Oscars Archives - Page 7 of 9 - Ramblin' with Roger

Oscars for 2014 films

I’m hoping to see all the Best Animated Short and/or Best Live Action Short nominees at The Spectrum in Albany before Oscar night.

“Everyone knows” that the only reasons that the Oscars matter is so 1) audiences can go to some obscure movie and complain, “THAT was Oscar-nominated?” or “THAT was an Oscar winner?” and 2) writers can put it in someone’s obituaries: “Oscar winner John Wayne…” The Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, will take place on February 22.

As I’m still in movie season mode, which runs, approximately, from November to March when it’s colder, and the better movies tend to come out, I may still see a few more films before Oscar night, or shortly afterward.

I’m pleased that I managed to see the two Best Picture nominees that were released early in the year, Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. (I’m going to link to my reviews of the films I saw, on the first mention.)

Are there Oscar snubs? Should Jennifer Aniston have been nominated for Best Actress in Cake? Should The Lego Movie, which I liked, have been on the list of animated features? Perhaps. I do appreciate this breakdown of “The Whitest Oscar Nominees Since 1995” because he names names; THIS should have been chosen instead of THAT. I don’t necessarily AGREE with the analysis.

Wow, there are a number of Oscar-nominated films this season based on real events: American Sniper, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Mr. Turner, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Unbroken, Wild.

Best Costume Design

#Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Mark Bridges, Inherent Vice
#Colleen Atwood, Into the Woods
Anna B. Sheppard and Jane Clive, Maleficent
Jacqueline Durran, Mr. Turner

I’m rooting for Budapest, because these costumes defined the characters so well, though Into the Woods was worthy.

Best Documentary — Feature

Citizenfour
Finding Vivien Maier
Last Days of Vietnam
The Salt of the Earth
Virunga

Citizenfour, which is about Edward Snowden, played at Proctors in Schenectady for three days, but I didn’t catch it. Finding Vivian Meier is about this woman who took thousands of photos, discovered only after her death. I’ve seen a woman involved in The Last Days of Vietnam, a harrowing period, on The Daily Show. Wish I had seen these.

Best Visual Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist
Guardians of the Galaxy, Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould
#Interstellar, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
X-Men: Days of Future Past, Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

Interstellar was impressive, though the film itself was sometimes tedious. Sometimes they give this to the big box office champ, which would be Guardians of the Galaxy. AND it reviewed well overall.

Best Sound Editing

American Sniper, Alan Robert Murray, and Bub Asman
#Birdman, Martín Hernández and Aaron Glascock
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Brent Burge and Jason Canovas
#Interstellar, Richard King
Unbroken, Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro

Best Sound Mixing

American Sniper, John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, and Walt Martin
#Birdman, Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and Thomas Varga
#Interstellar, Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten
Unbroken, Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and David Lee
#Whiplash, Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley

Four movies in common in these categories. For mixing, I’m rooting for the fifth, Whiplash, which had a sound in the music competitions that had a visceral impact. But Birdman was good too, and based on just the previews of American Sniper, I figure the competition will go to one of those two.

Best Animated Short

The Bigger Picture
The Dam Keeper
Feast
Me and My Moulton
A Single Life

Best Live Action Short
Aya
Boogaloo and Graham
Butter Lamp
Parvaneh
The Phone Call

Best Documentary—Short

Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper
White Earth

I’m hoping to see all the Best Animated Short and/or Best Live Action Short nominees at The Spectrum in Albany before Oscar night, but I almost never see the documentaries anywhere, except, occasionally, online.

The best supporting players, in alpha order.

Best Production Design

#The Grand Budapest Hotel, Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
*The Imitation Game, Production Design: Maria Djurkovic; Set Decoration: Tatiana Macdonald
#Interstellar, Production Design: Nathan Crowley; Set Decoration: Gary Fettis
#Into the Woods, Production Design: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
Mr. Turner, Production Design: Suzie Davies; Set Decoration: Charlotte Watts

I really thought Budapest was quite remarkable visually.

Best Film Editing

Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, American Sniper
#Sandra Adair, Boyhood
#Barney Pilling, The Grand Budapest Hotel
*William Goldenberg, The Imitation Game
#Tom Cross, Whiplash

Putting together a coherent story that was filmed over twelve years will almost surely mean a win for Sandra Adair for Boyhood.

