{"id":3639,"date":"2023-03-03T08:49:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T16:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3639"},"modified":"2023-03-06T07:22:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T15:22:59","slug":"seymour-movies-struggles-to-stay-intrigued-by-2023-oscars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3639","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Movies Struggles to Stay Intrigued by 2023 Oscars"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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The 2023 Oscar ceremonies bear down on us all like a vacant, runaway bus on an oil-slicked interstate. And yet, people still can\u2019t stop nattering about what happened at the 2022 ceremonies, when somebody\u2019s husband got so mad at somebody else\u2019s bad joke at her expense that he bitch-slapped that somebody else while ABC did its gosh-darndest to keep us from seeing it happen. Now the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences have assembled a \u201ccrisis team\u201d to make sure it doesn\u2019t happen again. Too bad. They could use the ratings. And they know it.

For yet another year, the Academy Awards stagger into view beneath a fog of uncertainty as to whether they should continue to exist at all. In a recent interview<\/a>, erstwhile Paramount Pictures honcho Barry Diller declared awards season \u201can antiquity\u201d, along with the movie industry that kept them propped up for more than a century. The business model, Diller says, of a movie \u201cgoing to a theater, building up some word of mouth if it was successful, having that word of mouth carry itself over\u201d has been overpowered by streams, clouds, and movie theaters closing in America and abroad as a reverberating byproduct of the COVID-19 lockdown. The very definition of a \u201cmovie,\u201d he adds, \u201cis in such transition that it doesn\u2019t mean anything anymore.\u201d

He’s right, of course. And yet, here we are again, rewiring this tired old circuitry to get audiences in the mood for another night of triumph, tears, suspense, and whatever else Oscar hype used to promise. What\u2019s kind of ironic, if not all that significant, is that this year, there may be real suspense in a few of the major categories given the mixed results along the way in the awards leading up to March 12. As of this writing, all the trade publications and prognosticators are certain Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em> will win everything, everywhere, etc. As you\u2019ll note below, I\u2019m not as convinced, at least not for Best Picture.

I\u2019m also not convinced that this will be the last Academy Awards broadcast, nor, for that matter, the next one, or the one after that. Because, as wobbly as things are with the Oscars, and as more people, even movie lovers, wish they would go away already, no one seems to have any ideas as to what, if anything, would fill the void they would leave behind. As with newspapers, all-star games, and other institutions struggling for new identities in the still-new century, the very nature of what a \u201cmovie\u201d is and what the criteria is for assessing its value, artistically or commercially is, unavoidably, under review in several quarters. Whatever the case, the movie business as we once knew it may be dying, but movies are not; any more than opera, live theater, even the damn novel, all of which persist, despite no longer occupying the center of the zeitgeist.

In fact, what is<\/em> a zeitgeist these days anyhow? If the Oscars are little more than a lame excuse to avoid dealing with that question, then, they\u2019re good for something after all.<\/p>\r\n

As always, projected winners are listed in bold <\/strong>with FWIW<\/strong> (For Whatever Its Worth) notes added whenever I feel like it.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n


Best Picture<\/strong>

All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>
Avatar: The Way of Water<\/em>
The Banshees of Inesherin<\/em>
Elvis<\/em>
Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em>
The Fabelmans<\/em>
T\u00e1r<\/em>
Top Gun: Maverick<\/em><\/strong>
Triangle of Sadness<\/em>
Women Talking<\/em>

Let\u2019s get this party started by clambering out on a limb. As I\u2019m writing this, the Screen Actors Guild, the Producers Guild of America, and the Directors Guild of America have all given their top honors to Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em> with BAFTA dissenting by making All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em> its choice for Best Picture. That digression, though hardly major, should be a hint that this season\u2019s predictions shouldn\u2019t be, if not set in stone, certainly written in ink. As the New York Times\u2019s Kyle Buchannan tweeted, not since Apollo 13<\/em> swept the PGA, DGA, and SAG\u2019s top prizes 28 years ago has a movie winning those awards fell short of winning the Best Picture Oscar. On the one hand, that\u2019s a formidable precedent; on the other, if it happened at least once before\u2026

