For anyone out there reading us, I must first apologize for what has turned into a lengthy Carnivorous Couch hiatus. Robb and I have each been in our own dank holes of stress and responsibility lately, so it’s been almost two weeks since we have posted any new content to the site. I am working feverishly away on the review for my #11 film of the year, which should become available some time very soon. Next week, we’ll have a full feature dedicated to Top 10 lists from ourselves and from various friends of the show. But, before we get to all of that goodness, the long Oscar season finally comes to a close tonight. We’ll be throwing our third annual Oscar Spectacular with foods and cocktails for all the Best Picture nominees. We’ll also have shots in every f***ing color because Spring Breakers don’t need no stinkin’ Best Picture nomination to come to our party! Until then, I wanted to go through my own thoughts on this awards season by offering up predictions, spoilers, and thoughts on what should have been there. I am actually going to attempt to do this for almost every category (except Documentary Shorts, of which I have yet to see one, ever), even though there are a couple of films I missed (sorry, August: Osage County). So, if you are rapidly trying to fill out a prediction ballot for a party of your own, feel free to copy off of my test, though there’s a good chance we’ll both end up having to take the entire class over. I’m going to go from the smaller categories and work my way down to the big ones. Here we go!
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
NOMINEES:
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
This is probably the easiest category to call. While Visual Effects often spreads some wealth to films that are not Best Picture contenders, this year is a major exception. Gravity is both a visual masterpiece (and a masterpiece in every sense if you ask me) and a heavyweight contender for the two biggest prizes of the night. And that has everything to do with what a groundbreaking, sweeping, and subtle sensory experience it is. No other film is close!
SPOILER:
It’s odd to think that if Gravity were not here, the second lackluster edition in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy would win this award by a dragon’s wingspan. It’s strange because I have yet to speak to a single person who feels anything even approaching fondness, much less serious enthusiasm, for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I personally think a lot of the gaudy effects on display here (Ugh. Cuddly bumblebees? Is it so hard to make the animals just look like damn animals?) are like microwaved CGI leftovers compared to the subtle effects in Lord of the Rings. That said, they are flashy and the three other blockbuster entries nominated feel too slight.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
I haven’t seen enough other films with strong visual effects to really have much of an opinion on what missed the cut. But those I know who have seen Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim claim it is the second best visual effects experience of the year.
SOUND EDITING:
NOMINEES:
All Is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor
WINNER:
My very layman’s understanding of the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing is that the former has more to do with creating sound effects for the film, while the latter has more to do with taking the existing sounds that have been created for the film and deciding how to use them. Any way you slice it, Gravity, the year’s biggest sensory achievement should easily take this one home. I am firmly in favor of this decision. . .
SHOULD WIN:
. . . but would not mind a bit if All Is Lost managed to take it home. A lot of what makes Gravity so arresting comes down to its score and the spell-binding contrast between sound and silence. For this reason, its sonic virtues can be amply rewarded in Sound Mixing. For actual sound effects, I was just as impressed with the pounding ocean hellscape of All Is Lost, where you could hear the roar of the fickle surf and the creak of the battered ship. I may be just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but J.C. Chandor’s soulful action drama is the year’s other great survival film and it would be a wonderful surprise to see it recognized somewhere.
SPOILER:
I wish I could say that All Is Lost is the spoiler, but it’s hard to say that confidently when the film could barely get arrested this year. Back in May, I had Robert Redford pegged for a career Oscar win. In the end, he couldn’t even score the nomination, which sadly makes me think a lot of people are just skipping the movie entirely. It’s more likely that the very good, tensely kinetic Captain Phillips Is next in line, with all its gunfire and outboard motors and helicopter blades. Paul Greengrass makes loud, visceral films and this one also happens to be a very well-liked Best Picture nominee.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
This question is as easy to answer as it is to see why it never would have happened. Shane Carruth’s bizarre, singular, and strangely moving Upstream Color literally created dense, mesmerizing tapestries of sound and made them the focus of the film. This wasn’t just an incredible work of sound editing, but a film where sound effects practically were the story.
SOUND MIXING:
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
To the surprise of nobody, Gravity has this completely sewn up and absolutely deserves it. Gravity created masterful sound effects, but its real achievement is the wondrous, almost spiritual tension it creates between cacophony and silence. With all due respect to the amazing musical mixing on the masterful Inside Llewyn Davis, this one absolutely belongs to Cuaron’s brilliant team of sonic craftsmen.
SPOILER:
There really is no spoiler on the horizon here. If another film were to win, there is a case to be made for Inside Llewyn Davis and its virtuoso music sequences. Since 2000, we have often seen this award pass by more showy technical achievements in favor of films that center on musical performances. Chicago, Ray, Dreamgirls, and last year’s Les Miserables all fit that bill. Inside Llewyn Davis already belongs on a list of the greatest films ever made about the music-making process, so it seems the most likely to upset.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Once again, Upstream Color was a phenomenal sound achievement and one that I imagine sound craftsmen will study in years to come. But, I get it, it’s a risque choice. In terms of safe options, they should have at least jettisoned The Hobbit to give All Is Lost another nomination for its remarkable soundscape. That relentless, hungry ocean was a thousand times scarier than any number of eloquent dragons.
