Saturday, February 21, 2015

Oscars 2015

It's a Nice Day for a...White Oscars 


Racism is dead in America.  We know, because John Roberts told us so.  And if white guys say it's over, it must be over, because we invented this shit.  So spare me the racial outrage at the all-white nominees.  The nominees were all-white in 1998 and that show got the highest ratings in 20 years. Just think of this year's show as the Boston Celtics.

Some broader thoughts before I get into the categories:

  • Meryl Streep Earns Her 19th Nomination
    • Enough now.  The coach of the Arroyo High School Girl's Basketball team was suspended for winning a game 161-2.  Streep keeps rolling along and no one says a word.  Maybe it's because the Arroyo Dolphins are named for an aquatic mammal.  Where's the Flipper outrage?!?

  •  True Stories
    • A bunch of the nominated movies and people are true stories -- American Sniper, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game.  Does this mean we've lost the ability to create?  Is story-telling dead?  Worry, not, gentle reader.  The "true stories" take so many liberties with the truth, they are very much akin to self-assessments I've written at work over the years -- eligible for a Pulitzer prize for fiction.  Here is a sample from the Hollywood Bubble:

      • The Iraq war is black-and-white (there's that color issue again)
      • George Wallace never regretted being a racist
      • Lyndon Johnson didn't give a shit about black voting rights
      • Alan Turing was a sociopath
      • Stephen Hawking was a joy to live with
      • Magneto shot JFK
    • The one, incontrovertible truth, is Ed Norton playing a guy who's incredibly difficult to deal with.  Turns out, Ed Norton is a guy who is incredibly difficult to deal with.  
  • Preferential Ballot System
    • The top vote-getting movie might not win, thanks to a new, PBS.  The 6,000 or so voters rank all 8 movies.  The smallest stack of ballots (for the movie with the fewest 1st place votes) is removed and all of the votes redistributed to the other 7 stacks, and so on and so forth until a movie has 50% of ballots plus 1 vote.  It's a sort of a Bucklin voting system. Speaking of people I'd like to Buck, 
Now, onto the awards (our choices, not our predictions, in bold...and, 'no', 'not' is not a prediction just because I bolded it.  Sheesh):

Best Original Screenplay 


As I've said previously, this is where the "sleeper" films come from.  This sleepiness is always on my mind during Lent.
  • Birdman
    • Clever story, head-scratching ending (but it took me less time to figure this one out than The Sopranos, and I grew to love that initially painful experience).
  • Grand Budapest Hotel
    • Clever, but Donna fell asleep, so it's not allowed to win.
  • Boyhood
    • Let me begin the Boyhood bashing right off the bat.  Ok, so they took 12 years to film it. And you can only sign a contract in the US for 7 years.  No longer.  And they got all of the same principles to come back year after year.  That's the only thing it had going for it.  It took 39 days to film in total.  And it shows.
  • Foxcatcher
    • Sienna Miller is one of those really good actresses (and really good looking people), that I can never identify.  Whenever she pops up on a talk-show, I think "I recognize her...or do I?"  What does this have to do with the screenplay?  Nothing.  And Foxcatcher shouldn't win because it's a true story. 
  • Nightcrawler
    • This is a very clever story, told in a very smart way.  But I only know that because someone told me.  Next time, I'll try to actually see all of the movies in this category.

Best Adapted Screenplay


"Adapted".  My son used to tell people he was "adapted".  Maybe one day he'll show up in this category.  For now, we'll concentrate our focus on:
  • Imitation Game
    • Loved this one.  It lost our Screenplay vote when I successfully predicted "Today, we call them computers".    
  • Boyhood
    • Hacky.  Don't even know why it made this category -- felt like a Lifetime movie to me. Must've been written by a white guy.    
  • Theory of Everything
    • This was a tough movie for me -- Stephen Hawking's disease and his wife's struggle supporting him made me think of my parents the entire movie.  I shed enough tears to screw up a pretty tasty vat of popcorn. 
  • Whiplash
    • A musician's movie, so I am probably rating it unfairly high.  But my athlete-wife enjoyed it, too, and the script had a healthy combination of some great jokes, clever witticisms and some unpredictable twists.
  • Inherent Vice
    • How did I miss this one?  It has graphic nudity.  I love my graphics naked.

