Thursday, December 04, 2008
New The Best Show on TV post...
... here.
Those those happy few out there who are fans of my stuff, the best place to find it now is over at PoopReading.com (motto: "Don't Worry; It's Classy").
Don't be afraid to check back here once in a while, but for the most part you'll find me over there now.
Those those happy few out there who are fans of my stuff, the best place to find it now is over at PoopReading.com (motto: "Don't Worry; It's Classy").
Don't be afraid to check back here once in a while, but for the most part you'll find me over there now.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Best Show on TV, Part 10
The Best Show on TV
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/6/2006 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/2008 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - 4/10/2008
"House" (FOX) -- 4/10/2008 - 10/5/2008
"Dexter" (Showtime) -- 10/5/2008 - 11/18/2008
"The Shield" (FX) -- 11/18/2008 - present
I've been a bit worried lately. I was facing something of a lose-lose situation with the seven-season run of "The Shield" coming to an end. You see, if I gave the show the Best Show on TV Title as a sort of lifetime achievement award, it might compromise the integrity of this list. Yet if a show as great as "The Shield" went off the air without ever having held the Best Show on TV title at any point in the title's almost three-year existence, it might compromise the integrity of the list.
My worries intensified as Season 7 debuted with confusing, convoluted episode after confusing, convoluted episode. The series finale airs on November 25th; what was I to do? But then, in the last couple of weeks, things got really good.
And, after Tuesday night, I needn't worry anymore.
[warning: mild "The Shield" spoilers ahead. Although, to be honest, if I hadn't ever seen "The Shield," and then I read the following, and then I went and watched "The Shield," I would think to myself, "you know, those spoilers weren't so bad"]
In the show's pilot, Los Angeles police detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) murders a fellow cop. He does this because the officer was a mole, assigned to Mackey's "strike team" to bust them for their rampant corruption. When he and his team aren't working on the case of the week, the majority of Mackey's time throughout "The Shield's" run has been spent trying to stay one step ahead of politicians, fellow cops, internal affairs guys, family members, gang bangers and anyone else who might be able to put him away for the murder. Or for any of the myriad crimes he and his team committed in its wake.
Which brings us to the final scene in Tuesday night's episode. For reasons that I won't get into, Vic is offered a deal by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They want his connections to L.A.'s criminal underbelly, and they imagine he's not much dirtier than your average dirty cop. Just as his crimes are finally about to catch up with him, he is offered immunity for any and all prior crimes to which he confesses at the time he signs the deal, and only for those prior crimes to which he confesses at the time he signs the deal. ICE knows he's not squeaky clean, but they figure maybe he falsified some reports here, ignored some gang activity there, or roughed up a
suspect once in a while, all in the name of getting the job done.
Instead, in a scene that I would describe as downright Shakespearean if I wasn't worried that would under-sell it, Vic must sit in a room, across from another human being, and confront exactly what he has done and what he has become by literally saying the words out loud. The look on Michael Chiklis's face as he lists all of his transgressions, his fate predicated on forgetting none of them, lets us know that for
Vic, finally having to say it means it's real. All those things he did: they're real. That's him. He can't hide behind his rationalizations any longer. Meanwhile the entire deal is contingent on his providing the full measure of his efforts to ICE, which will now be looking for any excuse to break the agreement.
What will such a man do now? Will he opt for a scorched-earth approach, attempting to burn down everything and everyone around him in an effort to secure his own freedom? Will he decide that enough is enough, and agree to accept the punishment he must know he deserves? The way "The Shield" has set it up, no one knows. At this point, I doubt that Vic himself knows. I can't imagine a series finale with higher stakes. I can't wait to see what happens.
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/6/2006 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/2008 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - 4/10/2008
"House" (FOX) -- 4/10/2008 - 10/5/2008
"Dexter" (Showtime) -- 10/5/2008 - 11/18/2008
"The Shield" (FX) -- 11/18/2008 - present
I've been a bit worried lately. I was facing something of a lose-lose situation with the seven-season run of "The Shield" coming to an end. You see, if I gave the show the Best Show on TV Title as a sort of lifetime achievement award, it might compromise the integrity of this list. Yet if a show as great as "The Shield" went off the air without ever having held the Best Show on TV title at any point in the title's almost three-year existence, it might compromise the integrity of the list.
My worries intensified as Season 7 debuted with confusing, convoluted episode after confusing, convoluted episode. The series finale airs on November 25th; what was I to do? But then, in the last couple of weeks, things got really good.
And, after Tuesday night, I needn't worry anymore.
[warning: mild "The Shield" spoilers ahead. Although, to be honest, if I hadn't ever seen "The Shield," and then I read the following, and then I went and watched "The Shield," I would think to myself, "you know, those spoilers weren't so bad"]
In the show's pilot, Los Angeles police detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) murders a fellow cop. He does this because the officer was a mole, assigned to Mackey's "strike team" to bust them for their rampant corruption. When he and his team aren't working on the case of the week, the majority of Mackey's time throughout "The Shield's" run has been spent trying to stay one step ahead of politicians, fellow cops, internal affairs guys, family members, gang bangers and anyone else who might be able to put him away for the murder. Or for any of the myriad crimes he and his team committed in its wake.
Which brings us to the final scene in Tuesday night's episode. For reasons that I won't get into, Vic is offered a deal by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They want his connections to L.A.'s criminal underbelly, and they imagine he's not much dirtier than your average dirty cop. Just as his crimes are finally about to catch up with him, he is offered immunity for any and all prior crimes to which he confesses at the time he signs the deal, and only for those prior crimes to which he confesses at the time he signs the deal. ICE knows he's not squeaky clean, but they figure maybe he falsified some reports here, ignored some gang activity there, or roughed up a
suspect once in a while, all in the name of getting the job done.
Instead, in a scene that I would describe as downright Shakespearean if I wasn't worried that would under-sell it, Vic must sit in a room, across from another human being, and confront exactly what he has done and what he has become by literally saying the words out loud. The look on Michael Chiklis's face as he lists all of his transgressions, his fate predicated on forgetting none of them, lets us know that for
Vic, finally having to say it means it's real. All those things he did: they're real. That's him. He can't hide behind his rationalizations any longer. Meanwhile the entire deal is contingent on his providing the full measure of his efforts to ICE, which will now be looking for any excuse to break the agreement.
What will such a man do now? Will he opt for a scorched-earth approach, attempting to burn down everything and everyone around him in an effort to secure his own freedom? Will he decide that enough is enough, and agree to accept the punishment he must know he deserves? The way "The Shield" has set it up, no one knows. At this point, I doubt that Vic himself knows. I can't imagine a series finale with higher stakes. I can't wait to see what happens.
Monday, October 13, 2008
The Best Show on TV, Part 9
The Best Show on TV
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/6/2006 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/2006 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - 4/10/2007
"House" (FOX) -- 4/10/2008 - 10/5/2008
"Dexter" (Showtime) -- 10/5/2008 - present
And we return to my favorite ongoing series of articles, The Best Show on TV. For those of you joining us already in progress, this is based on one of my favorite web pages in all of cyperspace, the WWE Title Histories page. If you can't spend countless hours of fun looking at a list of who defeated whom, and when and where, to win the WWE title, then I'm not sure exactly what more there is to say between us.
To clarify, this list chronicles a history not of my favorite show on TV, but of the actualbest show on TV. I'm not deciding what that show is, I'm just reporting the facts. Now, you might think another show is better; that's your business. But you should know that arguing that there was another show on TV that was better than "The Office" on, say, December 12th, 2006 would be essentially the same thing as arguing that Eddie Guerrero was not the WWE champion on May 23rd, 2004. You can argue it if you want, but we've got a list to refer to, and you're just going to end up looking silly in the end.
Anyway, even though you're reading this today, the title officially changed hands, as you can see, back on October 5, with the airing of that evening's episode of "Dexter." I'm writing it up today because last night was as soon as I was able to download a nice copy of the episode off the internet -- er, that is… last night was as soon as I was able to come to an understanding of what Season 3, Episode 2 of "Dexter" contained without resorting to any illegal means whatsoever.
For those who don't know, "Dexter" -- based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either, although I'm sure it's good) -- is the story of a serial killer who only kills other killers. You see, young Dexter's pathology was noticed very early in his life by his foster father, Officer Harry Morgan, and Harry decided, for good or ill, that since Dexter would inevitably become a killer, his urges might be steered in a "constructive" direction via a strict code, producing a Dexter who would arguably aid society instead of injuring it. The end result is Dexter Morgan, crime scene analyst (specializing, naturally, in blood spatter) for the Miami Metro Police Department by day, serial murdering vigilante by night.
It should be noted that "Dexter" is most certainly not for kids, or even for most adults; in Season 1 particularly, the subject matter becomes intensely dark, to the point that those who haven't grown up in a popular culture awash in slasher flicks and torture porn may well be so put off that it would be impossible for them to get anything out of the show. Not that the violence actually depicted onscreen is necessarily all that brutal; your average scene in Hostel or Saw makes the worst of "Dexter" look like some fabric softener commercial where a new mom smells her baby's head while tinkly piano music plays in the background. It's more that psychologically, "Dexter" plunges so far down into the depths of the morass of human depravity that you should really make sure you've got a vine tied around your ankle before you commit to diving in.
So why watch it, one might ask. Well, why watch any entertainment? Usually, we watch TV either for the purposes of pure escapism, or to get a laugh, or, perhaps best of all, to get a vicarious thrill from what we see. "Dexter" provides this in spades, because although we'd never admit, don't we all sort of fantasize that it was up to us to punish the wicked, to decide who gets to live and who gets to die, and to be able to do it with the unambiguous certainty that comes with total belief in our righteousness? We know, of course, that in a practical sense it's not doable because if we tried to do it we'd break a bunch of laws and get caught right away. We also know that in a philosophical sense it's not doable because we're fallible, and in no position to take it upon ourselves to administer justice when there are institutions, however imperfect, set up to take care of that for us.
But Dexter works for the cops, he vets his victims carefully, and he doesn't have a conscience per se, so he's the perfect man to live out our aberrant little fantasies on the screen every week. And, since we know that the people he's killing are fictional characters, we get our dose of fantasy fulfillment without any of those pesky horrific, soul-searing nightmares you or I might get from treating flesh-and-blood human beings like Dexter treats his victims.
But "Dexter" doesn't let Dexter off the hook, either; it would be too easy to depict a character who simply has no conscience, no regular human emotions or attachments. Instead, we're given a character who thinks he has no conscience, no regular human emotions or attachments. His affection for his foster sister, Deb, belies his claims of inhumanity, and the relationship he "acts out" with his girlfriend, Rita, grows steadily into a real relationship as the series progresses. Dexter's nervousness and discomfort during a Season 2 dinner with Rita, Rita's mother and a very attractive young woman from Dexter's life (I won't spoil it by divulging the nature of the relationship) show that, despite his claims to the contrary, he can certainly pick up on the same social cues and behavioral ticks on which the rest of us rely, as long as they're obvious enough. Think of Dexter as a blind man who imagines that he must not have any idea what a "cube" is like; if that man were suddenly given the power of sight, he'd probably discover that his guesses weren't far off at all.
Dexter, though he believes he's "apart from," "different than," is but a few tweaks away from experiencing things just like the rest of us do. And so, if my math checks out, that means we're but a few tweaks away from Dexter. Which is probably why it's such a damn good show.
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/6/2006 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/2006 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - 4/10/2007
"House" (FOX) -- 4/10/2008 - 10/5/2008
"Dexter" (Showtime) -- 10/5/2008 - present
And we return to my favorite ongoing series of articles, The Best Show on TV. For those of you joining us already in progress, this is based on one of my favorite web pages in all of cyperspace, the WWE Title Histories page. If you can't spend countless hours of fun looking at a list of who defeated whom, and when and where, to win the WWE title, then I'm not sure exactly what more there is to say between us.
To clarify, this list chronicles a history not of my favorite show on TV, but of the actualbest show on TV. I'm not deciding what that show is, I'm just reporting the facts. Now, you might think another show is better; that's your business. But you should know that arguing that there was another show on TV that was better than "The Office" on, say, December 12th, 2006 would be essentially the same thing as arguing that Eddie Guerrero was not the WWE champion on May 23rd, 2004. You can argue it if you want, but we've got a list to refer to, and you're just going to end up looking silly in the end.
Anyway, even though you're reading this today, the title officially changed hands, as you can see, back on October 5, with the airing of that evening's episode of "Dexter." I'm writing it up today because last night was as soon as I was able to download a nice copy of the episode off the internet -- er, that is… last night was as soon as I was able to come to an understanding of what Season 3, Episode 2 of "Dexter" contained without resorting to any illegal means whatsoever.
