Remember, there are now ten…TEN nominees for the Best Picture category. About five too many, I think. Maybe some of them should be combined so we can get back a more manageable number. For instance, Up and Up in the Air can be, simply, Up Up in the Air. And I like the idea of Precious Inglourious Basterds. Seriously, with as many as ten films up for Best Picture, one can easily eliminate about three or four from contention from the get-go. Don’t we all know it’s down to Precious, Inglourious Basterds, and Avatar?
Of course, everybody knows this change for what it is. The film industry wants to have those five other films bear the stamp, “the Academy Award nominated…”, for these next five weeks. And the Academy wants the hype.
Let’s see what else piques some interest: Up is in two categories, both Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. This has happened before, right? And who the fuck has seen The Secret of Kells? I haven’t, and the thing’s been around for two years.
Hey, we have TEN fucking films up for Best Picture, but only three have been nominated for Best Makeup. None of them are Best Picture contenders. How does that work? Exactly how does a film manage to earn Best Picture and not have decent enough makeup to be nominated in that category? And when is the Academy going to tackle the issue of what, exactly, constitutes “makeup.” Does it have to be greasepaint and eyelashes? Or can it also include CGI? I mean, look at these fat, pasty fucks:
And now look at them. Mmmmmm…that’s some sexy blue meat there.
Why Avatar got a nod for Original Score is beyond me. And Randy Newman needs to take a rest from scoring animated features. “I’m just ah frahg, treated like a dahg/But kiss me and see, what a good frin’ ah kin be.” Rooty toot toot. Bleah. Still, Newman is probably the best thing about that dumb cartoon.
as if the Grammies weren’t puke-making enough. The unabashed self-hype makes you wish for the days of George C. Scott and Sasheen Littlefeather.
District 9 made the list!? Holy cow. At least bumping to 10 breaks up the midcult seriousness a little.
Bet you a buck that Hurt Locker grabs it.
That’s another thing that puzzles me. Hurt Locker came out in October 2008. Why was it not in the list last year? Is this a new trend? Just release a film in Europe, let it grow some legs, build a rep, then release it in America a year or more later and BOOM-O! (not so) instant Oscar material!
Keep your dollar reynolds, as Hurt Locker ain’t gonna win Best Picture. And I can’t see Bigelow getting Best Director over Cameron (though I’d like to see that). Maybe Original Screenplay (though really I’d like that to go to Tarantino).
The Hurt Locker played four or five international film festivals in 2008 but was not released in the US until June 2009. The Hurt Locker won the Producers Guild Award for best film and Bigelow won the Directors Guild Award. That film has won nearly every critic’s award you can throw at it. SAG ignored Avatar altogether, and Cameron’s “screenplay” did not receive an Oscar nomination (nor did any of the “actors”). Except for a few technical awards, Avatar is toast. I was pleased for In the Loop, The Messenger, and, especially, District 9 (which was robbed in the make-up category); yet I was equally perplexed by the love for A Serious Man (then again it is Hollywood we are talking about). Mo’nique will win the only award for Precious. Waltz will carry Tarantino’s flame forward. Meryl Streep will once again be robbed for being so much better than every other actor (male or female) in Hollywood. Sandra Bullock gave a million dollars to Haiti (and 200+ million to Hollywood), so she will walk away with a trophy (maybe two if the Razzies have their way). Here’s hoping The White Ribbon walks away with two awards (best cinematography hands down). But I’m sure Avatar will win best cinematography, which makes about as much sense as giving that award to Up.
And Jeff Bridges, good god, the dude is going to walk home among the tumbling tumble weeds with his very own Oscar. That is going to be beautiful, man.
do you really believe nelson mandela is not going to win an oscar? jeff, why do you hate nelson mandela?
I do hate nelson.
Predictions:
Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
Best Director: James Cameron (in this way, the academy can honor Cameron’s commercial steamroller without elevating the silly story to “best picture” status)
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges
Best Actress: Sandra Bullock (she’s likable and perky, despite the dreck she appears in)
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’nique (The movie with the pretentiously long title must be thrown a bone in order to honor the New Serious Black Naturalism. Though I haven’t seen it, its advertising campaign and Oprah’s endoresment make me fear that Precious is a self-serious amalgam of rub-your-nose-in-it degradation with serious last moment uplift. At your throat or at your feet, as it were. But I could be wrong…)
Best Supporting Actor: Stanley Tucci
Why does Up get to be nominated for best film in two categories? Wouldn’t it just make sense to nominate animated films in Best Picture and do away with the “animated” ghetto? Coraline I think, deserve to be nominated as Best Picture, too, no? certainly it’s use of 3D is far better than Avatar’s.
I just read that one reason The Hurt Locker did not get a late 2008 release was that no production company had yet picked up American distribution rights. It wowed at the Toronto Film Fest yet walked away without a deal. Iraq-themed films have been anathema in Hollywood, but that does seem to be changing.
This is kind of interesting.
What if Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog were to direct the Super Bowl? I’d give the Oscar to Lynch . . . and you?
Yeah, Lynch probably. But they’re all kinda lame.
if it was late Godard, you’d walk out halfway through and then read about how great it was in Film Comment
I’d like to see a little Frank Booth in that clip…”baby wants to pinch them….”
If the online odds are any indication, people believe Avatar will be shut out in both the Best Picture and Best Director categories. I’m betting on upsets in the Best Actress and Best Foreign Film categories.
