Oscar Results: Academy Spreads the Love, But ‘Argo’ Outranks Them All

Ben Affleck‘s Argo completed its Cinderella rise to the top of the heap during awards season by claiming the Oscar for Best Picture at Sunday’s 85th Annual Academy Awards. When the nominations were announced on January 10th, the glaring omission of a Best Director nod for Affleck at first seemed to kill the film’s chances of winning Best Picture. After winning nearly every major award in the interim, Argo surged ahead from underdog to frontrunner and ultimately beat out conventional favorite, Lincoln. Argo‘s feat is particularly amazing in light of the fact that it is only the fourth film in Oscar’s 85-year history to take Best Picture without a nomination for Best Director. (The most recent was Driving Miss Daisy, 23 years ago.)

Christoph Waltz is now two-for-two working with director Quentin Tarantino. After winning Best Supporting Actor Award for Inglourious Basterds three years ago, he has now again taken Best Supporting Actor for his work in Django Unchained (in a role some argue is actually a lead). Tarantino had a repeat himself, taking home Oscar gold for his Django screenplay despite losing out in the Best Director and Best Picture categories, just as he did 18 years ago with Pulp Fiction. Django Unchained is currently the highest-ranked film of 2012 on Flickchart.

The other acting categories were practically locks from the beginning, with Lincoln‘s Daniel Day-Lewis, Silver Linings Playbook‘s Jennifer Lawrence, and Les Misérables‘ Anne Hathaway bringing home the Oscars.

No one could have doubted that superstar Adele and her co-writer, Paul Epworth, would take home the gold for their epic theme to Skyfall. Despite failing to garner a Best Picture nod, the 23rd film in EON Productions’ venerable James Bond franchise represented well, with five total nominations. In a bit of a surprise, Skyfall took the Oscar for Best Sound Editing…in a tie with Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty. This tie would prove to be ZDT‘s solitary win of the night.

The awards in the categories for Best Animated Films were alternately entirely predictable, and somewhat unexpected. Paperman was practically a lock for the Oscar in the Short Film category, while Pixar’s Brave has been a very divisive film, and faced stiff competition in the Feature category. (It lost to Wreck-It Ralph by a landslide in Flickchart’s own 2nd Annual Flickcharters Choice Awards. It is the second highest-ranked in the category behind Ralph on Flickchart, though.)

As many expected, Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi easily won the award for Best Visual Effects. Its victory sadly comes in the wake of the bankruptcy of visual effects company Rhythm & Hues less than two weeks ago. (Rhythm & Hues were also nominated for their work on Snow White and the Huntsman.) Pi also took home the awards for Best Cinematography for Claudio Miranda, and Best Original Score for Mychael Danna.

One of the biggest questions raised by the impending ceremony was – with Argo seeming more and more likely to take Best Picture, and Affleck out of the running – who would win Best Director? Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee were the only two Oscar nominees who were also nominated by the Director’s Guild of America (who have now successfully predicted the Best Picture Oscar winner six years in a row), and with their films garnering 12 and 11 Oscar nominations, respectively, they seemed the most likely contenders. Ultimately, the Academy sided with what must have seemed like the greater technical achievement, awarding the prize to Ang Lee. (Perhaps it only seemed fair; Lee and Spielberg now both have two Oscars for Best Director.)

Of the Best Picture nominees, only Beasts of the Southern Wild went home completely empty-handed. No doubt, it was considered a case of the small film just getting nominated being the real prize.

You can check out all of the Oscar winners below…

…and you can rank all the nominees from the 85th Annual Academy Awards on Flickchart…

…or see how Argo stacks up against the rest of Oscar’s Best Picture winners on Flickchart’s list of the Best Academy Award Best Picture Winning Movies.

Best Picture: Argo

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables

Best Director: Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Best Original Screenplay: Django Unchained

Best Adapted Screenplay: Argo

Best Animated Feature: Brave

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour (Austria)

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi

Best Editing: Argo

Best Production Design: Lincoln

Best Costume Design: Anna Karenina

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Les Misérables

Best Original Score: Life of Pi

Best Original Song: “Skyfall” by Adele, from Skyfall

Best Sound Mixing: Les Misérables

Best Sound Editing: Skyfall & Zero Dark Thirty (tie)

Best Visual Effects: Life of Pi

Best Documentary Feature: Searching for Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short: Inocente

Best Short Film (Animated): Paperman

Best Short Film (Live Action): Curfew