And the Oscar Went To...

The Oscars are over. What will Nataniel R write about now over at Film Experience considering he was averaging around an ungodly 3-5 Oscars posts a day? So what did I think of the Oscars? They were okay. Some things worked, some didn't. There was a lack of drama except for one interrupted acceptance speech for best short documentary. That said, I just wanted to share a couple of random observations I made throughout the night.

• Steven Martin and Alec Baldwin are funny guys. Hopefully though, if there is ever a pair of hosts again they can have dialogue that sounds more like a routine and not an improv at Second City. The picture of them backstage in a couple's Snuggie was a huge laugh though, as was Martin's comments about writing Geoffrey Fletcher's speech.


• Not only was Neil Patrick Harris' opening song completely unglamourous and mostly unfunny, but what was with the lighting in the audience? The camera was cutting to people in the darkness as he was singing about them.


• Robert Downey Jr. could make a funeral funny. Best presenter of the night.


• Sean Penn managed to go the whole night without kicking or punching anyone but still couldn't manage a coherent introduction to the Best Actress nominees. *Update* I haven't even published this post and I'm eating my own words.


• Jeff Bridges is a rare kind of star: he dedicated his Best Actor award to his late parents, he's been in a marriage for over 30 years, he's acting has never been undermined, to my knowledge, by any personal drama and he's a heck of a great actor on top of it. Did his speech ramble on? Sure it did, but he deserved the moment.


• Tyler Perry: "I'm on stage at the Oscars. I better make the most of it because it probably won't happen again." My thoughts exactly.


• I don't know what's worse, a pointless montage paying homage to horror films or the fact that it included scenes from Twilight. And to think, this is why no original songs were performed.


• Although it was an impressive display of physical acrobatics, Mad Hatter said it: if I wanted to watch America's Next Dance Crew, I could have changed the channel to it. I think it's safe to say we can thank Adam Shankman for that number.


• Precious won Best Adapted Screenplay. I picked Up in the Air to win. I guess I learned a valuable lesson: don't pick the better film to win because it probably won't.


• Mo'Nique's acceptance speech was one of the best and most heartfelt. She thanked Hatti McDaniel, the first black actress to win an award for Gone With the Wind, for going through when she had to go through so she wouldn't have to. Back then awards were given out during dinner and McDaniel was forced to sit at a table by herself.


• I don't know if she deserved to win or not, but Sandra Bullock's speech was good too.


• Thinking about Best Actress, Oprah almost had me sold on Gabby Sidibe and then I realized that she probably won't have much of a career after Precious because, not to sound course or anything but, she's can't really play anything but fat black girls.


• Did you see that moment before she read the winner when Barbara Streisand said "It's finally happened," giving Lee Daniels just one second of hope?


• Kathryn Bigelow is 58 and still looks better than most of the young stars in attendance. Good for her. Also nice to see her take home the big awards as she hasn't exactly been the kind of filmmaker you'd expect to make award winning films in the past.


• I was strangely unmoved by the John Hughes tribute. The montage of his work was weak and, outside of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Sixteen Candles I've never found his work anything more than simply entertaining and this tribute didn't do anything to change my mind about him, or his deserving a separate honour all to himself
  
• Speaking of honouring late celebrities: where the hell was Farah Fawcett in the montage?


• Ben Stiller bounced back this year after his tasteless parody of Joaquin Phoenix last year. He played the Avatar get-up perfectly, as a man who looked like a jackass and knew it. That said, where was all the other big comic talent like Will Farrell and Jack Black? Did Shankman sacrifice them for Taylor Lautner and Kristien Stewart?


• Next year, how about going back to five Best Picture nominations? That's all anyone really needs.
  
• Why is Pedro Almodovar introducing a category that he clearly deserved to be nominated in?


• Speaking of Best Foreign Film: do voters just pull names out of a hat for this category? Remember a few years ago when Pan's Labyrinth won every award it was nominated for except Best Foreign Film? I think Almodovar got the shaft that year too.


• While we are on this topic: why does Quintin Tarantino feel the need to start yelling into the mic at every awards show? He did it at the Grammys and now he has done it here too.


• I long for a year when Jason Reitman will actually be the frontrunner. He really deserves some wins.


• I got three of my predictions wrong. Not bad.

With that said, I noticed two big Celebrity Connections last night. Check 'em out:

Could T-Bone Burnett really just be James Cameron in disguise? You Decide.

Could Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal be Jason Reitman in disguise? You Decide

My Last Word on the Oscars

I'll be glad when tonight is over because it will be the longest possible time until the blog world is bombarded with ceaseless posts about everything Oscars again. It's not that I blame people, we have to find our inspiration somewhere, but really, once you reach a certain point, there's only so much Oscar coverage one can take.

