Oscars

Last year, I commented that the pool of legitimate candidates for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar was so deep, it bordered on absurd. This year, however, that’s more true of the Best Actor race, which is so stacked that it makes this category seem strangely light. That’s more praising 2013’s leading men than criticizing their supporting counterparts, but it nevertheless makes me wonder if the winner of this year’s award will ultimately prove to be forgettable.

NOMINEES
Barkhad Abdi—Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper—American Hustle
Michael Fassbender—12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill—The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto—Dallas Buyers Club

WILL WIN
I’m searching for a reason to pick against Jared Leto here, and I’m not having much success. He’s already racked up a whopping 17 wins on the precursor circuit, including all-important victories at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors’ Guild (more on those in a moment). By comparison, Fassbender has four pre-Oscar wins, while none of the remaining three challengers has earned a single one. The only red flag on Leto is that he lacks a BAFTA nomination, as the last Oscar winner in this category who whiffed with the Brits was Morgan Freeman in 2004. But the BAFTAs shut out Million Dollar Baby entirely that year (mainly because most voters hadn’t seen it), and they did the same to Dallas Buyers Club this year; given that Leto’s film tallied an additional five Oscar nominations, it’s safe to say that Academy voters viewed it more favorably than did those across the pond.

Besides, consider this: In the 20 years since SAG started bestowing awards, only twice in either of the supporting categories has a performer won at both SAG and the Globes but failed to complete the trifecta with the Oscar. (Those two cases, for the record: Lauren Bacall in 1996 for The Mirror Has Two Faces, and Eddie Murphy 10 years later for Dreamgirls.) The only way Leto gets dethroned here is if either American Hustle or 12 Years a Slave pulls a sweep, and while that’s a slight possibility for the latter, I can’t see it happening in such a hotly contested, three-way Best Picture race. Jared Leto takes his first ever Oscar, thereby finally compensating for the victory he should have earned 13 years ago for his searing performance in Requiem for a Dream. (Not that I’m still bitter or anything.)

SHOULD WIN
Remember what I said about this field feeling slight compared to the Best Actor race? That’s not exactly a coincidence: Four of the five films featured here also nabbed nominations for their leading men, so the supporting players feel a bit overshadowed (rightly so, for the most part). The only performer who isn’t the victim of nomination overlap is Barkhad Abdi (though Tom Hanks’ miss for lead actor was a major surprise), who does a remarkable job holding his own against one of America’s screen legends. There’s a shiftiness to Abdi’s work in Captain Phillips, as well as the sense of a brain operating frantically despite his ostensible control of the circumstances. As those circumstances spiral and that control becomes increasingly tenuous, Abdi silently illustrates his character’s inner panic and desperation without relinquishing his outward command of the situation. He isn’t a savage, but neither is he above a bit of savagery, and the unpredictability of his actions makes him both dangerous and fascinating. (His sudden exclamation, “I love America!” injects a blast of gallows humor into proceedings that are otherwise relentlessly grim.) He also generates a surprising amount of sympathy, as it becomes increasingly clear that his marauder is little more than a cog in a not-that-well-oiled machine. Hanks’ emotionally naked performance will serve as Captain Phillips‘ legacy, but Abdi’s savvy mixture of intelligence and ferocity provides for an intriguing counterpoint.

Three of the remaining four contenders are less successful in evading the long shadows cast by their costars, though given the extraordinary work of those costars, this should hardly denigrate the persuasive nature of the supporting performances. As he did in Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper proves himself a sound fit for David O. Russell’s manic sensibilities once again in American Hustle. He initially fashions his enterprising FBI agent as a hard-boiled go-getter, but that sense of steadfastness quickly begins to fray, and shards of doubt and anxiety start to pierce his façade of fortitude. Read More

Typically, I hate this category. Not only are the eligibility rules arcane, but most of the nominated songs add minimal value to their actual films, as they frequently just play over the closing credits, when most moviegoers are shuffling out to the parking garage before their validation expires. It’s why I usually dump my analysis into a larger post that addresses all of the music and sound categories at once. This year, however, one of the candidates is so extraordinary that it practically demands its own essay, while two others (one nominated, the other not) further illustrate how smartly written songs can actively complement movies, rather than simply serve as tacked-on denouements.

