Academy Awards 2006

Surprise is the name of the game and some surprise winners at the recent Academy Awards served to shake up a rather staid and dull evening.

Everyone expected Brokeback Mountain to sweep the Awards. But somewhere between nominations and the handing out of the awards, a shakeup took place. Brokeback Mountain wound up winning none of the acting awards, and it won very few of the craft and technical prizes. At the end of the night, Brokeback Mountain had won only three Oscars--Best Director, Best Music Score and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Three other films also won three Awards each. Crash was the surprise winner of Best Picture. No one really expected a film that was in the theatres early in the year and had been available on DVD for months, would win the top prize. But it was the best film of 2005 and wound up being recognized as that. It also took the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha cleaned up in the technical and craft areas, winning three awards each. King Kong won for Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Visual Effects, while Memoirs of a Geisha won for Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design.

The rest of the awards were spread out amongst the other contenders. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the acting prize for a terrific performance as Truman Capote and Reese Witherspoon received hers for learning how to sing like June Carter in Walk The Line. George Clooney surprised a lot of people by winning the Supporting Acting Oscar for his role in Syriana and Rachel Weisz was rewarded for her great work in The Constant Gardner.

Other winners included Wallace & Gromit In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as Best Animation feature, and The March of the Penguins received the prize as Best Documentary feature. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was chosen for Best Makeup, while It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp, from Hustle & Flow was Best Song.

I don't understand that last one, but the quality of songs must have been poor this past year. Only three songs were nominated and one of these didn't even sound like a song to me.

Tsotsi was also a bit of a surprise as Best Foreign Language Film. I had seen three of the nominees, but not that one, and I was sure that either Paradise Now or Sophie Scholl would win. You just never know.

So except for a couple of shorts, those were the results. Nothing too exciting happened. The show even finished on time. Not even the women's dresses created any excitement. That was a major disappointment.

So it's back to the drawing boards and we'll see what 2006 will bring.

Prime

Terrific romantic comedy that pairs sexy Uma Thurman and young stud Bryan Greenberg as the perfect mismatched couple. Rafi is a 37-year old divorcee who meets and falls for a 23-year old painter by the name of David. But David is also the son of Rafi's therapist, although she doesn't know this. Things move smoothly until the relationship comes out into the open and then all hell breaks loose.

The film is funny but serious at the same time, looking at difficult issues in a humorous way. And to top off the problems the lovers are forced to confront, it turns out that David is Jewish and Rafi is not. In most Hollywood films this factor would be overlooked or shunted aside. In this film, it is faced head-on.

The DVD contains lots of bonus features, including deleted scenes, outtakes and a behind the scenes featurette describing the making of Prime. Bonus features also include an audio commentary with writer-director Ben Younger and producer Jennifer Todd.

Starring: Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep, Bryan Greenberg, Jon Abrahams.

Walk The Line

One of the most entertaining films of 2005 arrived on home video and DVD recently. Walk The Line is an enjoyable film that tells the story of rock & roll and country star Johnny Cash and his long time love affair with June Carter.

The film follows Cash from his dirt-poor childhood to megastar and the performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are scintillating.

Academy Award Nominees on DVD

If the Academy Awards show wasn't too exciting, it may be because a lot of the films nominated are already out on video, or will be hitting the video stores shortly.

Those already available include:

Release dates for the other nominees have not been announced yet, but watch this column for further updates.