This doesn't mean that people out there who I respect didn't do a good job in their writing and it doesn't mean I didn't read it, I just didn't comment about it very much. That said, I recognize the ugly double standard that is going on here right now as I myself give my final word on the Oscars, which are happening, as probably everyone knows, tonight.

That said, if you don't want to read this or put too much thought into it, well, I don't blame you, but I haven't written much this past week and figure I might as well cap it off with something now that I'm back in Toronto. And, if nothing less, maybe you'll just read it because you like me and find my style somewhat entertaining and want to know how good I am at this whole political voting thing. Hey, it's a possibility. So I won't prolong it anymore: here's my predictions on who will win tonight, who should win, and anything else that comes to mind.

Best Documentary: The Cove will win because it has the most prolific reputation amongst the nominees. It's that simple really, although Food Inc. may have a shot too.

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon because it took the Golden Globe and the Golden Palm at Cannes, plus it's the only one of the nominees I've heard of so that has to count for something, no?

Best Animation: I'll say this: Disney is taking home a prize in this category tonight. What I'm curious about though is whether or not Up's place in the Best Picture category will mean a split vote for the film and The Princess and the Frog will take it? Oscar certainly does love a comeback and Dinsey's first 2D animated feature since Home on the Range certainly falls into that category, even if it didn't do quite the business it should have. My vote's still on Up though. Pixar just seems too unstoppable.

Beat Visual Effects: Avatar. Duh.

Best Original Song: Crazy Heart's got this one covered. When a film has more than one song nominated it tends to split the vote, as is the case with Princess and the Frog; Nine was uninspired and Crazy Heart took the Golden Globe award. Personally though, I prefer Flyin' and Fallin' from Crazy Heart, but that's just me.




Best Adapted Screenplay: A tough category. I'm going to eliminate District 9, An Education and In the Loop right away. It seems to be an even draw between Precious and Up in the Air. Precious has the advantage in that it pretentiously announces that it is based on a book right in it's full title, which I refuse to type out in whole, but Up in the Air is the better film, so I'll vote for it.

Best Original Screenplay: It's unfortunate that Inglourious Basterds came out in a year of hugely prolific films because, on any other year it would have been a no-brainer to give it this award. I'd still like to see Tarantino go home with this one. He is, after all, the best writer of all those nominated. I think it will probably go to The Hurt Locker out of default though. Inglourious Basterds doesn't seem like it will win anything else in the major categories except best supprting actor, which means it doesn't really have much of a shot here either.

Best Director: I know Kathryn Bigelow is going to win unless the Academy goes against the Director Guild by not picking the same winner, but that rarely happens. In theory though, the best choice would be Lee Daniels. Not because Precious has the best direction (and really, does Daniels really need anything to increase his already pompously sized ego?), but because the Academy is sometimes accused of trying to atone for their past mistakes (Paul Giamatti is nominated for Cinderella Man after being overlooked for Sideways, etc.). This then reminds me of several years back in which the Academy were deemed homophobic for letting Crash win Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain (people seem to have forgotten though that they gave Phillip Seymour Hoffman the acting trophy for playing an openly gay man in Capote that same year). I also assume that if Brokeback Mountain had won people would have cried that the Academy is racist too. How better to atone for this than giving the award to a gay, black director? It's just a thought.

Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. Don't argue, just accept the inevitable.

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz. See above.

Best Actress: A lot of people are rooting for Merly Streep, but I don't know, her performance as Julia Child came off more as imitation to me than actual acting. It also doesn't help that Julie and Julia was a wholly uninspired film. Therefore I'm voting for Sandra Bullock. We'll forget All About Steve and say that 2009 was a huge comeback year for Bullock and we all know Oscar loves a comeback.

Best Actor: It seems like Jeff Bridges is the forerunner in this category for Crazy Heart and his performance certainly does deserve the award. However, Oscar is sometimes know for pulling some fast ones in this category (Alan Arkin over Eddie Murphy, Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke), so could the award maybe go to Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus? I haven't seen the film myself so I can't comment on the quality of the performance, but Freeman is the only nominee who played a real-life character and Oscar history dictates that the Academy seems to favour actors who play real people. My vote's still on Bridges though.

Best Picture: It's between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'm going with Avatar. It made billions of dollars, revolutionized film technology and The Hurt Locker may have shot itself in the foot over the controversy caused by it's producer writing stupid letters basically begging Academy members for votes. Also, considering how Oscar seems to be going for viewers this year instead of prestige, Avatar is the best bet.

