[Jessica Jade]

My thoughts on the Oscars...sorry if it's a bit long <P>I watched the ENTIRE Oscar show, all for Lord of the Rings...and i'm not really disappointed in any of them, except one (or 2, but i'll get to that later) because everyone who won really deserved it.(for the most part). Everyone KNEW Beautiful Mind was going to win best picture. I didn't expect LOTR to get it, because many ppl in the Academy might be saving their votes for Return of the King in 2004. I think Ron Howard did deserve to win, because he sure did get ripped off that year with Apollo 13. (btw, he DOES look like a starved vampire! LOL) It's highly possible and likely that the Academy members are saving some nominations for the other actors when the next installments come out. I have high hopes that Elijah Wood will get nominated for Return of the King. He really deserves it. I'm sure that in '04, the voters will honor the entire trilogy and that ROTK will sweep up a lot of awards. At least, i really hope so. The down side to having 3 movies is, by the time '04 rolls around, the academy might think that LOTR is "getting old" and not give it so many nominations. It depends heavily on other things as well, like what other movies come out that year. This year, there was definitly stiff competition. Who knows what wil happen in 2 years from now? Also, another reason that more actors didn't get nominated for LOTR was maybe because there were other great people that needed to be recognized. They had to give other people a chance and not just let the LOTR actors fill up half of each category, you know. I'm glad that at least the movie got 13 noms. That's an awesome accomplishment in itself. And just think....2 more movies yet to come!!! <P>As for the awards that LOTR won....It was by far a shoo-in for Best Cinematography. If anyone else had won, i'd have been pretty darn annoyed! I'm glad it won such a well-deserved award! The best makeup was well deserved too. It's tough to portray Tolkien's vision as well as the LOTR crew did. From the hobbit feet, to the beatiful elves, to the Orcs. I was pretty suprised, though i was half expecting it, when it won for Best Soundtrack. I was so happy about that one especially, because the soundtrack matches the movie so well and brings all the emotion and characters home to you and grips your heart with emotion. The more you listen to it the better it gets. It had tough competition in that area and i'm glad they pulled through! And of course, special effects...there is definitely NO movie this year with better ones! I'm glad that LOTR won the ones that it deserved they most. <P>However, i was mad that best song when to that horrible, generic, soulless piece of crap from Monsters Inc. I mean, hell, i could write a better song than that right now if i wanted to. It was so run of the mill, and nothing speical at all- no meaning, no talent and no thought required to make a pice of redneck "music" like that. ANY other song deserved it ten times more than that one. Ugh. I think that LOTR deserved Best Adapted Screenplay sooo much more than that Beautiful Mind did. Do these people have ANY idea how incredibly difficult it is to even attempt to make a film out of Tolkien's vast, intricate, mythological Middle Earth? Peter Jackson and crew did a magnificent job and shoudl definitely have won that award. Beautiful Mind? Please. Let's not forget that they even forgot to mention in the movie that John Nash was a homosexual Jew-basher. Such key things to the biography that they left out. And yet they still win. Now, i shouldn't really judge that movie, because i haven't exactly seen it yet (I'm going Monday) but i guess that it's the year for that film, with all the hype about it. I'm sure it's a great film with a powerful message and dynamic meaning, but i'm wondering now what all the excitement is about. I shall see....<P>The fact that LOTR didn't win as many as we wanted it to, and if it does not get the honor it deserves in the next 2 Oscars, does not change the fact that it's a beautifully made work of art. People will soon forget about Beautiful Mind (because everyone didn't exactly want it to win, they just knew that it would) but no one will EVER forget the magic in Lord of the Rings. In many competitions, it's the 2nd and 3rd place winners and runner-ups that go on to have much bigger success in the end. So...cheers to LOTR. Long after Beautiful Mind is forgotten, people in years to come will still be passionate about Frodo's desperate, tragic quest and Tolkien's timeless Middle Earth.