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Tag: Academy Awards

Scattered Oscar Thoughts

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On February 25, 2008

In Film

I didn’t liveblog the Oscars because I was busy hosting an awesome Oscar party with awesome people at it. It was the most fun ever. And it only made it better that the Academy got most everything exactly right! I got 14 out of 24 categories right (that’s after I changed my Art Direction prediction from Atonement to Sweeney Todd, which was my pick anyway), and ALL the ones I really cared about won! So there were no incensed moments like last year’s Pan’s Labyrinth‘s loss. I just had to respell “incensed” about eight times with different combinations of “s” and “c” before I finally got it right. That’s embarrassing.

A few scattered thoughts.

Jon Stewart is the awesomest host ever, if only for bringing Marketa Irglova back onstage to give her acceptance speech after the music cut her off before she got to say anything. Also because he’s hilarious and didn’t get in the way very much. Also, yay Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard and Once!!!

And yay No Country for Old Men for a very deserved sweep. We were all so nervous that somehow it wouldn’t win, but then it did, and we were very pleased with the Academy for once. Though none of us are particular fans of Daniel Day-Lewis’s over-the-top acting style, his best actor win was pretty much a given, so we weren’t bothered.

Of course, I was still upset with the Foreign Film category, but not because the wrong nominee won; the right films weren’t even nominated. Of the films that were nominated, at least I predicted accurately (Oscar loves him some Holocaust stories).

I picked Julie Christie for Best Actress, but I overlooked the “pretty actress made up to be ugly” factor as well as the “playing a real-life person” factor, which should have led me to Marion Cotillard, since she did BOTH. But both actress categories were unusually strong this year, and really, any of the nominees could’ve won and I would’ve been happy. I’m glad Tilda Swinton won, even though I haven’t seen Michael Clayton, because she’s incredible and it’s about time Oscar noticed.

My beloved Diving Bell and the Butterfly didn’t win anything, though, and that makes me sad, even though I think the films that won against it (in cinematography, directing, and editing) were also deserving.

Helen Mirren wins the best-dressed award hands down. Gorgeous gown. Amy Adams is the most adorable thing in the world, and I just want to put her in my pocket and take her home. James McAvoy too. I’m in love with his accent. SWOON. My friend almost hyperventilated when Cormac McCarthy was in the audience. That was amusing. And Kristin Chenoweth! She’s so much fun. The only bad thing about Kristin Chenoweth singing is it meant Amy Adams wasn’t up there again–the Chenoweth vs. the Adams is a tough choice, though.

So in a way, it was a fairly low-key Oscar ceremony, no huge upsets (only Swinton and Cotillard were even slightly surprising, and as I said, those were both very competitive categories), but immensely satisfying.

Oscar Predictions

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On February 20, 2008

In Film

The Oscars are four days away, and I figure it’s about time I throw some predictions out there. Also, I don’t want the entire front page of the blog to be all American Idol posts, so I had to post about something else.

Best Actor

The Oscar will go to: Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s the odds-on favorite, it’s a showy performance, and Oscar loves showy performances.

My pick: not Daniel Day-Lewis. I don’t like showy performances. I haven’t seen In the Valley of Elah or Michael Clayton, so I might go with Viggo. He acts with his eyes.

Best Actress

The Oscar will go to: Julie Christie. It’s something of a close race between Christie and Marion Cotillard. I haven’t seen La Vie en Rose, but I predict the Academy will go with the classic Brit playing the Alzheimer’s patient rather than the newcomer in a French film. The Academy is nothing if not xenophobic.

My pick: Julie Christie. Xenophobia or no, Christie is simply luminous in this film. And, like I said, haven’t seen the other. I’m really glad Ellen Page got nominated, because she’s incredible, but not ready for a win yet.

Best Supporting Actor

The Oscar will go to: Javier Bardem. Another one that everyone seems fairly agreed about, though the Supporting Actor category is one in which Oscar often likes to be contrary. I think I’d put up Tom Wilkinson or Hal Holbrook for wild cards, then, even though I haven’t seen the films–often the contrarian Oscar voters pick an old guy in here.

My pick: Javier Bardem. But I haven’t seen any of the other films. My non-nominated backup would be Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood.

