The Oscars are fucking weird. I literally live in Hollywood and technically work in “Hollywood” and I can admit that. I mean, we can talk all we want about how the Academy Awards are artistic, about how they’re meant to honor people who inspire us, make us feel, laugh, cry, all that shit but in the end it’s little more than a job award ceremony, on par in some ways to the Lansing Regional Chamber’s Annual Celebration of Regional Growth for Businesses or the Dundies (below).
Of course this is a gross simplification. None of us could name the fastest growing businesses in Lansing but we all know, have seen, or at least heard of the movies, actors, and directors nominated for Oscars. So one reason it's relevant is that we know what they're talking about, kinda. Also, where besides the Oscars telecast do us mere mortals get to see the people we so envy laughing at themselves and sitting in seats watching a show like normal people? Where else do we get to see the women we lust after wearing tight dresses that actually make us appreciate fashion if only because they show us what a couple thousand dollar dress can do to a woman’s figure?
At the same time, it’s just a jobs awards ceremony. Sometimes it reflects our general society at large (TITANIC winning Best Picture and, like, every other award) and sometimes it doesn’t (CRASH winning Best Picture ). But the people getting up there and crying about their dreams coming true, about everybody who made this possible, “You like me! You really like me!” looks a bit silly if you think too deeply about it. Thus the reason the Oscar ratings have been dropping each year. Thus the reason James Franco (over-achieving punk that he is) nailed it on the head by blazing through last year's ceremony with an aloof grin as if to say “dude, we’re just giving out little gold statues to our buddies, let’s not pretend that we’re saving the world.”And Anne Hathaway crashed and burned with her OCD "I'm so nervous" thing, ruining me for any Anne Hathaway movie ever again.
But I digress. No, the Oscars are big and if I won one I’d probably be pretty damn overwhelmed too, if only because I’d be looking down on all the people I’ve looked up to for most of my life. But there’s another reason why you, as a man, should pay attention to this year. The Academy Awards is the only legitimate co-ed betting event around. And co-ed betting opens the field up for benefits your bros just can't provide.
My wife recently started watching and betting on football but a year or two ago I still had to explain basic rules like interference and touchbacks. Most women don’t gamble on sports. See it as barbaric. Don’t understand the difference between Field Goals in football and Field Goals in basketball and 3-pointers and how a person can get part of a tackle or what constitutes a completion or what's an RBI versus a homerun and so on. But I guarantee they’re gonna watch the Oscars and they'll understand what every field means.
Which brings a whole new twist to the awards. Maybe you don’t care about which movie you haven’t seen wins some award you don’t care about bestowed by a bunch of people you don’t know. But if you have a month of BJ Alarm Clocks on the line, suddenly you’re jumping up and down and cheering for Viola Davis (Best Actress Frontrunner). But how the hell are you supposed to have any idea who to vote for when the only movie you've seen that's nominated for all the big awards is MONEYBALL? Through this Oscar guide, goddammit.
But it’s tricky. First off, I would be surprised if more than a few hundred people have watched all of the nominated works in their entirety. It would just be impossible to do that while keeping up with the money-making shit we all have to watch in this business and, like, having any sort of life. So there’s a certain amount of politics that play (The Coen Brothers winning for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN because they were slighted when FARGO was nominated all those years ago; Denzel winning for TRAINING DAY when he should’ve won before for MALCOLM X – side note, the previous year the Academy had come under fire for not being down with the African American community) when it comes to Oscars, especially the big ones.
Also there’s a theme every year. With all the attention given to HUGO, THE ARTIST, and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (more writerly love than Hollywood but still, about entertainment artists), as well as director flicks (read: movies that directors drool over for reasons of how much fun they can or did have making them) like TREE OF LIFE, THE DESCENDANTS, and WAR HORSE, as well as the return of Billy Crystal, the theme is simple: Hollywood’s giving itself a pat on the back for over a century of amazing, inspirational and excitingly glamorous history.
So, that being said, let’s do the damn thing. First things first, print this Oscar Nominees sheet. It's good to assign point values to the Oscars, too. I mean seriously, unless you’re actively working in producing movies, you’re not really gonna know who the champs are in the production awards (Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, etc . . .). And unless you work in certain parts of the industry AND spend a lot of time overseas, you won’t be able to be able to rate all the Animated Shorts, Live Action Shorts, Documentary Shorts, and Foreign Films. So assign these all 1 point.
To run it down, I’d suggest the following based on who won the awards for their various guilds or what’s gotten the most buzz (since, admittedly, even I can’t tell a lot of these apart merely by watching):
SOUND EDITING: WAR HORSE
SOUND MIXING: HUGO
EDITING: THE ARTIST
COSTUME DESIGN: JANE EYRE (though there’s also a chance of ANONYMOUS winning – it’s always a period piece)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: TREE OF LIFE
ART DIRECTION: THE ARTIST
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (John Williams is the champion of this category – this year he was nominated twice and over his career he’s been nominated 41 times with 5 wins. He hasn’t won since ’94, for SCHNIDLER’S LIST – and this won a Sound Guild Award)
BEST MAKEUP: THE IRON LADY
LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE SHORE
ANIMATED SHORT: FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR. MORRIS LESSMORE
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: HARRY POTTER (they gotta win something)BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: SAVING FACE (Documentaries all about modern issues – this is about men who throw acid in their wives faces in Pakistan and the plastic surgeon who fixes them – girl power)
BEST DOCUMENTARY: HELL AND BACK AGAIN (the story of how a bullet affects the life of one soldier coming home to NC from Afghanistan with PTSD, shot by embedded journalist Danfung Dennis)BEST FOREIGN FILM: A SEPARATION (The Middle East is huge and an Iranian win, at this time, with the possibility of Iranian-American conflict – that kicks it up a notch. Also this won the Golden Globe)
BEST ANIMATED FILM: RANGO (PUSS N' BOOTS did dismal, KUNG FU PANDA 2 is a lackluster sequel, the other two are just there to make it interesting)
Which brings us to the 2-pointers: the Screenplay awards and Supporting Actor awards.
