Oscars 2011: The highlights / The winners' reaction

The 83rd Oscars are history. All in all, British talent was acknowledged yet again, thanks to both The King's Speech and Inception, which scooped 8 awards altogether. Obviously the former was the big hit of the night, winning accolades for Best Film, Best Director and Best Leading Actor, while the latter won the technical categories, namely, sound and visual effects.

Having said this, I watched - as I've usually done the last few years - the ceremony live, and I told my C1 students this morning that I got bored to death. The hosting by Anne and James was appalling. To me they lacked chemistry on stage, as he looked totally uninterested while she was overexcited and, at times, sickly sweet. Nothing to do with the good old days of the great Billy Crystal - or even the acid humor of Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes for that matter. If they were trying to appeal to a younger, hipper audience, the ceremony producers failed to do so - and with a loud crash. To make matters even worse, every odds-on favourite won the Oscar in each category across the board, so there was no space for surprises - Javier Bardem? - that might have spiced up the event a little.

Anyway, enough of my words. An image is worth a thousand of them, it's said, so down below I'm embedding a couple of CNN clips. Firstly, a quick recap of the ceremony's highlights:

Then, the reactions backstage by the joyful winners:

Do you have any comments about the much-hyped annual event? Were you surprised / disappointed by any of the prizes awarded this year? Post your thoughts here, will you?

The Road to the Oscars

As many of you probably know - and it makes me mad that I forgot to mention this in class, too many things in my head! - the 83rd Oscars are slightly over two days away, as the glamorous ceremony will be held this Sunday evening in L.A. , hosted by Anne Hathaway and James Franco.

You may also remember that Javier Bardem is nominated again, this time for the top notch award of best leading actor, no less. Yet, he doesn't seem to stand many chances - nor does Biutiful in the Foreign Language Film category - since King's Speech star Colin Firth is the odds-on favourite in all bets. It remains to be seen how many accolades the box-office hit, critically acclaimed British flick will scoop, apparently quite a few on paper ...

Anyway, I've just watched this interesting feature called "The Road to the Oscars", which I'm embedding down below courtesy of the official web oscar.go.com and I urge you to visit if only to see a wealth of film clips in original version.

I was wondering if you would also like to enter a small competition, just for the sake of fun, you know, though I can spice it up with an enticing prize, maybe a DVD or something, like I did foe the Christmas quiz, remember? The thing is that, why not, I'll email you a printable ballot containing the 24 main categories so that you can play the prediction game and see how many winners you guess right, right?

Then you would send me a message by Sunday evening - a word document, say - with your own choices, and we'll see who was more accurate in their predictions, right? Let me just say I'll be recording the ceremony live on Pro7, the German TV channel - as I've been doing for the last 6/7 years - so that you'll be able to see it too when I edit the stuff.

Fair enough, to whet your "Oscar appetite", here's the short feature I told you about at the beginning of this entry. I just loved listening to British director Kenneth Brannagh, an Oscar nominee himself in the past, with his precise, elegant English accent, appraising this year's nominees in the live action short film category. Will you hear the piece too?