MAKE-UP AND HAIRSTYLING:
Nominees:
Dallas Buyers Club
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
The likeable but ultra-modest Dallas Buyers Club made its presence felt in a number of categories this year. Some of them, like Editing and Original Screenplay, were very questionable. But there’s no denying that the film invests a lot into the physical transformations of AIDS patients, notably its two main characters. The make-up team does a good job of reducing Matthew McConaughey to a gaunt skeleton, and the combination of subtle make-up with Jared Leto’s fine performance helped to create a rich transgendered character. Voters in the technical categories can sometimes be purists, willing to focus specifically on the level of craft without giving too much weight to the quality of the film itself, but this is a case where the most acclaimed film will triumph. Dallas Buyers Club isn’t just the only Best Picture nominee in this line-up. It’s the only one that has even an ounce of credibility as film.
SPOILER:
That said, don’t be too surprised if the team that helped form an entire movie around Johnny Knoxville’s old man impersonation steals this one. In spite of the film’s lowbrow reputation, national newspapers have recently run pieces in praise of the makeup work on Bad Grandpa. It may still be a longshot, but Bad Grandpa is much more than just a hypothetical spoiler in this category. It could definitely happen. This is a good prediction if you want to get a little risky with your ballot without totally going out on a limb.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
As a man whose hair has literally two styles to it, short and less short, I really do not have anything approaching an informed opinion on hairstyling. That applies doubly for makeup. But I am a bit shocked that beloved Best Picture dark horse, American Hustle, couldn’t find traction here. It’s a film that essentially opens with a combover tutorial, gives a different eye-catching hair-do to each of its five major characters, and even explicitly comments on how styling one’s hair taps into the themes of the film. Was the bird on top of Johnny Depp’s head really that impressive to the Academy?
COSTUME DESIGN:
Nominees:
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
The Great Gatsby
The Grandmaster
The Invisible Woman
WINNER:
I personally all but hated the film, but it seems likely that The Great Gatsby will take this one home. Its entire reason for being is to showcase a succession of parties that creatively tweak the fashions of flappers and wealthy playboys. It also occasionally skips across the tracks to look at the styles of the lower classes, so it runs a wide gamut. This category is not afraid of saying more is more, and Gatsby is excess incarnate.
SPOILER/SHOULD WIN:
I would prefer the award to go to a film that doesn’t just have impressive duds, but uses costuming in a creative way. Just as with hairstyling, American Hustle uses clothes to reveal subtle things about the characters who wear them. The movie’s harshest critics dismiss it as a movie about playing dress-up, so surely even they can agree with it winning for its wardrobe.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
As noted above, more is more in this category, but does it have to be every single time? I’m not saying that this line-up of nominees isn’t deserving, because I really have no clue. As far as I know, they got it 100% right. But I would have liked to have seen them step outside of the box and recognize the subtle costume work in Her. I really enjoyed the idiosyncratic universe of high-waisted pants they created. And honoring Her would have signaled that nominations can occasionally go to films with just a few truly inspired clothing choices rather than the film with the highest thread count.
PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Nominees:
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
Her
WINNER:
I thought parts of the production on The Great Gatsby were a hot cluttered mess, but you can’t say they didn’t go all out on the gaudy thing. The Great Gatsby is literally a demo reel for production design and costumes, so I won’t complain too hard if it wins either one. While I would never cheer for the film itself, I guess you can’t begrudge it for the handful of things it does well.
SHOULD WIN:
Her, and not just because I think it’s the best film of the year, and not just because it’s another gorgeous, evocative piece of work from the brilliant Spike Jonze. Her deserves to win this category because it is simply one of the most beautiful, strange, and strangely believable science fiction universes ever imagined. It’s our own world just far removed enough from the present to make us think about how plausible it is as a future. This is a vibrant IKEA society with spacious interiors that are nonetheless filled to bursting with colorful technology. The film’s job is to create a future society that feels both foreign and familiar, and all of that would be unthinkable without the beautiful, thoughtful, meticulous care of its production design.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
I’m tempted to give some love to Wolf of Wall Street here, which hurtles us through board rooms, teeming office floors, mansions, country clubs, yachts, private planes, and posh European banks. That said, my heart belongs to Inside Llewyn Davis on this one, which evokes its 1960s folk period with such seamless, understated confidence that I only occasionally stopped to remember that it is in fact a period piece. Each coffee shop, recording studio, and club feels real, unique and haunting in its own subtle way. The dank familiarity of the local bar where Llewyn plays. The imposing, almost cathedral-like feeling at The Gate of Horn, where Llewyn hopes to score a big contract. Inside Llewyn Davis uses pitch-perfect production to enhance the mythical, melancholic mood of the story itself. For this it absolutely should have been recognized.
SHORT FILM- ANIMATED:
Nominees:
Feral
Get A Horse!
