Awards season has come to an end, the silent movie won it all – and for the first time in the three years I've been doing this for TheWrap, the movie that I predicted would win Best Picture in late August or early September did not win.
Of course, I hadn't seen "The Descendants" at the time I called it for the win, which might be an excuse – except that I had seen "The Artist," which I thought was thoroughly charming, but too light to actually be named Best Picture.
Wrong. With backing from the Weinstein Co. campaign machine, "The Artist" moved from improbable to inevitable in short order.
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Meanwhile, a rough and crazy awards season swirled around it. Things went nuts the week that Oscar producer Brett Ratner self-destructed, and stayed that way because of relaxed Oscar campaign regulations that opened the floodgates to parties until nominations were announced.
And the season's final weeks felt endless, a monthlong slog to a preordained result.
Along the way, though, the 2011-12 awards season provided some moments to remember. Here are 10 of them, in no particular order.
1. Nine is the new five, or 10
A new system of determining Best Picture nominations went into effect last summer, promising to result in anywhere between five and 10 nominees. It ended up delivering nine, more than most Oscar-watchers were predicting.
The new rules also overhauled the way votes are counted, and created a system in which a voter's second, third or fourth choices came into play far less frequently than in the past.
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The change created an air of uncertainty that dominated the conversation in weeks leading up to the nominations, but it also brought a messiness to the process – and I don't think most of those who participated in or watched things unfold felt that the messiness was worth the added suspense, or the chance for "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" to squeeze into the field.
While I thought the 2009 move to 10 nominees worked pretty well, there's something elegant, simple and right about a field of five. It's probably time to quit experimenting and go back to the classic Oscar handful.
2. Gary Oldman, happy campaigner
The famously intense actor, who somewhat astonishingly had never even been nominated before, seemed like the last person to embrace the rigors of non-stop interviews, Q&A screenings and Grip 'n' Grin receptions that make up the Oscar campaign circuit. But Oldman was omnipresent during the season, and unflaggingly affable even when he was considered a longshot to be nominated for his subtle performance in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."
