Archive for category: Essays

A big-winner favorite I didn’t like and a self-referential host who wasn’t funny were two of the reasons Oscar disappointed last night. As reported previously, my wife and I walked out of Birdman because we were having such a bad time. The absurdist magical-realism style never connected, and the characters, starting with Michael Keaton and climaxing with Edward Norton, were unpleasant company. The “one-take” cinematography, not any plot, was the story, and that came to feel like a gimmick. How much more did I enjoy seeing clips from the non-winners: The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, American Sniper! Aside from his adroit opening number, Neil Patrick Harris was a distraction rather than an addition. Who cared about his “Oscar predictions” in a sealed envelope or his jokes about himself? No one tuned in to see you, Neil Patrick.

Then there were other annoyances. One is baked in in this world of social-media and preliminary award shows: all the winners were known in advance. We were told that J.K. Simmons, Patricia Arquette and Julianne Moore were certain winners, and indeed they were. There was some question that Eddie Redmayne would triumph over Keaton, but he was the favorite and it held. Same for Birdman over Boyhood. Without suspense, opening the envelope is not the big deal it used to be. One mistake in production can easily be fixed: each Best Picture nominee should be given its own introduction. Apparently, with eight nominees the producers felt it would take too much time. But how discordant it was to combine American Sniper with Grand Budapest Hotel – or with any of the other nominees. Ditto for Selma, which deserved a solo moment in the sun. The best pictures are the big draw – give them more space. As for what took up too much time, look no further than the full production numbers for each Best Song nominee. None of them was particularly good, or memorable (even the winner, Glory), and did we really need to see a bunch of Legos bouncing around on stage? Another misuse of time came when the orchestra tried to usher winners off-mike in the middle of their acceptance speeches, which were the one spontaneous event of the overscripted evening. Particularly embarrassing was the music that tried to drown out one winner’s acknowledgement of her son’s suicide.

Then there is the perennial problem of the minor awards. The evening starts with a bang, the award for Best Supporting Actor (or Actress). Then we are fed a slew of categories that have little meaning and produce winners we have never heard of and don’t especially care to hear from now. For some reason, the awards for Costume Design, Sound Editing, etc., almost all go to Best Picture nominees, even though it makes no sense that these few pictures, which are chosen for their superior story, acting and directing, would also be the best in all the technical fields. And then we have to listen to the unglamorous award recipients thank their families and other insiders. All we can hope for is that they don’t embarrass themselves – and that they get off stage quickly without musical cue. For some reason, the Oscar producers also feel it imperative to add an unrelated big production number. In the old days it used to be a dance. A couple years ago it was a tribute, for no good reason, to Chicago. This year, with the excuse of a 50th anniversary, we got a two-fold tribute to The Sound of Music. It wasn’t enough to see Julie Andrews singing in clips; we got to see the tattooed Lady Gaga singing the same songs in person.

In other words, there are many easy ways to cut 30-40 minutes from the always overlong show. Or to make room to devote more airtime to the Best Picture nominees and their stars, which are the reason we tune in in the first place.