Best Supporting Actress

The Oscar will go to: Amy Ryan. It’s probably between her and Cate Blanchett, and I’m really not sure who will win. I’m predicting Ryan, though, because in the supporting categories Oscar likes either newcomers (Ryan’s not “new,” but she broke through in public consciousness with this role) or older performers who haven’t won before. That could give Ruby Dee an edge, but since I hadn’t heard about her at all until the nomination, she probably doesn’t have enough buzz. It could also give Ronan a boost, but I suspect she’s still too young, and that Atonement has exhausted its hype.

My pick: This category is too close for me to be willing to pick without having seen the rest of the films. Tilda Swinton in particular is usually incredible, and I’d definitely need to see Michael Clayton and I’m Not There before choosing, because my gut feeling is to give it to her or Blanchett. I have seen Gone Baby Gone, and I personally wouldn’t give it to Amy Ryan, because the performance verged on histrionic to me (partially the character, I know).

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Oscar will go to: No Country for Old Men. Although I’d think Atonement has a very good chance as well, since the book is so acclaimed. Or it could be a chance for TWBB to jump in, and I wouldn’t mind. Since I’m shutting it out everywhere else. (As you’ll probably notice, I didn’t like it very much; I’m hoping to get my January recap up soon, and then you’ll see.)

My pick: No Country for Old Men. I haven’t read the book in its entirety, but my friend who is writing her dissertation on Cormac McCarthy says that they stuck very close to the book and the things they did change made it better. That’s about as great an endorsement as an adapted screenplay could receive.

Best Original Screenplay

The Oscar will go to: Juno. I think it’s pretty much a lock at this point; it won’t win Picture, Actress, or Director, and the Academy will want to recognize it somewhere after its runaway success. Since its screenplay is the most touted thing about it, this is the obvious award for it to win.

My pick: Juno. It’s a bit too clever for its own good, but the only other one of these I’ve seen is Ratatouille. I’m curious to compare it to The Savages, though, which I suspect would give Juno a run for my vote if I had seen it.

Best Director

The Oscar will go to: Joel and Ethan Coen. Because director and picture usually go together, and I’m hoping so hard for a NCFOM win. :)

My pick: Joel and Ethan Coen. No only is NCFOM amazing, they deserve one in general. I’m really glad for Schnabel’s nomination though, and I would sort of be secretly thrilled if he won. As long is it didn’t indicate a no-win for NCFOM, of course.

Best Foreign Language Film

The Oscar will go to: The Counterfeiters. This is the only one of these films I’d even heard of before the nominations, so it’s likely to have more buzz than the others to help push it over the edge.

My pick: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. No, it’s not nominated. Which is such a total travesty that I am again boycotting the Foreign Language award. (Oh, and that’s leaving out The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which wasn’t eligible under current [stupid] Academy rules; if it were, I’d pick that with 4 Months a close second.)

Best Picture

The Oscar will go to: No Country for Old Men. There Will Be Blood had a surge of buzz a few weeks ago, but most people seem to be backing NCFOM now, which makes me very happy. Then there’s the possibility that they will split the “dark side of humanity” vote and leave room for Atonement or even Juno to pop in, but I don’t really think that will happen.

My pick: No Country for Old Men. It’s such a perfect application of cinematic filmmaking to a dark and ambiguous story.

more categories after the jump

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Time’s Richard Corliss on Critic’s Awards

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On December 15, 2007

In Film

The major film critic awards have been trickling out over the past few weeks, most of them honoring the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men and other semi-indie, art-house end of the year releases, prompting Time’s Richard Corliss to wonder “Do Film Critics Know Anything?”. Basically, he likes all the films that won, but thinks perhaps the film critics awards are an exercise in mutual affirmation of the type of films that film critics like, but that average moviegoers haven’t seen and don’t care about. And he’s afraid that the Golden Globes and Oscars are going to follow the film critics’ lead and nominate a bunch of stuff most people haven’t seen. (The Globe nominations came out last week, and he’s mostly right.)

But the Golden Globes and the Oscars, if they follow the critics’ lead, will have V.D.D. — viewer deficit disorder. Large numbers of people won’t watch shows paying tribute to movies they haven’t seen. In the old Golden Age days, most contenders for the top Oscars were popular movies that had a little art. Now they’re art films that have a little, very little, popularity. The serious movies Hollywood gives awards to in January and February are precisely the kind it avoids making for most of the year. The Oscars are largely an affirmative action program, where the industry scratches its niche. The show is a conscience soother, but not a crowd pleaser.

