Tag Archives: Jimmy Kimmel

Mar 11 2024
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Awards Coverage, The Scope

J. Robert Oscarheimer

It’s not usual that I’m happy with how the Academy Awards play out. This year, I’m happy with the Academy Awards for a number of reasons. One: Jimmy Kimmel was great as the Oscars host, as he always is. With his first year of hosting being the same year as the infamous Moonlight-La La Land Best Picture mixup in 2017, I’m sure every year after that seemed like a cakewalk for the late-night talk show host. He was just as charismatic and clever as he’s always been, and he did a great job making sure the show stayed fresh and kept up its momentum — even when he was facing scathing remarks from twice-impeached charlatan Donald Trump on “Truth” Social. My favorite rebuttal from Kimmel: “Isn’t it past your jail time?”

Two: The bits were actually funny this year and didn’t overstay their welcome. One of my favorite moments was when Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt were ribbing each other for their “Barbenheimer” rivalry, with Ryan pointing out Barbie dominating the box office while Emily observed all the honors Oppenheimer racked up this awards season. John Mulvaney hilariously ribbed Madame Web during his presentation for Best Sound, quoting the infamous “He was in the Amazon with my mom” line. But my favorite bit was when John Cena “streaked” across the stage to present the Best Costume Design category with only the envelope covering his Magic Johnson. Hey, at least you can’t say he didn’t wear his best suit (just as long as birthday suits count).

And lastly, the winners were largely justified this year. There was no obviously outrageous moment like Jamie Lee Curtis winning Best Supporting Actress, or Denis Villeneuve not being nominated for Dune, or Chadwick Boseman losing Best Actor for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Sure there were a few snubs here or there, but for the most part, I can see why most of the winners won this year. It’s very rare that the Academy is on the mark this much. And I’m going to savor every minute of it, because I already know this euphoria will be very short-lived.

Even my predictions went pretty well this year. As per usual, I didn’t get every category right this year, with the most obvious misses coming from those accursed short categories. But before we get to that, let’s start with…

SOURCE: Universal Pictures

Best Picture: Oppenheimer won the Academy Awards’ most coveted honor of the night, as it deserved to. Not only is it a compelling character drama taking a deep dive into the psyche of one of the most complex men in American history, but it is simultaneously also a cautionary tale on nuclear proliferation and what Oppenheimer’s achievements may mean for the future of the human race. Given the fact that it swept the SAG Awards, the PGAs, the DGAs and every other awards ceremony under the sun, I think it was a foregone conclusion that Best Picture was Oppenheimer’s to lose.

Still, I don’t want to minimize Christoper Nolan’s or Emma Thomas’ achievements. Oppenheimer is not only the best film from 2023, but one of the finest Best Picture winners to emerge from the past several years. I’m glad the Academy got this category right and gave it to Oppenheimer as it justly deserved. Now if only it could denuclearize the rest of the world.

Best Director: Just as he had won Best Picture, so too had Christopher Nolan won Best Director for Oppenheimer. Again, I don’t think there’s much more that needs to be said here other than he obviously deserved it. Not only was his work on Oppenheimer the very best out of the entire year, but he’s also been largely snubbed by the Academy for pretty much his entire career. The first time he was nominated was in 2018 for Dunkirk, and considering he’s mounted even more significant cinematic achievements with the likes of Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar, it’s kind of stupid that Oppenheimer marks only his second nomination — or his first win, for that matter.

Regardless, he couldn’t have won for a better film, and I couldn’t have been happier when they called Christopher Nolan’s name for Best Director. His Oscar win has been very much overdue.

Best Actor: No surprise here either: Cillian Murphy’s turn as J. Robert Oppenheimer was filled with both humanity and horror, and Cillian did a masterful job bringing the Father of the Atomic Bomb to life. What makes this win even more significant is the fact that this is also Cillian’s first nomination, let alone his first win. It’s baffling to me that such a committed actor has taken this long to be recognized by the Academy, but better late than never I guess. He did a phenomenal job in the lead role of Oppenheimer and absolutely deserved to win. I couldn’t have been happier for him.

That being said, I am sad that Cillian did have to win Best Actor at the expense of Paul Giamatti, who gave an equally gifted performance as Mr. Hunham in The Holdovers. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have been mad if Giamatti did win instead of Cillian, even if I wouldn’t necessarily have agreed with it. But let’s at least be grateful that one noteworthy performance lost to an equally talented performance. That’s the best way to lose at the Academy Awards.

Best Actress: It was a battle of the “stones” for Best Actress this year, with Killers Of The Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone squaring off against Poor Things’ Emma Stone. And Emma clinched it, if ever so slightly.

Knowing that she had previously won Best Actress for the likes of La La Land in 2017, I mistakenly thought that would work to her detriment considering the fact that she’s already an Oscar winner. I obviously underestimated the weight of her BAFTA win, a mistake I desperately need to learn from going forward with the Academy Awards.

Best Supporting Actor: Again, no surprise here: Robert Downey Jr. was just as compelling as Lewis Strauss as Cillian Murphy was in Oppenheimer, so it makes sense that he also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It’s so heartwarming to see Robert Downey Jr. go from struggling with addiction abuse in the 2000s to getting clean to becoming part of one of most successful franchises in cinematic history, only to turn around with arguably one of the best performances of his career in Oppenheimer. I worried for a while that he was going to be typecast after the success of The Avengers, but Oppenheimer proves he’s still got phenomenal acting chops — you just have to give him a role that he can truly thrive in. Congratulations to Robert Downey Jr. and his incredible achievement. The only way his win could have been even better is if he ended his speech by saying “I am Iron Man.”

Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph obviously gave the best performance out of all of the supporting actress nominees in The Holdovers, so she was the clear winner by a long mile. Da’Vine’s win is one of those Oscar moments that fills me with so much hope and joy, because she is clearly not as big of a name as her fellow nominees, yet won regardless due to the merit of her performance. She didn’t win by being a nepo baby (*cough cough*, JAMIE LEE CURTIS, *cough cough*) — she won by genuinely being the best actress. I couldn’t be happier for the win and hope that the Academy will follow suit in this voting methodology going forward. Perhaps they could start by taking away Jamie Lee Curtis’ Oscar and giving it to Stephanie Hsu instead.

