Oscar Nominations: Silver Playbook FTW

For no useful reason I dragged myself out of bed at 5:20 AM this morning in order to hear the Oscar nominations announced live. Well, there is a reason, but it isn’t useful: I like to hear the gasps when surprises emerge. Or the lack of gasps, like today, when Spielberg got his best director nom and not a sound came from the crowd, no murmurs, no polite applause, nothing at all. Which is kind of like my response to Lincoln, except I liked Tommy Lee Jones.

But what’s up with the Kathryn Bigelow snub? A vast, anti-woman conspiracy? Or maybe all those old white dudes in the Directors’ Branch are mad because she makes combat films that don’t feature muddy, carefully lit infantrymen slogging through Europe or Southeast Asia. Or it could be the torture thing but, c’mon, people, this is a movie! Y’all shouldn’t be letting a bunch of testy senators influence your Oscar vote.

Otherwise, good for Beasts of the Southern Wild, always a great thing when newcomers get recognized; makes you believe that the Academy can be shaken out of its torpor. And the Silver Linings Playbook sweep through all the big categories is satisfying – it’s a film that deserves attention: clever, well plotted, with actors who brought those characters to complicated life and deserve recognition for it. I am still surprised that Bradley Cooper pulled that off.

One more thing: the Academy shook up its schedule a little this time around, trying to get a jump on the Awards season momentum. They also changed to electronic voting, which had a few bugs and left some members angry and perplexed as they found the system difficult to manage. It’s possible that these changes have had an impact: the DGA nominees barely overlap with Oscar’s directors; there are also a lot of misses between the acting categories and SAG. Could be that voters were less influenced by Guild nominees, or that fewer voted because of the complications with the electronic voting switch, although Academy president Hawk Koch stated today that the new system actually encouraged more members to cast their ballots.

In any case, this is an interesting year for Oscar, and in the next six weeks prognosticators will be eagerly looking for signs of momentum among the nominees. My opinion? Free for all. None of the old rules apply.

Oscar Wrap

Can I predict ‘em, or what?  Actually there were two big surprises at the Oscars this year: Dragon Tattoo’s win for best editing (well deserved) and Meryl Streep’s Best Actress score.  Everyone’s talking about Meryl this morning, and why not, as recently as Friday the odds of picking up a trophy were trending against her.  But the Actors Branch of the Academy, which seemed, after the SAG awards, determined to make The Help cast its fave, either mellowed towards Streep or was outvoted by the other Branches, because there she was, accepting the award with all the charm and presence we would expect from our most celebrated actress.  


The return of Billy Crystal in the hosting role was pleasant, but not invigorating; Billy did what Billy does.  There were some entertaining moments – Christopher Guest’s focus group, Emma Stone’s funny and charming bit where she attempted to find ways to extend her time on stage as a presenter.  (Ben Stiller made a perfect foil.)  Angelina Jolie’s apparent effort to strike a “sexy pose” by thrusting her leg through a thigh high slit in her Versace dress wasn’t so appealing.  It’s hard to guess what the actress had in mind when she did that – reminding the crowd that she’s still the good time gal who made headlines in the nineties?  Trying to divert the spotlight from her life partner? Just trying to divert the spotlight?  Jolie seems to want to be taken seriously – she just wrote and directed a film about the Bosnian war – but this stunt might indicate that the 37 year old is not ready to grow up.  Fortunately, her little move was counter balanced by the Descendants writing team when they picked up their award; two of the three men struck the same pose as Angelina.  That was funny.


All in all, the 84th Academy Awards were not memorable.  Of the nine films nominated, only one (The Help) qualified as a hit, and hardly anyone has seen Best Picture winner The Artist.  Ratings were down, due to awards season fatigue, and general lack of interest.  Seems like the old white dudes who are responsible for Oscar Outcomes have lost step with America; maybe they should pay attention to the underlying message of last night’s show, and get out occasionally to see a movie. 

Oscar Wrap: Final Predictions

Rocky won the Oscar.

The votes are in, the accountants are counting, and the winners of the biggest show biz contest are just a few days away from glowing in the spotlight.


So who will get the prize? Well, the predictable awards are still predictable: Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) will take home the Supporting trophies; screenplay awards will go to Midnight in Paris (Original) and The Descendants (Adapted). 


Best Director looks like Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist, but there is some momentum for Scorsese and Hugo.  Not a lot of momentum, but some. Hey, it's Scorsese, all those old white dudes in the Academy love Scorsese. Some of the creative awards come down to these two films as well: Art Direction and Cinematography will probably go to Hugo, but their chances could get mowed down by an Artist juggernaut. Film Editing is leaning Artist.  In the sound categories it's Scorsese up against Spielberg (War Horse) with Scorsese predicted to pull out the win.  Spielberg, I'm sure, is honored to be nominated.  (Well, it's not him, really, it's his sound guys who are nominated but these guys take everything personally.)


The only really interesting contests are in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories.  George Clooney (Descendants) and Jean Dujardin (Artist) have been battling it out during the awards season, each of them picking up trophies, so there's no clear front runner, although the safe money is on Dujardin.  Some risk taking prognosticators are betting that Clooney and Dujardin will split the vote and Brad Pitt (Moneyball) will slip in and take the prize. Pitt might also have some sentimental momentum because he hasn't won before (nominated twice), and apparently he was quite the charmer on the awards circuit.


The actress contest comes down to Viola Davis (The Help) and Meryl Streep (Iron Lady).  Like the actors, Streep and Davis have split a lot of the early awards, but the current front runner is clearly Davis - she gave a bang up performance, the film was a box office hit, and there is a sense that the left leaning (mostly white) Academy likes the idea of giving the award to a black actress.  But there is a little awkwardness around Streep, since even though she has been nominated more times - 17! -  than any other human, she has only won twice, and it's been awhile since her name was inside the envelope. This thing could go her way.


Finally, Best Picture: any Oscarologist looking over your shoulder while you fill out your office pool ballot would tell you to check The Artist for the top prize, and that is far and away the safest choice. The only possible spoiler in this contest is the fact that there are eight other pictures in contention, enough to screw up the numbers even for an established front runner. Here's how the counting works: The Academy members are asked to rank their choices for Best Picture by preference -  this year, that'll be one through nine (this is the only category where voters rank their choices; for everything else, they check their favorite and move along).  The fine young accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers take those ballots and stack them in piles according to the number one pick.  Then they take the shortest pile and redistribute those according to the second ranked film on each ballot, and they keep on doing that, redistributing the smallest pile, until one film has fifty percent of the votes.  So it's not just who loves you best that matters, it's also who loves you second and third best.  Other contenders for the throne are The Help and Hugo, with former front runner The Descendants bringing up the dark horse rear.  The Oscars will be telecast on Sunday, February 26; the actual show begins at 5:30 but there will be televised hoopla for most of the day.