I guess my question is, first, so what? And second, um, so what? The Oscars have been accurate tests of cinematic quality since never; they used to be more populist, as he says, perhaps, but they’re always political. They’re always calculated. He does allow that the film critic groups should pick whatever they want to pick, but then bemoans the fact that *shocker* the rest of the awards might actually listen to critics? We might have fewer craptastic movies coming out of Hollywood if *shocker* the average moviegoer listened to critics. And if we had fewer craptastic movies coming out of Hollywood, maybe then they’d get more awards come award season. Just a thought. (He does mention critically-acclaimed popular films like Knocked Up and how they’ve gotten passed by so far this year…personally I disliked Knocked Up, so…)

Plus, I figure the more small, indie, artsy films that get honored at awards time, the more visibility they have, the more people will go see them, and then more people will learn what sort of cinematic treasures lurk outside the multiplex. (I’m being elitist. I’m sorry, I have to to counter Corliss’s rather odd populism…I like blockbusters too, but they don’t need awards–they get plenty of viewership without them.) It’s the small films that NEED critics to promote them, to bring them to a public consciousness that they won’t get from television and radio ads. And October-January (aka awards-preparation season) is the only time they get highlighted.

I don’t really understand why the Oscar show needs to be a crowd-pleaser. Is Corliss working for the network that’s airing them, trying to figure out how to get them more viewers? If people are only interested in watching the summer blockbusters they loved get awards, there are the People’s Choice Awards, the Blockbuster Awards, the Kid’s Choice Awards, and probably others. Let them watch those telecasts, and leave the Globes and the Oscars for those of us who WANT Julie Christie to win an award for so brilliantly portraying an Alzheimer’s patient (Away from Her), and who WANT the Coen brothers to finally win an Oscar for one of the most cinematically perfect films of the year (No Country for Old Men), and who WANT the innovative French animators who worked on Persepolis to win an Oscar over Pixar (who are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but they already have a bunch of little naked gold men), and who WANT festival fare to do well enough in awards season to get screentime in the areas where we live, since going to festivals isn’t what you might call feasible for a lot of us.

If you ask me, the problem isn’t that art-house films get too much attention at the end of the year awards, but that they don’t get enough attention during the rest of the year. It’s not that the awards aren’t populist enough, but that there’s such an unfortunate audience split between popular and art-house.

Academy Awards for 2006 (spoilers)

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On February 26, 2007

In Film

Okay. I was going to live-blog the Oscars last night, but then I decided not to. It was going by pretty quickly, and it was pretty much all my friends and I could do to recover from each unfathomable choice in time for the next one. Okay, to be fair, the Academy got a few right.

I’ll put the rest after a jump for spoilers’ sake.

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Rewriting the Oscars

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On February 21, 2007

In Film

Kristin Thompson gives her picks for Oscars from 1928 to now.

Rethinking the Oscars is a favorite pastime every year about this time, and Thompson’s got a lot of really good alternates. It’s interesting to note that most of her picks (up until recent years, anyway) are from directors who were either “rediscovered” by French critics of the New Wave (Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller) or came out of the New Wave tradition (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, sort of Michelangelo Antonioni), or are genre films (musicals, films noirs, westerns, thrillers), which the Academy traditionally hates and were resurrected by the New Wave critics. It just goes to show what a watershed period the New Wave was in film history. In other words, many of the films she chooses would never have been considered by the Academy, because genre films and the directors who directed them (Hitchcock and thrillers, Ford and westerns, Fuller and crime films, etc.) weren’t considered prestigious enough for the Academy. You can also see the Hollywood/foreign film disconnect, as many of her choices are from France, Italy, Japan, etc.

Anyway. I was going to post my own list, but I actually think she’s got it pretty well covered. I might keep Mrs. Miniver over The Magnificent Ambersons (but I would really need to rewatch the latter before committing to that), Casablanca, West Side Story (though she’s probably right…I just LOVE WSS), Chariots of Fire (again, because I LOVE it), Schindler’s List (Groundhog Day? Really? I like Groundhog Day, but not vs. Schindler’s List), and American Beauty. A lot of the 1970s and 1980s ones I can’t comment on, not having seen either the winning film or her alternatives. I might also keep Lawrence of Arabia because it’s gorgeous, but I have to admit that Jules et Jim is pretty excellent. I’d need a rewatch on Liberty Valance.

In addition to being a good alternative Oscar list, it’s also (obviously) a really good list for building film literacy. I’m going to go add the ones I haven’t seen to my Netflix queue. (Speaking of Netflix queues, if any of y’all have Netflix accounts, let’s be friends! faithx5 AT gmail DOT com is my associated e-mail address.)

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