{"id":1494,"date":"2016-02-17T19:44:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T19:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=1494"},"modified":"2019-10-07T15:06:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T15:06:32","slug":"seymour-movies-oscarssoinevitable-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=1494","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Movies: #OscarsSoInevitable 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The governors and voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should go into the streets, suburbs and strip malls of our great nation and thank every single angry black person they see. Start by going to the Smith family manse and apply a big, long, warm hug to Jada Pinkett Smith — and her husband, too, but only if he really needs one. Give Spike Lee another lifetime achievement award for something, anything else. And keep paying it forward, fulsomely and individually, from sea to shining sea.<\/p>\n

Because if it hadn\u2019t been for the #OscarSoWhite movement and all the attendant debate, acrimony and controversy it aroused among movie people all over the world, hardly anybody would give a bacon-wrapped, caramel-covered you-know-what about this year\u2019s show.<\/p>\n

Begin with the fact that ALL of this year\u2019s top acting awards have been foregone conclusions for weeks. So barring the utterly, inexplicably unimaginable upset, (in other words, don\u2019t count on it), there\u2019s almost zero suspense accompanying the awards going out to the most recognizable people.<\/p>\n

Some uncertainty clings to Best Picture, I guess. But that won\u2019t be decided until the bitter end, at which point Chris Rock will (one hopes and trusts) have kept you engaged and amused with his strafing every glitzy square inch of pomposity and Caucasian self-importance within his reach.<\/p>\n

And it wont matter whether he\u2019s the only person-of-color who shows up because, as I\u2019ve said since the boycott was announced, there\u2019s little hope in changing things by absenting yourself from a frame from which your overall absence (or relative lack of presence) is already taken for granted. That\u2019s as clear as I can or need to be on THAT topic. Except, I guess, for this.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s do this thing we do because we know you care \u2013 and we still can\u2019t understand why. As in past installments, projected winners are in bold<\/strong> and there\u2019s a \u201cFor Whatever It\u2019s Worth\u201d (FWIW)<\/strong> ancillary graph tacked onto each category listed.<\/p>\n

Best Picture<\/strong>
\nThe Big Short<\/em>
\n Bridge of Spies<\/em>
\n Brooklyn<\/em>
\n Mad Max: Fury Road<\/em>
\n The Martian<\/em>
\n The Revenant<\/em><\/strong>
\n Room<\/em>
\n Spotlight<\/em><\/p>\n

Revenant<\/em> is heavily immersive, grandiosely \u201cwow\u201d moviemaking. Then again, this description more or less applies to at least two, maybe three other movies on this list, especially Fury Road,<\/em> which many believed had the early lead. Big Short<\/em> may still pull a Crash<\/em>-like upset. And then there\u2019s Spotlight<\/em>, which in any other year would have been the public-spirited work collecting Oscars in the double figures. I\u2019m betting on the One With The Big Bear.<\/p>\n

FWIW:<\/strong> My own favorites from this list were Spotlight,<\/em> Fury Road, The<\/em>\u00a0Martian<\/em> and Bridge of Spies<\/em>, whose U2 takedown scene was, outside of Leo & The Big Bear, the best set piece available in this crowd. (They\u2019re kinda sorta alike if you think too much about it. So let\u2019s not.) If a younger director put that aerial sequence together with the same blend of meticulousness and brio, she\u2019d be hailed as a harbinger of greater things to come for the movie industry. Because it\u2019s Spielberg, it was more like: Is that all you got for us? (At least, that\u2019s what it sounded like to me.)<\/p>\n

Best Director<\/strong>
\nAdam McKay, The Big Short<\/em>
\nGeorge Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road<\/em>
\nAlejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, The Revenant<\/em><\/strong>
\nLenny Abrahamson, Room<\/em>
\nTom McCarthy, Spotlight<\/em><\/p>\n