Best Animated Feature

#Big Hero 6
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

I liked Big Hero 6, but have no real info on the others.

Best Original Song

#“Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie; Music and Lyric by Shawn Patterson
*“Glory” from Selma; Music and Lyric by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
“Grateful” from Beyond the Lights; Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me; Music and Lyric by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
#“Lost Stars” from Begin Again; Music and Lyric by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois

“Everything Is Awesome” is such a cheeky song. I thought the music from Begin Again was fine, and functional for the movie. Will the Academy voters throw a crumb to the fine song from Selma here? Or does it go to the dying Glen Campbell?

Best Original Score

#The Grand Budapest Hotel
*The Imitation Game
#Interstellar
Mr. Turner
#The Theory of Everything

Though I’m a music kind of guy, I don’t feel particularly savvy at comparing scores while watching a movie, because it becomes part of the texture of the whole. Maybe this is where Interstellar will win.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard, Foxcatcher
#Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White, Guardians of the Galaxy

From the preview, they managed to make Steve Carrell look REALLY creepy in Foxcatcher. Budapest is great, but, from the ads, so is Guardians, which I’m guessing will win.

Best Original Screenplay

#Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
#Boyhood, Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher, E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
#The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy

It could well be Boyhood, or Birdman, which I did not love, but which won the Golden Globes. But I’m rooting for Budapest, which was wacky fun.

Best Adapted Screenplay

American Sniper, Jason Hall
*The Imitation Game, Graham Moore
Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson
#The Theory of Everything, Anthony McCarten
#Whiplash, Damien Chazelle

I suspect American Sniper will win, but I’m rooting for Whiplash.

Best Foreign Language Film

Ida, Poland
Leviathan, Russia
Tangerines, Estonia
Timbuktu, Mauritania
Wild Tales, Argentina

There were years I’d get to see one or two of these, but not this time out. Does anyone out there have any opinion on these?

Best Cinematography

#Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
#Robert Yeoman, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, Ida
Dick Pope, Mr. Turner
Roger Deakins, Unbroken

I’m guessing Birdman, though Roger Deakins on unbroken is a name I actually recognize, so maybe that. Of course, I’m rooting for Budapest.

Best Supporting Actress

#Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern, Wild
*Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
#Emma Stone, Birdman
#Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

Without Patricia Arquette’s steady presence, Boyhood doesn’t work. She won the Golden Globe over three of these four women, and she deserves the Oscar. My only knock is that it’s hardly a “supporting” performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Robert Duvall, The Judge
#Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
#Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
#J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

I’ll tell you a selfish truth: I was enjoying Whiplash being this little movie that no one heard of, but that I liked a lot. Then Simmons had to spoil it all by winning the Golden Globe against all four of these guys. He deserves to win the Oscar.

Best Actress

Marion Cotillard, Two Days One Night
#Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Gone Girl played for a week at the nearby Madison Theatre, but I missed it. Jones was fine but didn’t feel like “best actress” material. I never heard of Two Days One Night. Still Alice, for which Julianne Moore won the Golden Globe, hasn’t even come to town yet. Hard to judge.

Best Actor

Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
*Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
#Michael Keaton, Birdman
#Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

I suspect it’ll be Keaton, who won a Golden Globe for Comedy or Musical over Redmayne, who won it for Drama.

Best Director

#Alexandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman
#Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
#Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
*Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game

I’m guessing this will be Boyhood’s director Linklater since he won the Golden Globes over the Birdman and Budapest. He’ll get a point for the vision thing.

Best Picture

American Sniper
#Birdman
#Boyhood
#The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
#The Theory of Everything
#Whiplash

If it were not very good, the fact that Boyhood took a dozen years to make wouldn’t have mattered. Had it been more conventionally made, with different actors as the boy, and makeup for the adults, it wouldn’t likely have had the same impact. But ever since I saw Boyhood, I was convinced it would win Best Picture. The way they vote, only in this category, is such that, if the voter thought Birdman or Selma or The Grand Budapest Hotel were the best films, but Boyhood was surely second or third on their ballots, it would win.
***
SamuraiFrog reviews Grand Budapest Hotel HERE. He reviews all the other Best Picture nominees, including his brilliant dissection of American Sniper, HERE.

