Oscars

Cinema may be a visual medium first and foremost, but its visuals would be pretty fucking useless without their auditory companions. And while my list of things to do before I die includes compiling the Manifesto’s Mute-Movie Hall of Fame – a list of films that are effective as works of art even with the sound turned off (current candidates include Avatar, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Hero, The Man Who Wasn’t There, and every Pixar movie ever made) – for the most part, a film’s aural component can be critical to its success. So recognition from the Academy for achievement in these categories (with one exception – more on that later) makes perfect sense.

(Also, if you’re wondering why no Terence Malick productions made my random shortlist of Mute Movies, that’s because they’re too busy fighting for a spot on the Anti-Sound All-Stars, a select group reserved for movies that actually become worse once you turn on your speakers. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve clearly never seen The New World or The Tree of Life.)

With that said, I have to confess that only one of the following four categories really interests me (though it’s one of the most important fields of the entire Academy Awards). I acknowledge the importance of the next two without fully partaking in their spirit, primarily because, after writing the Manifesto for 11 years and spending thousands of hours reading film criticism exclusively devoted to the Oscars, I still don’t really know what they mean. Oh, and the last category is worthless.

Alright, on to the predictions.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

NOMINEES
The Adventures of Tintin – John Williams
The Artist – Ludovic Bource
Hugo – Howard Shore
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Alberto Iglesias
War Horse – John Williams Read More

It is the Manifesto’s solemn, sacred duty to provide, for every Oscar category (stupid shorts aside), analysis that is both cogent and exhilarating. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for the majority of the fields is such that I take great pleasure in trying really hard but ultimately failing triumphing at such a daunting task. Sadly, my typically limitless passion is somewhat, well, limited for the following categories. As I say every year, I don’t mean to impugn the importance of these crafts to their respective films. They just aren’t that interesting to me personally, and thus I am unceremoniously lumping them together in a single, miscellany-style post.

For a strained but strangely pertinent analogy: Netflix has a setting on its website where you can select the video quality of your streaming service. The three potential options are – and I swear I’m not making this up – “Good,” “Better,” and “Best”. (Aside: These happen to be the same choices I give a woman whenever I ask her to critique my sexual prowess.) Applying that rubric to the Oscars, these are the “Good” categories. So if the text on your screen suddenly turns into Wingdings, or if the quality of the embedded videos reminds you of that time in 1995 when you kept watching late-night Cinemax even though your Dad wouldn’t pay for the channel and all you could really see were jagged lines and occasional glimpses of a woman’s bare shoulder, don’t worry, it’ll get better for the “Better” and “Best” fields.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

NOMINEES
Anonymous
The Artist
Hugo
Jane Eyre
W.E. Read More

Well that didn’t quite go as planned.

My predictions for this year’s Oscar nominations hit on just 50 out of 69 picks, good for a rate of 72%. That’s a rather precipitous decline from my 91% mark a year ago (when I only predicted eight categories rather than 13). Nevertheless, this year’s slate of nominees has me less frustrated than nonplussed. As it turns out, I overrated the appeal of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which is a shame, because it’s a good movie) and underrated the heft of War Horse (which is heartening, because it’s a great movie). I paid a bit too much devotion to guild awards, from which the voters strayed liberally (with the marked exception of the Screen Actors’ Guild). And I was absolutely blindsided by one of the Best Picture selections.

But, aside from a pair of unforgivable omissions in the supporting actor and actress categories, I’m relatively content with this year’s Oscar nominees. Sure, there’s too much The Tree of Life and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and not enough Drive or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 for my liking, but no individual is ever going to be wholly satisfied with the choices of a collective. Perhaps it’s because my hopes weren’t all that high to begin with – I’ve been resigned that many of my favorite films of 2011 would fail to synchronize with the Academy’s choices for some time – but the results are more eyebrow-raising than appalling. And if nothing else, this year’s Oscars should raise the profile for a handful of well-made, little-seen movies. So that’s something.

Now let’s get to where I fucked up. (Incorrect predictions are in red.) Read More

The Manifesto’s dynasty is about to end.

O.K., to call it a “dynasty” is a bit excessive. Yes, my utter dominance in predicting the recent Oscar nominations has undoubtedly been awe-inspiring to pundits everywhere, but I’ve only been forecasting the actual nominations for two years (I’ve been officially predicting winners – often badly – for 10); it’s not as if I’m rivaling Bill Russell’s Celtics for championship durability here. Still, my success made me feel invincible, and I figured I’d glide off into the sunset and spend the rest of my days reclining luxuriously on the beach while sipping mojitos like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Then things got complicated.