For those who don't know, "Dexter" -- based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either, although I'm sure it's good) -- is the story of a serial killer who only kills other killers. You see, young Dexter's pathology was noticed very early in his life by his foster father, Officer Harry Morgan, and Harry decided, for good or ill, that since Dexter would inevitably become a killer, his urges might be steered in a "constructive" direction via a strict code, producing a Dexter who would arguably aid society instead of injuring it. The end result is Dexter Morgan, crime scene analyst (specializing, naturally, in blood spatter) for the Miami Metro Police Department by day, serial murdering vigilante by night.
It should be noted that "Dexter" is most certainly not for kids, or even for most adults; in Season 1 particularly, the subject matter becomes intensely dark, to the point that those who haven't grown up in a popular culture awash in slasher flicks and torture porn may well be so put off that it would be impossible for them to get anything out of the show. Not that the violence actually depicted onscreen is necessarily all that brutal; your average scene in Hostel or Saw makes the worst of "Dexter" look like some fabric softener commercial where a new mom smells her baby's head while tinkly piano music plays in the background. It's more that psychologically, "Dexter" plunges so far down into the depths of the morass of human depravity that you should really make sure you've got a vine tied around your ankle before you commit to diving in.
So why watch it, one might ask. Well, why watch any entertainment? Usually, we watch TV either for the purposes of pure escapism, or to get a laugh, or, perhaps best of all, to get a vicarious thrill from what we see. "Dexter" provides this in spades, because although we'd never admit, don't we all sort of fantasize that it was up to us to punish the wicked, to decide who gets to live and who gets to die, and to be able to do it with the unambiguous certainty that comes with total belief in our righteousness? We know, of course, that in a practical sense it's not doable because if we tried to do it we'd break a bunch of laws and get caught right away. We also know that in a philosophical sense it's not doable because we're fallible, and in no position to take it upon ourselves to administer justice when there are institutions, however imperfect, set up to take care of that for us.
But Dexter works for the cops, he vets his victims carefully, and he doesn't have a conscience per se, so he's the perfect man to live out our aberrant little fantasies on the screen every week. And, since we know that the people he's killing are fictional characters, we get our dose of fantasy fulfillment without any of those pesky horrific, soul-searing nightmares you or I might get from treating flesh-and-blood human beings like Dexter treats his victims.
But "Dexter" doesn't let Dexter off the hook, either; it would be too easy to depict a character who simply has no conscience, no regular human emotions or attachments. Instead, we're given a character who thinks he has no conscience, no regular human emotions or attachments. His affection for his foster sister, Deb, belies his claims of inhumanity, and the relationship he "acts out" with his girlfriend, Rita, grows steadily into a real relationship as the series progresses. Dexter's nervousness and discomfort during a Season 2 dinner with Rita, Rita's mother and a very attractive young woman from Dexter's life (I won't spoil it by divulging the nature of the relationship) show that, despite his claims to the contrary, he can certainly pick up on the same social cues and behavioral ticks on which the rest of us rely, as long as they're obvious enough. Think of Dexter as a blind man who imagines that he must not have any idea what a "cube" is like; if that man were suddenly given the power of sight, he'd probably discover that his guesses weren't far off at all.
Dexter, though he believes he's "apart from," "different than," is but a few tweaks away from experiencing things just like the rest of us do. And so, if my math checks out, that means we're but a few tweaks away from Dexter. Which is probably why it's such a damn good show.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Oscar Picks, Year Four!
Hey, kids! It's that time of year again. Time for the glorious Onebee.com Oscar pool, the 4th Annual Athletic Reporter Oscar Picks column, and, to a lesser extent, the 80th Annual Academy Awards.
"But Joe," you ask. "Why should we listen to you? What do you know about the Oscars? Hasn't the accuracy of your picks in recent years been less than spectacular?"
Those are all fair questions...
Anyway, conventional wisdom holds that many of this year's races are closer than usual, so it promises to be an exciting Oscar ceremony.
Like I always do, I'll cut and paste what I wrote in 2005 to explain how this works:
Let's get to it!
BEST PICTURE
Winner:
No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
A recurring theme of this particular Oscar Picks column may well turn out to be the notion that the Coen brothers could, in spirit if technically not in practice, tie Walt Disney's record by winning four Oscars in one night. I think they will. These will be the Coen brothers Oscars.
Count me among those who thought that the bizarre final 20 minutes or so just about ruined No Country For Old Men. There I sat, enjoying an excellent crime drama, and then all this weird crap happens for no reason. At least that's what it felt like. Oh well. Even if it's not for a movie of which I particularly approve, it will be nice to see the Coen brothers finally get their due (or get their due again; they each won Oscars for writing Fargo, so you can't really say that the Academy has ignored them completely).
There Will Be Blood was pretty much a character study, a showcase for Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview. I'm firmly ensconced on the Day-Lewis bandwagon this year, but I can see why people might think that, pound-for-pound, Blood is slightly less deserving of Best Picture than No Country.
My personal favorite (of the three I saw) was Juno, which scored the one Best Picture nomination reserved for movies that aren't actually "Best Picture-y." Still, I've heard a good deal about how "relevant" No Country For Old Men (set in 1980) and There Will Be Blood (spanning the first fourth of the 20th century, give or take a couple of years) were to today's times, but... Juno actually takes place in today's times. So, there's your relevant.
Another reason I responded to Juno more than No Country For Old Men or There Will Be Blood, I think, is that characters in the latter two movies can probably be said to exist to some extent as metaphors (Daniel Plainview is capitalism, Eli Sunday is unchecked religious zealotry, Anton Chigurh is the inevitable, powerful force of evil in the ream of human existence), whereas, in Juno, the yuppie couple wanting to adopt a baby is pretty much a young couple wanting to adopt a baby, the spazzy teen boyfriend is pretty much a spazzy teen boyfriend...
As I get older I tend to be a little less interested in movies about the Big Ideas and more interested in movies about regular people dealing with their lives. Probably because I used to have Big Ideas, and now I'm a regular person dealing with his life. Makes sense, I suppose.
(well, and I like movies with boobs and gunfights. That's been pretty constant since I was about 12)
Michael Clayton I didn't see. I heard it was good and I'm sure it was, but, I got the feeling that if you sent away for "Oscar Movie Set in Present Day," then 6-to-8 weeks later you'd open up your mailbox and there you'd see Michael Clayton.
Atonement I didn't see. I heard it was good and I'm sure it was, but, I got the feeling that if you sent away for "Oscar Movie Set in the Past," then 6-to-8 weeks later you'd open up your mailbox and there you'd see Atonement.
BEST DIRECTOR
Winner:
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Apparently Julian Schnabel is somewhat of a trendy upset pick, for those who want to pick an upset in this category. I don't. Nominations in a few of the big boy categories (Cinematography, Editing, Screenplay) might indicate some passionate support for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but, I'm just going to bank on this being the Coens' year. They've been making great movies for over 20 years and they did an exemplary job with No Country For Old Men (my feelings about the film's conclusion notwithstanding), and I think those two factors will overwhelm whatever support Schnabel has out there.
As far as Jason Reitman goes, he's about the same age and my wife and I, and my wife was lamenting the other day the fact that he's a Best Director nominee and the two of us are, unequivocally, not. True, I told her, but, Buddy Holly was 22 when he died, so, in my mind, the day I turned 23 that whole "by the time this person was my age, he was doing x or y" ship had sailed in a big way. I mean, who's better than Buddy Holly? At anything?
So good on you, Jason Reitman.
Paul Thomas Anderson will probably be back in this category before too long. He's young and he'll almost certainly win Best Director one day, so nobody really has to feel like they're slighting him this year (it's sort of the same reason why they keep not giving Johnny Depp an Oscar).
And I'm sure Tony Gilroy's a fine man, but, it's tough to find anyone who thinks he's got a shot this year.
BEST ACTOR
Winner:
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Other Nominees:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
This would seem like a sure thing if it weren't for a small Daniel Day-Lewis backlash that seems to be building in some -- oh, who are we kidding? It's a sure thing.
Count me among those who loved Day-Lewis's performance unconditionally. Even the final scene, the "I Drink Your Milkshake" scene, rang true to me. And as far as There Will Be Blood is concerned, without Day-Lewis playing Daniel Plainview -- and, what's more, without Day-Lewis playing Daniel Plainview like he did -- I'm not sure you've got much of a movie.
The Cloon, I can't argue with. No one can. He's just a big honkin' movie star. You only get one or two George Clooneys (Cloonies?) every generation, and I enjoy ours (due in no small part to the lucky break that our generation's George Clooney actually happens to be George Clooney). But it's Daniel Day-Lewis's year, not his.
I've made no secret of my distaste for Sweeney Todd, but none of that was Johnny Depp's fault. He was just fine and he'll win an Oscar someday, but, as I parenthetically alluded to earlier, it won't be this year.
Viggo Mortensen's always good, and he fought some guys naked, which is pretty badass. But he won't win.
And, when I glanced at Entertainment Weekly's Best Actor prediction page and saw Tommy Lee Jones's picture, I thought, "Wait, he was nominated for No Country For Old Men? For Best Actor? He wasn't even in it that much... what page am I on? This is -- oh. Right." And I follow this stuff more closely than the average bear, so, my reaction probably doesn't say a lot for how memorable In the Valley of Elah was.
BEST ACTRESS
Winner:
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Other Nominees:
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno
Julie Christie's British and she played a person with a mental illness (Alzheimer's). It's hard to see the Academy not voting for that.
Unless they vote for Marion Cotillard; those who've seen La Vie en Rose rave about her performance, but have enough people seen it? And, of the people who have, will enough of them decide not to vote for Julie Christie?
It's a weird year for Best Actress, since the only nominee in a movie that anyone really saw is Juno's Ellen Page, and people her age don't win Best Actress, really. Although it should be noted that I heard someone praise Daniel Day-Lewis's performance for, among other things, his perfect American accent, and, well, Ellen Page is from Nova Scotia, so let's not pretend she wasn't doing an American accent as well.
Laura Linney and Cate Blanchett, we shouldn't have to worry about.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner:
Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Any other year you might think about Hal Holbrook pulling an upset for Into the Wild as a sort of lifetime achievement thing, but if they didn't give Peter O'Toole an Oscar last year they can skip Hal Holbrook on Sunday. People seem to have been fascinated by Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh. I'll admit that I don't quite get it, even though I have no trouble acknowledging that Bardem gave a worthy performance. It would probably be the biggest surprise of the evening if anybody else won Best Supporting Actor.
Too bad, though, because I kind of wish Philip Seymour Hoffman had a chance. I didn't see Charlie Wilson's War, but, based on the one three-second snippet of Hoffman's performance that I did see, extrapolated out to fill a two-hour movie, I'm sure he was excellent.
This is the one category this year where I feel there have been a number of egregious snubs, most notably Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood, but also Ben Foster in 3:10 to Yuma and John Travolta in Hairspray. Chins up, boys; there's always next year.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Other Nominees:
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Wide open, it seems. Entertainment Weekly picks Tilda Swinton but gives her only a 28% chance, with Amy Ryan at 25, Cate Blanchett at 22 and Ruby Dee at 20. Over at AwardsDaily.com, their predictions roundup had Cate Blanchett ahead, plenty of others picking either Tilda Swinton or Ruby Dee, and Amy Ryan conspicuous in her almost total absence. Swinton's own Michael Clayton co-star, the Cloon himself, predicted Amy Ryan.
So, who knows? I say, go for the safest bet. Which, in this instance, is the out-there, gender-bending performance in a weird movie people didn't see. You've got an English speaking foreigner playing a man; sort of like with Julie Christie in the Best Actress category, what is there to Cate Blanchett's performance that Oscar voters wouldn't swallow hook, line and sinker?
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Diablo Cody, Juno
Other Nominees:
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl
Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco and Brad Bird, Ratatouille
I suppose there's a slight chance that this could be the award that breaks Michael Clayton's way, but, Juno's the one to beat. They've marketed "Diablo Cody" (not her real name, if you can believe it) very well, sending her on press tours and Letterman and stuff, and I'd be even more sick of all that if she hadn't written such a good script. The director and cast of Juno deserve a ton of credit, too (it's not entirely fair that Cody is probably the only person associated with Juno who's going to come away with an Oscar for her efforts), but the script was right on. Maybe it had one or two extra-cutesy moments of self-consciously hip teenage dialogue... but maybe it didn't. I'm too young to have a teenager and too old to hang out with them (or so those bastards down at the county courthouse have declared), so maybe the ones who are determined to be hipper-than-thou actually make a point to try to talk like that. And even if, by and large, they don't, it's not out of the realm of possibility that one of them would.
