NOMINEES
The Ballad of Buster
Scruggs—Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
BlacKkKlansman—Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee
Can You Ever Forgive Me?—Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
If Beale Street Could Talk—Barry Jenkins
A Star Is Born—Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, and Will Fetters Read More
Yesterday, we
looked at some of the lower-profile below-the line fields in this year’s
Oscars. This morning, we’re staying in the technical areas but progressing to
some categories that carry a bit more weight. Of course, the Academy initially
planned on announcing the winners for two of these fields during commercial
breaks, but then they reversed course, no doubt because they remembered that
the Manifesto prizes these categories.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
NOMINEES
Cold War—Lukasz Zal
The Favourite—Robbie Ryan
Never Look Away—Caleb Deschanel
Roma—Alfonso Cuarón
A Star Is Born—Matthew Libatique Read More
Welcome to Oscars Week! If you’re less than excited about
Sunday’s annual cinematic gala, you might well be a producer for the show!
Suffice it to say that it’s been a rough month for the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts & Sciences, as they introduced one dubious revision to the
telecast after another—no live song performances; no prior year’s winners as
presenters; shunting the announcements for four categories to commercial
breaks—only to walk back each change in the face of virulent criticism from the
moviegoing public. (And let’s not forget the risible “Best Popular Film”
category that was introduced in August before being mercifully scrapped a month
later.) Enthusiasm for the ceremony may vary, but this parade of failures has
left the sour impression that the people who care least about the Oscars happen
to be in charge of running this year’s Oscars.
For my part, I no longer view the Oscars as hugely
important. But I still think they have value, both as a historical
record—literally, what were they thinking?—and as an opportunity to honor a
bunch of movies that are, by and large, pretty good. Sure, I disagree with the
Academy’s chosen winners more often than not, but that disagreement doesn’t automatically
render their selections terrible. Besides, the arguments are part of the fun.
And so, over the next week, we’ll be running through our
predictions and preferences in all 21 features categories (sorry, I don’t weigh
in on the shorts because I know absolutely nothing about them). Today, we’re
ripping through eight below-the-line fields that I dismissively dub “the odds
and ends”, which is just a way to distinguish them from the five other crafts categories that I’m more
passionate about. If you happen to care deeply about sound mixing or costume
design, I apologize if I’ve insulted you. Also, get over it. Read More
This
was the first year that I’ve ever attempted to watch the Academy’s livestream
of the nominations. I do not recommend it. I know that the Oscars are still a bit
behind the times with respect to technology, but you’d think they could figure
out how to stream a video of two people reading cue cards without it crashing
every 20 seconds.
In any
event, my predictions this year were pretty dismal; I hit on just 51 of 69 (74%),
a steep drop from the 81% mark that I posted last
year. Ordinarily I’d say that’s a good thing, because I’m always in favor
of an unpredictable Oscars, but some of the nominees this year were real
head-scratchers. But so be it. Let’s take a quick run through the field:
BEST PICTURE Black Panther BlacKkKlansman Bohemian Rhapsody The Favourite Green Book Roma A Star Is Born Vice If Beale Street Could TalkRead More
Who’s going to host this year’s Oscars? Who cares? True, for
some viewers, the Academy Awards are more about the pageantry—the glamour, the
outfits, the sheer mass of hundreds of celebrities piling into a single
auditorium—than the movies. But for me, to the extent the Oscars matter at
all—and they do matter, probably more than we’d like to admit—it’s the way they
function as a snapshot of film history. Sure, they’re a ceremony of
self-congratulation, but they’re also a statement about the particular
cinematic values that the Academy holds at this moment in time.
Does that mean that the Oscars function as some sort of
objective arbiter of filmmaking quality? Of course not. But even if it’s silly
to get too worked up about which movies win Oscars and which don’t—the upsets!
the snubs!—the awards themselves are still worth analyzing and remembering.
That’s why, each year, the Manifesto devotes some brief time to covering the Oscars. We’re
beginning today with our predictions for the nominations, which will be
announced tomorrow. We’ll follow that up with some quick reactions to those
nominations on Tuesday, followed by some category-specific analysis in the coming
weeks.
Let’s get to it:
BEST PICTURE
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
If Beale Street Could Talk
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice Read More