Alright, so we all know by now that two years ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – in its infinite wisdom – expanded its list of Best Picture nominations from five to 10 in an effort to broaden its appeal to a mass audience. Though that maneuver predictably incited a firestorm of controversy among purists about the quality of the films nominated (“Dear God, we’re watering down the Oscars!”), it didn’t make the actual prediction business that much more difficult, as evidenced by my 10-for-10 showing a year ago.

This year, however, the Academy has added a new wrinkle (possibly as a result of Academy president Tom Sherak waking up one day and muttering to himself, “Shit, did we really nominate The Blind Side for Best Picture?”). Rather than mandating exactly 10 nominations, the Best Picture field will now feature up to 10 selections, with a minimum of five. So for those of us who make a living hobby out of prognosticating the Oscars, we not only have to guess which movies will be selected, but we also have to estimate how many will make the cut.

To make things even more difficult, the specific process for sussing out the Chosen Handful is, shall we say, complex. I won’t go into details; suffice it to say that you basically need to be in a room with Microsoft Excel, an abacus, and Stephen Hawking in order to sift through the ballots and determine which movies have earned enough votes for a nomination. But there’s one key element in play that’s worth emphasizing: The balloting process places a heavy premium on first-place votes. That is, when Academy members fill out their ballots and rank their top five (yes, five – don’t ask) Best Picture contenders, a first-place ranking is dramatically more significant than a second- or third-place ranking. Thus, the process places a movie that is generally well-liked by many but perhaps not adored (like, say, War Horse) in a less favorable position than a movie that has a smaller but more ardent following (like, say, The Tree of Life).

What does all of that mean? I have no idea. And that, of course, is the problem. Just bear that in mind when I only hit on three of nine Best Picture nominations and you see me two days later wandering around Boulder taking swigs from a carton of milk.

Alright, enough preemptive pessimism. Let’s get to the predictions. Also, I’m expanding the categories in which I’m predicting the nominations to 13 total fields, up from eight in years past. I’m not interested in covering the remaining categories right now, partly because I don’t want to bore my readers, and partly because I don’t feel like spending three hours analyzing the chances of Transformers: Dark of the Moon earning a Best Sound Mixing nomination. As always, upcoming posts will predict the actual winner of all 21 categories (shorts excluded), but for now, you’ll have to settle for this baker’s dozen.

BEST PICTURE
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
The Tree of Life

Comments: If nothing else, we can be absolutely certain that The Artist and The Descendants will be here, and I’m reasonably confident in Hugo as well. And that, sadly, is where my confidence ends. Gulp.

It breaks my heart not to include War Horse, but its pulse has been ebbing significantly over the past several weeks, and I think the lack of a nomination for Spielberg from the Directors’ Guild constituted the moment it officially flat-lined. Read More

For someone who’s completely obsessive about the awards handed out at the Oscars, I’m somewhat indifferent about the actual Oscars themselves. That’s because the Academy Awards telecast, often dubbed the “Super Bowl for women”, is a showcase for high fashion (“you’re talking about fashion? you?”), banal stargazing, and inoffensive self-congratulation, absolutely none of which interests me. Don’t get me wrong, I still view the Oscars as the most important event of the year in terms of cinematic recognition; I just think the show itself is a bit of a bore.

That said, this year’s telecast has taken a relentless drubbing of criticism, and I’ll venture that it wasn’t that bad. Yes, James Franco was lifeless and disinterested, the original song performances remain a gigantic snooze, and most of the speeches were bland and uninspired. But the show had its share of moments, including Robert Downey, Jr.’s and Jude Law’s rat-a-tat chemistry, Kirk Douglas reaching back for a mid-90s fastball, Billy Crystal’s welcome cameo, and Jennifer Lawrence showing up in a stunning red dress and sending thousands of horny teenagers to their laptops to desperately Google “Jennifer Lawrence Esquire photo shoot”. Plus Anne Hathaway did her damnedest to compensate for Franco’s apathy with an abundance of boisterous energy, most memorably in an amusing rendition of Les Misérables’ “On My Own”. So while the 2010 Academy Awards telecast was hardly memorable, it was by no means a catastrophe. Read More