SOURCE: Toho

Best Animated Feature: It was a showdown between The Boy And The Heron and Across The Spider-Verse, and The Boy And The Heron ultimately won much to the dismay of web-heads. Personally, I feel Across The Spider-Verse deserved to win more, and Nimona should have been part of the conversation WAY more than it was. But in its defense, Into The Spider-Verse did already win Best Animated Feature back in 2018, while the last Oscar Hayao Miyazaki won was in 2002 for Spirited Away. The Boy And The Heron is a beautiful, tragic, and spellbinding film either way. If Spider-Verse or Nimona wasn’t going to win it, I’m glad it went to The Boy And The Heron.

No, if we really want to talk about Across The Spider-Verse snubs, we should be looking at other categories it wasn’t nominated in, including Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Visual Effects. Heck, I would have even caved for a Best Picture nomination. Regardless, Beyond The Spider-Verse is still coming out in the next few years, so Spidey will have another shot at the Oscars either way. The Academy better not mess up its mulligan, otherwise Marvel fans will have legitimate reasons to be angry next time.

Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days In Mariupol rightfully won Best Documentary, marking not only the third Academy Award-winner I’ve interviewed after Aaron Sorkin and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, but also the first Ukrainian to win an Oscar (how???). While I’m happy that 20 Days In Mariupol won the Oscar, there is a twinge of sadness attached to it knowing that it came at a cost of over 20,000 Ukrainian lives. I choked up at the moment when director Mstyslav Chernov said he wished this film never needed to be made, and similarly, I wish that I never needed to interview him.

Regardless, Mystyslav set out to make this film as a monument to the lives lost in Ukraine. He more than succeeded in making his monument, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s an accomplishment greater than any Academy Award could ever be.

Best International Feature: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if a Foreign-language film was nominated for Best Picture, it’s a lock for the Best International Feature Oscar. That made The Zone Of Interest winning a foregone conclusion. I just wish I could have seen it prior to Oscar night. It doesn’t help that it wasn’t playing anywhere near me. Here’s a film whose “limited” release was so limited that they should have just labeled it “Eh, we guess it was released.”

Best Original Screenplay: Anatomy Of A Fall won this year’s Best Original Screenplay Oscar as it rightfully should have. I saw the film months ago, and it’s still at the forefront of my mind with its spellbinding and dizzying narrative that masterfully teeters you on the edge of your seat. Did Sandra kill her husband or did she not? All these months later, I still don’t have an answer, and I don’t know if I want one.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Cord Jefferson’s witty and amusing adaptation of Percival Everett’s “Erasure” was as clever as it was insightful in American Fiction, so naturally it made it a perfect fit for this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Personally, I still wish it could have gone to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, but considering how much it cleaned up in the rest of the ceremony this year, I’m okay with giving this one to American Fiction. Most would probably argue that it deserved it more anyway.

Best Cinematography: I remember back in 2014 when Hoyte van Hoytema took over for longtime collaborator Wally Phister when shooting for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Years later, he continues to prove he’s one of the most creative cinematographers working in Hollywood today, with some of his most notable projects including Spectre, Dunkirk, Ad Astra, Tenet, and Nope. Oppenheimer demonstrates some of his finest work to date, so of course he deserved to win. I still don’t know how he pulled off those quantum physics sequences without any use of CGI. If they ever produce a documentary about the filming of Oppenheimer, I’ll be the first one to watch it. Mark my words.

Best Film Editing: From Frances Ha to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Jennifer Lame’s editing prowess has taken her all over Hollywood, which makes it especially baffling how Oppenheimer marks only her first nomination. Whatever. Oppenheimer’s film editing is the very best out of the year, and Jennifer Lame deserved to win regardless of whatever snubbing she experienced beforehand. Guess she and Christopher Nolan have that in common.

SOURCE: Searchlight Pictures

Best Production Design: It was clear from the trailers that Poor Things had some of the most striking set designs out of the entire year. As gorgeous as Barbieland looked, it lacked the dreamy and ethereal aesthetic that Poor Things nailed so effectively. It was clear from the outset that Poor Things was going to win Best Production Design. Nothing controversial to report here.

Best Costume Design: This one I got wrong because I vastly overestimated the Academy’s affection for Barbie. At first glance, Barbie seemed like the easy frontrunner, but Poor Things’ costumes were just as distinct, and unlike Barbie, didn’t have a template to base its wardrobe around. You won’t find any of Bella Baxter’s or Duncan Wedderburn’s clothes in any play sets or doll boxes. You will, however, find any of Barbie or Ken’s costumes in any toy aisle you happen to stroll past. Failing to observe its originality was perhaps my greatest oversight in making my Best Costume Design prediction this year.

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: While I flubbed up on predicting Best Costume Design, I did correctly predict that Poor Things would win Best Makeup over the likes of Maestro and Golda. Stitches and disfigured jawlines beat big noses and Helen Mirren erasure. I still don’t know why Oppenheimer was nominated in this category. I genuinely don’t.

Best Musical Score: If Ludwig Goransson didn’t win Best Musical Score for his eerie, ominous, and haunting compositions for Oppenheimer, then the Dolby Theatre truly deserved to be hit with a hydrogen bomb. Thankfully, the Academy picked the right winner in this category. For the record, I’m still fuming that John Williams is nominated for Dial Of Destiny over Daniel Pemberton for Across The Spider-Verse.

Best Original Song: As epic as Barbie’s musical number for “I’m Just Ken” was, it’s clear that Billie Eilish was going to win for her beautiful yet heartbreaking single “What Was I Made For?” Long before the nominees were even announced, the impact of her song was at the forefront of my mind for its emotion, its melancholy piano melody, and its somber and bittersweet tone. It’s a masterclass in excellent songwriting, and the Academy got it right when they picked her as the Best Original Song winner.

What’s most surprising about this category isn’t the fact that she won — it’s the fact that it’s the only Oscar Barbie won, period. Look at the list of winners. Barbie did not win in a single other category besides original song. Not production design. Not costume design. Not writing. Certainly not for Best Picture. The only Oscar it won was for its music.

In its defense, “What Was I Made For?” is arguably the most influential aspect of Barbie. I loved the song long before I even watched the movie, and the best part is you don’t even have to watch the movie to appreciate its message. It doesn’t change the fact that Barbie got absolutely shafted by the Academy this year. Many Barbie fans will be reasonably upset by the many ways it was snubbed at the Oscars this year. Personally, no snub was greater than Greta Gerwig getting robbed in the Best Director category. Oh well. At least she had fun singing “I’m Just Ken” with her cast.