Mr. Hublot
Possessions
Room On the Broom
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
It’s hard to really know what will win in this category. Disney’s slick, charming Paperman won here last year, but the Academy has also shown that it is perfectly comfortable giving the award to lesser known animators with a diverse and eclectic array of animation styles. For that reason, I am just going to go with my personal preference on this one and hope that the Academy feels the same way. Possessions is a visually engaging, funny, and interesting ghost story from Japan. It centers around an old myth that when possessions reach a certain age, they acquire sentience and can play tricks on the people who use them. When a weary traveler is caught in a rain storm, he seeks refuge in an old shack and finds it is full of old, discarded junk that can talk and move. Think of it as Toy Story with a prankster spirit and a Japanese passport. For a mixture of solid visuals and sound storytelling, Possessions is definitely my favorite of the bunch but I also found Feral masterful on a purely visual level. It hauntingly depicts a wild boy who is rescued from the woods and attempts to adapt to society. If I had to guess, I think Possessions is both more satisfying as a linear story and hits a wider range of emotional notes, so that’s where my vote would go.
SPOILER:
It’s only 6 minutes long and I found it to be one of the weakest nominees, but Disney’s 2-D/3-D hybrid Mickey Mouse short, Get A Horse!, has received mountains of hype for merging old and new animation technologies. The short also played in front of this year’s incredibly popular Frozen, which means it has probably had more eyes on it than any other short, in either category.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Well, I don’t know enough about the pool of unnominated shorts to say where the Academy erred through omission, but I have a strong opinion on where they erred through inclusion. I am really not fond of Room On the Broom, a plodding, listlessly voiced, mostly uninteresting 27-minute CGI fairytale from the British team that made short nominee The Gruffalo. I disliked The Gruffalo, a slight, repetitive children’s story blown up to 30 minutes. I found it to be a flat, sprawling, self-satisfied entry in the Shrek tradition of insufferably winking, post-modern fairytales. Room On the Broom has more genuine humor and quirky personality than The Gruffalo did, but it is also much less focused as a story. This tale of a witch and her cat who gradually pick up new animal friends has the structure of a recurring motif fairytale but lacks a coherent hook. Its central message seems to be that meeting new friends is good. Also, this all has something to do with them fleeing an angry dragon. The creators seem to think that some passable animation and a voice cast filled with very talented British thespians (Gillian Anderson, Sally Hawkins, Simon Pegg, Timothy Spall) will add substance to the thin gruel of an episodic story. This does not turn out to be the case.
SHORT FILM- LIVE ACTION:
Nominees:
That Wasn’t Me (Spain)
Just Before Losing Everything (France)
Helium (Denmark)
Do I Have To Take Care of Everything (Finland)
The Voorman Problem (Great Britain)
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
Once again, I can really only speculate. I am sorry to say this but I found the entire crop of live-action shorts to be underwhelming, with the exception of one tense, humane, terrifically edited film: Just Before Losing Everything. This story follows a domestically abused mother and her two children on the day she decides to flee her monstrous husband. They hide in the offices of the large grocery store where she works, as they wait for a family member to pick them up and escort them to safety. The short mines heart-stopping tension from the fact that the mother must close out banal professional matters, even as she constantly looks over her shoulder for the brute who would hurt them if he knew they were escaping. These shorts are all available on iTunes and this is the one honest-to-God masterpiece in the bunch. If you can handle drama of the most anxious kind, I highly recommend watching it. In recent years, the live-action shorts have kick-started the careers of major talents like Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) and Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank). I think this pensive, slow-burning, observant piece of work could signal the rise of a significant new voice in Xavier Legrand.
SPOILER/WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
A couple of the other films really feel like clichéd issue dramas. That Wasn’t Me, my least favorite, is a 26-minute long parade of horrors about some Spanish doctors who are kidnapped by African child soldiers. As tends to be the case with some of the worst entries in this category, its purpose is to simply show an unjust international situation and trust that topicality alone will see it through. It’s basically what Angeline Jolie and Bono see in their wet dreams, and it comes off as exploitative, cheap, and disjointed. The other issue film, Helium, is probably the second best film in the lineup, but I think that speaks more to the category’s weakness than to the film’s strengths. It is the tale of a hospital janitor who helps a terminally ill eight-year-old boy face death by telling him of a magical afterlife called Helium, filled with balloons and floating airships. As a premise, it does not go much further than you average Scrubs episode, but it redeems itself through strong visuals, solid acting, and an unwavering belief in itself. The other two shorts feel like total throwaways. The Voorman Problem is a neat little British Twilight Zone concept that seems to quickly lose interest in itself before trailing off with a shrug. And the Finnish Do I Have To Take Care of Everything? is a six-minute sitcom excerpt about a family trying to get to a wedding on time. It manages to elevate itself somewhat through the charisma and energy of the actors, but there is only so much that can be done with material this cloyingly wacky. In short, there is literally one great live-action short and a parade of precociousness and self-importance around it. I really hope they can at least nail a decision this easy.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
Nominees:
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar (Palestine)
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
Okay, so I lied. I actually didn’t end up catching the majority of the foreign films. Which is to say I only saw Denmark’s The Hunt, an intimate, well-acted film about a small town and a preschool teacher accused of indecent acts against one of his students. It’s very worth watching, but I think it’s probably an underdog here. I hear that The Great Beauty is the real big deal in this category. It’s apparently a swooning, visually sumptuous love letter to modern Rome that evokes Fellini and La Dolce Vita. Those who don’t vote for it for its interesting ideas and breathtaking images might vote for it as a tip of the cap to one of the great directors of the 20th century.