Best Picture 
  • Birdman
    • Big fan of the dark comedy and quirky plot.  This had plenty of both, but we both felt there were "bigger" stories.  I guess this is like an MVP award in sports -- do you really want the scrappy 2nd baseman whose team made the playoffs because of his small-ball, or do you want the guy whose homers will be compared to Mantle and Mays?  You can say it.  It's alright.  I know.
  • Imitation Game
    • No I am NOT overrating this one because it's about the first computer.  Scott Matheson didn't overrate 2001: A Space Odyssey because the opening scene featured the first drum stick.  I overrated Whiplash because it's a musician's movie. 
    • This thing is a big ole math problem, and they made it a relationship story, a persecution story, and a clock-is-ticking drama.  This is our choice, though we know it as much chance of winning as Turing did of shagging Keira Knightley.        
  • Boyhood
    • I'll stop the bashing now, but I have a feeling I'm going to feel that same awful sensation if it wins -- the one I felt at the very end of Lost when we find out they'll all dead and in Purgatory.  Don't be mad if you didn't see it -- I just did you a huge favor.
  










     


  • Theory of Everything
    • Beautiful film that deserved more box office and deserves a better chance at this award.  This is not a remake of some mix of Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind and My Left Foot.  This is a love story, a story of struggle and of triumph.
  • Whiplash
    • I said before this is a musician's movie, but rent it anyway.  Even if you're a drummer.
  • Grand Budapest Hotel
    • This might've been too quirky for its own good, but it was a wonderfully entertaining movie.  Twists we couldn't see coming; laughs at unusual places.
  • American Sniper
    • We actually liked this movie, despite being told in advance that it is slanted; historically inaccurate; etc.  I really could've done without the "our guy is a hero, but your guy who does exactly the same thing uses his powers for evil", but Cooper's performance more than makes up for that.  Really quite good, if too binary in presentation.
  • Selma
    • And, finally, the movie that brought back the discussion about race, because Ferguson and Donald Sterling weren't enough to get the dialog going.  The truth is this is a powerful movie, even if you knew the details of the history.  But the direction is weak (sorry, I know Paramount blew nomination chances with its lack of distribution of DVDs, but I hated the way this was shot, cut and presented).  Some powerful performances (David Oyelowo was the one Paramount really screwed), but too much historical inaccuracy.  No JFK here, mind you, but with a better script, the actual MLK speeches and a different director, Selma wins.  Not this version.

Acting

Some great performances this year.  Here are our choices:

Best Actress

We have the two big slam dunks of female acting -- Bat Shit Crazy vs. Undeserved Dementia.  Our vote would go to Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl), but we're all living longer, so we all have a family member who makes us cry.  Julianne Moore is Aunt Dolly, asking me the name of my dog again.  We don't have a dog.  Julianne wins.

Best Actor

This is a category that's bound to disappoint in 2015.  Michael Keaton is a front-runner because he played sympathetic crazy in a smartly written movie.  Bradley Cooper does a phenomenal job playing a complex character who humanizes the tragedy of war (even if the movie demonizes Iraqis unfairly) who is also murdered**.  Steve Carrell turns in the performance of his career (and we've learned he has more range than comedy from Little Miss Sunshine and Seeking for a Friend for the End of the World), but no one saw this movie.

Our choice would be Eddie Redmayne (Theory of Everything).  Your reaction might be "it's easy to play a guy who can't speak and is stuck in a wheelchair", but he showed us both the progression of the disease and still communicated real emotion even after he began speaking through an American-accented 'puter.  Redmayne should win.  Keaton will.

**-Spare me, spoiler-alerters.  The guy's on trial right now.  Read a newspaper, fortheloveofgod. 

Best Supporting Actress.

We will readily admit that Patricia Arquette was the best thing in Boyhood.  But that is a limbo bar you step over.  This is a Lifetime movie that has one remarkable thing about it -- they were able to have 12 annual reunions where everyone made it.  My old wedding band, Cheers, has a better track record than that.  And the only thing we ever win is a Holy Saturday hangover and a bunch of flack from our wives.

Best Supporting Actor

Norton was great in Birdman, but he was playing himself (see above).  We actually liked Ethan Hawke in Boyhood, but we're soured on the hype for the "can you believe they actually..." blah blah blah shut it.  Do you know how many bad Doogie Howser jokes are in your future?!?

This should go to J.K. Simmons.  He didn't just play mean, he played complex mean.  You believed him when he said he needed to drive the best to see if they could become the best, yet you still feared him.  It was intense.  I'm biased because this is a musician's movie, but even my all-sports-all-the-time wife liked it.  Hoping for a Simmons win here.

And, still my favorite awards show moment of all-time.  I've posted it before, it deserves yet another run.  I'm counting on you, fellow narcissists.  Do the needful and be yourselves:



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