In which I rant and tangent about The Oscars. · 6:54pm Jan 24th, 2017
So the Oscar nominees were announced today. Anyone who knows me knows that I know more about the Oscars than I probably should. In high school I used to impress people by having them give me a year, then I'd tell them what won Best Picture that year. People liked hearing what won the year they were born.
Unforgiven. That's what won the year I was born. Fantastic movie, by the way. Picture, director, supporting actor for Gene Hackman, and film editing. Clint Eastwood might have picked up Best Actor if the Academy hadn't thought to itself "hey, did we actually ever end up giving Al Pacino an Oscar?"
"Didn't we give him one for The Godfather Part II?"
"No, we gave it to Art Carney when we asked ourselves 'hey, did we ever end up giving Art Carney an Oscar?'"
"Oh yeah, that's right."
But I digress.
Now, you might say that the Oscars are just a popularity contest where a bunch of old white people vote on who should get a nice golden statuette. And yes, you'd be right. They totally are political. I've studied the Oscars for almost ten years now. So yes, I know all about the politics.
At any rate, the nominees came out this morning. 6:18 in the morning for me, to be specific. I can't say there were any surprises. I knew La La Land would be nominated in a ton of categories. I admit that I didn't see it scoring 12 nominations, but there you go.
So yeah, unless something really changes, La La Land for Best Picture this year. There's almost no question at this point.
Here's the thing... now, I know people are going nuts over this film. I guess I can see why. It's well made and well acted and all that, but...
I didn't care for it. And neither did my wife. Everyone else around us loves it, and for the life of me I can't comprehend why. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying it's a bad movie. Far from it. It's just okay. That's all. It's certainly not "12 Oscar Nominations" good. You wanna know why I think the Academy in particular likes it? It's because it's a Member Berry Movie.
I'll explain.
In the latest season of South Park, there are these things called Member Berries.
Freaky little bastards, ain't they?
Political stuff in the second half of the video aside, all they do is say "oh, remember...?" Usually about 80s nostalgia stuff and Star Wars. Lots of Star Wars.
It's no secret that La La Land owes a TON to the musicals of the 50s, mostly Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris. As one more side note, I didn't care for An American in Paris. Anyway, La La Land plays off of the nostalgia of those old films. A lot. So much so that I'm not sure it took the time to do its own thing. I was hopeful that the movie would be really neat and clever when I saw the opening song, but after that it kind of turned into a 50s musical just done in a modern setting. There would be nothing wrong with that if it did anything new or interesting, but I just don't feel like it did.
And it's pretty much a lock for Best Picture, which is interesting because we haven't had a musical win since Chicago in 2002. The last musical to win before that? Oliver! in 1968. The 50s and 60s were the golden age of musicals in my opinion, at least if you just take the Best Picture category into account. out of the 10 (soon to be 11) musicals that have won Best Picture, six of them were from those decades. Between 1958 and 1968, so in a ten year span, you have five of them. If the Academy could have a do-over, they would have given Best Picture in 1952 to Singin' in the Rain, instead of The Greatest Show on Earth, a style-over-substance movie that is widely considered to be one of the worst Best Picture winners of all time.
And yeah, it's pretty awful.
Not the worst one, though. That would be The Broadway Melody, one of the aforementioned musical Best Picture winners. 100 minutes of awfulness that felt every minute its length.
So, so bad.
Anyway, La La Land. Is it an awful film? No. Is it amazing? Not in my opinion, no. Is it totally fine if you saw it and loved it? Absolutely. A bunch of my best friends have seen it and they all loved it. My brother, who, incidentally, is also a big Emma Stone fan adored it. It sometimes feels like me and my wife are the only two people who weren't as amazed as everyone else. The buzz around it reminds me a lot of the buzz around The Artist, which won Best Picture in 2011. It was a pretty good film, and the first silent film to win Best Picture since Wings in 1928. Despite its quality, most people know the main reason it won Best Picture: it was a love letter to the olden days of film when even something like sound was seen as a novelty. It invoked feelings of nostalgia in a lot of people. I see La La Land and feel it's doing the same thing. Again, I'm not saying that either of these two movies are bad. Far from it. I just wasn't as impressed as everybody else.