SPOILER:
Based on what I’ve heard, the spoiler could be Belgium’s The Broken Circle Breakdown, about a couple that falls in love through their passion for bluegrass music and later raises a child with terminal illness. It sounds heartfelt, rapturous, and finally devastating and the voters in this category often go with the most emotional of the choices. If The Great Beauty and The Hunt turn out to be too intellectually chilly for them, they could end up listening to their big, throbbing heart-on.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Well, it wasn’t the Academy’s fault. France dropped the ball on this one. The way the nomination system works is that each country chooses one Oscar contender for itself each year. Even though Blue Is the Warmest Color set records at Cannes, a French film festival, France chose to ignore the wise, tender, and heartbreaking romantic lesbian epic. The fact that this masterful, swooning film received no Oscar nods in the same year that it earned top praise from none other than Steven Spielberg leaves me scratching my head. This is was one of the year’s very best films, full-stop. Here’s hoping its reputation grows and that the graphic sex scenes don’t scare people off seeing one of the most emotionally raw depictions of young love ever captured.
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Nominees:
The Grandmaster
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
Prisoners
Nebraska
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
In this case, the conventional choice is also the most daring choice. By God, it’s the right choice. Gravity is the safe pick to win because that’s what happens when you literally pioneer new cinematic techniques to take images that exist only in your dreams and make them visible to the entire world. That breathless 13-minute opening shot. Sandra Bullock floating in the fetal position. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is one of the true geniuses of modern cinema, and quite a young genius at that. He should have already won for his earth-shattering work with Alfonso Cuaron in Children of Men, where he not only mastered the tracking shot but infused it with incredible emotional depth. If not for that, then he certainly deserved it for instilling The Tree of Life with images ecstatic enough to reach God’s ears. Now Lubezki and Cuaron have paired together again to make a work of cinema that is terrifying, exciting, enriching, and glorious. Gravity is one of the most visionary achievements of all time and Lubezki has officially cemented his status as a legendary visual poet with this beautiful, soulful work.
SPOILER:
Inside Llewyn Davis has some of the most beautiful imagery of the year, courtesy of Bruno Delbonnel, but I’m afraid the Coen brothers’ masterpiece was received too softly by the Academy to be a major threat in this category. Nebraska has some interesting visuals, but it is really lucky just to have its nomination. No, if anyone is a spoiler, it’s Roger Deakins. The cinematography legend has done gorgeous work on a long list of great Coen brothers films, brought grit and majesty to The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, and even made a Bond film look radiant. He has also never won before. If the Academy finally gives Deakins his due for creating Prisoners’ eerie, foreboding, and wintry sense of place, I believe it will be regarded as a good winner.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
I’m tempted to say Her, because I really do think that the hypnotically lush visuals help make that surreal, enchanting universe soar. But, really, the most important part of cinematography isn’t just how well you capture an image but also what images you choose to show. No film did a better job of making its images both aesthetically and intellectually compelling than 12 Years A Slave. The sight of Solomon Northup hanging from a tree branch for an entire afternoon, as his fellow slaves dutifully ignore his plight, may be the most upsetting and iconic shot of the entire year. I will also never forget looking out upon an amorally passive Washington D.C. skyline as Solomon helplessly cries out for rescue. 12 Years A Slave is a sumptuously visualized period piece, but each image has arsenic bubbling just below the surface. Its omission in this category is one of the most glaring oversights of the year.
MUSIC- ORIGINAL SONG:
Nominees:
“Happy” by Pharell (Despicable Me 2)
“Let It Go” by Idina Menzel (Frozen)
“The Moon Song” by Karen O. (Her)
“Ordinary Love” by U2 (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom)
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
“Let It Go” is truthfully not even my favorite song from Frozen, but I firmly support Disney’s engaging, spirited, slyly feminist return to musical form getting its due. I won’t even lie. I have scarcely gone a day in the last two months without happily humming some tune from this sweet, progressive fairytale.