Go look it up. I did. The only two directors ever to win back-to-back Oscars were Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve<\/em>) and John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley<\/em>). Mank\u2026Pappy\u2026I\u00f1\u00e1rritu? \u00a0It makes a kind<\/em> of karmic sense: Birdman<\/em> was a high-fallutin backstage soap in the All About Eve<\/em> manner, only with dorkier phantasmagorical subtexts. And it\u2019s plausible that if Ford were around today, a frontier epic such as Revenant<\/em> would have been in his wheelhouse \u2013 presuming said wheelhouse was drained of Ford\u2019s patented Irish-whiskey sentimentality. As for what I think of I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s work\u2026I think the category, \u201cLess Than Meets the Eye,\u201d that the late Andrew Sarris included in his groundbreaking auteurist survey, The American Cinema<\/em>, was made for somebody like him. (Then again, to his everlasting credit, Andy wasn\u2019t afraid to change his mind about any of his rankings along the way.)<\/p>\n

FWIW<\/strong>: Ridley Scott\u2019s omission must have been a really close call, though it\u2019s hard to decide who would have had to go from this group to put him there. As relatively unassuming as McCarthy\u2019s work on Spotlight<\/em> appears, his seamless control of volatile material is a lot harder than it looks. The Big Short<\/em>\u00a0seems the only outlier in the band, if only because it\u2019s both a muckraking j\u2019accuse and a quirky docu-comedy. Given that this is a presidential election year, Short\u00a0<\/i>is also timelier than any of the nominated films and, for a time, that attribute seemed enough to vault McKay to a win. Time, so to speak, flies.<\/p>\n

Best Actor<\/strong>
\nBryan Cranston, Trumbo<\/em>
\nMatt Damon, The Martian<\/em>
\nLeonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant<\/em><\/strong>
\nMichael Fassbender, Steve Jobs<\/em>
\nEddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl<\/em><\/p>\n

Going all the way back to This Boy\u2019s Life<\/em> and The Basketball Diaries<\/em>, I can think of at least two DiCaprio performances more Oscar-worthy than this one. But, when going all the way back, I also remember that in those days he was considered more of an \u201cactor\u201d than a \u201cmovie star.\u201d And when a movie star is seen at a certain point in his career putting himself through as much shit as Leo conspicuously does here, the convergence of forces is too powerful to ignore. In other words, it\u2019s time to let him have it\u2026<\/p>\n

FWIW<\/strong>: \u2026because, while I still think Cranston is in the conversation as Our Best Actor, his Dalton Trumbo was ham left in the oven a tad too long. Damon will Get His some other time as will Fassbender, who may have actually been the Best In Show here.<\/p>\n

Best Actress<\/strong>
\nCate Blanchett, Carol<\/em>
\nBrie Larson, Room<\/em><\/strong>
\nJennifer Lawrence, Joy<\/em>
\nCharlotte Rampling, 45 Years<\/em>
\nSaoirse Ronan, Brooklyn<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a given at this point. And it\u2019s cool. She invests so much into this dark, slender story that her presence assumes total command of the enterprise. (Plus she looks\u00a0exactly\u00a0<\/em>the way readers of the novel imagined.)<\/p>\n

FWIW<\/strong>: Had Charlotte Rampling measured her words more carefully before weighing in on the minority\/Academy set-to, there might have been some echo-chamber chatter about her illustrious career getting a much-deserved party favor. Thing is, she\u2019s actually pretty excellent in this movie and it would have been altogether appropriate to give her the gold this time. It\u2019s just\u2026that is\u2026well\u2026you probably intended to say it differently, but\u2026how to put this? Do you actually know any black Americans personally, madame?<\/p>\n