Also, Ryan Gosling couldn't sing if his life depended on it. Even my friends who loved the movie agreed about that.
But yeah, it's going to win Best Picture. It's going to win Best Director and Screenplay and Original Song (for City of Stars, which, as much as I was unimpressed by the movie as a whole, I did like that one a lot) and Best Actress, too.
Yes. Best Actress.
I know I said a few weeks ago that Natalie Portman had it in the bag for her role as Jackie Kennedy in Jackie. Now that we're getting closer to the actual ceremony, it's clear that Emma Stone is the front-runner for La La Land. Once again, I don't think she was bad. Not in the slightest. But did she blow me away? Nope. Was she better than her co-nominee Natalie? Not a chance. Even back when I first thought Natalie was going to win, the one nagging doubt in my mind was that she'd already won (deservedly so) for Black Swan in 2010. The Academy has been known to snub performers because they've already gotten an Oscar. This is another reason that Meryl Streep will not win this year for Florence Foster Jenkins. She got nominated, of course. I think they legally have to nominate her at this point. Someone's going to go to prison if they don't.
In any case, I thought Natalie was going to win because 1. she was amazing and 2. she played a beloved historical figure. In this instance Jackie Kennedy, the wife of JFK, the last American president to be assassinated. On top of that, she pretty much carries the whole movie, and she does a superb job at it.
Now look, I'm not saying that there is some criteria for the people who can win. I'm not saying that the only people who can win a lead acting Oscar are the ones who carry a whole movie or who play some historical figure. Anthony Hopkins got one of the most deserving Best Actor wins ever for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, and he was only in the movie for about 20 minutes or so. But I've seen both performances and found Natalie better than Emma by far.
But La La Land was nominated for 12 Oscars, and it's going to pick up at least five or six of them.
In other category news, I was certain that Zootopia would win Best Animated Feature when I saw it. I still think it has a pretty good shot. The two main challengers are Kubo and the Two Strings and Moana. Kubo could win because I have yet to hear a single negative thing about that movie, on top of the fact that voters might be tired giving the award to a Disney and/or Pixar film every year, in which case Moana's odds are hurt a little bit, too. But if that's not the case, then Moana might win because 1. it's gorgeous to look at and 2. it came out more recently so it's fresher in everybody's minds. There's a reason for Oscar Season, after all. Now that's not to say that every film that wins an Oscar comes out between September and December. The aforementioned Silence of the Lambs came out on Valentine's Day in '91 and it won all five major Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay) so Zootopia is not out of the running. Personally I preferred it slightly to Moana, but both were very good.
At the very least this year's crop of Best Picture nominees (Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea) appears to be stronger than last year's group. (Spotlight, Room, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, The Big Short andThe Martian). I wasn't blown away by any of those movies except Room, which I think should have won. Spotlight won last year. It was decent, but it stopped one or two steps short of being amazing.
Star Wars picked up a couple of technical nominations. Visual Effects and Sound Mixing.
You know what did surprise me, though? Suicide Squad got a nomination. Makeup and Hairstyling. It'll either be that movie, the new Star Trek, or A Man Called Ove. Whatever the heck that last one is.
Anyhoo, some final thoughts:
It's been 14 years since a musical won Best Picture. It was 34 before that. If La La Land doesn't win Best Picture (and it will) then it'll go to Manchester by the Sea. Incidentally, Casey Afflek is going to win Best Actor for that one. Spoiler alert. Musical Best Picture winners tend to be pretty hit and miss. 1929- The Broadway Melody-absolute garbage.
1936- The Great Ziegfeld- Style over substance. Not that great.
1944- Going My Way -a sweet, sentimental film. Not amazing, but not bad either.
1951- An American in Paris- I didn't care for it. It was bloated and the 17 minute ballet sequence at the end just bored me to tears.
1958- Gigi- not a good film. Could not be made today. Opening number is called "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" It's just as creepy as it sounds.
1961- West Side Story- freaking amazing.
1964- My Fair Lady- Pretty good. Dr. Strangelove was better.
1965- Sound of Music- It's The Sound of Music. There you go.
1968- Oliver!- a pretty good movie. Lion in Winter was far better.