SPOILER:
Some are saying to watch out for U2’s “Ordinary Love”, as Mandela died very recently and U2 commands a certain kind of global ambassador reputation. I can buy it, but I think the big spoiler is the guy who has been tirelessly promoting his song since last summer. That would be Neptunes producer, Pharell. “Happy” is the most plausible threat to Frozen, and I have to say my hat is off to the giddy little number. Think about when Despicable Me 2 came out. That was all the way back in June. Pharell’s track has been around for more than half a year, and the shrewd producer-musician has managed to keep his bouncy little ode to positivity in the public consciousness that entire time. Awards sometimes go to the people who seem the most hungry for them, and Pharell wants this so much he can taste it! “Happy” has been released on vinyl, been the subject of celebrity karaoke videos, and was sung just two weeks ago by a major contestant on American Idol. When a song can maintain that kind of visibility more than 6 months after debuting alongside a forgettable kiddie flick, you know there’s something special about it.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
The Academy messed up by allowing its arbitrary set of rules to disqualify “Please Mr. Kennedy” from Inside Llewyn Davis. The controversy had something to do with the song sharing a title with an existing song. The music branch is infamous for its baffling set of rules. It’s very unfortunate that they chose to exclude a whip-smart, genuinely original delight from the year’s best soundtrack.
MUSIC- ORIGINAL SCORE:
Nominees:
John Williams (“The Book Thief”)
Steven Price (“Gravity”)
Win Butler and Owen Pallett (“Her”)
Alexander Desplat (“Philomena”)
Thomas Newman (“Saving Mr. Banks”)
WINNER:
Look for Gravity to add Best Score to its massive haul of wins on Sunday. And, honestly, it will be a very deserving winner. I especially like how this tense piece of work does not even begin to add its more emotional beats until the midway point. Gravity is a film where the actors, the director, the effects guys, and even the composer are all working perfectly in tandem. It is a film about dread and grief finally giving way to healthier emotions, and this beautiful score understands that arc and works to amplify it.
SHOULD WIN:
Anyone who knows me well may accuse me of bias on this one. You see, Win Butler and Owen Pallett are both members of Canadian alternative band The Arcade Fire, one of my very favorite groups. So, yeah, I was certainly rooting for this nomination to happen. But seriously, the Her score really and truly is the best musical composition of the year! I’ve listened to it several times now and its subtlety and emotional variety make most of these other scores look flat and inert. Butler and Pallett make the whole thing feel of a piece with the film, but also manage to never repeat themselves. Almost every track is unique and has its own special rhythm. There is enough gorgeous, innovative music on display here to score an entire multiplex of Philomena’s and Saving Mr. Banks’s, but I’d be okay with them recognizing all of it with one richly deserved Oscar.
SPOILER:
Her actually did very well in some of the technical categories, so I do not think it’s beyond the pale for it to upset in this category. That said, two of the nominated composers, Alexandre Desplat and Thomas Newman, have been working for decades on some of the finest modern scores. And neither of them has ever won before. Both of their scores this year are awfully milquetoast, but the cynic in me says that one of them, probably Desplat, is most likely to pull off a surprise.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Alex Ebert composed a spare, tense, and elegiac score for All Is Lost and it seemed like he was on his way to a nomination after triumphing at the Golden Globes. But the music branch can often fall victim to groupthink, which explains the presence of Newman and Desplat, even though neither came close to their best work this year. In the end, even though the rapidly fading Saving Mr. Banks managed only a single nomination, that nomination seems to have happened at the expense of the immensely undervalued All Is Lost.
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:
Nominees:
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest and Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises
WILL WIN:
Frozen will be Disney’s first legitimate win in Animated Feature (yeah, yeah, I know they own Pixar). It was going to happen eventually, and I’m happy it came for such a rich, enjoyable film. I personally prefer 2010’s Tangled, but I think Frozen points an exciting new way forward for Disney. It’s a joyous, deeply humane look at sisterhood that retains the charm of old Disney musicals while also showing that the company can create heroines with real intelligence and agency. On top of all that, it’s a bonafide phenomenon, with theatres around the country hosting sing-a-longs events for both children and adults. This is a nice, fitting way for Disney to finally get some recognition in the category.
SPOILER/SHOULD WIN:
As good as Frozen is, I just don’t see how you can say no to Hayao Miyazaki and The Wind Rises. The Japanese animation legend is so prolific and brilliant that countless Disney animators have cited him as a personal inspiration. This is the thinking man’s Walt Disney making one of his most thoughtful films. Here he has taken a bold step forward to tell the story of the brilliant Japanese aviation engineer who invented one of the deadliest planes to fly in World War II. I’m happy for Frozen, both for the joyous blast of fun it is and the thoughtful gender discussion it encourages, but The Wind Rises is the year’s true animated achievement.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Honestly, there were no real screw-ups this year in terms of what failed to make the cut. Sure, Despicable Me 2 getting to be an Oscar nominee sounds dubious, especially when the superior first one couldn’t even pull that off. But what’s the alternative? Certainly not junk like Turbo and Planes. And it’s hard to really advocate passionately for films as flat and uninspired as Monsters University and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2. Nope, sometimes you just have to call it like it is. This has not been a great year for animation.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:
Nominees:
20 Feet From Stardom
The Act of Killing
Cutie and the Boxer
Dirty Wars
The Square
WINNER:
20 Feet From Stardom is a hard film to dislike, and that’s fine because I actually thought it was perfectly good. It’s about the lives of backup singers, how the industry has historically kept them out of the spotlight, and what separates a star from a more unassuming talent. It’s a warm film, and it gets to have its cake and eat it too because it tells a somewhat sad story but also gives the audience a happy ending by way of its very existence. These stars get to have their moment in the spotlight now because you are watching them in their very own feature. As a music lover and all-around shy person, I have tremendous respect for what this movie is doing, but I haven’t thought about the film at all since seeing it. It’s a competent crowd-pleaser and it’s looking like that will be enough to make it the second consecutive documentary about underappreciated musicians to win the category.