Having already given my pronouncements on the Best Picture race – for me, it should be Winter’s Bone over Black Swan, by a neck – it is time to look at the individual awards. The pundits are almost unanimous in predicting the actual winners, so I will instead give an analysis of whom I would vote for, and why, if I had a ballot.
Best Actor Jesse Eisenberg is Oscar-worthy for his compelling and quite tricky portrayal of a real live contemporary as a socially destructive inventor, someone who operates outside the social norms we require yet remains sympathetic. The performance also impresses as a stretch from the goofy, lovestruck nerd Eisenberg played so well last year in Adventureland. This is not a normal year, however, and he will be blown away by Colin Firth, who is even more dominant in his movie and carries off the acting magic of convincingly stammering the entire film. Furthermore, Firth’s performance last year, in A Single Man, far outshone Eisenberg’s, and you feel that, as the more mature actor, this is his turn to win. Finally, Colin Firth is so good-looking and articulate that you just want to see him on stage giving the acceptance speech.
[Caveat: I have not seen Javier Bardem’s movie.]
Best Actress Natalie Portman gets points for playing a tragic role, points for her physical sacrifice (losing 20 pounds to get in character), and points for performing her own “stunts,” the dance scenes. Moreover, she’s a wonderful actress, with a long string of varying roles at her early age. Black Swan is her vehicle, and she rides it to perfection. Her only challenger, according to press accounts, is Annette Bening, but her performance left me indifferent, if not cold. Jennifer Lawrence did a wonderful job, but with no body of prior work and in a film that no one saw she is not in the competition. If she had been nominated, I would be tempted to cast my vote for Anne Hathaway in Love & Other Drugs, a baring performance in every sense; but I will be content to watch her MC the broadcast.
[Caveat: I have not seen Rabbit Hole, but Nicole Kidman, however talented, is not a favorite of mine.]
Supporting Actor This is a two-man race, and it is not the two that people are talking about. First off, Geoffrey Rush has no business appearing in the “supporting” category. King’s Speech is a two-person drama, and it is, in fact, Lionel Logue’s equality with King George VI that is the crux of the movie. Rush and Firth both belong in the Best Actor category, just as Bening and Julianne Moore shared best actress nominations at the Golden Globes. Christian Bale, the odds-on favorite, gives a remarkable performance, in the style of Brando or DeNiro. But for me, his performance was distracting, not supporting. “Look at me act!,” he seemed to shout every time he was onscreen. The truly supporting performances that mesmerized me were turned in by Jeremy Renner and John Hawkes. Each added a hard, sinister edge to his movie and, rather than acting, came across as totally authentic. Neither took the spotlight away from the star – Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lawrence, respectively – but both added heft, and a touch of terror, to the screen worlds they inhabited. If I had to choose? I couldn’t.
Supporting Actress Here again I will go with the consensus: Melissa Leo performed a similar service to The Fighter that Renner and Hawkes did to their films. As touching as Leo was in Frozen River, she was that tough here. Amy Adams, one of my favorites, held her own in arguably a more nuanced role, but it was Leo who set the appropriate tone; if Mark Wahlberg was too bland and Bale too showy, Leo was the anchor, the perfect bridge between the Hollywood actors and the common folk of Lowell. As for Hailee Steinfeld, she has apparently been nominated in the Supporting category because of her age and inexperience. By any measure – dialogue, screentime, narrative pivot – she is the lead performer in True Grit, far more essential than Jeff Bridges, who was somehow nominated in the Leading Actor group.
[Caveat: I have not seen Jacki Weaver. I should also add props to Leslie Manville, although again if she is a “supporting” actor, one wonders who the lead is. That is the dilemma of a true ensemble piece like Another Year.]
I know nothing about the non-acting awards, but it seems neither do other voters, who tend to cast ballots for whichever film they liked the most. So, among my choices would be:
Adapted Screenplay – The Social Network
Original Screenplay – The King’s Speech
Documentary Feature – Exit Through the Gift Shop
Film Editing – The Fighter
Sound Editing – Inception

No real surprises among this year’s Oscar winners, although Time’s prediction sheet managed 12 wrong, to 12 right. What dawned on me, however, as it must have before, is how much the Oscars are little more than a popularity contest, rather than a recognition of technical talent. I’m not referring to Sandra Bullock’s win over Meryl Streep’s far more amazing performance; instead, I’m looking at the secondary awards, things like sound mixing.
Now, I am no cinema expert and am in no position to judge films on technical merit; but surely there must be films that aren’t particularly “good” that nevertheless are blessed with extraordinary cinematography or sound editing. But it so happens that of the five nominees for sound editing, all five were also best picture nominees. And we all know that it was not the sound editing that got them included on the best picture list! The situation is not so extreme, but close to it, for all the other categories that apply to every movie released last year, with the exception of makeup (more on that in a minute).
Every movie would seemingly qualify for the awards in art direction, cinematography, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and, for most, original screenplay. But guess what: Hurt Locker, which happened to win best picture and director, won in four of those six, and presumptive runnerup Avatar won the other two. Now, I felt all along that Hurt Locker was the best American movie of the year, but on its “low budget,” could it really have had the best sound? In other words, if you’re a technical genius but your movie is not one of the two or three favorites of the Academy crowd, you can forget winning an Oscar.
There are two more categories I have omitted that also apply to every film but whose nominations don’t mirror the best picture: costume design and makeup. I exclude the former because, while every movie has costumes, this category is clearly aimed at “costume dramas,” movies employing out-of-the-ordinary clothing, like this year’s winner, The Young Victoria, or even movies about clothing, like Coco Before Chanel. One could almost say the same for makeup, citing the winning Star Trek, where the makeup created alien races. But the makeup in the other nominees, Il Divo and The Young Victoria, was no more extreme than that found in many other flicks – yet the Academy, for this category alone among the 24, offered only three nominations. Maybe for this award they really voted for best makeup, not best picture.