Oscars 2019: The Supporting Actors

Brad Pitt, future Oscar winner.

Thus far in our ongoing Oscars analysis, we’ve looked at some odds and ends and some technical categories. Today, we get to the good stuff: the supporting actor and actress races.

One curious thing about this year’s Oscars is that all four of the acting awards are virtually sewn up; the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild all honored the same performers in each category (ignoring the Globes’ musical/comedy offshoots for lead actor, neither of whom is even nominated here). This makes predicting these particular Oscar races rather boring. But who cares? The juicy stuff with actors isn’t who will win, but who should—and, more importantly, who appears on your own personal ballot. The quality of acting in cinema these days is extraordinarily strong, so narrowing down each category to a proper quintet is always a daunting challenge.

Who made the Manifesto’s cut? Read on to find out. Read More

Oscars 2019: The Big Techies

Matt Damon and Christian Bale in future Oscar winner "Ford v Ferrari".

Yesterday, we analyzed some of the less sexy categories at this year’s Oscars. Today, the sexiness has arrived; we’re moving on to five below-the-line fields that I’ve arbitrarily labeled “the big techies”. Get excited, film editing enthusiasts!


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

NOMINEES
The Irishman—Rodrigo Prieto
Joker—Lawrence Sher
The Lighthouse—Jarin Blaschke
1917—Roger Deakins
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—Robert Richardson

WILL WIN
The Oscars work in mysterious ways. For a solid decade—beginning with his double-nomination in 2007, for No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James—Roger Deakins was deemed to be the greatest living cinematographer never to have won an Academy Award. Two years ago, after 13 straight nominations without a win, Deakins finally got off the schneid for his breathtaking lensing of Blade Runner 2049. This year, he’s winning again for 1917. This will not be close. Read More

Oscars 2019: The Odds and Ends

Is "Toy Story 4" a future Oscar winner?

It’s that time of year! Over the next week, the Manifesto will be rigorously analyzing each of the 21 feature categories for this year’s Oscars. Well, maybe not that rigorously. I used to be an Oscar obsessive, but over the past decade or so, my enthusiasm for the glorified gala has waned a bit. How the movie industry chooses to celebrate itself is no longer of tremendous concern to me. I know which films and performances I like and which I don’t; who really cares what the Academy thinks?

Well, a lot of people. And even setting aside the commercial significance of the Oscars, it’s always worth remembering that, for the most part, they tend to honor pretty good movies. Just don’t take them too seriously; that way, you can’t be too disappointed when they inevitably fuck up.

We’ll be filing a series of posts this week, culminating with a look at Best Picture on Friday. Today, we’re beginning with a handful of categories that I’ve rudely deemed to be minor—not because I discount the contributions of the artisans in these particular fields, but because I, as a cinematic neanderthal, don’t especially care about them. (Speaking of which, I never bother to even predict the three shorts categories, because come on.) Let’s get to it. Read More

Oscars 2019: Nomination Prediction Results

"Jojo Rabbit" earned six Oscar nominations. Well, "earned" may be a stretch.

Poor Jennifer Lopez.

On the one hand, as a rule, I abhor the “Actor X was snubbed!” rhetoric. When a category limits itself to five selections, your favorites invariably find themselves left out; this rarely means that the chosen quintet is drastically inferior. That’s especially true in this bountiful era—our Golden Age of Acting—when every year seems to offer up a dozen or more performances worthy of recognition in each of the four fields. My own ballot in the acting categories hardly ever aligns with the Academy’s, but that doesn’t render their choices indefensible; it’s just a natural consequence of mathematics, the result of a large number being cruelly reduced to a small one. Great performances are inevitably excluded, not because voters didn’t appreciate them, but because they simply admired other work more.

Having said all that: Jennifer Lopez was snubbed. Her performance in Hustlers, full of fire and sadness and compassion, is the quintessential Oscar-worthy performance. It is impossible to conceive of a Best Supporting Actress field without her. The Academy blew it.

But as I discussed yesterday when making my predictions, one of the functions of the Oscars is to facilitate complaining. Their nominal purpose is to honor cinema’s best, but they’re more interesting for what they get wrong, which is what gets people angry (and talking). The only thing worse than an imperfect slate of nominees is a perfect one.

Speaking of predictions, I hit on 83% of mine this year (57 of 69), a decidedly mediocre number. Same as it ever was. On to some quick category-specific thoughts: Read More

Oscars 2019: Nomination Predictions

Joaquin Phoenix in likely Best Picture nominee "Joker"

Are you excited for this year’s Oscars? Neither am I. But I’m not depressed about them either. For all of the annual hand-wringing among critics about the disproportionate influence of the Academy Awards—the complaint that the industry focuses so much money and attention on a gala of glorified self-congratulation—it’s worth remembering that the Oscars tend to honor movies which are, for the most part, pretty good. You will not agree with everything that’s nominated, because you are an individual with your own specific tastes rather than a voting body susceptible to marketing, bias, and groupthink. But the lack of recognition for a performance that you loved—or, conversely, the highlighting of one that you simply can’t stand—hardly invalidates your opinion, nor does it signify the Academy’s collective stupidity.

If anything, personal divergence from the bloc’s choices is a good thing, given how the Oscars function as a flattener—a smoothing of esoteric preferences into agreed-upon safe picks. It will never happen, but if my own favorites of a given cinematic year ever precisely aligned with those of the Academy, I’d be worried that I’d lost my own taste—that my private thoughts had somehow become indistinguishable from the public will. That would be far more disturbing than being disappointed about some dubious selections for supporting actress or cinematography.

So by all means, complain about the Oscars; rage about snubs, fret about race, and long for greater surprise and imagination. Some of those grievances are surely valid. Just remember that the displeasure is part of the point.

Here are the Manifesto’s predictions for this year’s Oscar nominations in 13 major categories: Read More