WELL...THAT WAS AN EVENING: Reactions to the 93rd Academy Awards

Here's how we are going to do this: I am going to start off discussing the ceremony as a whole in terms of the producing (which had Steven Soderbergh among the team), then I will delve into a brief discussion around the smaller categories before going into a discussion of the top 8 awards.

____________________

CEREMONY QUALITY:

So...the socially distanced event done to meet the strict protocols still seemed like no one was following any kind of mask-wearing...although Frances McDormand was seen wearing one multiple times so good on her for that. 

I have to say that the idea of the ceremony, which was treated as more of a cinematic experience and in a setting that felt like a callback to the days of early Hollywood, was really nice. However...the show ended up feeling less cinematic simply because they relied far too little on movie clips. Some years don't have clips for the acting nominees but they often give us at least a montage of clips. This time around, they just had the presenters briefly gush to each nominee (which similar practices have been done in the past) and then the award was given.

Other random tech categories received clips while more visual based ones like Production Design got the "monologue" treatment. Instead of seeing images of their work, we get a cheeky "Six Degrees of Separation" setup amongst those nominees which didn't stick the landing in the way I am sure the producers felt it would.

The other downside was I felt like due to them pushing the Best Song performances off to the pre-show (which, frankly, I was fine with), they didn't seem as rushed to get the winners off the stage. People deserve to have their moment but they didn't play anybody off and some of those speeches felt like they went on for longer than most have in years.

And then, right before the final three awards of the night, they stop us dead in our tracks for an Oscar trivia bit which ended up falling flat...but it took Glenn Close and her knowledge of "Da Butt" and the dance moves of said number to save the day. 

Watch it for yourself!

https://youtu.be/pDdK3fNUQzQ

Lastly, they made the rather bizarre and unfortunate decision to save the acting Oscars for last which seemed to prove they felt Chadwick Boseman had his category sewn up but instead...they ended the night on a bit of a whimper in terms of impact.

________________________

THE TECH/SMALLER CATEGORIES:

I don't really have as much to say here although I was a little disappointed that Nomadland lost cinematography. I can't really deny that Mank was a good selection though despite my rather tepid feelings on that film and I also feel its Production Design win was the best call.

Sound of Metal winning Sound was a foregone conclusion and truly one of the best wins of the night...and it also pulling off Film Editing was pretty remarkable as well. It wasn't the kind of film that typically wins this award as the saying is usually: "The film with the Most Editing wins Best Editing". 

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom pulled off two solid wins for Costumes and Makeup/Hairstyling, which both of those were wildly expected.

In regards to International Feature, I did like Another Round but I had hoped that more voters would've embraced Bosnia's offering for the prize which was Quo Vadis, Aida?...a film that truly packed an emotional punch.

It was also obvious that they were going for "light" when voting for Documentary Feature as My Octopus Teacher managed to beat Collective, Crip Camp, and Time....all which dealt with truly important and timely issues and yet they went with the lighthearted romp. I guess that'll make Bill Maher happy....

_____________________________

THE ELITE EIGHT:

Best Original Screenplay: Emerald Fennell, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

-As the first award of the night, Emerald Fennell gave a delightfully nervous and charming speech that set off everything on a pretty good note in my book. I fully support this win but the truth is as much as I really like a lot of the films in this category, all of them had something that I consider flawed or not as strong about their scripts. I do admire the chances that Fennell took with hers and the story she was trying to tell. It also must be said that Fennell is the first woman to win this award in 13 years...hopefully another woman will win much sooner than that!

Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton & Florian Zeller, THE FATHER

-In the end, my choice for predicting this paid off. They ended up going with the script that was arguably more complex and verbose...and just so happened to be a Best Picture nominee. Not much to add here other than I feel the Academy made the right decision with this one.

Best Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH

-His speech may have been a little too long but he managed to get a lot of traction for his comment of thanking his parents for having sex and leading to his birth. The press has talked about this a lot...as opposed to his pleas for racial equality which should say a lot about the numbness of entertainment reporters...but this isn't anything new. Actors like Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro and Bruce Willis have made similar comments about thanking their parents for having sex after winning an award so I think we should cut him some slack. As for the win, it was a foregone conclusion and I highly support it but it still doesn't change the fact that he and his co-star/nominee Lakeith Stanfield were both leads. I hope that this breakthrough for Paul Raci leads to more work because I will always champion his sterling work in Sound of Metal.