There's one moment in particular in Juno that, for me, serves as a microcosm of why the movie was so successful (and we get into some plot stuff you'd probably rather not know if you've got a burning desire to see Juno but you haven't gotten around to it yet, so, tread lightly):
A pregnant Juno comes to visit Mark, the husband of the couple to which she has promised her baby once it is born. They've discovered previously that they share a love for being snobby about obscure bands. Juno is drawn to Mark because he amounts to the grown-up version of her spazzy-but-cool boyfriend, Bleeker. Mark is Bleeker plus a decade-and-a-half of money made, self-confidence found and comfort-in-own-skin achieved. Mark is drawn to Juno because she's a cute young thing who thinks it's cool that he plays the guitar and likes to be snobby about obscure bands. This in contrast to Mark's wife Vanessa; she has banished all of Mark's music stuff to one small room of the house, which, subconsciously, Mark chooses to focus on instead of the fact that Vanessa keeps a gorgeous house for him to live in.
Mark and Juno are alone together. Some music is played. Juno puts her hands on Mark's shoulders. She asks him, "did you dance like this at your prom?"
They sway together. Mark looks at her.
"Actually..." he says.
The entire movie -- the lives of the main characters -- turn here, between "actually" and what Mark says next. Will he say, "actually... this might make me seem lame and old, but, it's probably not appropriate for us to be slow dancing like this"?
No; he says, "actually... it was more like this," and he re-positions Juno's arms more intimately around his waist.
And, in the audience, you think, "Oh, Mark..."
This little scene, like most of Juno, was written, directed and acted with such depth of feeling and emotional truth that I'm excited to think someone involved could end up with an Academy Award, even if it's someone who decided that it would be a good idea for her name to be "Diablo Cody."
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Sarah Polley, Away From Her
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
First of all: yes, the blonde chick from Dawn of the Dead is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
That's pretty fantastic, but, as we've discussed, it's going to be the Coen brothers' night.
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Winner:
The Counterfeiters, Austria
Other Nominees:
Beaufort, Israel
Katyn, Poland
Mongol, Kazakhstan
12, Russia
The Counterfeiters is about the Holocaust (catnip to Oscar voters), and, on top of that, the trailer made it look really good.
I have nothing more to add about this category, except to say that with Borat last year and now with Mongol, Kazakhstan has essentially been represented at two consecutive Oscar ceremonies. I haven't taken the trouble to look it up, but, you can be pretty sure that hasn't happened before.
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Okay. It's getting late and this is getting long; let's plow through the pee-break categories, shall we? Here's what I always write about how that goes:
The only danger here is if EW has an off year. Like, say, last year, when mostly listening to their picks ended me up with an 11-13 Oscar picking record. Honestly, if you'd have made me bet on whether I ever, in my life, would pick more Oscar categories incorrectly than correctly in a given year, I would have bet on "no" and felt really good about it.
[actually, that's not true. I would have bet on "yes," and then, the next year, I would have intentionally made picks that had almost no chance of winning, thus outsmarting you and winning our little wager. But, if you said I'd have to place my bet and then afterwards you'd erase all memory of the bet from my mind so I couldn't pull the little trick I described, I would have bet that there was absolutely no way I'd ever come away from an Oscar year with a losing record. I once, in college, got them all right except for two! For Pete's sake!]
Anyway. I'll just tell you what Entertainment Weekly said, unless I disagree, in which case I'll let you know that you're getting my pick instead of theirs. Usually, though, when I against them in a pee-break category, we're either both wrong or they're right. I don't think, in three years of doing this, I've ever disagreed with EW and been right. But someday I'm sure that'll happen. Has to, right?
Here we go...
BEST ART DIRECTION: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I read somewhere else that Sweeney Todd wouldn't win because Dante Ferretti wins "all the time," but I looked it up, and, he's like 1-for-7. Not a convincing reason to pick against EW, to say the least.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: They (i.e., Entertainment Weekly) say There Will Be Blood's Robert Elswit, mainly because they assume that since Roger Deakins is nominated twice in this category he'll split the vote with himself. But, in the year of No Country For Old Men, will anybody actually vote for Deakins for The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford?
Still, Robert Elswit is supposed to be the front-runner, and this award generally goes to the movie with the most sweeping shots of the outdoors, which There Will Be Blood has in spades.
[although, when you think about it, wouldn't sweeping shots of the outdoors almost be the easiest thing for a cinematographer? I mean, doing something indoors, or with special effects, I can see how tough that would be, making sure everything in an unnatural arena looks natural; but, aren't most of the outdoors pretty much just sitting there already? Isn't that kind of what the outdoors are famous for?)
BEST EDITING: Roderick Jaynes, No Country For Old Men. Here's why No Country is going to beat The Bourne Ultimatum, which plenty of people are picking in this category: first of all, it's Best Editing, not Most Editing. Second, Roderick Jaynes is, as you may well know, not a real person. Roderick Jaynes is -- for some reason -- the pseudonym under which Joel and Ethan Coen edit their own movies. It would be a "thing" to have Roderick Jaynes announced as the winner and have the Coens accept for "him," and since when has Best Editing ever been a "thing?" Academy voters aren't going to pass up a "thing."
In any case, this is why I say the Coen brothers could tie Walt Disney's Four Oscars in One Year record in spirit if not in practice; if they win all the awards they're up for, then they will have essentially won four Oscars each on Sunday. You and I and everybody else watching will know that. Technically, however, by the letter of Oscar law, Joel and Ethan Coen will have won three Oscars each, and Roderick Jaynes will have won one. Also, if "Roderick Jaynes" wins Best Editing, there will only be one Oscar statuette given away in that category (the Coens will each get one if they win any of the categories in which they're both nominated).
So, while they may find it cute to edit their films under a pseudonym, it could cost the Coen brothers a tie for the official record for Most Oscars Won in a Single Year. Though certainly, a share of the unofficial record would be theirs.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Dario Marianelli, Atonement. Seems like everyone thinks it's between that and Ratatouille. I'll take Atonement, because the magazine says so.
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: "Falling Slowly" from Once, music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Finally, you can just go on YouTube and watch all of these songs and decide for yourself. "Raise It Up" from August Rush isn't really very good, and the three from Enchanted probably will spit. Having seen all three, I would go straight to hell before I voted for anything other than "Happy Working Song," but others think "That's How You Know" is more likely to win. That's why they'll split the vote; they're all good enough to have a reasonable amount of support.
So, it'll probably be Once. That was nice little movie, and it would be cool to see Hansard and Irglova, who pretty much wrote the songs in the movie (and the songs pretty much were the movie), rewarded with Oscars.
Although my favorite song from a 2007 movie was this one, by far. Even though it's obviously a parody of what old white people think rap music is, it's actually a much better song than 3-6 Mafia's Oscar-winning "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." I beg you not to click on that link if you possess any sense of decency, but, I also defy you to tell me that that video is not hilariously awesome (I'll also accept awesomely hilarious).
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier, Transformers. I can't argue with this pick; when I went and bought our new HDTV I was waiting at Circuit City from them to go and get it for me, and they were showing Transformers on an even better HDTV than I bought, with the Blu-Ray DVD and surround sound... I felt like one of those people on the audience of the first-ever motion picture, who ducked when the footage of the locomotive approached. It was something else.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Ethan Van der Ryan and Mike Hopkins, Transformers.
BEST SOUND MIXING: Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Peter Devlin, Transformers. The biggest, explodiest movie usually wins the sound stuff anyway, and this nomination is Kevin O'Connell's 20th, with zero wins so far. He got some attention for his 19th nod last year and I'm sure would have been a sentimental favorite if the movie he worked on, Apocalypto, hadn't been directed by Hatespeech von Hitler. Transformers director Michael Bay, as far as I know, has no beef with the Jews, so this should finally be Kevin O'Connell's year.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Entertainment Weekly's guess is much, much better than mine.
BEST MAKEUP: Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald, La Vie en Rose. La Vie en Rose seems to be considered something of a shoo-in here.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Ratatouille. I'd look out for an upset by Persepolis if Ratatouille hadn't been so, so universally adored.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Madame Tutli-Putli. I actually did a little bit of research on this category, and that research led me to believe strongly that Madame Tutli-Putli -- and not EW's pick, I Met the Walrus -- will win.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: No End In Sight. Seems to be the favorite no matter whom you ask, although with Michael Moore (Sicko) around, I won't breathe easy until the envelope is actually opened.
Well, and then until the winner is read. The actual opening of the envelope in and of itself doesn't really reveal any -- you know what? Never mind.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Freeheld. I'm sort of depending on you completely for this one, Entertainment Weekly.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Tanghi Argentini. I've seen this one predicted as the winner a couple different places, so, knowing nothing of any of the nominees, I'd be silly not to pick it.
That's all, folks. Enjoy the Oscars, now that you've been given permission by the WGA to do so.
"But Joe," you ask. "Why should we listen to you? What do you know about the Oscars? Hasn't the accuracy of your picks in recent years been less than spectacular?"
Those are all fair questions...
Anyway, conventional wisdom holds that many of this year's races are closer than usual, so it promises to be an exciting Oscar ceremony.
Like I always do, I'll cut and paste what I wrote in 2005 to explain how this works:
Please note: these are my [Athletic Reporter Oscar Preview] predictions, not to be confused with my all-important picks in Athletic Reporter co-creator and Photoshop guru Jameson Simmons' Onebee.com Oscar pool (aka "The Only Reason At All I Still Pay Any Attention to the Oscars"). I reserve the right to refine my choices for Jameson's until late Sunday afternoon.
Let's get to it!
BEST PICTURE
Winner:
No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
A recurring theme of this particular Oscar Picks column may well turn out to be the notion that the Coen brothers could, in spirit if technically not in practice, tie Walt Disney's record by winning four Oscars in one night. I think they will. These will be the Coen brothers Oscars.
Count me among those who thought that the bizarre final 20 minutes or so just about ruined No Country For Old Men. There I sat, enjoying an excellent crime drama, and then all this weird crap happens for no reason. At least that's what it felt like. Oh well. Even if it's not for a movie of which I particularly approve, it will be nice to see the Coen brothers finally get their due (or get their due again; they each won Oscars for writing Fargo, so you can't really say that the Academy has ignored them completely).
There Will Be Blood was pretty much a character study, a showcase for Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview. I'm firmly ensconced on the Day-Lewis bandwagon this year, but I can see why people might think that, pound-for-pound, Blood is slightly less deserving of Best Picture than No Country.
My personal favorite (of the three I saw) was Juno, which scored the one Best Picture nomination reserved for movies that aren't actually "Best Picture-y." Still, I've heard a good deal about how "relevant" No Country For Old Men (set in 1980) and There Will Be Blood (spanning the first fourth of the 20th century, give or take a couple of years) were to today's times, but... Juno actually takes place in today's times. So, there's your relevant.
Another reason I responded to Juno more than No Country For Old Men or There Will Be Blood, I think, is that characters in the latter two movies can probably be said to exist to some extent as metaphors (Daniel Plainview is capitalism, Eli Sunday is unchecked religious zealotry, Anton Chigurh is the inevitable, powerful force of evil in the ream of human existence), whereas, in Juno, the yuppie couple wanting to adopt a baby is pretty much a young couple wanting to adopt a baby, the spazzy teen boyfriend is pretty much a spazzy teen boyfriend...
As I get older I tend to be a little less interested in movies about the Big Ideas and more interested in movies about regular people dealing with their lives. Probably because I used to have Big Ideas, and now I'm a regular person dealing with his life. Makes sense, I suppose.
(well, and I like movies with boobs and gunfights. That's been pretty constant since I was about 12)
Michael Clayton I didn't see. I heard it was good and I'm sure it was, but, I got the feeling that if you sent away for "Oscar Movie Set in Present Day," then 6-to-8 weeks later you'd open up your mailbox and there you'd see Michael Clayton.
Atonement I didn't see. I heard it was good and I'm sure it was, but, I got the feeling that if you sent away for "Oscar Movie Set in the Past," then 6-to-8 weeks later you'd open up your mailbox and there you'd see Atonement.
BEST DIRECTOR
Winner:
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Apparently Julian Schnabel is somewhat of a trendy upset pick, for those who want to pick an upset in this category. I don't. Nominations in a few of the big boy categories (Cinematography, Editing, Screenplay) might indicate some passionate support for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but, I'm just going to bank on this being the Coens' year. They've been making great movies for over 20 years and they did an exemplary job with No Country For Old Men (my feelings about the film's conclusion notwithstanding), and I think those two factors will overwhelm whatever support Schnabel has out there.
As far as Jason Reitman goes, he's about the same age and my wife and I, and my wife was lamenting the other day the fact that he's a Best Director nominee and the two of us are, unequivocally, not. True, I told her, but, Buddy Holly was 22 when he died, so, in my mind, the day I turned 23 that whole "by the time this person was my age, he was doing x or y" ship had sailed in a big way. I mean, who's better than Buddy Holly? At anything?
So good on you, Jason Reitman.