SHOULD WIN/SPOILER:
The problem with a nice film like 20 Feet From Stardom being declared the best of the year is that it may mislead people into thinking that this was just a very good year for documentaries, when it was in fact a great one. And the biggest example of greatness in documentary film-making this year is The Act of Killing, a bizarre, sinister, and soul-shattering look at the Indonesian military’s rise to power in the early 1960’s. That power shift resulted in the horrific murder of more than one million people who were believed to be Communists. Indonesia’s dictators hired gangsters and thugs to carry out the killings, and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer gives those same gangsters the budget to make a movie memorializing their disgusting actions. What makes the film brilliant isn’t just how it illuminates a massive human rights violation, but how it reveals an Indonesian society that still looks upon those atrocities with pride. The Act of Killing is a film with brutal insights about genocide, politics, and historical revisionism. It shows how evil men can cast themselves as heroes in their own horror stories, and its only optimistic belief seems to be that art may occasionally have the power to awaken a bad man’s slumbering conscience. The Act of Killing picked up the majority of critics prizes throughout the year, but most now believe it is too bleak and uncompromising to join the vaunted Oscar-winning company of March of the Penguins. Sorry, sarcasm vomit.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell is another one of the year’s very best movies and a great documentary about, well, documenting. Polley’s film is deceptively small-scale, as she interviews members of her own family to find out more about the mother who died when she was very young. It is a daughter’s warm and generous search to uncover the many inner lives of the woman who gave birth to her. It is a touching ode to family in its many forms and a profound examination of how even the most seemingly basic story can be interpreted a multitude of ways depending on the narrator. And it is an absolute shame that the Academy turned a blind eye to this intimate, dreamy kaleidoscope of a film.
WRITING- ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Nominees:
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Nebraska
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
This will be one of the most heated races of the night, but I am confident that Spike Jonze can follow up his Writers Guild Awards win with a richly deserved Oscar for Her. I believe it to be the best script of the year, and I think the film’s recognition in other categories demonstrates that the Academy admires it and is willing to recognize it for its pathos, whimsy, and originality.
SPOILER:
But there are just as many who would argue that American Hustle is the one to beat here, especially because it is the best chance for the former Best Picture frontrunner to take home some gold. I am a big fan of the film and I quite admired the humor and energy of the writing. American Hustle definitely lost some momentum when it couldn’t beat Her at the WGA Awards. Still, it doesn’t hurt that this is the third consecutive David O. Russell film to earn nominations in major categories. It can still spoil if voters decide that Russell is overdue.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
In nominating Dallas Buyers Club’s dull, perfunctory Lifetime movie script over any of the following: Inside Llewyn Davis, Frances Ha, Enough Said, The World’s End, Mud, Short Term 12, All Is Lost, Gravity, Fruitvale Station, and a number of others.
WRITING- ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Nominees:
12 Years A Slave
Before Midnight
Captain Phillips
Philomena
Wolf of Wall Street
WINNER:
This should be among the easiest categories to predict. 12 Years A Slave is in a heated Best Picture battle with Gravity and American Hustle and neither of those other two films is competing in this category. If Slave really does have an even chance of winning the big prize, it stands to reason that it should at least be able to fend off this group of competitors.
SHOULD WIN:
12 Years A Slave is a fantastic movie with a great script, but I think that it is more a triumph of directing and acting. The most stunning adapted screenplay of the year is Before Midnight, the third film in Richard Linklater’s masterful “Before” series. It manages to be just as romantic, funny, and exhilaratingly intelligent as the first two films, but also balances that with bitter insights about the difficulties of nurturing a loving relationship over a long period of time. Its climactic hotel fight scene is a master class in nail-biting tension, worthy of standing with the most heart-stopping moments from Gravity and 12 Years A Slave.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Blue Is the Warmest Color should have been included here for the way it takes a perfectly good graphic novel and spins it into the one of the most dizzy, sexy, thoughtful, and heart-breaking relationship movies of all time. Yes, there was a lot of wordless, graphic sex in the film, but what makes Blue brilliant has much more to do with a candid script that patiently explores the intricacies of falling in love, finding yourself, and growing up.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Nominees:
Jennifer Lawrence (“American Hustle”)
Julia Roberts (“August: Osage County”)
June Squibb (“Nebraska”)
Lupita N’yongo (“12 Years A Slave”)
Sally Hawkins (“Blue Jasmine”)
WINNER:
Lupita N’yongo’s scorching work as the favored slave of Michael Fassbender’s Edwin Epps will win and it’s a stunning debut turn for the beautiful, talented Yale graduate. Some have argued that the impact of the role has stems mostly from the awful things that happen to her, and they’re not wrong. But N’yongo knows just when to underplay and when to sell the emotions of the scene. She shines in a terribly violent and emotionally naked scene with Fassbender, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sarah Paulson. That scene may well be the best ensemble work of the entire year, and she deserves an immense amount of credit for the conviction she brings to it.
