connielane, posts by tag: oscars - LiveJournal

I'm planning some movie-themed food for consumption during tonight's Oscars -- drumsticks for Whiplash, chips/queso for Boyhood, and a Crumbs cupcake for Grand Budapest Hotel. I don't often do a full list of predictions, but here goes. These guesses are highly influenced by Oscar blogs I follow, namely In Contention, and they reflect likely outcomes, not my own personal preferences. After years of following the Oscars, I've learned to just let go of my personal feelings and enjoy the show. Mostly. :P

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Unless some unforeseen technical snafu happens (like with the Golden Globes), I'll be livetweeting tonight (@pknail).

ETA: I just figured out you can't do that thing LJ used to let you do where you could pick a mood pic and write your own mood on it.  Now if you want to make up your own mood that's not on the list (say, "anticipatory"), you can't put a pic with it. :(

- Let me get this out of the way first. I don't hate American Hustle. It's an okay movie, nothing special, and to be honest I'm not invested enough to hate it. So to see it tied with Gravity for the most nominations this year and to see it become the 15th film EVER to be nominated in all four acting categories rankles just a bit. I'm frankly stunned that voters made room for Christian Bale in the super-crowded Best Actor race and shut out Tom Hanks, Robert Redford and Joaquin Phoenix.

- I am THRILLED that there was so much love for The Wolf of Wall Street - six nominations, including Best Director and Best Actor. I would have said a week ago that even if DiCaprio got into the field, he had no chance against Chiwetel Ejiofor (and my heart is still with Ejiofor), but after the Globes I think he actually might have a chance. And if his Oscar clip isn't him trying to get into that Lamborghini, someone on the award show production team should be fired.

- I was equally thrilled to see The Act of Killing nominated in the Documentary category. I really want to see 20 Feet from Stardom too.

- I guess I have to see Nebraska and Philomena now.

- Jennifer Lawrence may have been one of the few noteworthy things about American Hustle, but if she wins instead of Lupita N'Yongo, I'ma be pissed.

- Leaving Thelma Schoonmaker out of Best Editing was a mistake.

- I wasn't wild about it, but I'm surprised Inside Llewyn Davis got so little.

This has been a pretty fascinating year to watch the "inside baseball" of the Oscar season, because despite the recent bandwagon effect for Argo, it's been a fairly unpredictable year. First of all, the Best Picture lineup is the strongest I think it's been for years. There's really not a dud among them, in my opinion, and most of them I'd be very pleased to see take home the prize. (Basically anything but Silver Linings and Les Miserables would be a wonderful choice in my book.)

But here are a few fun factoids…

- If Argo wins Best Picture, which it's looking likelier and likelier that it's going to, it will be the first Best Picture winner since Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 (and only the fourth film ever) to do so without its director being nominated for Best Director.

- Silver Linings Playbook is the first movie since Reds in 1981 to have nominations in all four acting categories.

- For the first time ever, all of the nominees of a category (Best Supporting Actor nominees Arkin, De Niro, Hoffman, Jones, and Waltz) have all won an Oscar before. De Niro has actually won two of them.

- Here's a funny thing about Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lews, if when he wins, will have his third Oscar. If Sally Field were to win in Best Supporting Actress (and she's pretty much the only one who could give Anne Hathaway a run), it would be her third Oscar. And if Steven Spielberg wins Best Director, it would be his third Oscar for Best Director (his fourth overall).

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This afternoon I procured supplies for my "Me Party: Oscar Edition":
- Fried chicken dinner from Sylvia's in honor of The Help;
- A black-and-white cupcake from Crumbs in honor of The Artist; and
- Ingredients for fake champagne (I'd get the real thing, but I'm cheap) in honor of all the Frenchiness among the nominees (The Artist, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris)

Also, I found my old VHS copy of Singin' In the Rain, which could hardly be a more fitting pre-Oscar movie, especially in the year of The Artist. I had to fix it first, though. I mean after I Googled how to do it. :P And by the time the movie is over, I won't have to endure much of the red carpet!