Paul Thomas Anderson will probably be back in this category before too long. He's young and he'll almost certainly win Best Director one day, so nobody really has to feel like they're slighting him this year (it's sort of the same reason why they keep not giving Johnny Depp an Oscar).
And I'm sure Tony Gilroy's a fine man, but, it's tough to find anyone who thinks he's got a shot this year.
BEST ACTOR
Winner:
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Other Nominees:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
This would seem like a sure thing if it weren't for a small Daniel Day-Lewis backlash that seems to be building in some -- oh, who are we kidding? It's a sure thing.
Count me among those who loved Day-Lewis's performance unconditionally. Even the final scene, the "I Drink Your Milkshake" scene, rang true to me. And as far as There Will Be Blood is concerned, without Day-Lewis playing Daniel Plainview -- and, what's more, without Day-Lewis playing Daniel Plainview like he did -- I'm not sure you've got much of a movie.
The Cloon, I can't argue with. No one can. He's just a big honkin' movie star. You only get one or two George Clooneys (Cloonies?) every generation, and I enjoy ours (due in no small part to the lucky break that our generation's George Clooney actually happens to be George Clooney). But it's Daniel Day-Lewis's year, not his.
I've made no secret of my distaste for Sweeney Todd, but none of that was Johnny Depp's fault. He was just fine and he'll win an Oscar someday, but, as I parenthetically alluded to earlier, it won't be this year.
Viggo Mortensen's always good, and he fought some guys naked, which is pretty badass. But he won't win.
And, when I glanced at Entertainment Weekly's Best Actor prediction page and saw Tommy Lee Jones's picture, I thought, "Wait, he was nominated for No Country For Old Men? For Best Actor? He wasn't even in it that much... what page am I on? This is -- oh. Right." And I follow this stuff more closely than the average bear, so, my reaction probably doesn't say a lot for how memorable In the Valley of Elah was.
BEST ACTRESS
Winner:
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Other Nominees:
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno
Julie Christie's British and she played a person with a mental illness (Alzheimer's). It's hard to see the Academy not voting for that.
Unless they vote for Marion Cotillard; those who've seen La Vie en Rose rave about her performance, but have enough people seen it? And, of the people who have, will enough of them decide not to vote for Julie Christie?
It's a weird year for Best Actress, since the only nominee in a movie that anyone really saw is Juno's Ellen Page, and people her age don't win Best Actress, really. Although it should be noted that I heard someone praise Daniel Day-Lewis's performance for, among other things, his perfect American accent, and, well, Ellen Page is from Nova Scotia, so let's not pretend she wasn't doing an American accent as well.
Laura Linney and Cate Blanchett, we shouldn't have to worry about.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner:
Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Any other year you might think about Hal Holbrook pulling an upset for Into the Wild as a sort of lifetime achievement thing, but if they didn't give Peter O'Toole an Oscar last year they can skip Hal Holbrook on Sunday. People seem to have been fascinated by Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh. I'll admit that I don't quite get it, even though I have no trouble acknowledging that Bardem gave a worthy performance. It would probably be the biggest surprise of the evening if anybody else won Best Supporting Actor.
Too bad, though, because I kind of wish Philip Seymour Hoffman had a chance. I didn't see Charlie Wilson's War, but, based on the one three-second snippet of Hoffman's performance that I did see, extrapolated out to fill a two-hour movie, I'm sure he was excellent.
This is the one category this year where I feel there have been a number of egregious snubs, most notably Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood, but also Ben Foster in 3:10 to Yuma and John Travolta in Hairspray. Chins up, boys; there's always next year.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Other Nominees:
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Wide open, it seems. Entertainment Weekly picks Tilda Swinton but gives her only a 28% chance, with Amy Ryan at 25, Cate Blanchett at 22 and Ruby Dee at 20. Over at AwardsDaily.com, their predictions roundup had Cate Blanchett ahead, plenty of others picking either Tilda Swinton or Ruby Dee, and Amy Ryan conspicuous in her almost total absence. Swinton's own Michael Clayton co-star, the Cloon himself, predicted Amy Ryan.
So, who knows? I say, go for the safest bet. Which, in this instance, is the out-there, gender-bending performance in a weird movie people didn't see. You've got an English speaking foreigner playing a man; sort of like with Julie Christie in the Best Actress category, what is there to Cate Blanchett's performance that Oscar voters wouldn't swallow hook, line and sinker?
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Diablo Cody, Juno
Other Nominees:
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl
Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco and Brad Bird, Ratatouille
I suppose there's a slight chance that this could be the award that breaks Michael Clayton's way, but, Juno's the one to beat. They've marketed "Diablo Cody" (not her real name, if you can believe it) very well, sending her on press tours and Letterman and stuff, and I'd be even more sick of all that if she hadn't written such a good script. The director and cast of Juno deserve a ton of credit, too (it's not entirely fair that Cody is probably the only person associated with Juno who's going to come away with an Oscar for her efforts), but the script was right on. Maybe it had one or two extra-cutesy moments of self-consciously hip teenage dialogue... but maybe it didn't. I'm too young to have a teenager and too old to hang out with them (or so those bastards down at the county courthouse have declared), so maybe the ones who are determined to be hipper-than-thou actually make a point to try to talk like that. And even if, by and large, they don't, it's not out of the realm of possibility that one of them would.
There's one moment in particular in Juno that, for me, serves as a microcosm of why the movie was so successful (and we get into some plot stuff you'd probably rather not know if you've got a burning desire to see Juno but you haven't gotten around to it yet, so, tread lightly):
A pregnant Juno comes to visit Mark, the husband of the couple to which she has promised her baby once it is born. They've discovered previously that they share a love for being snobby about obscure bands. Juno is drawn to Mark because he amounts to the grown-up version of her spazzy-but-cool boyfriend, Bleeker. Mark is Bleeker plus a decade-and-a-half of money made, self-confidence found and comfort-in-own-skin achieved. Mark is drawn to Juno because she's a cute young thing who thinks it's cool that he plays the guitar and likes to be snobby about obscure bands. This in contrast to Mark's wife Vanessa; she has banished all of Mark's music stuff to one small room of the house, which, subconsciously, Mark chooses to focus on instead of the fact that Vanessa keeps a gorgeous house for him to live in.
Mark and Juno are alone together. Some music is played. Juno puts her hands on Mark's shoulders. She asks him, "did you dance like this at your prom?"
They sway together. Mark looks at her.
"Actually..." he says.
The entire movie -- the lives of the main characters -- turn here, between "actually" and what Mark says next. Will he say, "actually... this might make me seem lame and old, but, it's probably not appropriate for us to be slow dancing like this"?
No; he says, "actually... it was more like this," and he re-positions Juno's arms more intimately around his waist.
And, in the audience, you think, "Oh, Mark..."
This little scene, like most of Juno, was written, directed and acted with such depth of feeling and emotional truth that I'm excited to think someone involved could end up with an Academy Award, even if it's someone who decided that it would be a good idea for her name to be "Diablo Cody."
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Other Nominees:
Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Sarah Polley, Away From Her
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
First of all: yes, the blonde chick from Dawn of the Dead is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
That's pretty fantastic, but, as we've discussed, it's going to be the Coen brothers' night.
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Winner:
The Counterfeiters, Austria
Other Nominees:
Beaufort, Israel
Katyn, Poland
Mongol, Kazakhstan
12, Russia
The Counterfeiters is about the Holocaust (catnip to Oscar voters), and, on top of that, the trailer made it look really good.
I have nothing more to add about this category, except to say that with Borat last year and now with Mongol, Kazakhstan has essentially been represented at two consecutive Oscar ceremonies. I haven't taken the trouble to look it up, but, you can be pretty sure that hasn't happened before.
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Okay. It's getting late and this is getting long; let's plow through the pee-break categories, shall we? Here's what I always write about how that goes:
For the major categories, I'll give you my analysis; for the others, I'll just tell you who Entertainment Weekly says is going to win (that's what everybody does anyway. Like you've got any clue about Best Documentary Short).
The only danger here is if EW has an off year. Like, say, last year, when mostly listening to their picks ended me up with an 11-13 Oscar picking record. Honestly, if you'd have made me bet on whether I ever, in my life, would pick more Oscar categories incorrectly than correctly in a given year, I would have bet on "no" and felt really good about it.
[actually, that's not true. I would have bet on "yes," and then, the next year, I would have intentionally made picks that had almost no chance of winning, thus outsmarting you and winning our little wager. But, if you said I'd have to place my bet and then afterwards you'd erase all memory of the bet from my mind so I couldn't pull the little trick I described, I would have bet that there was absolutely no way I'd ever come away from an Oscar year with a losing record. I once, in college, got them all right except for two! For Pete's sake!]
Anyway. I'll just tell you what Entertainment Weekly said, unless I disagree, in which case I'll let you know that you're getting my pick instead of theirs. Usually, though, when I against them in a pee-break category, we're either both wrong or they're right. I don't think, in three years of doing this, I've ever disagreed with EW and been right. But someday I'm sure that'll happen. Has to, right?
Here we go...
BEST ART DIRECTION: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I read somewhere else that Sweeney Todd wouldn't win because Dante Ferretti wins "all the time," but I looked it up, and, he's like 1-for-7. Not a convincing reason to pick against EW, to say the least.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: They (i.e., Entertainment Weekly) say There Will Be Blood's Robert Elswit, mainly because they assume that since Roger Deakins is nominated twice in this category he'll split the vote with himself. But, in the year of No Country For Old Men, will anybody actually vote for Deakins for The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford?
Still, Robert Elswit is supposed to be the front-runner, and this award generally goes to the movie with the most sweeping shots of the outdoors, which There Will Be Blood has in spades.
[although, when you think about it, wouldn't sweeping shots of the outdoors almost be the easiest thing for a cinematographer? I mean, doing something indoors, or with special effects, I can see how tough that would be, making sure everything in an unnatural arena looks natural; but, aren't most of the outdoors pretty much just sitting there already? Isn't that kind of what the outdoors are famous for?)
BEST EDITING: Roderick Jaynes, No Country For Old Men. Here's why No Country is going to beat The Bourne Ultimatum, which plenty of people are picking in this category: first of all, it's Best Editing, not Most Editing. Second, Roderick Jaynes is, as you may well know, not a real person. Roderick Jaynes is -- for some reason -- the pseudonym under which Joel and Ethan Coen edit their own movies. It would be a "thing" to have Roderick Jaynes announced as the winner and have the Coens accept for "him," and since when has Best Editing ever been a "thing?" Academy voters aren't going to pass up a "thing."
In any case, this is why I say the Coen brothers could tie Walt Disney's Four Oscars in One Year record in spirit if not in practice; if they win all the awards they're up for, then they will have essentially won four Oscars each on Sunday. You and I and everybody else watching will know that. Technically, however, by the letter of Oscar law, Joel and Ethan Coen will have won three Oscars each, and Roderick Jaynes will have won one. Also, if "Roderick Jaynes" wins Best Editing, there will only be one Oscar statuette given away in that category (the Coens will each get one if they win any of the categories in which they're both nominated).
So, while they may find it cute to edit their films under a pseudonym, it could cost the Coen brothers a tie for the official record for Most Oscars Won in a Single Year. Though certainly, a share of the unofficial record would be theirs.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Dario Marianelli, Atonement. Seems like everyone thinks it's between that and Ratatouille. I'll take Atonement, because the magazine says so.
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: "Falling Slowly" from Once, music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Finally, you can just go on YouTube and watch all of these songs and decide for yourself. "Raise It Up" from August Rush isn't really very good, and the three from Enchanted probably will spit. Having seen all three, I would go straight to hell before I voted for anything other than "Happy Working Song," but others think "That's How You Know" is more likely to win. That's why they'll split the vote; they're all good enough to have a reasonable amount of support.
So, it'll probably be Once. That was nice little movie, and it would be cool to see Hansard and Irglova, who pretty much wrote the songs in the movie (and the songs pretty much were the movie), rewarded with Oscars.
Although my favorite song from a 2007 movie was this one, by far. Even though it's obviously a parody of what old white people think rap music is, it's actually a much better song than 3-6 Mafia's Oscar-winning "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." I beg you not to click on that link if you possess any sense of decency, but, I also defy you to tell me that that video is not hilariously awesome (I'll also accept awesomely hilarious).
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier, Transformers. I can't argue with this pick; when I went and bought our new HDTV I was waiting at Circuit City from them to go and get it for me, and they were showing Transformers on an even better HDTV than I bought, with the Blu-Ray DVD and surround sound... I felt like one of those people on the audience of the first-ever motion picture, who ducked when the footage of the locomotive approached. It was something else.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Ethan Van der Ryan and Mike Hopkins, Transformers.
