And the winner is... The Last Airbender!

Los Angeles this weekend was buzzing even more than usual with the awards ceremony seeing the great minds behind Sex and the City 2 and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender scooping most of the major prizes. At the 2011 Razzies.

This annual Hollywood event is now in its 31st year and serves as a welcome event to take the over-inflated Hollywood egos down a peg or two. For the second year running, the Twilight saga were up for a wide range of awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Actress and even Worst Entire Cast. Fortunately for them, they narrowly lost out to the winner of this year’s Worst Film in the form of The Last Airbender which also bagged M. Night Shymalan the Worst Director prize and a further win in the recently added category, Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D.

It’s becoming quite the institution in itself, where the Razzies (officially titled, the Golden Raspberry Awards) offers a proper opportunity to name and shame some of the worst stuff that comes out of Hollywood. Since its founding in 1981, it’s attracted an increasing amount of attention, with last year seeing Sandra Bullock accepting her Worst Actress award for the dismal All About Eve. This year’s winners – Ashton Kutcher for his wooden performances in the limp Killers and Valentine’s Day and the quartet of “actresses” in Sex and the City 2 collectively combining their acting abilities to qualify for Worst Actress – did not, unfortunately, demonstrate enough good sportsmanship to appear to collect their awards. As far as award’s season winners go, however, it seems pretty unanimous that The Last Airbender, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and Sex and the City 2 with nine, nine and seven nominations respectively, are 2010’s severe cinematic blunders that should not be repeated.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles on that Saturday night, the Independent Spirit Awards were being handed out to those slightly more off-beat films that may otherwise not get the recognition their deserve in the following night’s Oscar’s. Here, the Best Film, Best Director and Best Lead Actress awards all fell to those involved with Black Swan which may lose out to its bigger blockbuster competitors at the Academy. Still, Natalie Portman’s win for Black Swan may yet still be repeated at the Oscar’s, as it was for the BAFTAs; just as James Franco, who won the Spirit Award for Lead Actor in 127 Hours, may still be in with a shot at the gong.

The Spirit Awards serve more to give credit to films like Winter’s Bone – the Sundance festival winner that earnt its nominations as little more than a token “alternative” gesture from the Academy, and their wins, alongside The Kid’s Are All Right and Best First Film Get Low give a little extra credit to these lower-budget films.

How does this bode for the Oscars? With the 83rd Academy Awards’ scheduled time of 5pm PST being unconsiderately far beyond the Felix print deadline, the predictions still are as stand – David Fincher and The Social Network are tipped to be major winners, as well as a handful more wins going to The King’s Speech, Toy Story 3 and Black Swan.