NOMINEES
Alone Yet Not Alone—”Alone Yet Not Alone” (Bruce Broughton, Dennis Spiegel)
Despicable Me 2—”Happy” (Pharrell Williams)
Frozen—”Let It Go” (Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez)
Her—”The Moon Song” (Karen O, Spike Jonze)
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom—”Ordinary Love” (Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen) Read More

Winging it, as it turns out, just might suit me. This was the Manifesto’s third year predicting the Oscar nominations in 13 different categories, and after hitting on just 50 of 69 picks each of the past two years (a thoroughly mediocre 72%), this year’s total jumped to 59 of 69 (a far more palatable 86%). I could attribute my success to the Academy’s predictability (though voters did still provide two stunners). Or, I could congratulate myself on my extraordinary intuition, even at the risk of squandering half my readership in the process.

You know what? Screw it:

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But to be fair, the nominations themselves are just the appetizer. I still need to predict the actual winners prior to the March 2 telecast, and my recent track record in that regard—I correctly pegged just 14 of 21 categories each of the past two years—is hardly worth gloating about. To paraphrase the immortal Cadillac Williams, I may have won the war, but the battle isn’t over. (Or, if you prefer the acerbic poetry of Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks quite yet.”)

So, as always, the Manifesto still has work to do. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how things shook out with Thursday morning’s announcement (incorrect picks are in red): Read More

“Winging it” has never been my strength. I believe in data, in probability, in hard science. I believe that decision-making is a process of ruthless optimization, whereby one weighs the relevant costs and benefits before selecting the appropriate option. I believe in regression to the mean, the unimpeachable truth of mathematics, and the Gambler’s Fallacy. And I generally believe that, if you think rationally about a question long enough, you can arrive at the correct answer. It’s why I spend hours crafting email-screeds to my friends railing about atrocious decisions in sports, like Mike McCarthy choosing to kick the extra point in a two-point game with 11 minutes left, or John Farrell bringing Brayan Villarreal into a tie game
with the bases loaded in the ninth inning while Koji Uehara plays Scrabble in the bullpen. It’s also why my friends in Colorado lovingly (loathingly?) refer to me as a robot. Much like the sneering spice merchant in Game of Thrones, I trust in logic, not passion.

Of course, that spice merchant got his fucking throat cut, suggesting that logic can only get you so far. And really, predicting the Oscars has always been more art than science. As tempting as it can be to pore over the list of winners from, say, the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association and attempt to form a conclusion about The Great Gatsby‘s odds of landing a Best Production Design nomination, in the end, I’m never going to be able peer into the collective psyche of the 6,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and learn what the hell they’re thinking. Plus, I just started recapping each of the 92 movies I watched in 2013, so I haven’t been able to delve into the nitty-gritty of the Oscar race with my usual demented zeal. Read More

Writing a post-Oscars recap always feels a bit odd, as the Manifesto’s area of expertise is not the telecast itself. (Of course, given the success rate of my predictions this year, it’s questionable whether the Manifesto has any area of expertise. No matter.) So if you’re looking for analysis on just how adorable Quvenzhané Wallis looked, or whether Kristen Stewart was hammered (nope, she just had a broken foot), or the awesomeness of Anne Hathaway’s nipples, you’ll find plenty of fodder elsewhere on the web.

I do, however, want to comment briefly on Seth MacFarlane’s turn as host. From the beginning, MacFarlane made it clear that he knew he was an outsider (“It’s an honor that everyone else said no”), and a prolonged skit with William Shatner – partly painful, partly very funny, particularly the “Flight in sock puppets” bit – instantly established his sheepish, near-apologetic demeanor. In the era of instant micro-analysis and trends on Twitter, where a rabid online audience will ravenously seize on the latest mishap or malfunction, the hosting gig at the Oscars is virtually predetermined for failure. MacFarlane seemed amusingly resigned to that fate from the get-go, with Shatner displaying fake screenshots from the future that read, “MacFarlane worst Oscar host ever”. It’s the sort of self-insulating shtick that can come off as preemptively defensive, but it showcased a cute self-awareness in which MacFarlane acknowledged that he was swimming over his head. Read More