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When it comes to screenplays, this is a part of films most people outside Hollywood don’t really know about. Growing up I always assumed that the director wrote the movie. Then I figured out that wasn’t the case but, seriously, how much do we really know about the screenplay? A Hollywood screenplay is at best the backbone of the film. In some cases, like JUNO, it can add some funky uniqueness via snappy repartee and hipster lingo. In others, like GOOD WILL HUNTING, it’s the beauty of the story and the way it was wound together, the macro instead of the micro. It can also be a way to award a film that might be deserving of a Best Picture Oscar but, alas, just isn’t gonna win. But usually it gets buried under director's vision and actor's ambition. A screenplay is really more of a jumping off point.
And to make it even more complicated, we got two categories: Best Adapted Screenplay (a movie taken from a book, another movie, or, occasionally, from a graphic novel – daunting when you imagine turning 300 or 400 pages of prose into 120 pages or less of strangely-spaced dialogue and direction) and Best Original Screenplay. Most years the Best Picture is based on an adapted screenplay as it is usually through the novel genre that storytellers are most invited to break the status quo and tell new stories. Just look at the last 5 years: KING'S SPEECH in 2011, HURT LOCKER (while not a book, it was based on Mark Boal's experiences as a war journalist and in fact the idea came from Kathryn Bigelow adapting one of Boal's Playboy articles into a TV series a few years before) in 2010, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE in 2009, NO COUNTRY in '08, THE DEPARTED in '07 (not based on a book but adapted, in this case from a Hong Kong crime movie), and so on.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: THE DESCENDANTS
THE DESCENDANTS is an amazing movie, perhaps my favorite of the year. But there’s no way it’ll win Best Picture or even Best Director. The Academy knows this.
Also, the writers (director Alexander Payne and comedy actors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash) do a great job of making every scene literally an emotional tug of war between anger, sadness, and fear.
MONEYBALL is good but didn’t necessarily have a tough story to capture. IDES OF MARCH hasn’t gotten much buzz and wasn’t much different from PRIMARY COLORS except more fictional. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is an old-ass John LeCarre book and hasn’t gotten much buzz.
The only possible rival is HUGO and usually Children’s stories don’t win this category as they are considered too young to have the full spectrum of emotions necessary to make it a poignant, Oscar-worthy story. Steer the girlfriend away from HUGO, if you can.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: A MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is Woody Allen’s most successful film ever. He’s already won this category twice, in ’78 and ’87 but 25 years is long enough to open it back up to him. Just like THE DESCENDANTS he won the WGA Award this year as well.
Some screenwriter friends of mine said they hated this movie, ranting that it was like some cheesy parade of well-known historical names which covered up a weak plot. They're also hardcore Hollywood writers for whom the idea of leaving L.A. to write novels in the beautiful city of Lights. But as a man I am extremely well-read on the man's bible, the writings of Papa Hemingway. And one of my favorite of his is A MOVEABLE FEAST. And that brilliant novel comes alive in this film. The thing they don't realize is that this isn't just a conglomeration of ex-pat luminaries, this was an ACTUAL SOCIAL GROUP of Hem, F. Scott, Picasso, sage Gertrude Stein, and original jazz man Cole Porter, all living for the cheap in Paris and looking for inspiration from the breathless life therein. And the ideas that not only are Americans gauche but that every generation seems cooler than our own are timeless for a man living in America today.
THE ARTIST, while certainly this year’s darling, doesn’t have much dialogue and so can’t really win or it'll be an insult to writers everywhere. MARGIN CALL, while one of my favorite films of the year (seriously, go see this now if you haven’t already: Zachary Quinto and Paul Bettany are pitch perfect, Stanley Tucci nails it as recently-fired risk analyst, and the story itself – look for this to be the next BOILER ROOM, popping up in college business majors’ film collections over the next few years) has generated hardly any buzz, a sign that people still don’t really want to talk about the collapse of the financial system. And A SEPARATION will win Foreign Film so that’s good enough for an Iranian film about marital problems.
BRIDESMAIDS is the possible sleeper rival. It’s a girl-powered comic romp, a statement that female-based R-rated raunchy comedies can play, as well as just a damn funny movie. Plus there’s no way that its only other nominee, the big and proud comedy “It” girl Melissa McCarthy, will win Best Supporting.
Click here for the final, big money awards: the two 2-pointer “Best Supporting”Oscars as well as the 3-pointers “Best Actor”, “Best Actress”, “Best Director”, and “Best Picture”.
- Ryan
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