Best Sound: Now here’s one of the few surprises from the night. Oppenheimer’s sweeping and striking sounds of atomic molecules crashing into each other was among the most distinct sound design of the entire year. I thought it was a lock for the Best Sound Oscar, but it turns out the Academy felt differently when The Zone Of Interest won instead.

Like I said, I haven’t seen the movie (who has?), so it’s hard for me to say whose sound design was more deserving. What I will say is that the muffled sounds of children screaming in the chemical showers in the small snippet that played during the ceremony was easily the most disturbing moment from the Academy Awards this year. The clip lasted less than 10 seconds, yet that eerie sound is the one thing I remember most from this weekend. It reminded me a lot of the sound design of Nope, where the muffled sounds of people being digested by a giant alien was one of the most haunting and disturbing sounds I had ever heard in a horror movie. In a way, The Zone Of Interest is a horror movie of its own, only it’s covering real-life horrors as opposed to fictional ones.

So while I haven’t seen enough to declare whether or not it deserved the Oscar over Oppenheimer, I can definitely see why it won. This is likely one of the first Oscar winners I’ll be catching once the title hits streaming services.

SOURCE: Toho

Best Visual Effects: I have mixed feelings about Godzilla Minus One winning Best Visual Effects, mainly due to the allegations that its VFX artists were simultaneously overworked and underpaid. What gave me hope was seeing that director Takashi Yamazaki worked alongside his fellow artists as a VFX supervisor, meaning that whatever arduous hours his team was working, he was most likely working right alongside them. Does that make their working circumstances any less problematic? Not really, but at least the director is in the trenches with them. If your crew is drowning in misery, at least have everyone be equally miserable together. That’s all I really ask for.

Also, Takashi and his crew looked really excited to be at the Academy Awards. For crying out loud, he brought a gold Godzilla statue with him, and his team all had their own Godzilla figurines with them. Regardless of whatever their working conditions were, you can tell that they were passionate fans who poured their hearts into this atomic-sized monster epic. As long as they’re happy, I’m happy. And for whatever it’s worth, Godzilla Minus One did have the best visual effects out of the year regardless.

And finally, we come down to those blasted short categories. The only one I got right this year was Wes Anderson winning Best Live Action Short for The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar. The rest were all a bust. Thankfully, Issa Rae and Ramy Youssef at least had the good sense to keep the presentation as blissfully short as their nominees.

That brings my total score this year to 18 out of 23 categories guessed correctly. Not a bad year for me, although I did lose in my own family’s pool. Oh well. At least I got to go to bed before 11 for a change.

– David Dunn

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Feb 19 2018
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Awards Coverage, The Scope

2017 Oscar Predictions

The more I cover the Oscars, the more frustrating they become to me.

Oh, don’t get me wrong: I’ve always disliked the Oscars, long before I even started this website in 2013. That’s because they have consistently snubbed the most obvious winners ceremony by ceremony, almost for as long as the Oscars themselves have existed. Perfect example: how is it that Alfred Hitchock, the iconic director behind classics such as Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, has gone through his ENTIRE 50-year career and never won a single Oscar? Meanwhile, Edith Head has won eight Academy Awards. Who? My point exactly.

You would think that by this point, the Academy would wisen up and make more educated decisions in their awards and nominations. But no, if anything, they’ve gotten worse. 2016 famously had that #OscarsSoWhite controversy, where they embarrassingly snubbed the cinematic epics Beasts of No Nation, Creed, and Straight Outta Compton in their acting and picture categories. They had that clumsy envelope mishap last year during its best picture announcement for Moonlight. Not to mention that it has snubbed masterpieces such as Rush, The Dark Knight Rises, Catching Fire, Captain America: Civil War, and Patriot’s Day in all of its categories from the past several years. I completely understand these movies not getting nominated for best picture or director. But seriously, not even costume design?

This year, their snubbing is arguably at their worst yet. For one thing, they’re still refusing to fill all 10 of their best picture slots, capping it off at nine nominees. Why do they keep doing this? There’s no reason to be that disinterested in a potential 10th nominee. Either go all in with your slots, or wuss out and go back to five nominees so we can all go to bed sooner. Opening a potential tenth spot just to leave it empty is like flipping the middle finger to the fans behind Blade Runner 2049, The Big Sick, Logan, War for the Planet of the Apes, Baby Driver, and so, so many others. It’s disgraceful to the film community and it’s disrespectful to the passionate fans behind it. You might as well fill a Transformers movie in the tenth slot since you’re basically eliciting the same disgusted reaction from your viewers anyway.

But nevermind the empty 10th slot. This night is about the movies that are getting recognized: the so-called “best of the year.” It would be great if anybody has seen them. Call Me By Your Name, a coming-of-age romantic Italian drama, grossed the lowest of any best picture nominee at $25 million. The other coming-of-age drama Lady Bird performed better at $48 million, but it still pales in comparison to Dunkirk’s $500 million box office numbers. Phantom Thread didn’t even break its budget price, bringing in a measly $27 million against its production costs of $35 million. Why, then, is it nominated for six Academy Awards? Because Daniel Day Lewis is in it, I guess. Although oddly enough, that excuse didn’t work for Academy favorite Meryl Streep this time around, since her film The Post is only nominated for two awards this year. Is her time in the spotlight finally up? We can only hope so.

Regardless of my annoyances with the Academy’s nomination process, these are the movies we have to pick from, and the winners aren’t going to predict themselves. Let’s hop right into this year’s Oscar predictions.

SOURCE: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Best Picture: Predicting this category has become a crapshoot wheel of fortune for the Oscars. Half of the best picture winners from the past decade haven’t even won best director, and the rest of them have arrived to their best picture win through very strange methods. Argo won best picture in 2013 despite Ben Affleck not even being nominated for best director. 12 Years A Slave won best picture in 2014 despite Gravity sweeping the rest of the night. Spotlight won best picture in 2016 despite winning only one other award from the night for best original screenplay. And don’t even get me started on last year’s best picture mixup fiasco between La La Land and Moonlight.

The selection process for these best picture winners have become completely lopsided and unpredictable. Perhaps that’s why I’m struggling so much in my prediction for best picture this year. In previous years, best picture was usually the first category I checked off in my predictions. This year, it was my last. It’s seriously become that uncertain.

