But in my post-show gloom, I decided to ramp up my usual comparative analysis of the present year's ceremony to a past year's ceremony. And boy do I have quite the comparison for this year...
Oddly enough, it's the year I was born: 1988.
(Side note: The 61st Academy Awards saw the introduction of the classic phrase "And the Oscar goes to...")
The King's Speech and Inception both tallied 4 wins this year. In 1988, Rain Man and Who Framed Roger Rabbit both garnered 4 wins.
The King's Speech and Rain Man won the same 4 categories! Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay.
Inception and Who Framed Roger Rabbit triumphed in the technical awards (both won awards for sound and visual effects).
Inception and Who Framed Roger Rabbit were the commercial favorites, capturing the adoration of national audiences. (Of course, Rain Man and The King's Speech also eclipsed the $100 million mark at the domestic box office.) Both films are gamechangers in story-telling. The King's Speech and Rain Man were fairly straightforward movies.
Hoffman's character in Rain Man suffers from a restrictive/repetitive behavioral impediment. Colin Firth's character in The King's Speech is no different.
The Social Network and Dangerous Liaisons both won 3 Oscars. Both were nominated for Best Picture, and both won the Best Adapted Screenplay award. Both are tales of sexual seduction; one is set in Pre-Revolution France and the other set around Facebook. Click this now.
Natalie Portman just won her first Best Actress Oscar at the age of 29. Her breakthrough role was at the age of 13, playing a 12 year-old girl with an uncomfortably awkward relationship with a much older man. (Roger Ebert questioned the film's "would-be sexy portrayal of a pre-teenage girl.")
Jodie Foster won her first Best Actress Oscar at the age of 26. Her breakthrough role was at the age of 13, playing a 12 year-old girl with an uncomfortably awkward relationship with much older men. (She played a child prostitute.)
Their Oscar-winning roles involved controversial sexual topics.
Christian Bale and Kevin Kline won Best Supporting Actor Oscars. Both were both middle-aged (36 for Bale and 41 for Kline) and in the middle of very successful acting careers at the time of their wins. Unlike Bale's triumph, Kline's victory was considered an upset.
Hans Zimmer was nominated in both years, for Rain Man and Inception. He lost both times.
A Tim Burton film won the Academy Award for Best Makeup: Beetlejuice (1988) and Alice in Wonderland (2010).
Finally, the 1988 and 2010 winners of Best Foreign Language Film came from Denmark (Pelle the Conqueror and In a Better World).
And you probably thought I was reading too much into all of this...