7:49 - Movie's over. Now nothing left but the painful red carpet stuff. Missed the Sacha Baron Cohen stunt, but I just saw Seacrest, presumably just now returning after getting a new tuxedo jacket. He seems to be able to laugh about it. On camera, at least.

8:00 - I don't tend to go in much for the fashion commentary, but Gwyneth in the cape just made my jaw drop. In the best way. She looks AMAZE-BALLS!

8:22 - Chicken dinner reheated. I'm ready to go. Hearing producer Brian Grazer talk about Billy Crystal's opening number. Now, I've always been a fan of the opening number, but ... is he doing ALL the Best Picture nominees? Because 9 seems a bit much for the usual medley.

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After a disappointing experience with last year's Oscars, I'm actually rather excited about the show this time and the stuff I expect to win. I've also seen a lot of different websites doing predictions and making some surprising (in my opinion) mistakes in the major categories. So here's what I think you can expect to see in the big awards tonight. If you care, of course.




Spoiler alert! :P

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***

I'll be liveblogging here tonight, so stay tuned for my frantic, crazed, probably champagne-fueled commentary!

It feels sad to say, but I think I may have outgrown the Oscars. I don't think I've ever been so "meh" about a ceremony since I've started watching. The magic and the movie-love was just missing. I'm sure, however, that part of it can be blamed on this particular telecast. Former perennial Oscar host Billy Crystal got the second of the two standing ovations of the night, and when he came out I know I was not alone in wishing he would take over emcee duties. Was James Franco stoned or what?!

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Last year I promised myself I wouldn't follow the Oscar punditry, but I did, and I think I'll amend that resolution for the coming year. I like following it through the festivals and until the end of the year. It's the best way to keep abreast on what's coming out, what's important, and what's, well, good. But I'm shutting off around December, when the "race" starts. It just sucks so much of the fun out of it. And all the backlash is really upsetting to me. I don't need all that; in the big picture, this is just not that important.

Apologies again if it seems I'm on a bit of a hobby horse about this film. But it's all a lot of people in my little world are talking about right now.

First of all, I want to smooch InContention.com's Guy Lodge for this comment, where he takes some commenters (and bloggers) to task for using the label of "Masterpiece Theater" as a pejorative and, as he says, a "byword for cosy British corset-porn." WORD.

But I've read comments from people who are resisting seeing the movie, because it seems so much like "Oscar bait" - another pejorative that is better earned by a great number of films, but not all, and certainly not The King's Speech. It's in the Academy's sweet spot, to be sure, but if you're avoiding seeing it because you think it's another Dreamgirls or Benjamin Button or Atonement or Invictus or Nine or any number of past Oscar bait films, please reconsider. Just do yourself the favor; you won't be sorry. I will say, however, that the television ads I've seen for the film are not helping the misconception. Nor is Harvey Weinstein's interview where he basically says all the best films are Oscar winners. *sigh*

I've also been dismayed at the jabs (and I suspect they can't be avoided now that the film is part of the larger cultural consciousness) at TKS and its "white people problems" or "privileged people problems." First of all, speech difficulties and similar problems that can be traced back to child abuse are not "white-people/privilege problems" - nor are they silly or meaningless problems - and SHAME on anyone who says so. Second, being a king, even a ceremonial one, and especially during wartime, carries immense responsibility and pressure that most of us will thankfully never have the "privilege" to know. I hate to be all "poor little royals," but there's a good deal more to "kinging" than champagne and silly waves, and I don't see how anyone who's actually seen the film can possibly miss that.

In other King's Speech news, I am flabbergasted at the number of respectable news outlets and writers who are jumping on the "news" that Queen Elizabeth II has seen the movie and found it "moving" and whatnot. This is from the SUN, people; there is no other source for this except all the people quoting it and linking to people quoting it. And, as I understand (and director Tom Hooper said as much in the Q&A at Lincoln Square), it is palace policy not to comment publicly on fictional portrayals of the royal family. But now this story is out there and taking hold, and whether it's true or not, it's going to be perceived in the culture as true. *headdesk*

I apologize if movie awards season is, like, ALL I talk about right now, but aside from work and hanging out in my warm apartment and watching movies (discussion of the latter of which being negligibly different from Oscar talk for I dare say a great many of you), that's what's going on with me right now.

