Oscars

Fact #1: The Manifesto has correctly predicted each of the past five Best Picture winners.

Fact #2: The Manifesto has correctly predicted each of the past eight Best Director winners.

Am I gloating? Not at all. Perhaps it’s due to the rise of the Internet era – in which every news nugget, every minor awards’ ceremony, every incident that could possibly impact the Oscars is immediately devoured, over-scrutinized, and spat back out by the blogosphere – but there hasn’t been a truly suspenseful Best Picture race since 2006, when The Departed held off a late charge from Little Miss Sunshine that would have sent Martin Scorsese on a murderous rampage, not to mention caused my father to have a heart attack. (For the record, I got that one right. My last miss was the year before, in the Oscar Race That Shall Not Be Named.) This year, the procession has been even more formulaic than normal, and tonight’s opening of the envelope feels less like a suspenseful announcement than a dutiful, long-awaited coronation. Read More

Is there an industry in America right now experiencing a bigger talent boom than the acting trade? Pick a movie playing at your local multiplex, and regardless of its overall quality – which is typically dependent on the talents of the director and the screenwriter – it’ll invariably be headlined by highly talented lead performers, whether they’re in-their-prime movie stars, chameleonic character actors, ageless veterans who can still reach 95 with their fastball, or frighteningly self-assured up-and-comers. Throw in a preposterously deep pool of imported talent, and English-language actors are on a “UCLA in the ’60s and ’70s” run right now.

Don’t believe me? I’ll break it down for you: Read More

Sometimes I worry that the rationale behind awarding Oscars for screenplays is utterly fraudulent. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denigrating the importance of writing in today’s cinematic climate, not least when high-brow critics constantly grumble about how “Scripts don’t matter anymore” and “Young people are too attention-addled to appreciate a proper art film” and “What the hell is Twitter, anyway?”. My real concern is that, of all of the prizes awarded at the Academy Awards, the screenplay is the one category that voters can’t actually see. For Best Costume Design, they can judge a film’s wardrobe; for Best Cinematography, they can follow the camera movements and lighting; for the acting fields, they can watch the performer. You get the idea.

But a screenplay? Hell, a screenplay is just a few hundred typewritten pages that might have been drafted years ago and were lying in a dusty desk drawer underneath some old Superman comics until a director miraculously came along and decided to turn them into a movie. Of course, it rarely works that way (though Clint Eastwood apparently sat on the Oscar-nominated script for Unforgiven for 15 years until he was old enough to play the lead), but I nevertheless wonder if we can accurately judge a screenplay on its own merits rather than as a mere stepping stone to a finished film.

But so it goes. Besides, these are two of the categories in which the Academy regularly exhibits a certain degree of bravery (“The Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” always has a nice ring to it), so I suppose I shouldn’t be staring into the mouths of gift horses. Read More

Someday, an enterprising young man with a degree in applied mathematics and way too much time on his hands – not that I’m looking at anyone in particular – is going to compile a riveting sociological study on the Best Supporting Actor/Actress Oscars and the economic windfall that they yield for their winners. I mean, do these things really matter? I’ve always argued that the Academy Awards themselves are highly relevant, at least from a commercial standpoint if not an artistic one. Oscar winners immediately become more marketable as business properties, simply due to their increased visibility; once you win an Oscar, you’re somebody. Aren’t you?

Lately, I’m not so sure. True, following his ferocious Oscar-winning performance in Inglourious Basterds, Christoph Waltz is now every casting director’s first call for the part of “Megalomaniacal Villain” (the only reason he isn’t playing the baddie in the upcoming James Bond movie is that fellow Best Supporting Actor winner Javier Bardem beat him to it). But do you realize that the winners of Best Supporting Actress over the past decade include Jennifer Connelly (only two worthwhile credits in the 10 years following A Beautiful Mind), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last quasi-memorable role: Ocean’s Twelve in 2004), Renée Zelweger (only function these days seems to involve spreading rumors of another wretched Bridget Jones sequel), Jennifer Hudson (virtually invisible post-Dreamgirls), and Mo’Nique (lone credit since Precious? Steppin: The Movie)? And I haven’t even mentioned Cuba Gooding, Jr. yet. I thought winning an Oscar was supposed to energize your career, not torpedo it.

So it’s entirely possible that winning an Academy Award for a supporting performance has a 30% chance of derailing an actor’s career. Just remember this when you look back 10 years from now and think to yourself, “Who the hell was Octavia Spencer?”.

But I digress. On to the predictions. Read More

Given that I dubbed my last post the “Aural Edition”, this one should probably be called the “Horror Edition”. Why? Because predicting these four categories at this year’s Oscars absolutely terrifies me. I don’t mean an abstract, intellectual form of terror in the “I’m scared that Keira Knightley might never win an Oscar” or “I’m afraid that Jeremy Lin might pull a Hank Gathers and die on the basketball court if D’Antoni keeps playing him 45 minutes every night” vein. I mean that, if I go 0-for-4 in predicting these deeply important technical categories on Oscar night – a scenario that is alarmingly plausible – then there’s the distinct possibility that I’ll film myself with tears streaming down my face, babbling, “I am so, so sorry for underestimating the impact that Hugo held with mainstream Academy voters,” before wandering into the woods and never being heard from again. In the words of Terius Nash, this shit real.

(Just to confirm: It’s not normal to have nightmares about an unwatchable film winning Best Cinematography, right? I’m starting to wonder if I take this whole Oscar thing a bit too seriously. Oh well, too late now.)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

NOMINEES
The Artist – Guillame Schiffman
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Jeff Crenoweth
Hugo – Robert Richardson
The Tree of Life – Emmanuel Lubezki
War Horse – Janusz Kaminski Read More