Best Director: Chloe Zhao, NOMADLAND

-Biggest lock of the night. A truly lovely woman and filmmaker with an immensely bright future ahead of her. As I have stated, I admire and respect this film more than I would say I "love" it...but she did a truly masterful job on it. I just hate that the awards lineup pushed this off so early (much like they did with Best Picture which...what the fuck....) because it almost cheapens the enormity and importance of such a selection. To clarify, not only is Zhao the first woman of color to win this award, but only the second woman to even win the prize. Hopefully this is the start of more women getting their due in this category! Also, it was great to see Bong Joon-ho coming back to present with his wonderful translator from last year Sharon Choi!

Best Supporting Actress: Youn Yuh-jung, MINARI

-This was simply fantastic. Many doubted early on that they would even go for her, but she did it. Not only is this the first time a Korean actress has won an Oscar, but it is the first time a predominately Asian-language performance has won...and she is only the SECOND actress of Asian descent to win an Oscar. The first was Miyoshi Umeki way back in 1958 for Sayonara, a performance that was in English. Much like Olivia Colman's speech back in 2019, I hope the internet makes Youn go viral for this delightful speech in which she championed all of her nominees and then ended with saying she was only up there because she got "lucky". She was up there because she was easily the best!

Best Picture: NOMADLAND

-As I stated, I am not a passionate supporter of the film. The win is fine, though. I felt almost pretty equally about most of the nominees save for Trial of the Chicago 7 and Mank. With this season of wins, Nomadland became the first film since the seasons of 12 Years a Slave and Argo to truly sweep through the season without any real significant competition.

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, NOMADLAND

-I love Frances McDormand because she's a damn good actress who doesn't care about the trappings of Hollywood. However, I can't deny that it is a little bit sad to see her win a THIRD Oscar for acting (and she just won an Oscar for producing Nomadland right before which now gives her four wins overall). I really wanted Carey Mulligan to pull this off but they were also still willing to vote for a white actress for a third time as opposed to giving a Black actress an Oscar, which has only occurred ONCE in the Academy's history. In the end, it should be about the performance and while I am not saying that McDormand was bad, I just didn't see this performance as an undeniable selection. At least her speech was short and to the point...she was ready to leave for the night!

Best Actor: Anthony Hopkins, THE FATHER 

-My semi-gutsy prediction paid off!! Having the ceremony end with this moment and with Hopkins not taking part in the event in any way, it was truly a bleak feeling as it seemed poised to be set up as the coronation of Chadwick Boseman. Still though, this was a case where I have to commend the Academy for this selection. Hopkins is an actor who doesn't care about awards and doesn't do any type of serious campaigning unless its talking about the film with his colleagues or doing Q&As with other actors. He doesn't like to suck up to anyone and he finds award shows boring...and he isn't wrong for thinking that. Voters still chose to reward him because he was truly giving us a master class...and probably his greatest performance in his career. It sort of saddens me to think he is going to get pummeled on Twitter and all of social media when its very possible that most of those people didn't even see his film. So, if you preferred Boseman, that is fine...but you honestly can't deny that Hopkins was giving us brilliance.

________________________________

And with that, the Oscar season is over. It has been the longest season ever and it feels it. I feel tired and I am ready to move on from it. Eventually I will look more in depth as to what the big contenders are going to be for this year (quite a few that got postponed from 2020), but for now...I am going to go drink some tea and unwind....sigh...

"I HAVE SUCH DOUBTS!": Updates on Predictions for the 93rd Oscars

The whole concept of the Oscars is certainly frustrating as they can be so overtly political...but every now and then, they just so happen to make a decision that is simply the right thing. Even then, art is subjective. Not everyone is going to agree on a winner (although last year, I would say Parasite had the most overwhelming passion I've seen a film have) and you also have to factor in how it isn't necessarily fair to compare different kinds of films and performances to another. 

Still though, I find myself oddly fascinated by the process and yet I am pretty much sucked in as most people won't even be watching or even know what the films are this year.

I already posted my predictions but there are a couple of major categories where I am started to wonder what is going to happen because I could see them going multiple ways. I am going to devote more time to the categories that are a bigger mess, but I will give a quick rundown:

I think Best Supporting Actor is the biggest acting lock of the night, and it will go to Daniel Kaluuya for Judas & The Black Messiah. Anyone else winning would be a major shock but I do want to state that a shocking Paul Raci upset would be thrilling. Kaluuya is fantastic though and more than worthy of this award even though it is an example of category fraud.

Best Supporting Actress seems very poised to go to Minari's Youn Yuh-jung and I would say that she is practically a lock as well. It is a performance that has a lot of passion and, in my opinion, she is easily the best choice. It also serves as a great way for the Academy to vote for the film as they often love to at least give one of the major contenders an award.

Best Director may be the biggest lock of them all, however. Even if Nomadland loses Best Picture (which I will be coming back to later), Zhao is taking it. Anyone else winning would be one of the biggest upsets ever as she has not only won every major award that she could, but she swept through all of the regional critics awards (save for a small few) in such a manner that no director has ever done. 