At Central Casting, Hollywood’s Bit Players Need to Stand Out Before They Can Blend In.

The Human Seat Warmers

Mike Nichols

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed.

I don’t what surprised me more: that our college undergraduate intern knew who Mike Nichols was (he’s a film buff and LOVES The Graduate) or a guy I know in this thirties who knows a lot of stuff but didn’t recognize the name.

When I was growing up, it seemed that Mike Nichols and Elaine May were on the TV talk shows and variety shows all the time. This followed 306 performances on Broadway of An Evening with… for nine months in 1960 and 1961. “The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.” Here’s Nichols and May on the Jack Paar Show.

Nichols then got into directing plays on Broadway, winning several Tony Awards for Best Director of the original productions of Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, among others. He also won Tonys for producing Annie, and later, for directing Spamalot and a revival of Death of a Salesman.

He got into directing movies, and his first attempt was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Watch the dance scene. His second directing attempt was The Graduate, for which he won his only Oscar. I’ve seen that movie, plus Catch-22, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Charlie Wilson’s War, plus Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge, the latter three which he also produced. Here’s the hit song from Working Girl, Let the River Run by Carly Simon. Read Mike Nichols’ five rules for filmmaking.

Nichols’ two Emmys came from fairly serious fare: the TV movie Wit (2001) starring Emma Thompson, and the TV miniseries Angels in America from 2003. This means he is one of a dozen people to win the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003.

I found out about Mike Nichols’ death because my TV was possessed on Thursday morning. Usually, I watch two minutes of the CBS Morning News at 7 a.m., but the DVR was stuck on the ABC affiliate. The lead was about the death, a story that didn’t show up on my New York Times and LA Times news feed until a half-hour later. The news was released, after the story on the air, by the ABC News president. Diane Sawyer, former GMA and World News anchor, and Nichols’ wife of 26 years, apparently arranged an exclusive for her network, noted not as criticism but just an observation.

The GMA folks – heck, EVERYONE who knew him, such as Meryl Streep – said he was always “the smartest and most brilliant person in the room,” rather like his Nichols’ third cousin twice removed on his mother’s side, scientist Albert Einstein. But he also a wonderful raconteur, and I feel as though I would have enjoyed being in his presence.

Mike Nichols died of a heart attack a couple of weeks after his 83rd birthday.

Oscar predictions for the films of 2012

This should be Affleck’s. Or maybe Kathyrn Bigelow’s for Zero Dark Thirty. Neither were even nominated.

This is what I thought before the Oscar nominations came out: Lincoln would win Best Picture and Ben Affleck would win Best Director. Then Affleck inexplicably wasn’t even nominated for Best Director, though he was for Best Actor; he subsequently won Best Director in the Golden Globes, and more importantly, the Directors’ Guild. Now I’ve pretty much switched the two places. The picks here are who I THINK will win, not who I WANT; sometimes, such as in the Best Actress category, I haven’t seen enough of the performances to have a rooting interest.

* means I saw that movie

Best Actor:

Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln
*Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables
Joaquin Phoenix – The Master
Denzel Washington – Flight

If there is a mortal lock this year, it’s Day-Lewis, who BECOMES Lincoln, just as he has inhabited every other role he’s played.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva – Amour
Quvenzhané Wallis – Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Naomi Watts -The Impossible

Riva is old, not that well known and in a depressing movie, though she’s quite good. Wallis was SIX when she made HER movie. Watts just isn’t getting as much buzz as I would expect. So it’s between Chastain, reportedly good in a controversial film, and Lawrence, who was a blockbuster star this past year in The Hunger Games. I pick Lawrence.

Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin – Argo
Robert De Niro -Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master
*Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln
Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained

My personal favorite of the three I saw was Arkin. The smart money says Jones. I think the Academy will give Django something, and this may be the place. Yet it’s De Niro I’m going to pick because he’s DE NIRO.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams -The Master
Sally Field – Lincoln
Anne Hathaway – Les Miserables
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
*Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook

Anne Hathaway, who emoted greatly, is another mortal lock. Wish I’d seen the Hunt role.