2002- Chicago- I grew up listening to the soundtrack. I still enjoy the movie a lot. The Pianist was a better film, but f*** Roman Polanski.
Okay, so there's that, then. The Oscars. I'm certain that I'll make another Oscar blog with my full list of picks. My family does an Oscar party every year and we all make our picks for that. I've won for the past four or five years since I start following the Oscar race in, oh, June. It's why I own a copy of the 2014 Best Picture winner Birdman.
So here's the full list of nominees for anyone interested.
Also, the Razzies (the awards "honoring" all of the worst films) announced their nominees, too. Nothing too shocking. Zoolander 2 leads the way with 8 nominations. Full list here.
And for grins and giggles, here's the list of all of the Best Picture winners. The Broadway Melody, Out of Africa and The Greatest Show on Earth are the worst ones. Biggest mistake is Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan in 1998. So wrong. Best ones are the two Godfather films, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. The most underrated Best Picture winner is The Lost Weekend,
So there. Over 2000 words about some political popularity contest awards show decided by old white people.
I'll try to get some actual pony writing done soon.
Traditional cute pony pic
I feel inclined to argue the merits of Fury Road, though I'll grant that it's an odd pick for Best Picture. Though part of that's just that the Academy hates effects-heavy action films, and films that aren't in a contemporary or historical setting. Pretty sure the only reason Return of the King got so many Oscars is the nostalgia factor from the books plus the LotR trilogy just being too huge to ignore.
Of course, that's part of why I don't take too much interest in the Oscars anymore. Everyone knows the best way to win an Oscar is to play a disabled transgender homosexual with a terminal illness during the Holocaust, with bonus points if the character is mentally handicapped (as long as ... well, cue Tropic Thunder quote).
That was an interesting look at things. :O I don't follow (non-comic-related) movies much anymore, but I seem to recall MovieBob being less than impressed by La La Land.
4395164 No arguments about Fury Road. It was my favorite film that year for sure. But yeah, you forgot "popular historical figure" on your list.
I had a tear-boner for most of Hacksaw Ridge. I can watch Old Yeller and anything labeled as "sad" and not blink once. Give me a reason to be proud of humanity and people in general and I jus' start bawlin' and pissin' meself like a baby. (See: The Green Mile)
I hope Kubo wins Best Animated Picture, it's astounding how much time and effort Laika puts into their Stop-Motion movies, and it's really sad when Disney/Pixar win soley because they have the prestige of being Disney/Pixar, since the academy doesn't seem to take animated films the slightest bit seriously
4395164
So...something like this?
I've never really been too much of an Oscars fan. So many of the movies are either 'I didn't watch it' or 'I did watch it and didn't see anything special in there.' This year, I'll admit to liking the animation category about as much as anything, and would not mind watching the whole bunch in one long session. Loved Furry Road (Zootopia) as well as Fury Road. :)
One thing that bugged me about Suicide Squad was that the *beginning* was both better and more disjointed, while the last half was more organized but worse. (Plot? We need a plot?) It took a bit to put my logical self on the shelf and just enjoy it for the experience. Doctor Strange, however, had me from the start.
Meh, never cared about the oscars.
4395315
They did once. I forget the year ( our esteemed OP can probably quote it ), but when Beauty and the Beast originally came out it was nominated for Best Picture. Not best Animated Picture, Best Picture. Braveheart won that year, and ever since then, no animated movie has ever been nominated for that category again.
4395575 Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture in 1991, where The Silence of the Lambs took home every major trophy. Braveheart won in 1995, the year Pocahontas came out. Which was not nominated for Best Picture. Won Best Song, though.
4395575 Up and Toy Story 3 were nominated for best picture though...
Very few Best Picture winners are among my own 10/10 favourites: Rebecca, Casablanca, The Silence of the Lambs, The Lord of the Rings, American Beauty (though it's still not my favourite of the year), Gladiator (ditto) and The Departed (ditto). Can't comment on any of your least favourites, but mine are Chariots of Fire and The Artist.
Incidentally, if there's one snub this year that really pisses me off, it's Finding Dory being ignored for Best Animated Feature. (It's also my overall favourite of the year, but my hopes weren't that high.)
4395832 My top ten has the two Godfather films, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sting and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.