So now, that brings me to the categories that give me some pause or concern:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: 

With Nomadland and The Father being ineligble at WGA, that left Borat Subsequent Moviefilm the path to take that win but I highly doubt that would even happen at the Oscars. Its improvised comedic approach plus the fact that it didn't get a Best Picture nomination is more than enough to show it doesn't have a real shot. It has been 22 years since a film won in this category without having a Best Picture nomination but that film was Gods &Monsters, which had more of a critical and Oscar pedigree. 

Anything other than Nomadland or The Father winning will be a shock. A lot of people suspect that Nomadland will win based on its massive support and it would be clean sweep of those top 3 much like Parasite and Birdman did. My main issue is that the film isn't exactly a "script-centric" movie. It has some nice monologues but it doesn't really strike me as a movie where I marvel at the text. The Father, on the other hand, is a play turned into a movie that actually managed to make the film feel cinematic and not overly stagey. It has a more clever and verbose script that netted a win at BAFTA but could that have just been due to its European pedigree? 

Frankly, I could see either happening but I am still sticking with The Father. I also do feel like it is the most deserving.

_______________________

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: 

This one seems more set in stone but there is a potential nightmare scenario I see occurring here. 

Emerald Fennell's script for Promising Young Woman took the Critics Choice, WGA, and BAFTA awards. That is a pretty hefty haul but I keep thinking back to 2019 when The Favourite was expected to win (though that race had been more divided) and then the winner ended up being Green Book which forecasted its...ugh...win for Best Picture later that night. Green Book won the Globe for Screenplay that year while Aaron Sorkin won it this year for Trial of the Chicago 7. 

The one thing that gives me hope that Sorkin won't pull off a comeback victory here is that Green Book also had more support by winning the Comedy/Musical Globe for Best Picture and also the PGA Best Picture award....but I will return to Trial in a bit.

I am still predicting Fennell here but part of me worries about Sorkin coming from behind and he did have a rather solid amount of support in the anonymous voter ballots that got released over Fennell. These can often be misleading but they can also forecast some interesting close races.

_________________________

BEST ACTOR:

All season long, Chadwick Boseman has been gliding along and collecting the precursors needed to secure a posthumous Oscar victory...and then Anthony Hopkins won at BAFTA. Many, at first, chalked this up to him having a home turf advantage but the truth is that The Father was the last film among the contenders to be released and many were not able to truly see it until late February/early March. There just seemed to be a surge of support for Hopkins on social media and among the industry and then to top that all off, the anonymous voter ballots show Hopkins having a small lead over Boseman and multiple people saying "Oh, I suspect Boseman will win but I am voting for Hopkins".

On strictly a performance level, Hopkins deserves this...and Riz Ahmed also would be immensely deserving. I think there is a good chance that Hopkins could ride this late surge to a win...but I would not in the slightest be surprised if Boseman still wins. He still has a strong narrative and it isn't as if his performance is terrible.

I am going to go out on a slight limb and predict Hopkins. I could, however, see some people being upset about this selection although I am sure most of them probably wouldn't have even seen his performance. Hopkins is beloved as an actor though but his rather healthy lack of care for the awards circuit may unfairly paint him as ungrateful to those who may be on the Boseman train.

___________________________

BEST ACTRESS:

Now we come to the ultimate hot mess of categories....

To break it down for you:

-Andra Day won the Globe

-Carey Mulligan won CC

-Viola Davis won SAG

-Frances McDormand won BAFTA

I think its safe to say that Vanessa Kirby is out of the race even if you could consider the fact that crazy vote splitting could help her, but I really really do not see her pulling a Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock type of win.

I am still going with Carey Mulligan here even though she is by no means a sure thing. My reasoning for choosing here (aside from the fact that she is my favorite of the lineup) is that she is Oscar-less and in one of the films that performed the strongest among nominations: Picture, Director, Actress, Screenplay, Film Editing...all of these are crucial support nods. It is obvious she is the passionate fan favorite amongst Film Twitter and similar social media outlets but that doesn't translate to Oscar success. I do also feel she would've won BAFTA had they not snubbed her on the nomination jury so I do think she may gain support among the British vote and also the Aussie vote as she did win their equivalent of an Oscar. If she does win the Oscar, I suspect it will be by an extremely narrow margin. 

The fact that McDormand already has two Oscars and may very well win a third as a producer for Nomadland makes me think she won't benefit from that stat. She is also is one of those actresses that, despite her status, has a lot of detractors who find her to be too much of the same in her performances and in this case, she is very subtle in her portrayal which often goes against the type of performances Oscar voters go for. Also, much like Hopkins, she doesn't care about awards. She has even said she would rather younger performers benefit from that exposure. Despite all of this, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that a win could occur. If enough voters really loved Nomadland, I do think McDormand could coattail. I am just choosing to think that won't happen in the end.