The best picture race this year has boiled down to two pictures: The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Most people believe that The Shape of Water is going to snag it, mostly because of its sweeping in the Producer’s and Director’s Guild Awards. I’m not convinced. For one thing, a science-fiction film has never won best picture in Oscar history. Not once. Not 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. Not Star Wars in 1977. Not E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial in 1982. Not Apollo 13 in 1995. Not Avatar in 2009. Not Inception in 2012. Not Gravity in 2013. You want to talk about Oscars bias? Nominate a science-fiction film for best picture. It almost immediately dashes all hopes of a best picture win.

That being said, the genre that the Academy is consistently in favor of are dramas. Every single best picture winner from this decade has been a drama film, from The Hurt Locker all the way to Moonlight. This works in favor of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri because it is based in a realistic setting as opposed to The Shape of Water’s fantastical one.

I have no idea who is going to win best picture this year on Oscar night. The confusion from previous ceremonies has completely dashed my confidence in predicting this category. But if we’re basing our decision solely on trends repeated throughout Oscar history, then Three Billboards is the safest choice. I will be fuming if The Shape of Water becomes the first science-fiction film to win best picture over Star Wars.

Best Director: Guillero Del Toro won the DGA award, which means he’ll also win the best directing Oscar for The Shape of Water. I’d prefer it go to first-time writer-director Jordan Peele, whose horror-satire film Get Out was a clever and ingenious look at race culture and how neo-liberalism negatively impacts minority communities. However, Del Toro did deserve an Oscar years ago for Pan’s Labirynth and was wrongfully snubbed against Germany’s The Lives of Others. I guess this year will give him the recompense that he’s so desperately deserved this entire time.

Best Actor: No contest, Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. Not only does it take a lot of talent and dedication to portray a historical figure as significant as Winston Churchill, but Oldman is another actor that the Academy has disregarded time and time again for the past several years. He didn’t even get his first nomination until 2011 for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. His win for Darkest Hour will make up for all the years the Academy has snubbed him.

Best Actress: While Sally Hawkins’ performance was the best thing to come out of Guillero Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, I highly doubt the Oscar will go to her, especially since a best acting award hasn’t gone to a non-speaking role since Jean Dujardin for the silent film The Artist in 2011. Since this is the case, I’m going to go with my runner-up option with Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Her strained performance as an grieving mother devastated by the loss of her daughter was beautifully poignant and tragic, not to mention that sassy spunk she threw around at anyone in her general direction. Her character was one of the most memorable figures to come out of cinema this past year. I will be infuriated if the Oscar is awarded to anyone else besides McDormand or Hawkins.

Best Supporting Actor: Forgiving the fact that Bill Skarsgard was unforgivably snubbed for his performance as the creepy titular monster in Stephen King’s It, we have a toss-up in this category between Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Williem Dafoe for The Florida Project. I’m going with Rockwell for Three Billboards. His performance as a spoiled, self-centered police officer who doesn’t deserve a badge or a gun was both wildly entertaining and intimidating. You couldn’t really predict what he was going to do next, whether he was jamming to his earbuds in the police station or throwing an advertising manager out of a two-story building. His wildcard of a character won me over, and I would be seriously surprised if the Academy decided to skip over him.

Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney for I, Tonya. Not only does she look disturbingly immaculate compared next to Tonya Harding’s real-life mother LaVona Golden, but her genuinely tense and unfiltered presence fueled Tonya Harding’s drive throughout the picture. Boy, am I grateful that she’s not my mother.

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Best Animated Feature: While Loving Vincent was a beautiful love letter to Vincent Van Gogh and features over 65,000 frames of oil paintings on canvas, it’s very hard to see this film beating out Pixar’s Coco, especially when you consider how much today’s social climate is stacked against Mexican immigrants. I have to go with Coco for its representation and wonderful tribute to Mexican culture.

Best Documentary Feature: I was surprised to find that Jane and Step weren’t nominated for best documentary this year despite their outstanding performance during their theater run. But nevermind, I haven’t seen any of the nominees this year for best documentary anyway (shocking, I know!)

My first prediction for this category would have been Last Men In Aleppo. Not because I know whether the movie is any good or not, but only because it reminded me of Gary Johnson’s embarrassing “Aleppo” moment in 2016. Political blunders aren’t enough to hand out Oscars, however, but they are enough to hand out Raspberry Awards. With any luck, Johnson might soon be able to put “Razzie Award-Winner” on his resume.

My best guess is that Faces Places will win best documentary. The reason why is because the premise is that its filmmakers JR and Agnes Varda travel around France creating portraits of the people that they come across. I haven’t heard of a premise so heavily engrossed into its filmmakers since Banky’s Exit Through The Gift Shop in 2011. So for the sake of its immersion and first-person perspective, I’m going with Faces Places.

Best Foreign-Language Feature: I’ve heard nothing but good things about The Square, and early on in awards season it looked like it might sweep at the Oscars. But nah, if we’re predicting the winner solely based on relevance, I’m going with A Fantastic Woman. A film about a transgender woman mourning over the death of her husband while being alienated by his family could not be more pertinent in today’s hateful and divisive society. A Fantastic Woman? Indeed.

Best Original Screenplay: Another category with some fantastic frontrunners that’s hard to choose from. The Big Sick was a poignant and darkly humorous observation on the fragility of human life and how fleeting moments of happiness and love really are. Get Out was a creative and captivating horror-comedy on the impacts of white supremacy against minority communities. And Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a tragic dramedy that profoundly elaborated on rape culture, police brutality, racism, and homophobia fantastically wrapped into one immediately moving package. All of these nominees are worthy contenders in this category. The question is who will be the winner?

A lot of eyes are on Get Out since Jordan Peele recently won the WGA award for best original screenplay. However, the WGA’s are not the most consistent when it comes to predicting this Oscar category, especially with last year’s mixup when Manchester By The Sea won against WGA winner Moonlight for best original screenplay, which in turn won against WGA winner Arrival for best adapted screenplay. How can Moonlight be nominated for both original and adapted screenplay, you ask? Great question. I wish I could give you an answer that made any sense.

Since this category is seriously confused to begin with, I’m going with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as the winner for best original screenplay. It covers just as much ground as Get Out does, except it does it in a much more realistic, practical setting as opposed to the horrific confines of a white supremacist family’s mansion. No, I’m not saying the satirical tone works against Get Out’s favor. I’m saying Three Billboards is more believable than Get Out is, although that doesn’t make either of them any less important. I wouldn’t be surprised or upset if Peele ended up taking home the Oscar for Get Out, but my money is on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. God help me if The Shape of Water ends up being the winner.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Let’s get one thing straight here: Logan deserves to be the winner of this category, hands down. Taking the superhero genre and flipping it on its head into a somber dystopian tragedy, Logan is one of those films that shows our iconic blockbuster heroes as older, crippled versions of their former selves, reflecting on their broken identities as they use the last of their days to give Logan’s daughter a chance at life. By every definition, it is one of the best films of the year and definitely one of the best superhero dramas of all time.