Best Director

Steven Spielberg – Lincoln
Ang Lee – Life Of Pi
Michael Haneke – Amour
*David O. Russell -Silver Linings Playbook
Benh Zeitlin – Beasts Of The Southern Wild

This should be Affleck’s. Or maybe Kathyrn Bigelow’s for Zero Dark Thirty. Neither were even nominated, nor was Tarantino for Django; I’m really surprised Haneke and Zeitlen were. The only person other than Spielberg who has a chance is Lee, and that only if people saw it in 3D, rather than the 2D screeners Academy voters likely got.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Argo
Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Life Of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook

Lincoln or Argo? My preference is Argo, but my guess is Lincoln.

Best Original Screenplay

Amour
Django Unchained
Flight
Moonrise Kingdom (my review)
Zero Dark Thirty

Does this go to the movie about torture (ZDT) or Tarentino’s movie about slavery (Django)? I’m pulling for Moonrise Kingdom myself, but I’m guessing Zero.

Other picks:

Best Animated Feature Film: *Wreck-It Ralph (my review) over Brave
Best Cinematography: *Life Of Pi, another near-lock
Best Documentary: Searching For Sugar Man. I’ve seen none of them, but this one I know the story about an obscure US musician who hits it big in South Africa without even knowing it.
Best Film Editing: *Argo over Zero Dark Thirty
Best Foreign Film: *Amour. Mortal lock. A Best Picture nominee.
Best Makeup: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey over *Les Miserables
Best Original Song: Skyfall, because it was, Adele.
Best Short Film (Animated): *Paperman, because Disney was smart to make it widely available online and as the tease to Wreck-It Ralph. *Adam and Dog is lovingly rendered in watercolor, but it left me cold. Could win, I suppose.
Best Visual Effects: *Life Of Pi, deservedly so
The rest of the categories: I have no idea.

Best Picture (links to my reviews), with box office (from Box Office Mojo), and release date

Amour $4,081,541 12/19/2012
Argo $127,654,188 10/12/2012
Beasts of the Southern Wild $12,306,988 6/27/2012
Django Unchained $157,656,712 12/25/2012
Les Misérables $145,963,845 12/25/2012
Life of Pi $111,745,023 11/21/2012
Lincoln $176,962,546 11/9/2012
Silver Linings Playbook $100,870,102 11/16/2012
Zero Dark Thirty $89,047,400 12/19/2012

Argo was taut, interesting, and not too long. Its campaign has been excellent.. I don’t remember so many good box office films up for Best Pic in a while.
***
Predictions by The Huffington Post and Roger Ebert.

MOVIE REVIEWS: Oscar-nominated short animated films

From France, Dripped is about an art thief who really loves his work.

It’s rare that The Daughter has gone to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany; in fact, I’m not sure she’d EVER been there. While it is the preferred film venue for the Wife and me, it often has films not suitable for sensitive eight-year-olds. But the ads said that the films nominated for Academy Awards in the animated shorts category were “family-friendly.” This is useful to know because we saw last year’s entries, and A Morning Stroll most certainly NOT Daughter-friendly, to say the least.

On Washington’s Birthday – which was when the Wife and I went last year; a holiday tradition? – the three of us sojourned to the cinema. In previous years, they just showed the movies, but this year, there were interspersed conversations with William Joyce and Brandon Oldenberg, who created last year’s well-deserved winner, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore [watch it]. In fact, one of these guys looked a bit like Lessmore. They talked about the struggle to get their film made and the surreality of Oscar night.

Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare

The youngest character in the long-running show I used to watch for the first eight or nine seasons, but seldom since then. It was interesting enough for the Wife and me, though the Daughter missed out on the significance of the Ayn Rand School for Toddlers; she liked the ending, though. The piece was OK, not distinct enough to be Oscar-worthy, though; my wife’s third favorite film of the bunch.

Adam and Dog

This retelling of the Creation is beautifully rendered as lovely watercolors. The sound of walking on the grass was terrific. There’s a guy whose opinion I value who said it was the best picture of the bunch, and he may be right. Yet the latter part of the story left me cold.

Fresh Guacomole [watch it]

Two minutes of stop motion zaniness is fun. My wife’s second-favorite of the films; third for the Daughter and me.