At the risk of repeating myself (at least to those of you who\u2019ve been paying attention to my annual dithering on these things), the Oscars, even in their present emaciated state, are trade awards, first, foremost, and for however long they go on. In the medium\u2019s customary tug-of-war between Art and Commerce, the latter tends to have the upper hand in the Academy\u2019s consideration. Neither the media nor the moviegoing public are factors in the voting except for those parts of the latter group with craft union cards within the moviemaking industry. Thus, most of the Academy\u2019s final decisions have less to do with the quality of a motion picture and more to do with assessing its overall impact on their industry\u2019s future. Hence, I put it to you: which of these eight movies has done more to bolster whatever\u2019s left of the movie business\u2019s sagging confidence?


Before you answer, I need to remind you that at this year\u2019s annual Oscars luncheon, TG:M<\/em>\u2019s co-producer and star Tom Cruise made the biggest splash among its record-breaking 182 attendees;<\/a> he was the Big Man On Campus, its Belle of the Ball, with none of the baggage he\u2019s had to lug over the past 20 years. In a year with as many wide-open categories as this, the top prize may be the widest and most open of the competitions, excepting the feature documentaries. Draw your own conclusions, but at this moment, I can easily see Captain Maverick and his squadron booming and zooming to the winner\u2019s circle. And because the movie was<\/em> better than anybody had the right to expect, it wouldn\u2019t be the most embarrassing Best Picture award in Oscar history. Too many others compete for that dubious honor.


FWIW<\/strong>: I doubt Prey<\/em> or Nope,<\/em> two of my own favorite movies from last year, would have made this list; nor would the tightly wound and ferociously topical Emily the Criminal<\/em> and the sumptuously Hitchcockian detective story from Korea Decision to Leave.<\/em> What all these had in common, as far as I was concerned, was a sense of each movie going about its business, doing what needed to be done in their allotted time, and keeping their audiences alert for surprise and possibility within tight corners. In short, they were the kind of movies I sought out in theaters or drive-ins in an earlier, different life.




Best Director<\/strong>

Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inesherin<\/em>
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em><\/strong>
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans<\/em>
Todd Field, T\u00e1r<\/em>
Ruben \u00d6slund, Triangle of Sadness<\/em>

Fablemans<\/em> is a Steven Spielberg movie about Steven Spielberg. Some people have a problem with this, and I don\u2019t know why. It\u2019s not getting skunked the same way that his remake of West Side Story<\/em> did a couple years ago. But you\u2019d think a love letter to movies and moviemaking would be a slam dunk with voters. Instead, Team Daniel has been riding in triumph throughout awards season and there\u2019s not so much as a pebble to trip them up to the winner\u2019s circle.


Best Actor<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Austin Butler, Elvis<\/em><\/strong>
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em>
Brendan Fraser, The Whale<\/em>
Paul Mescal, Aftersun<\/em>
Bill Nighy, Living<\/em>

At the start, this category appeared to belong to Farrell or Fraser, whose SAG win may have put him back in play. But maybe it\u2019s kind of a retroactive referendum on what people admired more about Robert De Niro\u2019s Oscar-winning portrayal of Jake La Motta in 1980\u2019s Raging Bull<\/em>. Was it the all-out depiction in La Motta\u2019s volatile personality or was it the fact that De Niro invested so deeply into the role that he made himself gain weight? Guess we\u2019ll see.


Best Actress<\/strong>

Cate Blanchett, T\u00e1r<\/em>
Ana de Armas, Blonde<\/em>
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie<\/em>
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans<\/em>
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em><\/strong>

Everybody I know, including me, is rooting for Yeoh, though Blanchett\u2019s been mounting a doughty and, it would appear, successful campaign to dispel the negative vibes her movie stirred up in the classical music community. Cate\u2019s BAFTA win teases us into thinking this will be a photo finish, but somehow, I doubt it\u2019ll be that close