It deserves to win the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. It absolutely will not win it.

First of all, while it’s tonally different from the rest of the genre, it’s still technically classified as a superhero movie. That’s works against itself at the Oscars, because the only genre that the Academy is more biased against besides superhero movies are horror movies. A superhero film has never been nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Not once. Not Spider-Man 2 in 2004. Not The Dark Knight in 2007. Not even Wonder Woman or Logan this year.

The Academy just does not like to recognize superhero movies, plain and simple. That bias is exactly why Logan will not win best adapted screenplay at the Oscars. A sham, but not surprising with the Academy Awards involved.

However, there is one genre that the Academy loves to lap up, and that is LGBT dramas. The Imitation Game won best adapted screenplay in 2015, while the fantastic Moonlight also won best adapted screenplay last year. I haven’t seen Call Me By Your Name, but given the Academy’s recent track record with LGBT representation, I think it’s a safe bet for this year’s Oscar ceremony. Call Call Me By Your Name the winner for best adapted screenplay.

SOURCE: Warner Bros. Pictures

Best Film Editing: I’ll give Lee Smith this much credit: when we’re in the heat of battle in Dunkirk, the action flows effortlessly, and Smith does a great job cutting from shot-to-shot, giving us multiple perspectives at once while at the same time making the action fluid and coherent. The problem as I’ve outlined in my review is that the rest of the film’s assemblage is chaotic, nonlinear, and incomprehensible, jump-cutting from multiple different passages of time at once and overlapping their events one on top of the other. I don’t blame Smith for this as much as I do Christopher Nolan however, as this confusion was the creative decision he made through writing his screenplay. Fun fact: Nolan originally considered not writing a screenplay at all for Dunkirk. Appropriate, since he rightfully isn’t nominated for best original screenplay this year either.

Anyhow, back to editing. The rightful winners in this category are Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos for Baby Driver, as the way they timed their editing and Baby’s driving to the tunes of 1970 hits was clever, skillful, and captivating all at once. First-time nominees are less likely to win in this category, however, and this is both Machliss and Amos’ first Oscar nominations.

Smith, however, has been nominated twice before in previous ceremonies, once for Master and Commander: Far Side of the World in 2003 and once for The Dark Knight in 2008. Couple that with the fact that action films are a genre favorite in this category (Hacksaw Ridge won this award last year, and Mad Max: Fury Road won the year before that), and you have this year’s best film editing winner in Dunkirk.

Best Cinematography: Before Leonardo DiCaprio, cinematographer Roger Deakins was the most snubbed nominee at every single Oscar ceremony. He should have won with his first nomination in 1994 for The Shawshank Redemption, but he lost to John Toll for Legends of the Fall. He was nominated in 2007 for No Country for Old Men, but lost to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood. And he was nominated again in 2012 for the James Bond film Skyfall, but lost to Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi. He’s been nominated 14 times now and has never won once.

Enough is enough. If Roger Deakins doesn’t win this year for Blade Runner 2049, I’m going to flip a lid. I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The first time I saw a still of Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, I thought he had purposefully put on a lot of weight for the role. Turns out he just had a lot of prosthetic makeup on, and good gravy did it have me fooled. While Victoria & Abdul and Wonder also had some great makeup work, neither of them convinced me that their actors were entirely different people. So that settles it for me: Darkest Hour will take home the Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling. I’m still bitter that It wasn’t even nominated in this category, however.

Best Costume Design: It would be pretty pathetic if a film about a dressmaker didn’t win best costume design at the Oscars, now wouldn’t it? I loved the costumes in Victoria & Abdul, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake struck out in its visual design as well. But if Phantom Thread was going to win any award at the Oscars this year, it would be for costume design. So that’s the one I’m going with.

Note: Wonder Woman is missing in this category. I just needed to point that out.

Best Production Design: This is actually one of the tougher categories to predict this year, because the truth is I love all of the nominees here. Beauty and the Beast looked gorgeous in the design of its magnificent castle and its inanimate inhabitants, while Blade Runner 2049 magnificently recreated the bleak, dystopian future that we first got exposed to in the original Blade Runner 30 years ago. Both Dunkirk and Darkest Hour accurately depicted the WWII era, with Dunkirk going as far as to use real 1940’s British planes and seaboats for the film.

Nothing, however, visually encapsulated me like the colorful 1960’s designs of The Shape of Water’s city streets, the dark, opaque laboratories, or the dimly lit movie theater resting below Elise’s apartment. I’m split in this category because all of the nominees are equally outstanding, but if I picked the one that I recognized the most while watching, it’s not even a contest. The Shape of Water wins.

Note: Again, Wonder Woman is missing in this category.

SOURCE: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Best Musical Score: Alexandre Desplat won his first Oscar in 2014 for scoring The Grand Budapest Hotel, a quirky and loveable picture whose music perfectly matched the introverted tone that it was going for. This year he’s nominated again for scoring Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, and his music beautifully captured the intrigue and mystery behind this underwater sea creature discovering his feelings for another mortal. His music is completely encapsulating every time you listen to it. For that reason, I have to go with The Shape of Water.

Another Note: Do I really have to spell it out for you at this point? WONDER WOMAN.

Best Original Song: If you didn’t cry during that moment in Coco where Miguel sang “Remember Me” to his Great-Great-Grand-Mama, I’m convinced you have no soul. It was a beautiful, simple song, one that pays respect to the Mexican-American culture and to remembering our heritage. I suspect there will be a lot of outrage if anything but “Remember Me” wins best original song, so I’m going to play it safe and go with Coco.

Best Sound Editing: Dunkirk, hands down. The first ear-screeching “BANG” that echoes in the theater hummed in my ears as if I had just dodged a bullet, and the rest of the film pays as much attention to the haunting sounds and noises of the battlefield. I remember very few films that were as masterful in their sound work as Dunkirk was, so I must advocate for its win in this category.

