Lawrence Uncut: The Oscars

Reintroducing "Lawrence Uncut"!:

So yea, I formally introduced the "uncut" segment here on my blog a while back, but still have yet to take it into proper use. I've been having a huge load of school work to do and a lot of plans for the future to make in the past few weeks, but now that I seem to have been given a bit of spare time, I thought I'd take some time off to give you my few cents about the 86th annual Oscar ceremony, which took place last night. 

The foreign language race:

Seeing as "The Hunt" had a pretty good shot at taking home the statuette for best foreign language film last night, this probably was the category that me and my fellow Danes were the most interested in. However, for those of us who actually saw "The Great Beauty", the Italian film that actually ended up taking home the Oscar, there really wasn't much hope to find. I expressed my thoughts about the movie in this review, but to put it shortly, I personally think that Paulo Sorrentino and Italy deserved to win the award over any of the other nominees. The Hunt is a great movie and I love Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen, but the film just never reached the level of cinematic weight that The Great Beauty did. 

Honoring the screenwriters:

In terms of the awards for best adapted and original screenplay, which are the two categories that I personally look forward to the most every year, I was extremely happy to find out that "12 Years A Slave" and "Her" ended up winning, predictable as it may have been. I managed to catch a screening of "Slave" just 36 hours before the ceremony and still have yet to watch Her, but based on my admiration for both Steve McQueen and and Spike Jonze, I couldn't be any happier. I did find McQueen's first feature film "Hunger" a bit artsy-fartsy in some ways, whereas I think that "Shame", which was his second feature, is an incredible movie with an even more incredible central performance by Michael Fassbender. Jonze on the other hand has directed nothing but good movies, and I'm a huge fan of the movies he's made with Charlie Kaufmann, especially "Adaptation", which also features the last great Nicolas Cage performance. 

An acceptable compromise:

This year's Oscars are somewhat different from all the previous years in my opinion, because for the first time in recent memory, I'm actually not mad about the awards for best director and best picture being given to two different movies. Watching "Gravity" was a fantastic  experience in my opinion, especially visually, and I think that all the years of hard work and dedication that Alfonso Cuarón put into this pet-project of his was worth the best director's award. 12 Years A Slave was a very straight forward but also much more touching movie experience, and even though I don't love is as much as everyone else seems to do, I still think that its ability to tell a tough and grueling story in a sober and ruthlessly honest way makes it one of the finest movies of 2013. Its subject matter might be a little worn out by now, especially seeing as it came out relatively shortly after "Django Unchained" and "The Butler", but it still managed to add  a new perspective on a story that has been told many times before, which in and of itself is very impressive. 

Flying high on national pride:

Finally, I have to mention the fact that Denmark actually did bring one Oscar statuette home last night, in spite of The Hunt loosing out to The Great Beauty. Anders Walter's "Helium" won the award for best live action short, and even though I haven't seen the film yet, I do feel a little proud of this Danish achievement, seeing as three of the people who worked on the film went to the film college that I'll hopefully be studying at in a couple of years. How exciting!