SHOULD WIN:
For my money, the best nominated performance is Sally Hawkins’ work as Cate Blanchett’s working class sister in Blue Jasmine. Blanchett is the film’s focus, with her big, brilliant, neurotic performance, and it can be extremely difficult to play the supporting part against a supernova piece of acting like that. Hawkins does a fantastic job playing a humble, sweet-natured woman who wants to minimize tension with her snobbishly self-absorbed sister but must work overtime to keep long-buried resentments from springing back to the surface. It’s the least big of all these performances yet still manages to pack a strong emotional punch.
SPOILER:
N’yongo’s closest competitor is last year’s Best Actress winner, Jennifer Lawrence, earning praise for her second collaboration with David O. Russell. I deeply enjoyed all of the acting in American Hustle, but I actually found Lawrence to be the least effective of all the nominated performances. Her role as a trashy New Jersey housewife is loud, sneering fun and I certainly laughed a lot at her line readings, but her scene-stealing is so flashy that I was often relieved to return to the more subtle stylings of Christian Bale and Amy Adams.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Scarlett Johannson gave the best performance of her career this year and, in so doing, opened a brand new debate about what constitutes an Oscar performance. Ellen DeGeneres’ Dory made people ask if an animated character could be nominated. Andy Serkis’ performances as Gollum and Cesar (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) prompted discussion over whether a CGI performance deserved consideration. Johannson’s vulnerable, heartfelt work as a Siri-like A.I. system should have marked the first nomination for a performance consisting solely of voice work, but the Academy didn’t have the cojones to go through with it. That’s a shame because this wasn’t even a particularly strong year for the category. Johansson and Blue Is the Warmest Color’s Lea Seydoux tower over this slate of performances. Voters could have made history and recognized the best supporting performance of the year, but apparently the allure of June Squibb flashing her genitalia at tombstones was too much to pass up.
SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Nominees:
Barkhad Abdi (“Captain Phillips”)
Bradley Cooper (“American Hustle”)
Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”)
Jonah Hill (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)
Michael Fassbender (“12 Years A Slave”)
WINNER:
While he wouldn’t be my first, second, or third choice, Jared Leto has had this award sewn up for months now. His sweet, energetic turn, as a transgendered AIDS patient who helps Ron Woodroof distribute better HIV medication to the masses, occasionally elevates the safe film around him into something alive, funny, and human.
SHOULD WIN:
This award should go to Fassbender’s hypnotic portrait of evil in 12 Years A Slave, and I’m actually quite surprised it’s not going to happen. After all, this category has sung the praises of some amazing villains in recent years: Anton Chigurh, Hans Landa, The Joker. Fassbender emerged back in 2008 with Steve McQueen’s Hunger and has been on a roll ever since with great work in Shame, Inglourious Basterds, and Fish Tank. His Edwin Epps is a viciously proud monster. He is not particularly intelligent and his desire to be seen as such makes him all the more terrifying.
SPOILER:
This category is what you would call a lock. There really is no chance of Leto going home empty-handed. But if anyone has picked up momentum since the nominations, it is Barkhad Abdi for his fantastic work as the head pirate in Captain Phillips. Abdi recently took home the BAFTA award, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscar, and he has an enormous amount of goodwill from major Hollywood talents like his co-star Tom Hanks. Abdi was working as a limousine driver in Minnesota when Paul Greengrass found him, so he also has a great Cinderella story to help him get votes. He won’t win, but it would be a terrific surprise if he did because he really deserves it!
ACTRESS:
Nominees:
Amy Adams (“American Hustle”)
Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine”)
Judi Dench (“Philomena”)
Meryl Streep (“August: Osage County”)
Sandra Bullock (“Gravity”)
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
With all due respect to the other ladies in this category, Blanchett’s performance as Jasmine French is one for the ages. In the pantheon of performances in Woody Allen films, it belongs up at the top, right next to the likes of Annie Hall. This is the biggest acting certainty of the night.