Best Sound Mixing: Dunkirk again. The way Christopher Nolan uses different sound effects in building up tension and unease in a scene is truly masterful, and the sound engineers did a fantastic work at incorporating all of the sounds together in the film. I do love Baby Driver for how it incorporates classic songs into its high-octane action and stunts, but if we take that film out as a possible upset win, the clear frontrunner is Dunkirk.

Best Visual Effects: Viewers were frustrated in 2015 when Christopher Nolan’s space exploration film Interstellar won the best visual effects Oscar over Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. This year will give them the recompense that they need. While Blade Runner 2049 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi sported some of the most visually spectacular moments of the year, nothing surpasses the visual effects team’s efforts behind the digital recreation of primate animals and their behavior in War for the Planet of the Apes. I can potentially see one of the other nominees possibly taking home this award in an upset win, but when I really think about it, no one else could be more deserving. War for the Planet of the Apes will win best visual effects.

On a side note, who on Earth thought it was a good idea to nominate Kong: Skull Island for this award? Did nobody see Wonder Woman? Beauty and the Beast? Thor: Ragnarok? Spider-Man: Homecoming? Alien: Covenant? Wolf Warrior 2? Boss Baby?

And finally we come to the forever-dreaded short categories, the nominees which nobody has seen, but for some reason are always expected to predict anyway. I’m just going to rattle off my answers and shove them out of the way. Dear Basketball, Heroin(E), and The Silent Child.

That’s all for me, folks. See you on awards night where I will no doubt be shaking my fist at Wonder Woman’s absence.

– David Dunn

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Jan 24 2018
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Awards Coverage, The Scope

The Indie Spirit Oscars

SOURCE: MovieWeb

Have you heard about any of the Academy Award nominees? Yeah, me neither.

Like clockwork, the Academy Awards recently released their nominations for this year’s ceremonies. Unlike previous years where I wake up at my own leisure and read the nominees at my earliest convenience, I actually got up earlier the morning of the announcements and listened to the livestream on my way to work. Good gravy, are these people pretentious. The live-action shorts that played before the category announcements were so high-quality that they were better produced than many of the nominees themselves were. Can we recruit these people to make better films for these categories in future award ceremonies?

But never mind that, you’re not here to hear me gripe about the Hollywood elites. You’re wanting the breakdown on this year’s nominees. Let’s hop into it.

Leading the pack of best picture nominees this year is Guillermo Del Toro’s science-fiction romance The Shape of Water, a weird and uncomfortable movie about a fish creature falling in love with a woman. In hindsight, I passively admit that the film is mostly deserving of its 13 nominations. It is, after all, visually and aesthetically pleasing, and the creature himself has some of the most convincing effects I’ve seen in the past year. But I didn’t like the movie itself, feeling that it was too preachy and on-the-nose to be taken seriously. I do think Del Toro is very deserving of an Academy Award in general. His films Hellboy and Pacific Rim both pushed the boundaries in what could be achieved through visual storytelling, while Pan’s Labyrinth was a beautifully dark fantasy that put adult tragedies through the innocent eyes of a child (it’s actually one of my frustrations that film didn’t win best foreign language film at the 2007 Oscar ceremony). Will The Shape of Water be the film to break Del Toro’s losing streak? Possibly, but I can’t help but feel that parts of his earlier filmography are more deserving for an Oscar than The Shape of Water is.

The runner-up best picture nominee with the most nominations is Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, a World War II drama depicting the battles for French beaches, seas, and skies. Again, Christopher Nolan is a fantastic filmmaker: one of our generations best. But his earlier films are astronomically better compared to the sloppy, confused timeline that Dunkirk gave us. His first nominated film Memento was a mind-boggling and fascinating study of a decomposing mind, while The Dark Knight broke the boundaries between what we consider superhero movies and art. Inception is one of the greatest films this decade. Any one of these masterpieces could and should have been major contenders for best picture in previous ceremonies. Why is it suddenly that the lapsed, removed experience of Dunkirk is the one picture to suddenly give him a serious chance at the Oscars? Dunkirk is nominated for eight Academy Awards. It deserves five of them.

Side-note: In addition to Dunkirk’s best picture nomination, this is also the first time Nolan has been nominated for best director, merely getting only screenplay nominations in previous ceremonies. Regardless of what your opinion is on Dunkirk, can we at least agree that it is blatantly outrageous that this is Nolans’ first best director nomination?

Next is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which places in this year’s ceremony with seven Oscar nominations. This is one picture you gotta look out for here, folks. It swept at both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actor Guild Awards, winning the highest prizes at both ceremonies. Its stars Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell are both serious contenders for this year’s acting categories. Writer-director Martin McDonagh has a strong chance at the best original screenplay award. I haven’t watched the film yet, but it’s been racking up wins this awards season like a Star Wars movie stealing the holiday box office. Keep your eyes focused on this one.

Two surprise nominees here that I wasn’t expecting: the biopics Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread, both starring Hollywood heavyweights Gary Oldman and Daniel Day Lewis. The surprise here isn’t that they’re nominated for best picture, but that they’re nominated for five other Academy Awards besides it. I figured those two pictures were shoo-ins in the acting categories due to the reputation of its leads. I didn’t expect them to also slip in to the production design, costume, makeup, and cinematography categories as well. If anything, this shows that this year’s ceremonies are not as predictable as they usually are, and they’ll really contain their own twists and turns that none of us were expecting. I’m genuinely excited to see how these two films will impact the best picture race on Oscar night.

SOURCE: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Also nominated for best picture is the coming-of-age drama Lady Bird, the gay romance film Call Me By Your Name, and the satire-comedy-horror picture Get Out. Out of all of the movies to be nominated for best picture this year, my favorite is easily Get Out. If you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely need too. It’s one of the most creative films I’ve seen in years, making a provocative race commentary that is equal parts violent, scary, entertaining, and relevant to its intended audience. The fact that it’s nominated here not only for best picture, but also best director, actor, and screenplay makes my heart happy for writer-director Jordan Peele, who basically exploded onto the film scene with this directorial debut. One could only dream to have a year as successful as Peele did.

There’s one best picture nominee here that doesn’t belong. Not because it isn’t deserving, but because it isn’t fairly backed up by its other nominations: The Post. Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely deserves to be nominated for best picture. The journalism-drama tells the story of the Washington Post reporting team that broke the story on U.S. Government’s obscured involvement with the Vietnam War, which eventually developed into the Pentagon Papers expose. It very much is Oscar-worthy material. The issue is that it’s only nominated for one other award besides best picture, and that is best actress for Meryl Streep’s role in the film.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened in recent Oscar history. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was only nominated for best picture and best supporting actor for Max Von Sydow in 2012, while the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma was only nominated for best picture and best original song in 2015. The worst of these offenses was Spotlight in 2016, which only won best original screenplay in addition to its best picture win. It is the only best picture winner in Oscar history to receive only two awards from the night.

