD remotely win when like 1 in a 1000 people who rank it over Toy Story 3, which an awful lot of people think is the best animation ever, yet alone just this year.
People trash the Oscars as if they are as bad as the Grammys, they are not, if it were you'd be seeing stuff like Transformers nominated. All 10 films were good this year, sure not classics, but you rarely get classic mainstream films anyway(although they were 4, yes 4 in 2007, and only 2 got nominated.)
I found the kings speech quite enjoyable. Probably not worthy of best film, but I haven't seen a lot of films this past year that I'd call great. I thought Firth was worthy of best actor and I thought Bale deseved his best supporting actor award, as he was very good in The Fighter.
The other two you said, maybe, but at least they were kinda split on the public and critics point of view...why should HTTYD remotely win when like 1 in a 1000 people who rank it over Toy Story 3, which an awful lot of people think is the best animation ever, yet alone just this year.
And I know like 100 critics who rated Toy Story 3 over that, and they're critics, so I'd, and academy voters, would value their opinion over people trying to look different being all "oh it's got unanimous praise from everywhere and everyone, so it must be overrated"
How To Train Your Dragon is a great film mind you, but Toy Story 3 is rewarded for being not only a great film, but being a very very rare great second sequel.
It's nothing to do with it "being Pixar", Cars wasn't nearly as praised, neither was Ratatoiulle(well liked, but not as much as the other recent ones)....very few film critics are 'bought' unlike in games and music.
You're really going down the critics route? Most of them are unbelievably biased and I'm pretty sure they didn't rate Toy Story any higher considering rottentomoatoes has them neck and neck.
Anyway who gives a feck, they're both top films but I prefer HTTYD.
RT is flawed in that type of a argument since say....100x100 6/10 reviews looks better than 99 x 10/10 reviews with 1 random critic giving it 1/10 say. In this case TS3 has 8.8 compared to 7.9, and in the genius imdb voted by the genius public it's 8.8 to 8.2. Which isn't really much, since well it isn't that much better than it, but it shows a clear superiority from both critics and public opinion, whereas its far closes between Social Network and Kings Speech.
Nothing wrong with critics, just filter out the internet nerds who don't actually know their film history, and they are fine, Kermode, Norman(still miss him), Ebert, Corliss, Kim Newman, pretty much all of the Sight and Sound writers, Roeper, all know their shit and are usually spot on.
He also disliked Die Hard but liked Speed 2 Cruise Control. I think he's a bit of a Hollywood sycophant. Most people could probably cobble together a list of "Greatest Movies." to be fair. It's not rocket science. Never liked Roeper either.
Kermode is pretentious, and too obsessed with The Exorcist and anything like it, but at least is actually very funny when he gets in full on rant mode. Especially if he's just watched anything with Danny Dyer in it.
But then again I like my reviews ranty and humorous. Lindy West from the Stranger is currently my favorite reviewer of things.
I went into HTTYD having heard good reviews, with a few saying it was better than Toy Story 3. I'm a big fan of the Toy Story films, as I grew up with them, but I thought HTTYD was excellent, and there were times whilst watching it that I honestly thought "this actually is better than Toy Story". But its problem is that, while it has some truely wonderful moments, it is too "cartoonish". With HTTYD you had the other young characters, who ended up being important in the final scenes, yet throughout the film there was zero real character work done into a single one of them, and they felt like they'd been created just to add in a few characters with wacky personalities. In Toy Story, even in the first film, you connected with the characters right from the start.
The other problem is that you could see the ending of HTTYD coming from a mile off, it was too obvious and standard family-film stuff. And I don't just mean how the story came to a close, happy ending and whatever, I mean the actual final scene and pretty much everything that happened in it.
Dragons and Vikings live as one, the kids are flying the dragons and everybody is happy. What a surprise.
Whereas with Toy Story, the ending was dealt with very well. I know it might be hard to look at it objectively as a fan of the series, as obviously it was meant as an emotional ending to the series, and it tugged a few heart strings, but it was just the most perfect way to end the film.
The moment in HTTYD, where he reaches out to the dragon for the first time and it touches his hand, with the delay and the music in the background, it's a beautiful scene and very well done. So is the scene where they fly with the girl, or the scene near the end just after the big fight. They built up a connection between the boy and the dragon, which is where almost all of my enjoyment in the film came from. The rest of it, with the story about the training tournament and the dragon's nest was all pretty non-relevant for me, I just cared about the boy and the dragon. Toy Story 3 had strong and interesting characters, even some of the newer ones, but it also had a story that I was interested in from start-to-finish.
