I don’t know if it was just a better year for movies or if the frontrunners were just obvious earlier, but this year’s nominations seem both predictable and hard to quibble with. The Academy, for the most part, seems to have acknowledged well-made films, if not much off the beaten track. I have seen five of the ten Best Picture nominees so far, and have Winter’s Bone downloaded from Amazon previously. That leaves me four to get myself to before the show – I might actually be able to do that.
As I’ve gotten older, and learned more and more about the Academy, I am less mentally on board with the Oscars. They’re petty, and based on popularity, and all the other complaints that get trotted out every year. Sure. (And they have terrible taste in music: Best Song is almost always a travesty.)
But emotionally, I can’t quite let them go. Part is nostalgia; my father and I both love film, and he and I used to pick apart the nominations and then watch the show together, while largely ignoring the SAG Awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, etc. These award shows were always firmly in the “useful in as far as they help you predict the Oscars” category for me as a child.
And I have to say, I love the schmaltz, to a point. I grew up in the golden Billy Crystal years (his Titanic send-up to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme will always be timeless to me). And though the post-Crystal hosts have been uneven, seeing everyone dressed to the nines, seeing the little montages interspersed throughout the evening, the occasional Adrien-Brody-kisses-Halle-Berry moment… they’re all fun, and as long as I have the distance to treat them that way, I try not to get too bent out of shape.
(My father, to this day can’t watch The Sound of Music without angrily commenting that Doctor Zhivago was ROBBED.)
So while everyone and their mom knows that Hailee Steinfeld was in no way a supporting actress, or that all but one of the Best Actor slots were basically locked even before the nominations were announced, or that Natalie Portman is an all but sure thing, I can’t quit the Oscars altogether. Partly because it’s a link back to movie history, even if the Hollywood machine, political side of it, and partly because I am still at heart one of the little girls practicing her acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle. (Though after last year, I felt less self-conscious about the fact that my imaginary award changed from actress to director when I was 15 or so.)
Comments on the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen: reviews for True Grit and Black Swan are up.
Inception was my personal favorite film last year, but I don’t know that it was the best, necessarily; also, given the type of film it is, it has no shot at winning. It is nice, though, to see it get a nomination, and I think this year showed nicely that there were ten films worth recognizing.
Toy Story 3 was an excellent, heart-wrenching film, and while the Toy Story franchise is not necessarily my favorite part of Pixar, it’s hard to find flaws with it. Again, not going to win, but we’ll see how many years in a row Pixar gets a nomination. (And an easy lock for Best Animated Feature.)
The Kids Are All Right struck me as a movie with some phenomenal acting, but that would have been critically unremarkable if not for the genders of the three leads. I’m not saying it was a bad film, because it wasn’t, and I quite liked both Annette Benning and Mark Ruffalo in it, but the screenplay was a bit “eh” to me. I am all for more mainstream, loving depictions of non-heterosexual, cis-gendered couples in which their sexuality is not a huge deal; I just don’t expect the movie to be patted on the back for that alone.
I am very much looking forward to Winter’s Bone. More word on that once I watch it.
And, finally, on a side note, I was glad to see the Coens get an unexpected nod for Direction, even if I do mourn that it probably knocked Chris Nolan out. Both True Grit and Inception were so-well directed it seems a crime to ignore either.
The Exploding Macguffin 