This pity-nomination party has to stop in the Academy Awards. A film is not considered the best of the year for one actress alone, but for an assortment of cohesive elements that work together for the film. The director Steven Spielberg. The writer Josh Singer. The editor Michael Kahn. The cinematographer Janusz Kamiński. Streep’s co-star Tom Hanks. There was a lot of talent associated with this film, all of them equally deserving for attention as Streep was. Either give the film more nominations to support its best picture nomination, or don’t nominate it at all. There were plenty of other hard-hitting contenders that could have been nominated instead of The Post that have the nominations to back it up. Blade Runner 2049 with five nominations. Mudbound with four nominations. Baby Driver with three. You can make a case for any of these films and more to be nominated in the place of The Post due to its acting and technical nominees. Why on Earth are we giving out pity nominations for movies that can’t get more than two nominations from Academy board voters?

Overall, how do I feel about these nominations? Meh. They’re fine. I’m not really excited or maddened by their recognition here. They’re just kind of a passing mention of under-the-radar films to be aware of before you get to awards night.

I will say that, just like every year, there is obvious snubbing in categories where films did not deserve the disservice they received. You will notice, for instance, that Wonder Woman got zero nominations, despite being one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of the year. Detroit got zero nominations, despite its attention to detail and authentic depiction of such despicable events. The Stephen King horror film It got zero nominations, not even for makeup or supporting actor for its brilliant performance by Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgard. Good grief, even Logan got snubbed with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s mesmerizing performances as old heroes reflecting on their broken selves (although it did impressively nab a best adapted screenplay nomination, the first superhero movie in Oscar history to ever receive such an honor).

But Academy Awards ratings have been consistently dropping, ever since its changes to the best picture category first proposed in 2010. Continuing to skip over mainstream films such as these is exactly why. Critics love the indie flicks that continue to surprise us in new ways, while moviegoing audiences love the occasional blockbusters that give them the escapism and entertainment that they need. It’s entirely possible to love and appreciate both of these kinds of films. Somebody please send the Academy the memo.

– David Dunn

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Feb 27 2017
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Awards Coverage, The Scope

La La Land, Moonlight Wins 89th Academy Awards (Sort Of)

I don’t even know what to say.

Every year, the Oscars hand out their fair share of snubs and surprises. Last year, it was when Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for Bridge of Spies over Sylvester Stallone for Creed. The year before that, it was when Big Hero 6 won best animated feature over How To Train Your Dragon 2, whereas The Lego Movie wasn’t even nominated.

I’ve seen the Academy snub films every year, but I’ve never seen the Academy snub the moment of winning before. Unbelievably, the Academy did just that last night.

First thing’s first: Jimmy Kimmel was a fun host. Running the show like he was running his late night talk show, he quipped zingy one-liners, had nominees read mean tweets, poked fun at the president, recreated the Lion King moment with Lion’s Sunny Pawar, and even invited a tour bus into the stage area to meet all of the snazzy-dressed celebrities. He was a good host, although I think he did drag on the political jokes for too long (and tweeting the president was definitely a bad idea. You never stoke the flames of a forest fire).

Everything else, however, was in complete debacle. Let’s start with the biggest one of all on Oscar night:

Best Picture: The most shocking win from the night, and not because of who won, but because of how they won. At first, Faye Dunaway read La La Land off of the card and producers Jordan Horowitz and Fred Berger came up to the stage to accept their award. A few seconds later, they retracted their statements and announced there had been a mistake. Moonlight won best picture instead.

How did this happen? Apparently there was a mix-up with the envelopes and Warren Beatty was given a replacement card for best actress instead. Since that card read Emma Stone, who won best actress for her role in La La Land, Dunaway mistakenly thought that meant La La Land won best picture. Her inferences were wrong and the La La Land team had to turn over their statuettes to Moonlight.

Number one: How could the Oscar staff mess this up this badly? The night went smoothly for all of its categories throughout the night until it came to best picture. Suddenly, Beatty and Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope and announced the wrong winners. How could the production team be so negligent? How could they possibly goof it up so badly to the point where they hand a card that clearly reads “BEST ACTRESS” to the announcers for best picture? I still can’t wrap my mind around it. It is without a doubt the biggest and most embarrassing mistake in Oscar history.

Number two: Props to Jimmy Kimmel, who kept his cool and even offered a few laughs through the whole ordeal. When he got up to the mic after that massive upset, he turned to cheek and said “Sorry guys, I knew I was going to mess this up.” He made the best out of a terrible situation, and I’m grateful he was there to make everyone feel lighthearted despite going through such a heavy-handed mistake.

Number three: Respect also to the La La Land team, who graciously handed their awards over to Moonlight after that embarrassing stint. I’m sure no one was happy after having that moment taken from them, but the La La Land producers were quick to get off of the stage and to get Moonlight on it. They’ve clearly demonstrated their love, respect, and passion for the arts and were more concerned with honoring the rightful winner rather than take the moment away from them. Thank you to Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt. You are the definition of Hollywood class.

Number four: Obviously, congratulations to the Moonlight team, not only for being involved in making a brave and courageous film, but for also being brave and courageous enough to produce it in the first place. Independent film is a part of the industry that has always been wobbling on its own two legs, but putting Moonlight center stage gave the independent scene a little more foundation in its footing. Moonlight is a masterful picture, it is an important picture, and it is the best picture of the year. Congratulations to that talented team for their monumental achievements in storytelling and character development.

All that aside, I’m still frustrated by that massive slip-up. In one fell swoop, the Academy took that important moment away from multiple filmmakers at once. Somebody is definitely getting fired for that stint.

Best Director: No surprise here. Damien Chazelle won the Director’s Guild Award, so that means he also won best director. At age 32, Chazelle is the youngest best director winner in Oscar history. Congratulations Damien, and thank you for encouraging everyone to dream just a little bit more.

Best Actor: Another upset. I was split down the middle on this category since Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington were on equal footing for Manchester By The Sea and Fences. Since Washington won the screen actor, however, I felt that gave him a slight edge in his race towards the Oscar. Turns out I was wrong. Casey joined big brother Ben in the Oscar crowd and took home best actor for his quietly moving performance in Manchester By The Sea. Congratulations to him and for taking on a personal, intimate role that speaks on the human condition and for our longing to reconnect with the things we’ve lost.