I read somewhere that Avatar doesn’t stand a chance because the Best Picture award never goes to a science-fiction film (though a few have been nominated in that category, such as A Clockwork Orange in 1971, Star Wars in 1977, and E.T. in 1982). I suppose that means District 9 can’t win either.
Looking back, I did find that Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days won Best Picture in 1956. Is this not science fiction?
Also, just for the sake of historical accuracy, the Oscars had 10 nominations for Best Picture from its first year, 1927, through 1943.
Is this too late? Predictions:
Best Pic – Hurt Locker
Best Director — Kathryn Bigelow
Best Actress — Gabourey Sidibe
Actor — Jeff Bridges
Supporting actor — Christoph Waltz
Supporting actress– Mo’Nique
Animated Feature — Up
writing (original) — Mark Boal
writing (adapted) — Precious
cinematography — Robert Richardson/Inglorious
art direction — Avatar
Costume — Bright Star
Documentary Feature — The Cove
Doc (short) — The Last Truck
Editing — Avatar
Foreign Film — The White Ribbon
Makeup — Il Divo
Music — Michael Giacchino/Up
Music/song — T-Bone Burnett/Crazy Heart
short (animated) — Logorama
short (live) — The Door
Sound editing — Avatar
Sound mixing — Avatar
Visual Effects — Avatar
I thought the lyric about “dropping the soap” was somewhat crass, as well as Steve Martin’s remark that Alec Baldwin should go “take pills and die.”
Only missed nine; pretty decent. I think I would have submitted similar choices (though we would have disagreed on make-up, costumes, cinematography, and best actress). The Precious call for screenplay was inspired. I think it was certainly the better adaptation, but all signs pointed to Ivan, the lesser.
I found this moment puzzling but an article in Salon explains it:
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/2010/03/07/music_by_prudence_burkett/index.html?source=newsletter
Thanks for the link, michael. I found it puzzling too. My thought was “this woman is not supposed to be up there, but it’s clear the director knows her.” Really awkward. But not nearly as awkward as just about every joke read by Martin and Baldwin. It seems we’ve reached a point in award show writing where it is no longer necessary to try and write good jokes, since no one appears capable of doing so. The solution, then, is to write bad jokes, and then also write that the jokes are supposed to be bad. Get it? That’s the joke.
Overall, I’m pleased with the results. I still think Tarantino deserved Best Director and Basterds Best Picture.
Just a quick note: there’s something odd about George Clooney. I can’t explain it. There was one moment last night when the camera was on him, and he just stared at it like “why the fuck are you on me?” Then he waved his arm as if to say, “get off me, get the stage asshole!” But in a funny Clooney kind of way. It was like we got a glimpse of raw ego. Not necessarily in a bad way, but certainly weird. It was Clooney vision last night.
And hey, is Sandra Bullock a lesbian?
Oh, and here was a really tacky moment: playing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” after Kathryn Bigelow’s acceptance speech. Oh, that is so second wave feminism.
not to mention the fact that they kept telegraphing the fact that she was going to win,not least by having Streisand give the award. Streisand? Huh? I would have preferred a holograph of Ida Lupino. oh, and by the way, four other people were nominated…..and, what now, they don’t even list the films nominated for Best Picture because they don’t have enough time? perhaps, then, spare us the testimonials regarding the actors/actresses? my favorite was the costume designer who essentially said, “hey dumbasses, people design costumes for movies other than bloated costume dramas, you know?”
The Clooney stuff was staged/rehearsed (according to the New York Times). That’s why Baldwin kept giving him the stink eye while the camera cut away to Clooney’s performance of raw ego. Seems to have been some kind of meta attempt to both comment on Clooney’s fabulosity and philanthropy while critiquing it.
Hmmm…what I got from that story was ambivalence (“appeared to be planned in advance”). Which is what I felt. That it was neither obviously staged nor obviously random only made it seem weirder. I got the Baldwin stink eye thing. But what I’m talking about is something else. But I’ll let it go, for fear that I’m letting on that I’m the one who has a Clooney thing.
Speaking of ambivalence, does anyone have any thoughts about Disney’s “disenchanted” night? A few years ago, one would have thought that a New Orleans-themed animated cartoon would have ridden the post-Katrina wave to the Oscar stage for Best Song. And fuck, the Saints won the Super Bowl! So wha happen? Just a bad score?. I dunno. To be dissing the Night Tripper, I don’t know. That seems, well, untimely.
But I remember thinking, as I watched the ceremony, “shit, the Academy loves Country music.”
No, I think the academy loves people playing broken-down drunks. I am increasing my Oscar chances by playing a mentally challenged, paraplegic and alcoholic leader of a resistance group against the Nazi’s. It’s called Auschwitz and Rye . Look for it.
As for New Orleans, that’s yesterday’s news. I think for an animated film to have a chance it must be Pixar or Pixar-like at this stage. A princess and a frog is hopelessly retro. Roy Disney got a shout-out during the death montage–that’s as far as the academy is willing to go.
Hey…I just remembered that there was a film out last October called Where the Wild Things Are that I really liked–the first twenty minutes or so of which far surpassed much of Avatar (also a love story). Not a single nomination, nor any talk of a lack of a nomination. Has anyone read of any backlash against this snub? I wonder if people thought it deserved to be ignored. I certainly didn’t. But maybe I need to see it again.
It doesn’t help Disney that it’s first African-American princess toon was scored by a white man (and one of the black characters–whose song was nominated–was sung by Dr. John). Plus, it didn’t do very well at the box office. The reviews were very good.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e712072e5e/academy-award-winning-movie-trailer