Actually, the original Star Wars Trilogy earned 10 Oscars total (including 3 Visual Effects Oscars, like LOTR)
I’m happy for the film, but don’t count me in the orgasmically ecstatic crowd running around naked with only my hobbit-feet on.
But I am still trebly pleased that this film won because the Oscar committee has never honored a fantasy film as best picture; they have rarely honored films that rake in tons of money; they rarely honor big-budget special effects epics; and as previously stated, they rarely if ever honor a sequel. Return of the King had the odds stacked against it, especially when many people here said that, on its own, ROTK wasn’t the better film. We were hoping that the Academy would take into account the previous seven hours of film when viewing this one, which really was just the climax.
I guess it would be like watching your favorite sports team, perennial losers, finally win the championship. Fantasy and science fiction have been traditionally snubbed year after year, beginning famously with Star Wars. They usually sweep in technical awards: visual effects, sound, maybe costumes, but the Academy usually picks some tear-jerker drama or a period piece as Best Picture.
And I’m pleased that finally the books I’ve read for years and kept pretty much to myself are at last on the Big Stage.
Fish, please see my earlier posting to this thread regarding “technical awards”.
I thought it was kind of ridiculous. The film was good. Very good. But it had flaws, for sure. How the hell did it win for best song? I feel it deserved the technical awards more than Best Picture, which I would’ve given to Lost in Translation or Mystic River.
Lost in Translation was very good, but I didn’t find it anywhere in the same ballpark as RotK. LiT was the quirky, lovely work of a pretty raw talent; RotK was the climax of years of work by some of the best artists in multiple fields.
And I didn’t see Mystic River, so I cannot comment on that. But I’d be very surprised if I found it as moving as I found RotK. At this point, sexual abuse has become a cliched theme in movies; although it’s a very real tragedy in our world, the ubiquity of it in mimetic fiction has dulled its ability to affect me.
The only two awards I didn’t entirely agree with were for Best Editing (if RotK had a real fault, it was its length, and its confusing multiple endings) and for Best Song (as good as Annie Lennox’s was, the Triplets of Belleville song just amuses the hell out of me). But I’m not complaining: the victories in both these categories was plausible, and it’s fitting that this watershed work broke some sort of Oscar record, which the clean sweep enabled it to do.
I am absolutely thrilled at how the evening turned out. Jackson and Walsh and Boyens and all the others deserve every scrap of recognition they get: they poured themselves entirely into a project they loved, and we all benefit.
Daniel
The Oscar voting process can seem somewhat mysterious, but it’s actually pretty straightforward; there isn’t a committee, per se, for anything other than the foreign language and documentary categories. For everything else, nominations are made by members of the Academy in their respective fields of expertise (only directors, for instance, can nominate films for “Best Director”), whereas the winners are voted on by the entire Academy membership, nearly 6000 people. So if your favorite film doesn’t get nominated or win, blame every other rival filmmaker. 
There’s a page here that details Academy Awards voting procedures.
According to imdb, the first Star Wars movie won 6 Oscars (Art Direction, Costume, Sound, Film Editing, Visual Effects, and Music), the second won 1 Oscar (Sound), and the third none. However, the first was also given a Special Achievement Award for sound effects and the second and third each got Special Achievement Awards for visual effects. Special Achievement Awards are technically not Oscars, as they are given outside of the usual nomination procedure.
Committees also nominate the short films (live and animted), and the animated features.
The editor is not responsible for setting the length of the film. That’s the director and the producer wrangling over it. The editor is there to make sure that all the miles of film that the director shot are pieced together in a way that makes the film visually appealling. Editing LOTR was a herculean task. Each film had a different editing team.
And LOTR beat out Cold Mountain in this category, which was edited by a man whom many consider to be the best editor in the business, Walter Murch.
The best song award wasn’t that good, but since everybody heard it and associated with such pleasant memories (i.e., it was over the end credits so you could get up and go to the bathroom) that it won. But I bet a lot of voters, who probably heard the “Triplets of Belleville” song for the first time at the performance, wanted to get their ballots back.
Frankly, that song was crappy, and Annie Lennox has done way better.
However, when your competition is some scraggly blonde tart whining over Sting on the hurdy-gurdy (that’s what it was, right?), how can you not win?
Seriously. Both songs from Cold Mountain were the lyrical equivalent of elevator music. I fell asleep during the second one!
I remember remarking later during the evening that the cinematographer from ROTK must be pissed, because every member of the crew except him had won something. I was half-expecting them to announce ROTK for “best Key Grip”…
Amen to that! I’m a devoted LotR fan, but after I heard that song (and I’d never heard of the short that was nominated either - I hope it makes its way down to NZ) I thought to myself,‘y’know, 10 out of 11 Oscars isn’t so bad…’
Just logging in to say how thrilled I am that they won and won so decisively. I was also gratified by the ensemble cast win by LOTR at the Screen Actors Guild awards. I also think everyone was very classy in their acceptance. I have loved the books for decades, and while one can quibble endlessly over the films, they have seemed like a gift. I am grateful to all who worked so hard on them and believed they deserve all the $ and recognition they are getting.
Not that I know, but I suspect that there are plenty of Nerds[sup]tm[/sup] in moviedom as well as out here in the real world. They simply went down their ballots, checked everything that said “Lord of the Rings” and then went back to vote in the other categories. Exactly the way that many of the folk posting in this thread would have voted. 
Personally, I thought that “Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” was the best song. It, at least, had a melody, a chorus–those traditional sorts of things.
Don’t feel too bad for Andrew Lesnie (Cinematographer) not getting an Oscar for ROTK, he got one for FOTR. Also, TT got a Sound Editing Oscar so the trilogy got an Oscar in 13 categories. This may be everyting it qualified for except the 4 acting categories.
Brian
Hey, a few more lines of Elvish dialog, and ROTK might have qualified for Foreign Language Film (to the horror of the producers of Barbarian Invasion).
To each is own and all (I thought the songs were really pretty), but that aside, Alison Krauss a scraggly blonde tart?! Record deal at 14, 17 Grammies (the most for a woman) and a long and accomplished career so far. Elvis Costello, Sting and T Bone Burnett aren’t quite chopped liver either.
Okay, she’s actually a fairly attractive blonde tart… and I had no idea she was that accomplished a musician (in fact, I’d never even heard of her).
Still, I stand by my original contention; I just don’t understand how anyone would choose to listen to that stuff.
Oh, and let the record show that Elvis Costello is still awesome.
Some triva that may interest Benard Hill’s agent:
Only 3 movies have recieved 11 Oscars. Bernard Hill was in 2 of them.
Only 2 movies have grossed > US$1Billion worldwide. BH was in both.
Brian