SPOILER:
If anyone were to spoil, it would be Amy Adams for American Hustle. The movie won the SAG award, which is voted on by actors, so it’s clear that other performers in Hollywood love it. It is also one of the three films competing for Best Picture, and Adams is quite overdue at this point. I personally think Hustle has been fading since the nominations were announced, but if it turns out I’m wrong then Adams could benefit from the film’s popularity. Really though, I love Amy Adams, so I wouldn’t want her to bear the heavy burden of stealing this from Blanchett.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Honestly, it sounds strange to say, but they messed up by nominating really good work from dependably great actresses, when they should have been nominating fantastic work from lesser known ones. My favorite performance of the year in either category is Adele Exarchopoulos for Blue Is the Warmest Color, a beautiful, heart-rending three-hour epic that focuses almost entirely on her face. There should have also been room for Greta Gerwig’s charming, awkward grace in Frances Ha, Julie Delpy’s layers of love, humor, and bitterness in Before Midnight, and Brie Larson’s gorgeously understated turn as a group home worker in Short Term 12. Oh, and let’s not forget Shailene Woodley in The Spectacular Now. What I’m saying is it’s great that some of our most revered actresses put in stand-out work, but did it have to be in the same year that some of our most promising young talents absolutely caught fire?
ACTOR:
Nominees:
Bruce Dern (“Nebraska”)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years A Slave”)
Christian Bale (“American Hustle”)
Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)
Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”)
WINNER:
It looks like Matthew McConaughey will take home the Oscar as validation for what has been a pretty fantastic two years for him. He did strong work last year in Magic Mike, Killer Joe, and Bernie, and he followed it up this year with even better work in Mud, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club. I’m a bit lukewarm on Dallas Buyers myself, but there’s no denying that McConaughey’s performance is very strong.
SHOULD WIN:
Chiwetel Ejiofor seemed like the safe money to win this back in October and I’m genuinely surprised that he’s not the frontrunner because the performance is absolute dynamite. Ejiofor has to play both a passive vessel for the audience and the proud, suffering human being roiling beneath the façade he constructs to survive. Heck, one of the movie’s best scenes is just a long take of Ejiofor’s soulful eyes staring off into space. When an actor does work of this caliber in a Best Picture frontrunner, you’d think the decision to award him would be easy. Come on voters, even if you can’t spell the name, write it down anyway!
SPOILER:
The problem is that McConaughey has more than a strong performance; he has a narrative going for him. So it stands to reason that the person with the best chance of upsetting him is someone with a narrative of his own. Leonardo DiCaprio gave what is hands down the best performance of his career in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. He’s one of Hollywood’s brightest young talents, one who has grown from the humble beginnings of Titanic to deliver numerous great performances. He is also the muse of Martin Scorsese, arguably America’s greatest living director, and he’s nominated for his work in a Best Picture nominated Scorsese film. The ingredients are there for an upset, but taking down McConaughey is an uphill climb.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Oscar Isaac’s funny, infuriating, melancholy musician in Inside Llewyn Davis was one of the most beautifully modulated performances of the year and also gave use no less than five of the year’s best musical moments. Isaac did wonders with a small role in Drive before this, and I think we’re not far from seeing him really become well-known. When he does, people will wonder how the Academy missed this opportunity to recognize a major young talent who was just hitting his stride.
DIRECTOR:
Nominees:
Alexander Payne (“Nebraska”)
Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”)
David O. Russell (“American Hustle”)
Martin Scorsese (“The Wolf of Wall Street”)
Steve McQueen (“12 Years A Slave”)
WINNER/SHOULD WIN:
There’s no question about who will and should win this category. Alfonso Cuaron’s dazzling technical vision forever changed cinema this year, but unlike with James Cameron’s Avatar, the technology was only the beginning of the story. Cuaron reinvented what cinema can do and then harnessed it to a beautiful short story about wanting to live. That by itself is revolutionary. Steve McQueen would also be an excellent choice as well for work that is quieter but no less revolutionary in its own way.
SPOILER:
There really is no spoiler here, but Steve McQueen is probably the man closest to Cuaron in the race.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
Spike Jonze’s Her contains great performances, great editing, and a a fantastically composed near-future universe. Jonze even wrote the script. For combining so elements into the year’s best film, Jonze should have at least been recognized with a nomination.
PICTURE:
Nominees:
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street
12 Years A Slave
WILL WIN/SHOULD WIN:
We’re looking at one of the most exciting, heated races of all time. Gravity, 12 Years A Slave, and American Hustle are all jockeying for the win, but it looks like it will come down to Gravity and 12 Years. The conventional wisdom is that Cuaron will take Director and 12 Years will win Picture, but I’m skeptical. Splitting picture and director is a rare and very unconventional thing to do. At the end of the night, Gravity will have a ton of wins, including Director. And then it will just demurely concede the Picture win? If the film is that close to winning Picture, I don’t think it’ll take much for it to actually do it. It’s a toss-up at this point, but I think Gravity just might pull it off.
SPOILER:
Like I said, 12 Years A Slave has just as good a chance of winning, and American Hustle is probably not too far behind either.
WHERE THEY MESSED UP:
I would kick out Dallas Buyers Club, Philomena, Nebraska, and even Captain Phillips to make room for Inside Llewyn Davis, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Frances Ha, and Before Midnight. Really, most of those films didn’t have a ghost of a chance of being nominated, but a blogger’s got to dream.
And that’s it! I hope you all have a great Oscar night and that you get to see at least a couple of your favorites take home the gold. Whatever happens, it’s been an amazing film year. Here’s hoping that 2014 goes three for three!