BEST SOUND MIXING: Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Peter Devlin, Transformers. The biggest, explodiest movie usually wins the sound stuff anyway, and this nomination is Kevin O'Connell's 20th, with zero wins so far. He got some attention for his 19th nod last year and I'm sure would have been a sentimental favorite if the movie he worked on, Apocalypto, hadn't been directed by Hatespeech von Hitler. Transformers director Michael Bay, as far as I know, has no beef with the Jews, so this should finally be Kevin O'Connell's year.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Entertainment Weekly's guess is much, much better than mine.
BEST MAKEUP: Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald, La Vie en Rose. La Vie en Rose seems to be considered something of a shoo-in here.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Ratatouille. I'd look out for an upset by Persepolis if Ratatouille hadn't been so, so universally adored.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Madame Tutli-Putli. I actually did a little bit of research on this category, and that research led me to believe strongly that Madame Tutli-Putli -- and not EW's pick, I Met the Walrus -- will win.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: No End In Sight. Seems to be the favorite no matter whom you ask, although with Michael Moore (Sicko) around, I won't breathe easy until the envelope is actually opened.
Well, and then until the winner is read. The actual opening of the envelope in and of itself doesn't really reveal any -- you know what? Never mind.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Freeheld. I'm sort of depending on you completely for this one, Entertainment Weekly.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Tanghi Argentini. I've seen this one predicted as the winner a couple different places, so, knowing nothing of any of the nominees, I'd be silly not to pick it.
That's all, folks. Enjoy the Oscars, now that you've been given permission by the WGA to do so.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Oscar Picks, Year Three... And-a-Half???
[note: not long ago, Athletic Reporter Co-Creator and Photoshop Guru Jameson Simmons e-mailed out a mock-up of his glorious Onebee.com Oscar pool ballot, which he was using to tweak the program in advance (well in advance) of next year's Academy Awards. Rather than list last year's nominees he made up his own, using fake (but real-sounding) movie titles and the names of real Hollywood stars. It was breathtaking; the kind of thing that makes me want to poop my pants with glee. I realized that I had absolutely no choice but to do what you are now about to read. The following takes place in an alternate universe that is exactly like our own, except that the 2008 Oscars are days away, and the nominees are made up of the films on Jameson's mock-up. Oh: and the Minnesota Vikings have multiple Super Bowl victories to their credit. Because why not? Enjoy]
Hey, kiddies, it's that time of year again! That's right: time for the glorious, fabulous, often maddening, always fascinating Onebee.com Oscar Pool, as well as the accompanying Athletic Reporter Oscar Picks column! I've got some making up to do, after my solid but unspectacular record in the picks column and my utter failure in the Onebee.com pool last year. Fear not, though, dear readers, because this year I've seen the bulk of the nominated films, and can offer the sort of expert advice I simply haven't been able to give before.
Let's get started, shall we?
(these are my predictions for who will win, it should be noted. Who will win, not necessarily who should win)
BEST PICTURE
Winner:
Rita Wilson's War
Other Nominees:
France, 1820
Magnified
My First Caliphate
The Wasted Life
I know the Oscar rule of thumb has been that the film with the most nominations usually wins Best Picture, but that rule hasn't been quite as hard-and-fast of late (last year's most-nominated film, Dreamgirls, didn't even receive a Best Picture nod). So France, 1820 (nine nominations to Rita's eight) is some people's pick, but I think that the lack of any acting nominations for France portends a lack of Academy-wide support. Besides, it racked up a bunch of noms in costume and art direction-type pee break categories that Rita was, perhaps, not quite "epic" enough to contend in. So, sure, it was the most nominated movie, but... eh.
The Wasted Life was well done, was a pretty brutal portrait of American frontier life, but was a relatively "small" movie and was mainly just a downer. Not the kind of thing Best Pictures are made of, and I'm not sure enough people saw it. But if I had to handicap the race I'd say it was probably running a solid third in this category.
My First Caliphate, for all the controversy that surrounded it before it was released, was ultimately staid and sedated, almost to a fault. It featured some flawless performances but, as far as I'm concerned, never coalesced into an affecting film. It aimed for the heart, but it only hit the head (and, because of the 177-minute running time and my large Diet Coke, so did I. Twice).
And, as I always mention, every year some often dumb and always undeserving little comedy sneaks into the Best Picture field, certain to be completely forgotten about in the next few years (like, when's the last time you heard anybody mention Chocolat?). As such, the less said about the slapdash mishmash of clichés and lame set pieces that was Magnified -- and the less said about the hacky, one-note supporting "performance" by the usually good, herein bad and now inexplicably nominated John Lithgow -- the better.
So, Rita Wilson's War, then. I know we've been hearing the comparisons to Being John Malkovich ever since the project was first announced, but, really, all the two movies have in common is a trippy sort of surrealism and a famous person or two (Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, most notably) playing themselves. I don't think the Malkovich factor will hold Rita Wilson's War back at all, and I don't think Hollywood will be able to resist awarding a movie that so skillfully uses industry in-jokes while taking care to entertain and avoid alienating those who aren't as in the know. The uproarious cameo by Spielberg alone was almost worth a Best Picture trophy (especially in what I think was a bit of a lean year), but I still can't figure out why more people aren't talking about that blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance from everyone's favorite former governor, Jesse Ventura. Anyway, Rita Wilson's War stands above the field in terms of originality, sheer quality (in my humble opinion) and critical acclaim, and since the Academy has shown a willingness of late to award Best Picture to movies that actually are set in the present day (The Departed, Crash, Million Dollar Baby), I'll say Rita over France.
BEST DIRECTOR
Winner:
Stephen Frears, Rita Wilson's War
Other Nominees:
Doug Liman, Can Only Feel Diamonds
Martin Scorsese, France, 1820
Clint Eastwood, My First Caliphate
Paul Greengrass, The War Birds
This category is actually one of the easiest of the night; Frears has won every major award short of the Heisman Trophy (for which I think he actually finished like fourth). And, in case you never actually looked, he really does have quite an impressive -- and eclectic -- body of work (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity, The Queen and now Rita Wilson's War).
I don't see a director whose film isn't nominated winning this year (they never really do), so there go Liman and Greengrass. Clint Eastwood already has two Best Director wins, and I think if you really got down to it, most movie lovers would be forced to admit that My First Caliphate probably doesn't crack his own career Top Five.
And it would be harder to discount Scorsese if he hadn't finally won last year. But he did. So push all your chips to the center of the table when Best Director comes up; you won't have to worry about it.
BEST ACTOR
Winner:
Rupert Everett, Shy and Alive
Other Nominees:
Matt Damon, A Frank Portrayal
Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson's War
Kevin Kline, The First Man Home
Robert Redford, Notebook
I heard once, a few years ago, that nobody has even won Best Actor when his Best Actor nomination was the only nomination that film received. I don't feel like looking that up to find out it it's true, mainly because even if it is it won't be for long. Only Hanks's Rita has received any nominations anywhere else, and although Hanks is great in the movie, if he's going to get a third Oscar it's going to be some other year.
This has been a weird one to predict: Kline won the SAG award; Damon won numerous critics' awards; the Golden Globe went to France, 1820's Sam Rockwell as Prime Minister Elie Decazes, and then Rockwell didn't even get nominated here; Redford's nomination seems to have come out of nowhere (and, many feel, at Rockwell's expense. In fact, if Rockwell had been nominated, I dare say he'd have been my pick)...
I'll go with Rupert Everett; not only does it seem like he's getting a surge of late buzz, he's actually the only guy in this category who hasn't already won an Oscar in some category or another. And, as much as I enjoyed Rockwell and was surprised that he was left out, Everett's portrayal of 18th century civil rights crusader Horatio Tardwell pretty much had everything: he's mentally handicapped, he's British (the actor and the character), and (spoiler alert!) he dies at the end. All stuff that Academy voters eat up with a spoon.
BEST ACTRESS
Winner:
Sandra Bullock, Torn From the Top
Other Nominees:
Frances McDormand, The Franken File
Julia Roberts, My Skirt Ripped!
Meryl Streep, I Appeared In a Movie This Year... er, I mean... My First Caliphate
Hilary Swank, Bible Murder
One of the other putative "no-doubters" of the night, or, at least the one acting category of the four that's closest to being a sure thing. I don't have much to say about any of these movies, so I'll just say this in regards to Sandra Bullock: Hey! Hey, Academy! If you keep giving Oscars to beautiful women whose main performance feature is that they dressed up ugly, then beautiful women will continue to dress up ugly to try to win Oscars! And no one wants that. We want to look at hot women being hot. That’s why we have Hollywood. Next time you've got a script with an ugly chick in it, maybe think about hiring, like, Joy Behar instead of Jessica Biel. That's all I'm saying.
Two other points about Best Actress:
1) If Annette Bening were also nominated this year, I'd be picking Hilary Swank to beat her again,
and
2) You'll hear bitching from time to time about how hard it is for women in Hollywood, but, let me just ask: did Richard Gere get nominated for Pretty Woman? Did Aaron Eckhart get nominated for Erin Brockovich? Did Hugh Jackman get nominated for My Skirt Ripped!? No, they didn't, did they. An actress can get nominated for just about any kind of movie, whereas an actor pretty much has to play a President or a retard (wait until they make a movie about George W... some lucky actor will get to play both! Ha! Get it? Because he's stupid and evil! I'm so brave for joking like that! Speak truth to power!)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner:
Christopher Guest, Frances Harper
Other Nominees:
Javier Bardem, Under the Waning Moon
Samuel L. Jackson, The Short List
John Lithgow, Magnified
Kevin Spacey, The War Birds
This was the toughest one by far, and I admit to sort of throwing up my hands and voting with my heart on this one. According to almost every barometer of Oscar buzz, it’s pretty much a three-man race between Guest, Bardem and Jackson, but I’ll take Christopher Guest with his chilling portrayal of the psychologically abusive patriarch in Frances Harper. If you didn’t see the movie, first of all, shame on you, and second of all, by way of describing Guest’s performance: imagine if Count Rugen, the character Guest so skillfully played in The Princess Bride, had been 50% smarter, 20% more evil, about half as funny, and scarier than any character in any movie ever. That will give you a pretty good idea of what Guest did with Solomon Harper. Christopher Guest has given so much to movies over the course of his career; it’s time that movies gave back.
(should I throw in a “dammit!” here? Oh, why not?)
Christopher Guest has given so much to movies over the course of his career; it’s time that movies gave back, dammit!
Then there’s Bardem and Jackson to contend with. Bardem’s been nominated before, and he just has this stink about him of a guy who in no way won’t win an Oscar someday. In Athletic Reporter Co-Creator and Photoshop Guru Jameson Simmons’s Onebee.com Oscar pool, you’re given 10 points per category to parcel out as you wish; I don’t know that I’ve ever split any points in an acting category but, as much as I’m pulling for Guest, I might have to throw a couple of points Bardem’s way.
And then there’s Jackson; he’s never won an Oscar, he’s a big movie star, and he’s black. So, he’s got a hell of a lot going in his favor as far as this is concerned (the last few years they've been giving out Academy Awards to black actors like it's going out of style). I’m sure he’ll also win an Oscar someday, but for the sake of Christopher Guest I hope that day is at least a year away. Plus, he was only in two scenes in The Short List, and although there’s almost universal agreement that he made the most of them, the movie didn’t make as much of a splash as he did and, as far as I’m concerned, it is unlikely to be remembered much beyond the next few years.
Kevin Spacey’s already got two Oscars, and, if John Lithgow wins I’m really going to have to move to some country were they don’t even allow movies. Like, Saudi Arabia or somewhere.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner:
Catherine Keener, Reverse Cowgirl
Other Nominees:
Julie Delpy, The War Birds
Olympia Dukakis, After the Depression
Téa Leoni, My First Caliphate
Rita Wilson, Rita Wilson’s War
Tough category, but, I’ve got to figure it’s finally Catherine Keener’s year. Leoni won the National Board of Review award and most of the early cricits’ prizes, but Keener took the SAG trophy and looks to be coming on strong. She’s been Oscar-nominated for a couple of movies and egregiously snubbed for others (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, anyone?), but, her daring, hilarious, ultimately tragic performance in Reverse Cowgirl will probably be impossible to ignore. Plus, if you really think about it, she technically avoids the old “hooker with the heart of gold” cliché because, in the strictest sense, she’s actually playing a madame.
Téa Leoni’s performance was very strong as well, but not as flashy as Keener’s, and for once I’ll decide not to mind if that’s all the Academy sees fit to consider. Rita Wilson, ironically, wasn’t actually all that integral to the happenings of Rita Wilson’s War, though she was plenty good in the film. In a slower Best Supporting Actress year she’d have a darn good chance.
Julie Delpy is being given pretty long odds, and, although it probably won’t happen, it would be kind of nice to see past winner Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) receive that second Oscar she so clearly deserved for Too Many Grandmas.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Aaron Sorkin, Rita Wilson’s War
Other Nominees:
Guillermo Arriaga, Aim Higher
Iris Yamashita; story by Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Bits and Bytes
Guillermo del Toro, Scamp
Peter Morgan, The Wasted Life
And so, prodigal son Aaron Sorkin returns after taking a beating from the Jesuslanders, welcomed by the nurturing bosom of Hollywood liberals.