FWIW:<\/strong> Every year, the Oscars always seem to single out a \u201clittle\u201d movie with a broken, put-upon protagonist struggling with some malady that s\/he cannot control until they find redemption at the end. This year, that movie is To Leslie<\/em> and its principal beneficiary is Andrea Riseborough, whose controversial nomination came through an eleventh-hour campaign with big names (Kate Winslet, Amy Adams, and Gwyneth Paltrow among them) pushing her over. This in turn led to cries of foul, especially among the #OscarSoWhite veterans believing Risborough\u2019s candidacy came at the expense of such Oscar-worthy lead performances as those of Danielle Deadwyler (Till)<\/em> and Viola Davis (The Woman King<\/em>), both of whom were nominated for SAG Awards, but lost to Yeoh. Till\u2019<\/em>s director Chinonye Chukwu accused Hollywood of \u201cunabashed misogyny towards Black women.\u201d She\u2019s not altogether wrong. But it doesn\u2019t mean Riseborough\u2019s nomination is a manifestation of this prejudice. It\u2019s legit. You come away from To Leslie<\/em> with Riseborough\u2019s all-out investment in her serial-fuck-up character resonating in your head. Do I think she\u2019s better than Blanchett or Yeoh? Apples and oranges. Do I think Deadwyler was better in her movie than Riseborough was in hers? I\u2019d say it\u2019s a draw. Do I think Davis was better in Woman King<\/em>? You bet I do because, as I\u2019ve stated before on this platform, Viola Davis is God! Then again, I also would have wanted Aubrey Plaza represented here for Emily the Criminal<\/em>. But who cares what I want? Not Hollywood. That, as we were once fond of saying, is show biz and biz-ness of any kind rarely plays fair. So, I say kudos to the coalition behind Riseborough for making their push. Someday soon, Black and Brown people will make their own Riseborough uprising because of the precedent it set. To repeat: that\u2019s show biz.


Best Supporting Actor<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em>
Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway<\/em>
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans<\/em>
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em>
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em><\/strong>

By now, a foregone conclusion. And, as with last year\u2019s winner in this category, it\u2019s also a great story: the little boy \u00e9migr\u00e9 from Vietnam who played Short Round in 1984\u2019s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Down<\/em> hitting the jackpot forty years later. Fun fact: Jeff Cohen, who played Chunk to his Data in 1985\u2019s The Goonies<\/em>, is now his lawyer.

FWIW:<\/strong> Keoghan was a surprise BAFTA winner in this category, and it may be because his poignant presence shined through the outsized personalities of Banshees<\/em>\u2019 two stars. He\u2019ll get some attention, but, in many ways, he\u2019s already won. As for Paper Boi (Henry), his day\u2019s coming. Count on it.


Best Supporting Actress<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever<\/em>
Hong Chau, The Whale<\/em>
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Ineisherin<\/em>
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em><\/strong>
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em>

Curtis\u2019s SAG award shouldn\u2019t have come as a surprise. For starters, she\u2019s totally unrecognizable in the movie, at least at first. And Oscar loves it when the glamorous go all out to distort themselves on camera, especially when, in Curtis\u2019s case, they\u2019re Hollywood royalty. I\u2019m now feeling it\u2019s hers to lose. Bassett\u2019s infusion of power and vulnerability helps ground what could have been an unwieldy popcorn blockbuster and made her an early favorite. But the MCU can\u2019t withstand the accumulated might of ancestral movie legacy. Not this time, anyway.

Best Adapted Screenplay<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery<\/em>
Living<\/em>
Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>
Women Talking<\/strong><\/em>

On the one hand, giving an Oscar to a Nobel Prize winner like Kazuo Ishiguro (Living<\/em>) would show elevated thinking on Hollywood\u2019s part. On the other, Sarah Polley has quietly, diligently proven herself to be one of the world\u2019s best writer-directors and I can\u2019t see her walking away empty-handed from another one of these ceremonies.


Best Original Screenplay<\/strong>

The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em><\/strong>
Everything, Everywhere All at Once<\/em>
The Fabelmans<\/em>
T\u00e1r<\/em>
Triangle of Sadness<\/em>

Anything with Martin McDonagh\u2019s name on it is all but automatically placed in this category\u2019s pole position. This one\u2019s an odd chamber piece, an astringent, overextended Laurel and Hardy sketch in which you actually feel the bumps on the noggin and see all the bruises, physical and otherwise. However thin the gruel, I can easily see it winning, though there\u2019s always a chance that the momentum of EEAAO<\/em> (\u201c\u2026with a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there\u2026\u201d) could sweep this one up.