With that out of the way I hope everyone enjoys the show and (partially) hope Tarantino can refrain from spitting on people during the red carpet. It still irks me that John Hughes will be getting his own tribute when Patrick Swayze and Eric Rohmer will simply be limited to getting their picture in a montage. Oh well, I'll live, I think.

Oscar Nominations Are Out

Of course, today is the day where every critic and blogger weighs in on the pleasant surprises and bitter disappointments of this years Oscar nominees which were announced today. I won't go over them in a super amount of detail seeing as so many people already have, but I will make a few small observations and ideas on who I think will win in each category.

• Meryl Streep is not surprisingly nominated for her performance as Julia Child in Julie and Julia. It's another example of a mediocre movie getting recognized come awards season just because of Streep. Who will win is kind of a toss up in this category. It's nice that two youngins were nominated for Best Actress in Carey Mulligan for An Education and Gabourey Sidibe for Precious, but considering the year Sandra Bullock is having she may end up grabbing the award for The Blind Side.


• Best actor will go to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. That's all there is to say here.


• A couple of surprises for the supporting actor category came in Woody Harrelson for The Messengers and Christopher Plummer as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station, but neither of them will dismount Christoph Waltz as the villain in Inglourious Basterds who has been expected to win since the moment the film debuted at Cannes.


• Supporting Actress will go to Mo'Nique for her amazing performance in Precious. Penelope Cruz is a surprise as she nabbed a nomination for her performance in Nine, the under preforming, uninspired musical remake of Fellini's 8 1/2. This adds special irony to the underground rumblings that the Weinstein Company had paid their way to a Golden Globe win for the film. However,, it wouldn't be a true Oscar ceremony without Harvey Weinstein sneaking in someone in a role that doesn't deserve the recognition.


• Will the animation category be shaken this year with Pixar's Up scoring a Best Picture nomination? The one entry that offered it any competition, Ponyo, is absent from the category.


• Once again Pedro Almodovar gets completely overlooked in the Foreign Film category, not snagging a nomination for his Broken Embraces. Although the Academy has pulled some fast ones in this category in the past (Pan's Labyrinth losing to Lives of Others in 2007), but Michael Haneke's White Ribbon seems to be the front-runner here.


• As good as Inglourious Basterds and Up in the Air are, the clear competition in the Best Director category will be between former spouses James Cameron for Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. Cameron won the Golden Globe, Bigelow won the Director's Guild prize. The Director's Guild is usually the best predictor. Although I think Precious is a great movie, I don't think Lee Daniels is a great filmmaker so he doesn't really have a chance.


• And now, Best Picture. There are 10 nominations this year. I don't think there needs to be, as none of the other 5 seem like the have a chance against the five that would have been up for nomination in the first place (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Precious and Inglourious Basterds). I appreciate seeing the Coen Bros.' A Serious Man getting some recognition and Up gets a spot for animation, but really, District 9? Of all the good blockbuster entertainments in 2009, was District 9 really better than The Hangover or 500 Days of Summer?


• Once again, Best picture will come down to The Hurt Locker and Avatar.


• The Blind Side is also up for best picture. I haven't seen it and have sort of purposely avoided it because, even though it could be an uplifting and moving experience, I'm still a little skeptical about how, in 2009, Hollywood still feels that it needs a white person to tell a black person's story.


• Finally, I'll repost a comment I left over at Sergio Leone and the Lefthand Fly Rule about the Academy's decision to have 10 nominees for best picture in order to hopefully open up the awards and let in films that were known more for their popularity than artistic merit:

"It's almost as if, by expanding the nominees to ten in an effort to get more mainstream movies nominated and translate that into more viewers that the Oscars are dulling their own significance. Now, instead of striving to be great art, all a film needs to do is be a big hit. Under this logic, why not nominate Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as best picture, surely there must have been some booms of applause at the multiplex for that one, no?

In my opinion this is just plain silly. An Oscar nomination, as the above commenter helps to point out, has always been a way for smaller or bigger more artistically sophisticated films to get marketed to a wider audience. If films like The Hangover, as good as they are, start getting nominated because of the ten slots, then the entire aura created from getting an Oscar nomination will be dulled and rendered meaningless (not that an Oscar win means much either, though).

The Oscars, at their core, are a celebration of film for people who think of film as an art, a feeling, an emotion, a scent of some sort of magic in the air, etc, not just as pure entertainment and time passing titillation. Love the films they rejoice or not, they aren’t for the kids who spend every weekend of their summer gobbling popcorn at the multiplexes. Don't get me wrong, I love dumb summer entertainment as much as the next, and see no value in elitism or snobbery, but the moment those films enter into the Oscar circle is the moment the Oscars lose their specificity."

Find a complete list of the nominations here.