But seriously, Rita Wilson’s War might just be enough to wash the stink of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” off of Sorkin’s legacy, and considering how much I thought “Studio 60” blew, that’s saying something. Movie critic Manohla Dargis memorably called Rita Wilson’s War “a movie that Charlie Kaufman himself couldn’t possibly get high enough to write,” and, if you’ve seen it, that pretty much says it all. If you haven’t, then, there’s really no way to do it justice. Well done, Sorkin.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Patrick Marber, The War Birds
Other Nominees:
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer; story by Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Anthony Hines, Todd Phillips, Alabaster Disaster: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Michaelangelo’s Gay Secret
Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, France, 1820
William Monahan, Into War
Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Under the Waning Moon
I always talk about how one of the screenplay Oscars is essentially given away as a consolation prize for Best Picture (Little Miss Sunshine won a screenplay award last year, if you’ll remember), and I suspect that will happen to some degree with War Birds. A mild surprise to be left out of the Best Picture category, The War Birds is partially based on an obscure German biography of World War I flying ace Manfred “The Red Baron” von Richthofen, which is why it was slotted into the Adapted Screenplay category; but Patrick Marber fleshed out large portions of the story himself to create characters and scenes that weren’t in the book (or any book, for that matter).
Director Paul Greengrass’s dogfight sequences (the airplane kind, not the Michael Vick kind) were really well done, which makes it also a bit of a surprise that War Birds didn’t receive a Visual Effects nomination (maybe because they didn’t actually even look like special effects). A small but passionate following of fans seems to consider The War Birds to be the best movie of the year, so it’ll probably be acknowledged with a screenplay win. I suppose there's a chance that this could be the one major award that France, 1820 scores, but, I really think that for all the hullabaloo over that movie when it came out in July, people are, for the most part, over it by now.
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Winner:
Living in a Dirt Box, Germany
Other Nominees:
For This Day, Sweden
Home Without You, Canada
Open Sesame, Egypt
The Tallest Nun
According to some, the title Living in a Dirt Box could have been translated more accurately from the German. The movie is supposed to be a canny satire about tabloid journalism; I’ll have to take that on faith, as I haven’t seen it. I bet against Germany and The Lives of Others last year and ended up regretting it, so, I’ll stick with the Krauts (I’m half German; I can say that. You can’t. That’s our word).
---------------------------------------------------------
And that’s it for what I like to think of as the “major” categories; as I do every year, I’ll cut-and-paste what I wrote in 2005 to explain how the rest of it works:
BEST ART DIRECTION: EW says Jeannine Oppewall, Gretchen Rau, Leslie E. Rollins, France, 1820. It’s got to win something, right? And these categories are harmless. Other than maybe After the Depression set decorator Nancy Haigh’s mom, who really cares if France, 1820 beats out an overall better movie for an award here?
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Wally Pfister, The War Birds. Although France, 1820 can’t be counted out here. This category is usually (not always, but usually) just an award for “most sweeping shots of the outdoors,” and to prove it, as I always do, here are Best Cinematography’s last several winners: Pan’s Labyrinth; Memoirs of a Geisha; The Aviator; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; Road to Perdition; Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; American Beauty; Saving Private Ryan; Titanic; The English Patient; Braveheart; Legends of the Fall.
BEST EDITING: Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse, Richard Pearson, Underwater Dynamo. This one often matches up with Best Picture, but it might not this year, since Rita Wilson’s War editor Thelma Schoonmaker just won last year for The Departed, and since Schoonmaker, who has edited nearly all of Martin Scorsese’s movies, underwent a highly publicized rift with the director last year, the reasons for which have never been addressed by either party in public (and not to be unkind, but I think it’s safe to assume that it’s wasn’t a lover’s tiff, because, guh).
Scorsese’s France, 1820 was, in turn, edited by Steven Rosenblum, and industry scuttlebutt suggests that, in some circles, sides have been taken and lines have been drawn in the sand as far as Editorgate goes. I (and Entertainment Weekly) look for Schoonmaker and Rosenblum to split the vote and Underwater Dynamo to emerge as the victor.
And let’s face it, maybe it should; was there a slicker, more fun, more thrilling movie all year? You got your Nicolas Cage, you got your Ryan Reynolds, you got your Danny DeVito, you got your Zooey Deschanel running around in a bikini pretty much the whole time... good stuff. Any given year’s box office champ/loud fun blockbuster usually takes home some technical awards, but Underwater Dynamo was probably deserving of a Best Picture nomination in its own right (I mean, Good Lord, if there’s a spot being taken up by freaking Magnified...), and I like it to sneak in there and grab Best Editing also.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Philip Glass, Me and Your Cousin. Evidently it’s Philip Glass’s year; he’s lost thrice before. I didn’t particularly notice the score in Me and Your Cousin, which may not be the best sign; I’m not sure film scores are necessarily supposed to be like major league umpires in that respect (i.e., you never notice the really good ones). But I certainly can’t claim that Glass’s score was particularly offensive.
Really, though, every year that Carter Burwell doesn’t win this award is a year that I just get closer and closer to joining al-Qaeda.
( I mean, really. I saw Miller’s Crossing on TV just the other day. You know what won Best Score the year Miller’s Crossing came out? Neither do I! Neither does anyone, because whatever movie it was, it’s score couldn’t carry Miller’s Crossing’s score’s jockstrap!)
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Slow,” from Friar Bait, music and lyrics by Randy Newman. I happen to love Randy Newman’s stuff. I really liked Friar Bait, too; I thought it was Disney’s best hand-drawn animated offering in quite a while, and I was surprised it was left off of the Best Animated Feature list. I did think that the decision to promote Bait from Friar to Master at the end of the movie was unwise, and probably cost them a good chunk of box office from some of your more conservative moviegoing parents.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover, Jon Thum, Underwater Dynamo. EW says Panic Island, but, I think a substantial voting block will toss Underwater Dynamo a bunch of Oscars for most -- if not all -- of the categories in which it’s nominated. In fact, I think the smart money might be on Underwater Dynamo to emerge as the most-honored movie of the night.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Christopher Boyes and George Watters II, Underwater Dynamo. Keep ‘em coming, boys!
BEST SOUND MIXING: Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes, Lee Orloff, Underwater Dynamo. EW agrees with me on the last two, by the way. Or, I should say, I agree with them.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Sharen Davis, France, 1820. Is there any chance that a movie called France, 1820 wouldn’t win a costume design Oscar?
BEST MAKEUP: David Marti and Montse Ribe, Underwater Dynamo. The makeup in France, 1820 was your pretty standard period stuff. Also: I'm not saying it should beat Dynamo here, and I hate to admit it, but, I sort of liked MonsterFace. I mean, Rob Schneider as a guy who inexplicably develops a condition that makes his face appear monstrous and gross to everyone else, only when he looks in the mirror he sees himself as normal? You’ve got to admit, MonsterFace mined all possible comedy out of that situation, and then some. And Norm Macdonald’s cameo was, as it is in all Rob Schneider movies, off-the-charts hilarious.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Up. Always bet on Pixar. It should be noted that Koala Spaceship was pretty cute, but, I think to take home the Oscar you’ve got to at least attempt to appeal to adults as well as kids, and they really didn’t.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: The Bastard Potato. If you say so, Entertainment Weekly.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Anniversary at Birkenau. People have confused Anniversary at Birkenau with the also-nominated Birkenau: An Anniversary, but the two are similar in title only. Anniversary at Birkenau unearths the story of a Jewish couple who celebrate their first wedding anniversary at the Birkenau concentration camp in 1944 only to be executed the following day; Birkenau: An Anniversary cobbles together present-day interviews with Holocaust survivors and American soldiers done on or near the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
I haven’t seen either movie, but EW says Anniversary at Birkenau, and all I can tell about it is that I did recently get out of a screening of a different movie at the same time as an Anniversary at Birkenau crowd, and I actually heard someone say, “I never would have thought the Holocaust could seem that sad.” So, it must get the job done.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Unexpectedly Quaint. A New York power couple quits the rat race and starts up a Vermont B&B. It would sound like a lame mid-season CBS sitcom starring Mark Feuerstein (at least Mark Feuerstein) if it weren’t a true story and, according to EW, this year’s Best Documentary Short front-runner.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Lavate las Manos. Oh, busboys. You can’t not be funny.
And there it is, friends. Another Athletic Reporter> Oscar Picks column in the books. It really seems like the Oscars come sooner and sooner every year, doesn’t it?
Hey, kiddies, it's that time of year again! That's right: time for the glorious, fabulous, often maddening, always fascinating Onebee.com Oscar Pool, as well as the accompanying Athletic Reporter Oscar Picks column! I've got some making up to do, after my solid but unspectacular record in the picks column and my utter failure in the Onebee.com pool last year. Fear not, though, dear readers, because this year I've seen the bulk of the nominated films, and can offer the sort of expert advice I simply haven't been able to give before.
Let's get started, shall we?
(these are my predictions for who will win, it should be noted. Who will win, not necessarily who should win)
BEST PICTURE
Winner:
Rita Wilson's War
Other Nominees:
France, 1820
Magnified
My First Caliphate
The Wasted Life
I know the Oscar rule of thumb has been that the film with the most nominations usually wins Best Picture, but that rule hasn't been quite as hard-and-fast of late (last year's most-nominated film, Dreamgirls, didn't even receive a Best Picture nod). So France, 1820 (nine nominations to Rita's eight) is some people's pick, but I think that the lack of any acting nominations for France portends a lack of Academy-wide support. Besides, it racked up a bunch of noms in costume and art direction-type pee break categories that Rita was, perhaps, not quite "epic" enough to contend in. So, sure, it was the most nominated movie, but... eh.
The Wasted Life was well done, was a pretty brutal portrait of American frontier life, but was a relatively "small" movie and was mainly just a downer. Not the kind of thing Best Pictures are made of, and I'm not sure enough people saw it. But if I had to handicap the race I'd say it was probably running a solid third in this category.
My First Caliphate, for all the controversy that surrounded it before it was released, was ultimately staid and sedated, almost to a fault. It featured some flawless performances but, as far as I'm concerned, never coalesced into an affecting film. It aimed for the heart, but it only hit the head (and, because of the 177-minute running time and my large Diet Coke, so did I. Twice).
And, as I always mention, every year some often dumb and always undeserving little comedy sneaks into the Best Picture field, certain to be completely forgotten about in the next few years (like, when's the last time you heard anybody mention Chocolat?). As such, the less said about the slapdash mishmash of clichés and lame set pieces that was Magnified -- and the less said about the hacky, one-note supporting "performance" by the usually good, herein bad and now inexplicably nominated John Lithgow -- the better.
So, Rita Wilson's War, then. I know we've been hearing the comparisons to Being John Malkovich ever since the project was first announced, but, really, all the two movies have in common is a trippy sort of surrealism and a famous person or two (Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, most notably) playing themselves. I don't think the Malkovich factor will hold Rita Wilson's War back at all, and I don't think Hollywood will be able to resist awarding a movie that so skillfully uses industry in-jokes while taking care to entertain and avoid alienating those who aren't as in the know. The uproarious cameo by Spielberg alone was almost worth a Best Picture trophy (especially in what I think was a bit of a lean year), but I still can't figure out why more people aren't talking about that blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance from everyone's favorite former governor, Jesse Ventura. Anyway, Rita Wilson's War stands above the field in terms of originality, sheer quality (in my humble opinion) and critical acclaim, and since the Academy has shown a willingness of late to award Best Picture to movies that actually are set in the present day (The Departed, Crash, Million Dollar Baby), I'll say Rita over France.
BEST DIRECTOR
Winner:
Stephen Frears, Rita Wilson's War
Other Nominees:
Doug Liman, Can Only Feel Diamonds
Martin Scorsese, France, 1820
Clint Eastwood, My First Caliphate
Paul Greengrass, The War Birds
This category is actually one of the easiest of the night; Frears has won every major award short of the Heisman Trophy (for which I think he actually finished like fourth). And, in case you never actually looked, he really does have quite an impressive -- and eclectic -- body of work (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity, The Queen and now Rita Wilson's War).
I don't see a director whose film isn't nominated winning this year (they never really do), so there go Liman and Greengrass. Clint Eastwood already has two Best Director wins, and I think if you really got down to it, most movie lovers would be forced to admit that My First Caliphate probably doesn't crack his own career Top Five.
And it would be harder to discount Scorsese if he hadn't finally won last year. But he did. So push all your chips to the center of the table when Best Director comes up; you won't have to worry about it.
