The Winners of the 84th Academy Awards

Alright folks, prepare to be nonplussed. The nerdiest moment at this Oscars ceremony was probably when Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow presented an award together and if you squinted you could pretend it was Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. But it also, as TDW points out, had a moment where the Dean from Community made fun of Angelina Jolie, moments after she’d presented his Oscar for writing The Descendants.

In my Oscar wrap ups, I generally try to focus on what moments held a modicum of geeky pleasure, and comment on how well the Academy embraced genre films this time around. And while there were a few moments in the broadcast that were uplifting to some of our favorite fandoms, there were others that found themselves completely out in the cold.

The good news first: The Muppets have now secured their very first Oscar. Yup, very first. They’ve been nominated before, the last time in 1985, for The Muppets Take Manhattan‘s score, but this year Flight of the Conchords‘ Bret McKenzie took the statue home. Maybe he’ll get another for The Hobbit next year? Hugo took home five awards, most of them technical ones, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that it is based on a novel with frequent illustrated sections. The Invention of Hugo Cabret married prose with wordless pictures in a way that many book reviewers found bold, and comics fans rolled their eyes for the umpteenth time and just enjoyed the charming story.

And now the bad: Sorry, Potter fans. You were hoping for an acting nod for the epic conclusion to your beloved, years-in-the-making, movie series; and you didn’t even manage to take home a technical award. Bridesmaids, the cast of which delivered one of the funnier collaborative presentations in the show (Will Ferrell and Zach Gabaganaqagazafis also hit the spot for me), lost both of its nominations, one to Octavia Spencer, who was so endearing when she accepted that I couldn’t even be mad; and the other to Woody Allen, who didn’t even show up, so I don’t know how he expects me to forgive him. There was never a more convenient time for the Academy to choose something other than a children’s movie for Best Animated Feature, in a year where Pixar’s summer tentpole, Cars 2, didn’t even make it to the nominations. But the award went to Rango, which wasn’t bad, relatively speaking, but keeps the Academy right in that place where it considers animation to be inextricably linked to the genre of children’s fare.

Speaking of animation, probably the note that hit most sour for me in the show (or, to put it another one, the one that had me yelling at my television the most) was when Chris Rock presented the award for Best Animated film by giving a speech belittling the work of voice actors and directors. As if animation didn’t have enough trouble being considered a place for real acting work, real stories that touch and communicate just as directly as live action film, not just summer family fare cash cows that allow actors to phone in a performance and score a fat check. Perhaps Rock was making a nod to the fact that he generally stars in the mostly forgettable low end computer animated low-brow kids comedies that Dreamworks came up with when it realized it had really made enough Ice Age movies. Perhaps I’m just incensed on behalf of all the voice actors who’ve touched my childhood and adult life with their performances.

Anyway, vitriol aside, here’s the complete list of winners of the 84th Academy Awards:

• Best Picture – The Artist, Thomas Langmann, Producer
• Best Actor –  Jean Dujardin, The Artist
• Best Actress – Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
• Best Supporting Actor – Christopher Plummer, Beginners
• Best Supporting Actress – Octavia Spencer, The Help
• Best Animated Feature – Rango, Gore Verbinski
• Best Cinematography – Hugo, Robert Richardson
• Best Art Direction – Hugo, Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo
• Best Costume Design – The Artist, Mark Bridges
• Best Director – The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius
• Best Documentary Feature – Undefeated, TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Rich Middlemas
• Best Documentary Short – Saving Face, Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
• Best Editing – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
• Best Foreign Language Film – Iran, A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, director
• Best Makeup – The Iron Lady, Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland
• Best Score – The Artist, Ludovic Bource
• Best Original Song – “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets
• Best Short Animated Film – The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
• Best Short Film – The Shore, Terry George and Oorlagh George
• Best Sound Editing – Hugo, Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty
• Best Sound Mixing – Hugo, Tom Fleischman and John Midgley
• Best Visual Effects – Hugo, Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning
• Best Adapted Screenplay – The Descendants, Alexaner Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash
• Best Original Screenplay – Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

If you’d like a reminder of who was nominated against these winners, check out our Oscar nominations post right here.