Best International Feature<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em><\/strong>
Argentina 1985<\/em>
Close<\/em>
EO<\/em>
The Quiet Girl<\/em>

Given a Best Picture BAFTA and eight other nominations, Edward Berger\u2019s graphic, devastating take on Erich Maria Remarque\u2019s novel is the surest bet on the table.


Best Animated Feature<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Pinocchio<\/strong> <\/em>
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On<\/em>
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish<\/em>
The Sea Beast<\/em>
Turning Red<\/em>


I feel relatively alone in asserting that this spikier, darker take on The Puppet Who Wanted to Be a Real Boy may have been a more imaginative and adventurous movie than any of the Best Picture nominees if only in the way it risked pissing people off who cling to their memories of the Disney version, which, for the record, I love, too. Most of the experts think it\u2019s a lock, but I\u2019m sensing a groundswell of support for M. Shell.

Best Cinematography<\/strong>

All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths<\/em>
Elvis<\/em><\/strong>
Empire of Light<\/em>
T\u00e1r<\/em>

Another close race, this one primarily between James Friend\u2019s work on All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em> and Mandy Walker\u2019s on Elvis.<\/em> If Walker wins, she will be the first woman to do so. But Friend\u2019s movie also is nominated for visual effects and production design, which experts say gives him the edge. Screw it. I\u2019m going to put my chips on progress.


Best Documentary Feature<\/strong>

All That Breathes<\/em>
Fire of Love<\/em>
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed<\/em>
A House Made of Splinters<\/em>
Navalny<\/em><\/strong>

By far, the widest-open race this year. If precedent alone was a factor, Sara Dosa\u2019s DGA prizewinner, Fire of Love,<\/em> with its dual themes of nature and everlasting love (married scientists who perish in a volcanic explosion), would have the edge. Then again, voters\u2019 hearts would be just as vulnerable to House Made of Splinters<\/em> which is set in a home for neglected children awaiting adoption. But the timeliest of these nominees is Daniel Roher\u2019s tense profile of the Russian opposition leader who survived poisoning by Vladimir Putin\u2019s goons, recovered in Germany, and returned home to a hero\u2019s welcome \u2013 and imprisonment. The winner may, as in previous cases, depend on whether voters want to assault the turmoil of what\u2019s been happening in Russia and the Ukraine, or run from it towards more hopeful, or at least more heartening stories. I\u2019ll guess I\u2019ll just what-the-hell my chips on Roher\u2019s film.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n



Best Score<\/strong>

All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>
Babylon<\/em>
The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em>
Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em>
The Fabelmans<\/em><\/strong>

Once more, with feeling, to 91-year-old John Williams, though Carter Burwell still hasn\u2019t won one of these yet. Here as elsewhere, I\u2019m not convinced Banshees<\/em> is strong enough to pull him over the hump.


Best Original Song<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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\u201cApplause\u201d from Tell It Like a Woman<\/em>
\u201cHold My Hand\u201d from Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>
\u201cLift Me Up\u201d from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever<\/em>
\u201cNaatu Naatu\u201d from RRR<\/em><\/strong>
\u201cThis is a Life\u201d from Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em>

With Rhianna (\u201cLift Me Up\u201d), Lady Gaga (\u201cHold My Hand\u201d), and one third of David Byrne (\u201cThis is a Life\u201d) in play, how is it possible that the showstopper in this bunch belongs to a Tollywood epic that somehow stormed the global marketplace? Everybody seems to have already taken its win for granted, but everybody, including me, has been wrong many times before on this category.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                      The 2023 Oscar ceremonies bear down on us all like a vacant, runaway bus on an oil-slicked interstate. And yet, people still can\u2019t stop nattering about what happened at the 2022 ceremonies, when somebody\u2019s husband got so mad at somebody else\u2019s bad joke at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[1200,1198,316,1204,1203,1201,1202,1199,1205,96,1195],"class_list":["post-3639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-andrea-riseborough","tag-barry-diller","tag-cate-blanchett","tag-jamie-lee-curtis","tag-john-williams","tag-ke-huy-quan","tag-martin-mcdonagh","tag-michelle-yeoh","tag-sarah-polley","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3639"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}