BEST ACTOR
Winner:
Rupert Everett, Shy and Alive
Other Nominees:
Matt Damon, A Frank Portrayal
Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson's War
Kevin Kline, The First Man Home
Robert Redford, Notebook
I heard once, a few years ago, that nobody has even won Best Actor when his Best Actor nomination was the only nomination that film received. I don't feel like looking that up to find out it it's true, mainly because even if it is it won't be for long. Only Hanks's Rita has received any nominations anywhere else, and although Hanks is great in the movie, if he's going to get a third Oscar it's going to be some other year.
This has been a weird one to predict: Kline won the SAG award; Damon won numerous critics' awards; the Golden Globe went to France, 1820's Sam Rockwell as Prime Minister Elie Decazes, and then Rockwell didn't even get nominated here; Redford's nomination seems to have come out of nowhere (and, many feel, at Rockwell's expense. In fact, if Rockwell had been nominated, I dare say he'd have been my pick)...
I'll go with Rupert Everett; not only does it seem like he's getting a surge of late buzz, he's actually the only guy in this category who hasn't already won an Oscar in some category or another. And, as much as I enjoyed Rockwell and was surprised that he was left out, Everett's portrayal of 18th century civil rights crusader Horatio Tardwell pretty much had everything: he's mentally handicapped, he's British (the actor and the character), and (spoiler alert!) he dies at the end. All stuff that Academy voters eat up with a spoon.
BEST ACTRESS
Winner:
Sandra Bullock, Torn From the Top
Other Nominees:
Frances McDormand, The Franken File
Julia Roberts, My Skirt Ripped!
Meryl Streep, I Appeared In a Movie This Year... er, I mean... My First Caliphate
Hilary Swank, Bible Murder
One of the other putative "no-doubters" of the night, or, at least the one acting category of the four that's closest to being a sure thing. I don't have much to say about any of these movies, so I'll just say this in regards to Sandra Bullock: Hey! Hey, Academy! If you keep giving Oscars to beautiful women whose main performance feature is that they dressed up ugly, then beautiful women will continue to dress up ugly to try to win Oscars! And no one wants that. We want to look at hot women being hot. That’s why we have Hollywood. Next time you've got a script with an ugly chick in it, maybe think about hiring, like, Joy Behar instead of Jessica Biel. That's all I'm saying.
Two other points about Best Actress:
1) If Annette Bening were also nominated this year, I'd be picking Hilary Swank to beat her again,
and
2) You'll hear bitching from time to time about how hard it is for women in Hollywood, but, let me just ask: did Richard Gere get nominated for Pretty Woman? Did Aaron Eckhart get nominated for Erin Brockovich? Did Hugh Jackman get nominated for My Skirt Ripped!? No, they didn't, did they. An actress can get nominated for just about any kind of movie, whereas an actor pretty much has to play a President or a retard (wait until they make a movie about George W... some lucky actor will get to play both! Ha! Get it? Because he's stupid and evil! I'm so brave for joking like that! Speak truth to power!)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner:
Christopher Guest, Frances Harper
Other Nominees:
Javier Bardem, Under the Waning Moon
Samuel L. Jackson, The Short List
John Lithgow, Magnified
Kevin Spacey, The War Birds
This was the toughest one by far, and I admit to sort of throwing up my hands and voting with my heart on this one. According to almost every barometer of Oscar buzz, it’s pretty much a three-man race between Guest, Bardem and Jackson, but I’ll take Christopher Guest with his chilling portrayal of the psychologically abusive patriarch in Frances Harper. If you didn’t see the movie, first of all, shame on you, and second of all, by way of describing Guest’s performance: imagine if Count Rugen, the character Guest so skillfully played in The Princess Bride, had been 50% smarter, 20% more evil, about half as funny, and scarier than any character in any movie ever. That will give you a pretty good idea of what Guest did with Solomon Harper. Christopher Guest has given so much to movies over the course of his career; it’s time that movies gave back.
(should I throw in a “dammit!” here? Oh, why not?)
Christopher Guest has given so much to movies over the course of his career; it’s time that movies gave back, dammit!
Then there’s Bardem and Jackson to contend with. Bardem’s been nominated before, and he just has this stink about him of a guy who in no way won’t win an Oscar someday. In Athletic Reporter Co-Creator and Photoshop Guru Jameson Simmons’s Onebee.com Oscar pool, you’re given 10 points per category to parcel out as you wish; I don’t know that I’ve ever split any points in an acting category but, as much as I’m pulling for Guest, I might have to throw a couple of points Bardem’s way.
And then there’s Jackson; he’s never won an Oscar, he’s a big movie star, and he’s black. So, he’s got a hell of a lot going in his favor as far as this is concerned (the last few years they've been giving out Academy Awards to black actors like it's going out of style). I’m sure he’ll also win an Oscar someday, but for the sake of Christopher Guest I hope that day is at least a year away. Plus, he was only in two scenes in The Short List, and although there’s almost universal agreement that he made the most of them, the movie didn’t make as much of a splash as he did and, as far as I’m concerned, it is unlikely to be remembered much beyond the next few years.
Kevin Spacey’s already got two Oscars, and, if John Lithgow wins I’m really going to have to move to some country were they don’t even allow movies. Like, Saudi Arabia or somewhere.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner:
Catherine Keener, Reverse Cowgirl
Other Nominees:
Julie Delpy, The War Birds
Olympia Dukakis, After the Depression
Téa Leoni, My First Caliphate
Rita Wilson, Rita Wilson’s War
Tough category, but, I’ve got to figure it’s finally Catherine Keener’s year. Leoni won the National Board of Review award and most of the early cricits’ prizes, but Keener took the SAG trophy and looks to be coming on strong. She’s been Oscar-nominated for a couple of movies and egregiously snubbed for others (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, anyone?), but, her daring, hilarious, ultimately tragic performance in Reverse Cowgirl will probably be impossible to ignore. Plus, if you really think about it, she technically avoids the old “hooker with the heart of gold” cliché because, in the strictest sense, she’s actually playing a madame.
Téa Leoni’s performance was very strong as well, but not as flashy as Keener’s, and for once I’ll decide not to mind if that’s all the Academy sees fit to consider. Rita Wilson, ironically, wasn’t actually all that integral to the happenings of Rita Wilson’s War, though she was plenty good in the film. In a slower Best Supporting Actress year she’d have a darn good chance.
Julie Delpy is being given pretty long odds, and, although it probably won’t happen, it would be kind of nice to see past winner Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) receive that second Oscar she so clearly deserved for Too Many Grandmas.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Aaron Sorkin, Rita Wilson’s War
Other Nominees:
Guillermo Arriaga, Aim Higher
Iris Yamashita; story by Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Bits and Bytes
Guillermo del Toro, Scamp
Peter Morgan, The Wasted Life
And so, prodigal son Aaron Sorkin returns after taking a beating from the Jesuslanders, welcomed by the nurturing bosom of Hollywood liberals.
But seriously, Rita Wilson’s War might just be enough to wash the stink of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” off of Sorkin’s legacy, and considering how much I thought “Studio 60” blew, that’s saying something. Movie critic Manohla Dargis memorably called Rita Wilson’s War “a movie that Charlie Kaufman himself couldn’t possibly get high enough to write,” and, if you’ve seen it, that pretty much says it all. If you haven’t, then, there’s really no way to do it justice. Well done, Sorkin.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Winner:
Patrick Marber, The War Birds
Other Nominees:
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer; story by Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Anthony Hines, Todd Phillips, Alabaster Disaster: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Michaelangelo’s Gay Secret
Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, France, 1820
William Monahan, Into War
Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Under the Waning Moon
I always talk about how one of the screenplay Oscars is essentially given away as a consolation prize for Best Picture (Little Miss Sunshine won a screenplay award last year, if you’ll remember), and I suspect that will happen to some degree with War Birds. A mild surprise to be left out of the Best Picture category, The War Birds is partially based on an obscure German biography of World War I flying ace Manfred “The Red Baron” von Richthofen, which is why it was slotted into the Adapted Screenplay category; but Patrick Marber fleshed out large portions of the story himself to create characters and scenes that weren’t in the book (or any book, for that matter).
Director Paul Greengrass’s dogfight sequences (the airplane kind, not the Michael Vick kind) were really well done, which makes it also a bit of a surprise that War Birds didn’t receive a Visual Effects nomination (maybe because they didn’t actually even look like special effects). A small but passionate following of fans seems to consider The War Birds to be the best movie of the year, so it’ll probably be acknowledged with a screenplay win. I suppose there's a chance that this could be the one major award that France, 1820 scores, but, I really think that for all the hullabaloo over that movie when it came out in July, people are, for the most part, over it by now.
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Winner:
Living in a Dirt Box, Germany
Other Nominees:
For This Day, Sweden
Home Without You, Canada
Open Sesame, Egypt
The Tallest Nun
According to some, the title Living in a Dirt Box could have been translated more accurately from the German. The movie is supposed to be a canny satire about tabloid journalism; I’ll have to take that on faith, as I haven’t seen it. I bet against Germany and The Lives of Others last year and ended up regretting it, so, I’ll stick with the Krauts (I’m half German; I can say that. You can’t. That’s our word).
---------------------------------------------------------
And that’s it for what I like to think of as the “major” categories; as I do every year, I’ll cut-and-paste what I wrote in 2005 to explain how the rest of it works:
For the major categories, I'll give you my analysis; for the others [i.e., the "pee break" categories], I'll just tell you who Entertainment Weekly says is going to win (that's what everybody does anyway. Like you've got any clue about Best Documentary Short).Last year, I believe I did some actual research into some of these categories, and, for the most part, it cost me. You only end up seeing something that will throw you off. I’ll stick with EW unless I really, really think I’ve got to strike out on my own, in which case I’ll let you know that’s what’s going on.
BEST ART DIRECTION: EW says Jeannine Oppewall, Gretchen Rau, Leslie E. Rollins, France, 1820. It’s got to win something, right? And these categories are harmless. Other than maybe After the Depression set decorator Nancy Haigh’s mom, who really cares if France, 1820 beats out an overall better movie for an award here?
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Wally Pfister, The War Birds. Although France, 1820 can’t be counted out here. This category is usually (not always, but usually) just an award for “most sweeping shots of the outdoors,” and to prove it, as I always do, here are Best Cinematography’s last several winners: Pan’s Labyrinth; Memoirs of a Geisha; The Aviator; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; Road to Perdition; Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; American Beauty; Saving Private Ryan; Titanic; The English Patient; Braveheart; Legends of the Fall.
BEST EDITING: Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse, Richard Pearson, Underwater Dynamo. This one often matches up with Best Picture, but it might not this year, since Rita Wilson’s War editor Thelma Schoonmaker just won last year for The Departed, and since Schoonmaker, who has edited nearly all of Martin Scorsese’s movies, underwent a highly publicized rift with the director last year, the reasons for which have never been addressed by either party in public (and not to be unkind, but I think it’s safe to assume that it’s wasn’t a lover’s tiff, because, guh).
Scorsese’s France, 1820 was, in turn, edited by Steven Rosenblum, and industry scuttlebutt suggests that, in some circles, sides have been taken and lines have been drawn in the sand as far as Editorgate goes. I (and Entertainment Weekly) look for Schoonmaker and Rosenblum to split the vote and Underwater Dynamo to emerge as the victor.
And let’s face it, maybe it should; was there a slicker, more fun, more thrilling movie all year? You got your Nicolas Cage, you got your Ryan Reynolds, you got your Danny DeVito, you got your Zooey Deschanel running around in a bikini pretty much the whole time... good stuff. Any given year’s box office champ/loud fun blockbuster usually takes home some technical awards, but Underwater Dynamo was probably deserving of a Best Picture nomination in its own right (I mean, Good Lord, if there’s a spot being taken up by freaking Magnified...), and I like it to sneak in there and grab Best Editing also.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Philip Glass, Me and Your Cousin. Evidently it’s Philip Glass’s year; he’s lost thrice before. I didn’t particularly notice the score in Me and Your Cousin, which may not be the best sign; I’m not sure film scores are necessarily supposed to be like major league umpires in that respect (i.e., you never notice the really good ones). But I certainly can’t claim that Glass’s score was particularly offensive.
Really, though, every year that Carter Burwell doesn’t win this award is a year that I just get closer and closer to joining al-Qaeda.
( I mean, really. I saw Miller’s Crossing on TV just the other day. You know what won Best Score the year Miller’s Crossing came out? Neither do I! Neither does anyone, because whatever movie it was, it’s score couldn’t carry Miller’s Crossing’s score’s jockstrap!)