Head Over Heels

This is my second-favorite, and the Daughter’s. It’s from the UK, and uses quality Claymation to show a middle-aged couple whose relationship is in trouble because of the husband’s difficulties with gravity. Will they find a way to save the relationship?

Paperman [watch it]

Yet the Daughter and I still liked this seven-minute Disney offering the best, though we had seen it before; it was my wife’s favorite, and it was new to her. It looks old-fashioned in that it is hand-drawn, and in black and white (except for red lipstick); it is quite romantic.

(Another set of opinions.)

To fill out the program, there were three shorts that were “highly commended”:

Abiogenesis

From New Zealand, it’s another Creation story. But this art is computer-generated, and the story is futuristic. I wasn’t engaged until the very end.

Dripped

From France, it’s about an art thief who really loves his work. It’s surreal and manages to work several art styles – impressionism, cubism, abstract – into the storyline. “Dedicated to the memory of Jackson Pollock,” one has to think Pollock would have approved. This piece should have been a contender for the prize instead of Maggie Simpson.

The Gruffalo’s Child

The only piece with dialogue, and by far the longest short at 27 minutes, it is a CGI piece. It’s a follow-up, I understand, to a 2009 BBC Christmas special The Gruffalo. It’s nicely rendered and shares a message about the power of legends. It made my daughter a little nervous, though no cartoon animals were really harmed. Here’s a review.

One other point: both Adam and Dog, and, to a much lesser extent, Dripped, had men with full-frontal male nudity, and their members were obliquely rendered; it was actually distracting.

Traditions of baseball, comic books, and film

I hadn’t read the Comic Buyer’s Guide regularly since 1994, but I would usually buy a copy on Free Comic Book Day each May, just to check out what was new

I lost a dollar this week. A blogger I know bet that no one would be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and regrettably, he was right. Even allowing the “punishment” of those who allegedly took performance-enhancing drugs, there were plenty of qualified candidates (starting pitcher Jack Morris, the totally undervalued reliever Lee Smith, for two). This was an unfortunate outcome, and not so incidentally, will be lousy for tourism in Cooperstown this year.

Now, ironically, baseball will be expanding its drug-testing program.
***
To my surprise, I was quite sad to read that Comics Buyer’s Guide is folding in March. The usual reasons were stated: “decline in advertising and free content online.”

CBG was “started by Alan Light as The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom [in 1971], publishing monthly at first, then twice a month, then weekly…” By the time the newsprint magazine was acquired by Krause Publications in 1983 and changed its name, it had become the bible of the industry. It was like Variety was for entertainment or Billboard for music. Especially under Krause, the level of professionalism increased tremendously.

I started collecting comics in 1972, and when the Crystal Cave comic book store opened c. 1975 in New Paltz, I would buy the publication, scouring the ads for the best prices in back issue comics. That’s also where I first saw the classic comic renderings by my friend-to-be, Fred Hembeck.

When I started working at FantaCo in 1980, and we started publishing comic-book-related material, including material by Hembeck, we would dutifully mail our press releases to Don and Maggie Thompson. Sometimes they would use it, but often they would not. This was discouraging to some in the store, but it made me more determined to keep sending more and more info to them. Eventually, we became so “legitimate” that they would almost always report on our publication schedule. Indeed, I think that’s generally a lesson in dealing with the media: keep trying.

There was a lovely editorial written by Michael T. Gilbert shortly after Raoul Vezina, the artist who worked at FantaCo, had died in late 1983. I have that somewhere in the attic.

I hadn’t read CBG regularly since 1994 when I sold my collection, but I would usually buy a copy on Free Comic Book Day each May, if a copy could be found, just to check out what was new. It won’t be around for the next FCBD, though.

Mark Evanier has his own recollections.
***
I start my quixotic attempt to see most of the films nominated for an Academy Award in the major categories. I’ve seen three of the nine nominees for best picture: Argo, Les Miserables, and Lincoln. Beasts of the Southern Wild came and went, and I don’t know if Life of Pi is still around.

Almost certainly, the next film we’ll see will be Silver Linings Playbook, which would take the count of best actor, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress nominations I will have seen from two to three each; best director from one to two; and best actress from zero to one.