Best Supporting Actor<\/strong>
\nChristian Bale, The Big Short<\/em>
\nTom Hardy, The Revenant<\/em>
\nMark Ruffalo, Spotlight<\/em>
\nMark Rylance, Bridge of Spies<\/em>
\nSylvester Stallone, Creed<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m aware I said there\u2019ll be no suspense at all with the acting awards. But I suppose there\u2019s some suspense over whatever bleary thing will pop into Stallone\u2019s head during his acceptance speech and whether he once again thanks the William Morris Agency twice while altogether forgetting to thank the black director and cast members of what some would-be-wit-iots insist on calling Rocky VII.<\/em> The very least he can do is remind America \u2013 and maybe himself \u2013 that his \u201cimaginary friend\u201d Rocky Balboa would have never existed without Muhammad Ali as an inspiration. Google \u201cBayonne Bleeder\u201d if you don\u2019t know what I mean. On second thought, we’ll save you the trouble<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FWIW<\/strong>: \u00a0Rylance\u2019s is the one great performance in this bunch and the most significant MIA here is, of course, SAG winner Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation<\/em>. Meanwhile, I’m still wondering whether Tom Hardy is our new Brando or our new Lee Marvin. Either option would work out just fine.\u00a0M Squad: The Movie<\/em>? <\/a>I’m so there…<\/p>\n

Best Supporting Actress<\/strong>
\nJennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight<\/em>
\nRooney Mara, Carol<\/em>
\nRachel McAdams, Spotlight<\/em>
\nAlicia Vikander, The Danish Girl<\/em><\/strong>
\nKate Winslet, Steve Jobs<\/em><\/p>\n

She\u2019s really good, folks. And she\u2019s had one of the best overall years of anybody on this docket. As much as she outclassed her co-star here, this picture, in some ways, was the least of it. In Ex Machina,<\/em> she was the most alluringly scary of living dolls. She was also dryly funny beneath the dazzling threads she wears in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.<\/em><\/p>\n

FWIW<\/strong>: Still…Winslet was great in one of those never-saw-it-coming turns that, in many ways, was better than the one for which she won the lead-actress Oscar. (And remind me. Which one was that?) But I\u2019m really rooting for JJL, who made the best out of one of the most thankless roles in motion picture history.<\/p>\n

Best Adapted Screenplay<\/strong>
\nThe Big Short<\/em>
\n Brooklyn<\/em><\/strong>
\n Carol<\/em>
\n The Martian<\/em>
\n Room<\/em><\/p>\n

Classy source material and an austere, near-classical design. What more could anybody ask for?<\/p>\n

FWIW:<\/strong> Then again, Carol<\/em> was pretty austere, too, which some people, though I\u2019m not one of them, believed was its biggest problem. I\u2019d be happier, though, if Big Short<\/em>\u2019s brasher tactics were rewarded here, if nowhere else.<\/p>\n

Best Original Screenplay<\/strong>
\nBridge of Spies,<\/em>
\n Ex Machina<\/em>
\n Inside Out<\/em>
\n Spotlight<\/em><\/strong>
\n Straight Outta Compton<\/em><\/p>\n

A really good list here and I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only lapsed newspaperman who roots for this one, no matter where it\u2019s nominated.<\/p>\n

FWIW:<\/strong> We may well be running out of opportunities to give one of these to a Pixar movie and my inner cartoonist secretly pulls for the one with the Ugly Imaginary Friend. Yet I\u2019m all but positive it\u2019s a shoo-in for\u2026<\/p>\n

Best Animated Feature Film<\/strong>
\nAnomalisa<\/em>
\n Boy and the World<\/em>
\n Inside\/Out<\/em><\/strong>
\n Shaun the Sheep Movie<\/em>
\n When Marnie Was There<\/em><\/p>\n

Centuries from now, assuming the smarter rats and bugs take up history, cinema studies and Freud as hobbies, the Disney-Pixar corpus will be pored over as keys to how civilization at the Second Millennium engaged with and critiqued its own imaginative autonomy. Inside\/Out<\/em> will be as crucial to this retrospective effort as all twelve films of the Toy Story<\/em> saga. (I know, but give them time because you know that\u2019s what The Mouse is ultimately after…)<\/p>\n

FWIW:<\/strong>\u00a0Sing along with me, everybody: \u201cHe\u2019s Shaun the Sheep! \/ He\u2019s Shaun the Sheep!\/ He Even Mucks About With Those Who Cannot Bleat\/Keep it in Mind\/He\u2019s One of a Kind\/Oh!\/Life\u2019s a Treat\/With Shaun the Sheep!!…\u201d Let me repeat: It\u2019s \u201cSHAUN THE SHEEP\u201d!!!!!<\/p>\n

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