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Slow,” from Friar Bait, music and lyrics by Randy Newman. I happen to love Randy Newman’s stuff. I really liked Friar Bait, too; I thought it was Disney’s best hand-drawn animated offering in quite a while, and I was surprised it was left off of the Best Animated Feature list. I did think that the decision to promote Bait from Friar to Master at the end of the movie was unwise, and probably cost them a good chunk of box office from some of your more conservative moviegoing parents.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover, Jon Thum, Underwater Dynamo. EW says Panic Island, but, I think a substantial voting block will toss Underwater Dynamo a bunch of Oscars for most -- if not all -- of the categories in which it’s nominated. In fact, I think the smart money might be on Underwater Dynamo to emerge as the most-honored movie of the night.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Christopher Boyes and George Watters II, Underwater Dynamo. Keep ‘em coming, boys!
BEST SOUND MIXING: Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes, Lee Orloff, Underwater Dynamo. EW agrees with me on the last two, by the way. Or, I should say, I agree with them.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Sharen Davis, France, 1820. Is there any chance that a movie called France, 1820 wouldn’t win a costume design Oscar?
BEST MAKEUP: David Marti and Montse Ribe, Underwater Dynamo. The makeup in France, 1820 was your pretty standard period stuff. Also: I'm not saying it should beat Dynamo here, and I hate to admit it, but, I sort of liked MonsterFace. I mean, Rob Schneider as a guy who inexplicably develops a condition that makes his face appear monstrous and gross to everyone else, only when he looks in the mirror he sees himself as normal? You’ve got to admit, MonsterFace mined all possible comedy out of that situation, and then some. And Norm Macdonald’s cameo was, as it is in all Rob Schneider movies, off-the-charts hilarious.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Up. Always bet on Pixar. It should be noted that Koala Spaceship was pretty cute, but, I think to take home the Oscar you’ve got to at least attempt to appeal to adults as well as kids, and they really didn’t.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: The Bastard Potato. If you say so, Entertainment Weekly.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Anniversary at Birkenau. People have confused Anniversary at Birkenau with the also-nominated Birkenau: An Anniversary, but the two are similar in title only. Anniversary at Birkenau unearths the story of a Jewish couple who celebrate their first wedding anniversary at the Birkenau concentration camp in 1944 only to be executed the following day; Birkenau: An Anniversary cobbles together present-day interviews with Holocaust survivors and American soldiers done on or near the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
I haven’t seen either movie, but EW says Anniversary at Birkenau, and all I can tell about it is that I did recently get out of a screening of a different movie at the same time as an Anniversary at Birkenau crowd, and I actually heard someone say, “I never would have thought the Holocaust could seem that sad.” So, it must get the job done.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Unexpectedly Quaint. A New York power couple quits the rat race and starts up a Vermont B&B. It would sound like a lame mid-season CBS sitcom starring Mark Feuerstein (at least Mark Feuerstein) if it weren’t a true story and, according to EW, this year’s Best Documentary Short front-runner.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Lavate las Manos. Oh, busboys. You can’t not be funny.
And there it is, friends. Another Athletic Reporter> Oscar Picks column in the books. It really seems like the Oscars come sooner and sooner every year, doesn’t it?
Monday, May 07, 2007
The Kid
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The Best Show on TV, Part 7
The Best Show On TV
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/2/06 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/06 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - present
[note: this was written weeks ago; I'm just now getting around to putting it up. Sorry. Since I wrote it, rumors have surfaced that Alec Baldwin wants off the show. This would be bad. Keep your fingers crossed]
I can't say enough about "30 Rock," so I won't say any more except to say that "24" had best watch its back.
-- Me, 1/19/2007
And so it comes to be that "30 Rock" -- much like John Cena at WrestleMania 21 -- wins a rather decisive victory over a very worthy champion. "24" hasn't really gotten any worse, but, last Thursday, as I was starting my second viewing of the "Fireworks" episode of "30 Rock" three seconds after I watched it the first time (while Monday's "24" still sat on the TiVo, anticipated but as-yet-unwatched), I thought to myself, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've got ourselves a new The Best Show On TV."
(and that's how this whole thing works, by the way. There's no plan, no rules; you just know when you know)
"30 Rock" is, as you are no doubt aware, set behind the scenes at NBC's "The Girlie Show," a fictionalized version of "Saturday Night Live." If one had to name the show's principals, they would be Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), "The Girlie Show"'s head writer; Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), the NBC executive who oversees the show (among other things), and Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), the erratic, floundering movie star foisted upon the show by Donaghy.
Most reviews of "30 Rock" focus mainly on Alec Baldwin, and rightly so; he's finally showing the rest of the world (or, to be more accurate, the criminally small portion of the rest of the world that tunes in to "30 Rock" every week) what those of us who have enjoyed his work as SNL host already knew: he's an unbelievable comedic genius. For years I was convinced that television would never (and could never!) produce a supporting actor on a comedy who could even hope to be in the same league as "Frasier"'s David Hyde Pierce; I was wrong.
If there was no other reason to watch "30 Rock," Alec Baldwin would be reason enough. Watching him perform comedy is like watching Johan Santana pitch, or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello, or Rosie O'Donnell be sanctimonious; you know you're watching the world's best at the top of his game. And what's more, Fey and the rest of the "30 Rock" writing staff have seen to it that Donaghy's character, which could easily have been nothing more than a preening stuffed-shirt corporate wet blanket to Liz Lemon's creative aspirations, in fact brings a great deal to the table. Most notably, he's competent, and actually good at his job. Not always, but usually. He's like the football coach who frustrates you occasionally, calls the wrong play once in a great while, but genuinely cares about the success of his team and the lives of his players as much, if not more, than he cares about advancing his own career and taking all the credit for himself. More Bill Cowher than Bill Parcells, to complete the analogy.
But there are other reasons to watch "30 Rock." There really are! Fey's Liz Lemon -- a successful, smart, pretty, nerdy, career-oriented, unhappily single, one-woman opt-out revolution waiting to happen -- is every thinking man's fantasy, if only she'd realize it. Lately the character has started dating Jason Sudeikis's Floyd, but only after orchestrating a breakup between him and his girlfriend and following him into an AA meeting and pretending to be an alcoholic in order to get closer to him [note: in the season finale, they broke up. Pity]
And Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan character is often very, very funny, which is more than I ever expected from a character that looked like he would be extremely one-dimensional. "I want to hold a mirror up to society," he once said, "and then win world's record for biggest mirror."
I case I'm not selling it quite enough, I can tell you this in all sincerity: "30 Rock" has become, in a few short months, the most quotable TV show since "The Simpsons." Past "Buffy," past "Arrested Development," past "Family Guy;" there will be five or six lines -- at least -- in every episode of "30 Rock" that you can't stop saying to yourself in your head, that will get stuck in there like a good Beatles song (a Paul song, more than likely). Plus -- and I don't know if this is an actual goal for the people at "30 Rock," or just an amazingly fun coincidence -- almost every episode contains the word "poop," used to absolutely perfect comedic effect (as much as it pains me to say it, the great Sarah Silverman could learn a lot from "30 Rock" in this regard). How do we know, right away, that Floyd is the guy for Liz? Well, he comes into her office (to apologize for sending her Valentine's Day flowers that were intended for his girlfriend), and the first thing he says is, "Cool, is that a French 'Planet of the Apes' poster? You know, I heard that in Greece they have to write Charlton Heston's name as 'Charlton Easton,' because in Greek the word 'Heston' means 'poop yourself.'"
"The Shield" is back and it's great, and "24" could finish strong. Also, I just watched the first two seasons of "Battlestar Galactica" on DVD and I'm about to start catching up with Season 3 as it re-runs on the Sci-Fi Channel. What I'm saying is that "30 Rock" -- which NBC had the sense to renew for a second season -- will have to fight to keep its status as The Best Show On TV, but, if they keep delivering episodes like Thursday's "Fireworks," the outlook is good.
[note: they kept delivering the goods, up through the season finale; don't expect "30 Rock" to give up this title without a fight]
"The Office" (NBC) -- 2/9/2006 - 4/2/2006
"Huff" (Showtime) -- 4/2/06 - 8/26/2006
"Big Brother" (CBS) -- 8/26/06 - 10/4/2006
"South Park" (Comedy Central) -- 10/4/2006 - 11/30/2006
"The Office" (NBC) -- 11/30/2006 - 1/14/2007
"24" (FOX) -- 1/14/2007 - 4/5/2007
"30 Rock" (NBC) -- 4/5/2007 - present
[note: this was written weeks ago; I'm just now getting around to putting it up. Sorry. Since I wrote it, rumors have surfaced that Alec Baldwin wants off the show. This would be bad. Keep your fingers crossed]
I can't say enough about "30 Rock," so I won't say any more except to say that "24" had best watch its back.
-- Me, 1/19/2007
And so it comes to be that "30 Rock" -- much like John Cena at WrestleMania 21 -- wins a rather decisive victory over a very worthy champion. "24" hasn't really gotten any worse, but, last Thursday, as I was starting my second viewing of the "Fireworks" episode of "30 Rock" three seconds after I watched it the first time (while Monday's "24" still sat on the TiVo, anticipated but as-yet-unwatched), I thought to myself, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've got ourselves a new The Best Show On TV."
(and that's how this whole thing works, by the way. There's no plan, no rules; you just know when you know)
"30 Rock" is, as you are no doubt aware, set behind the scenes at NBC's "The Girlie Show," a fictionalized version of "Saturday Night Live." If one had to name the show's principals, they would be Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), "The Girlie Show"'s head writer; Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), the NBC executive who oversees the show (among other things), and Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), the erratic, floundering movie star foisted upon the show by Donaghy.
Most reviews of "30 Rock" focus mainly on Alec Baldwin, and rightly so; he's finally showing the rest of the world (or, to be more accurate, the criminally small portion of the rest of the world that tunes in to "30 Rock" every week) what those of us who have enjoyed his work as SNL host already knew: he's an unbelievable comedic genius. For years I was convinced that television would never (and could never!) produce a supporting actor on a comedy who could even hope to be in the same league as "Frasier"'s David Hyde Pierce; I was wrong.
If there was no other reason to watch "30 Rock," Alec Baldwin would be reason enough. Watching him perform comedy is like watching Johan Santana pitch, or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello, or Rosie O'Donnell be sanctimonious; you know you're watching the world's best at the top of his game. And what's more, Fey and the rest of the "30 Rock" writing staff have seen to it that Donaghy's character, which could easily have been nothing more than a preening stuffed-shirt corporate wet blanket to Liz Lemon's creative aspirations, in fact brings a great deal to the table. Most notably, he's competent, and actually good at his job. Not always, but usually. He's like the football coach who frustrates you occasionally, calls the wrong play once in a great while, but genuinely cares about the success of his team and the lives of his players as much, if not more, than he cares about advancing his own career and taking all the credit for himself. More Bill Cowher than Bill Parcells, to complete the analogy.
But there are other reasons to watch "30 Rock." There really are! Fey's Liz Lemon -- a successful, smart, pretty, nerdy, career-oriented, unhappily single, one-woman opt-out revolution waiting to happen -- is every thinking man's fantasy, if only she'd realize it. Lately the character has started dating Jason Sudeikis's Floyd, but only after orchestrating a breakup between him and his girlfriend and following him into an AA meeting and pretending to be an alcoholic in order to get closer to him [note: in the season finale, they broke up. Pity]
And Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan character is often very, very funny, which is more than I ever expected from a character that looked like he would be extremely one-dimensional. "I want to hold a mirror up to society," he once said, "and then win world's record for biggest mirror."
I case I'm not selling it quite enough, I can tell you this in all sincerity: "30 Rock" has become, in a few short months, the most quotable TV show since "The Simpsons." Past "Buffy," past "Arrested Development," past "Family Guy;" there will be five or six lines -- at least -- in every episode of "30 Rock" that you can't stop saying to yourself in your head, that will get stuck in there like a good Beatles song (a Paul song, more than likely). Plus -- and I don't know if this is an actual goal for the people at "30 Rock," or just an amazingly fun coincidence -- almost every episode contains the word "poop," used to absolutely perfect comedic effect (as much as it pains me to say it, the great Sarah Silverman could learn a lot from "30 Rock" in this regard). How do we know, right away, that Floyd is the guy for Liz? Well, he comes into her office (to apologize for sending her Valentine's Day flowers that were intended for his girlfriend), and the first thing he says is, "Cool, is that a French 'Planet of the Apes' poster? You know, I heard that in Greece they have to write Charlton Heston's name as 'Charlton Easton,' because in Greek the word 'Heston' means 'poop yourself.'"
"The Shield" is back and it's great, and "24" could finish strong. Also, I just watched the first two seasons of "Battlestar Galactica" on DVD and I'm about to start catching up with Season 3 as it re-runs on the Sci-Fi Channel. What I'm saying is that "30 Rock" -- which NBC had the sense to renew for a second season -- will have to fight to keep its status as The Best Show On TV, but, if they keep delivering episodes like Thursday's "Fireworks," the outlook is good.
[note: they kept delivering the goods, up through the season finale; don't expect "30 Rock" to give up this title without a fight]