Best Actress: Emma Stone won best actress for her performance as an aspiring actress in La La Land. She was a standout in the movie and deserved to be recognized for her complex role as a down-on-her-luck artist. It’s funny, though, how her win would come back to haunt the best picture category mix-up. But don’t even get me started back up on that again.

Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali won for Moonlight, making him the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar at the Academy Awards. Congratulations, my friend. You were one of the strongest elements of Moonlight, and your speech was also one of the strongest moments of the night. You have my blessings.

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis won for Fences. Her call to exhume and exalt the ordinary person summoned a powerful force in the room, and everyone resonated with her message to celebrate life, love, and the arts. Jimmy Kimmel hilariously followed that up with “I think she’s nominated for next year’s Emmy’s for that speech.”

I still feel Naomie Harris was more commanding in her role as a drug-addicted mother seeking redemption in Moonlight. But Moonlight already got some love. It’s nice to see Fences get some too.

Best Animated Feature: Zootopia won, clearly. Look out for its sequel, which will be adapting the 2016 Presidential Elections. (I’m kidding, of course, but don’t be surprised if you see new characters introduced next year named Donald Skunk or Hillary Chimpton).

Best Documentary Feature: O.J.: Made in America won best documentary. That was when Taraji P. Henson pulled out a paper tag from the card and read “MADE IN TAIWAN.”

Best Foreign Language Feature: In another upset, Asghar Farhadi won best foreign language film for The Salesman, making him one of the few filmmakers to win this award twice. Sadly, Farhadi could not come to the ceremony to accept his award in person due to the immigration ban placed on Iran. His call to empathize and understand beyond judgement and apprehension is a message we all need to hear more of.

Best Original Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan won best original screenplay for Manchester By The Sea. Lonergan dedicated the award to many people in his life, including his father, who passed away earlier last year. Him winning for his passion project behind Manchester made me immensely happy for him, and I can’t help but feel he’s written something relevant for everyone, no matter what age you are. Congratulations, Kenny. No doubt that your father would be proud.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight deservingly won best adapted screenplay, as he guides us through Chiron’s complex childhood and clearly demonstrates how actions in the past affect decisions made in the future. Like many other winners from the night, Moonlight demands that we see people not for their labels, but for their experiences. Congratulations to him and his wonderful achievement in defining human empathy.

Best Film Editing: Before I get into this, I need to apologize. In my predictions, I commented that Tom Cross was going to win best film editing for La La Land, even though he was vastly undeserving compared to his great work on Whiplash. I want to now redact my statement. The Oscar for best film editing did not go to La La Land, but instead went to John Gilbert for Hacksaw Ridge.

It was my mistake to underestimate him. Gilbert has edited numerous films, from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring to Bridge to Terabithia. Hacksaw Ridge is a full demonstration of his talents as he expertly navigates us through the physical and spiritual warfare that happened on the battlefields of Okinawa. Congratulations and thank you, Mr. Gilbert. You’ve delivered us a very powerful film.

Best Cinematography: La La Land. It should have gone to Bradford Young for Arrival, but since La La Land got snubbed way worse in the best picture category, I’m willing to hand this one over to Linus Sandgren. Hopefully it made the loss a little easier to bear.

jared-leto-joker-suicide-squad

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Okay, now this is getting ridiculous. Suicide Squad won the Oscar for best makeup over A Man Called Ove and Star Trek Beyond. While I’m happy that it won and agree it is the most deserving nominee out of the bunch, I’m frustrated at the Academy voters because they’re so blasted inconsistent with this category. The Iron Lady beat out Harry Potter in 2011. Les Miserables beat out The Hobbit in 2012. The Grand Budapest Hotel beat out Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Year after year, the Academy snubs the clear standout in this category for one stupid reason or another. Why is it this year that they decide to set themselves straight again?

Whatever. The DC Extended Universe now has an Oscar under their belts, and that’s one more thing they have over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Congratulations guys, but don’t let it go to your head. You still have Justice League coming up right around the corner.

Best Costume Design: Another infuriating upset. While I agree that Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them has some outstanding costume work, it does not warrant it for an Oscar, especially when you compare it to its nominees such as Allied and Jackie. Plus, its win now makes it the first film in the Harry Potter series to win an Oscar. Yes, dear reader: Fantastic Beasts is considered Oscar-worthy whereas none of the other eight Harry Potter films are. That’s just lividly frustrating to me.

In either case, Colleen Atwood is still the costume industry’s version of Meryl Streep. Congratulations and all that jazz.

Best Production Design: La La Land. A worthy winner, but are you really that surprised?

Best Musical Score: La La Land, obviously.

Best Original Song: La La Land, for “City of Stars.” John Legend’s cover of the song was the stuff of dreams.

Best Sound Editing: The first big surprise of the night. Arrival took home best sound editing and not Hacksaw Ridge. It didn’t seem likely that it would win considering it was a slow burning science-philosophy film filled with quiet moments and eerie alien moans, and most of the previous year’s winners were in-your-face action movies. However, I don’t take away its nomination or its worthiness of the award. Congratulations to Arrival for best sound editing. It was genuinely shocking to see you dethrone Hacksaw.

Best Sound Mixing: However, Hacksaw Ridge’s loss wouldn’t last long since it won for best sound mixing not even two minutes later. I keep debating back and forth in my head whether it was the most worthy nominee or not, but at the end of the day, I really don’t care. It’s outstanding sound work anyway, and the gunfire and bomb blasts made every moment tingle with excitement and urgency. Congratulations to the Hacksaw Ridge sound team. You did Desmond Doss justice.

Best Visual Effects: Since the Academy ruled out Doctor Strange and Rogue One, The Jungle Book won best visual effects that night. It’s not an undeserved win. Congratulations to Jon Favreau and for making these incredible jungle animals come alive. Don’t mess it up now with the Lion King remake.

Surprisingly, I even got one of the short categories correct, predicting that Piper would win best animated short film. With that, I’ve correctly predicted 14 winners out of the 24 categories. Not my worst record, but not my best either.

In any regard, congratulations to Moonlight, La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge, Manchester By The Sea, and all the other winners from last night. Hopefully next year the Academy will be more thorough with handling its envelopes.

– David Dunn

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