Kristopher Tapley, of InContention.com, is a critic who frequently infuriates me, but who just as frequently allows the clouds of whiny punditry to part and lets the logic shine through. Case in point, this article about the inevitability of The King's Speech's frontrunner status, how that status was decided not just in the last week but at the end of the summer (when it received a five-minute standing ovation at its Telluride Film Festival premiere), and how that status (coupled with disappointment over The Social Network's fading star) is starting an inevitable backlash.

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Last year's DGA winner, Kathryn Bigelow, with this year's winner, Tom Hooper

Shit, as they say, just got real in the Oscar race. The Directors Guild of America had its annual awards ceremony tonight. There were several categories in both film and television, but naturally the big moment was the announcement of the Feature Film winner. What's great about the DGAs is that, since it's not televised, it's more laid back and there's no rush to make a set time limit, so they do a big schpiel for each nominee and give them all a nice plaque. Last year, all the guys were as much in love with Kathryn Bigelow's legs as they were her film.

This year, the nominees were...

Darren Aronofsky, the perceived dark horse for his trippy, unsettling Black Swan,
David Fincher, the perceived frontrunner for The Social Network, which has won several awards already,
Tom Hooper, the perceived longshot for The King's Speech, due to his being less established and his film being less showy,
Christopher Nolan, the Oscar snubbee, whose Inception was also perceived as a possible spoiler here, and
David O. Russell, who quite frankly was lucky to be in the room for The Fighter.

And the winner was, as you saw above ... a completely gobsmacked (or so I've heard) Tom Hooper.

Here's some stats for you. The DGA has been giving these awards for 62 years, counting this one. Only 12 times has the film of the winning director NOT gone on to win Best Picture. Only 6 of those winning directors did NOT go on to win Best Director (though it's happened twice this decade). I still think Hooper is a long shot for the Directing Oscar, for a number of reasons. Mainly, it reminds me of the situation in 2002, when a similarly "new" director, Rob Marshall, nabbed the DGA for Chicago and the Academy ultimately awarded Roman Polanski for The Pianist (though Fincher is not as overdue as Polanski was, nor is Hooper as "new" as Marshall was at the time). ETA: Also, I should mention that King's recently won the Producers Guild award, which is also a strong Oscar indicator, though not quite as reliable as the DGA.

A lot of pundits are sighing and wringing their hands over Hooper's win, many saying that several directors could have taken the same cast and the same script and turned out a good movie that people loved. But here are some facts. It was Hooper's decision to change David Seidler's script (which had Bertie miraculously cured of his stammer), making the ending much more powerful. It was Hooper's decision to bet against all weatherly odds and cast Helena Bonham Carter, despite the fact that the practically guaranteed rain in England in November (when they were shooting) could have left Helena Bonham Carter trapped at Leavesden shooting Deathly Hallows on pick-up days and left him searching for another actress to play the Queen. And it was Hooper's Anglo-Australian heritage that made this a very personal film as opposed to an awards grab.

We shall see if the Screen Actors Guild, who hold their awards tonight (televised on TNT and TBS) continue TKS's momentum upswing. It's quite possible, especially with a cast that all those pundits bemoan could have delivered similar results for the movie in some other director's hands. :P The Fighter could be a possible spoiler, though (each of them have three noms in the individual categories). I'm not planning to liveblog, but I may Tweet.

I had all this neatly formatted and crap, with comments, and I'd gotten all but two categories done when my finger slipped trying to select and I deleted everything. GAH! SO here it is, a little less neat looking than it was before. *sigh* I miss having a mouse.

First of all, the best surprise of the morning is that JOHN HAWKES IS AN OSCAR NOMINEE! *ahem* More on that below. On to the list.

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And those are the nominees. February 27 is the date!