The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King swept the Oscars last night, winning in all 11 categories it was nominated in, including best picture and best director for Peter Jackson. I’m ecstatic that the film did so well, especially considering the previous two in the trilogy (The Fellowship Of The Ring and The Two Towers) only won minor awards. As I’ve written previously, J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels are some of my favorites of all time, and I was quite worried that Peter Jackson would ruin them for me. However, on the whole I don’t think anyone else could have done them justice, and I am very glad that the Academy saw fit to bestow its highest honor on his epic work. Here is a complete list of winners as well as the nominees.
I didn’t see too many other films in the running for best picture and other categories, but I really enjoyed Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. The movie was nominated for best picture, and Coppola was nominated for best director, the first American female to receive that honor. Although she lost the best director Oscar to Peter Jackson, I was glad to see that she won for best screenplay. I was really rooting for Bill Murray to win best actor for his role in Lost In Translation, but I guess it wasn’t his year (again) :-(. Since I didn’t see Mystic River, I can’t evaluate whether Sean Penn deserved the win over Bill Murray or not, although the consensus from many people I’ve talked to and articles I’ve read is that his role was definitely worthy of the honor. The film is on my short list on Netflix once it comes out on DVD, although if you could see how long my queue is there, you’d know that “short list” is a relative term… 😉