Andra Day is in a very strange position as she won the Globe in a massive upset after many (including me) wrote her off. She then got a Critics Choice nomination (which she lost to Mulligan) and then got snubbed by SAG and BAFTA. Many chalked up the SAG snub as being related to her film's late breaking release which has hurt past contenders like Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh for Little Women and eventual Oscar winner Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk. However, her BAFTA snubbed seems more deliberate as she didn't even make the nomination shortlist of 15 actresses even though her film was shortlisted in a couple of tech categories. Statistically, it isn't easy for an actress to win for a film in which she is the sole nomination (look at Glenn Close two years ago despite her massive overdue narrative) and on top of that, her film has been received rather poorly. Day does very well in he first true film performance as Billie Holiday. She does her own singing and her acting is honestly quite remarkable in the end. It is normally the kind of performance that voters would eat up and they also have the chance to make history by rewarding only the second African-American for Best Actress. It just gives me pause due to the lack of other nominations/wins and also her film being so mixed.

In connection to the choice to reward a strong African-American actress, you have Viola Davis as well. She did win SAG which shows solid support but I also sort of suspected she'd win SAG even before the season truly began. She also has won 6 SAG Awards already...they love her...and I get it...I adore Viola Davis and think she is one of the best actresses working today and, frankly, of all time. However, she won SAG for The Help and then lost to Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, another transformative biopic performance that also just so happened to be rather poorly received as a whole. I don't doubt that Davis could pull it off here...but her performance, while very good, is a lot shorter than her fellow nominees. It doesn't feel like it holds the same weight and I can truly see an instance where Davis will get snubbed down the road for a far superior performance because they chose to give it to her here (she should've won in Lead for Fences but that's a whole other debate). I also think what is potentially detrimental to her chances is Chadwick Boseman still pulling off the win.

Statistically, it isn't as easy for both Leading Acting Oscars to go to two performers from the same film unless the film just so happens to be nominated for Best Picture...and the last time it happened was in 1998 when Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt both won for their work in the BP nominated As Good As It Gets. Meanwhile, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom got snubbed in two categories where many expected it to get recognized: Picture & Adapted Screenplay. The film is also wildly predicted to win awards for Costumes and Makeup/Hairstyling. So, a film winning 4 out of its 5 nominations when not having been nominated for Picture or Screenplay has never happened...and the only time I can think of when a film came close to such a stat was 1953's The Bad & The Beautiful which won 5 Oscars despite not being nominated for Best Picture or Best Director...and that film didn't win two shared Acting Oscars. I am not saying it can't happen this year but I just don't see it occurring personally. 

So after all of that, I am going with Mulligan but this is definitely going to be the most on-edge I've been awaiting to hear the results of an Oscar win for acting in years.

_______________________________

BEST PICTURE: 

This category is less chaotic in many ways than Actress but since it is the big final award, I saved the discussion for last.

Nomadland seems like the far-and-away winner here, but I can't help but be a little concerned about Trial of the Chicago 7. The only reason that I am so concerned is the preferential ballot which ends up favoring films that have more widespread support and by that, I mean films that get #2, #3, and #4 votes on a ballot. 

In the last few years, most of the films that were wildly expected to win Best Picture ended up losing to a film that didn't seem to have as strong of an awards haul. 

In 2015, Spotlight won the award despite only winning SAG Ensemble and the WGA prior while its biggest competiton, The Revenant and The Big Short, split a lot of the precursors prior.

In 2016, the support for La La Land seemed so overwhelming but there was also a sense of brewing backlash which then led it losing to Adapted Screenplay winner and Golden Globe-Drama winner Moonlight.

In 2017, a lot of the precursors were split between Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri & The Shape of Water but the winner ended up being the latter which was preferred by PGA and DGA.

In 2018, many suspected Roma would carry the day but the combo of Netflix bias and some bemoaning that film's slow moving pretentiousness led to Green Book, the PGA/Globe winner, to slip in.

And in 2019, Parasite had immense passion and went the same route as Spotlight and ended up sweeping the top 3 prizes (and in that case, I predicted it).

The truth is that no film has really won the right precursors to show a true threat...but I do think Trial is the film that could benefit in this scenario as it is the kind of white-bread fantasy film that older voters love. 

It also won the SAG Ensemble award which isn't always a key precursor but it can show wear tides might be turning in certain races just like it did with Parasite and Spotlight and even way back in 2006 with Crash. The only difference with those films is that they were all Screenplay contenders and won at WGA which Trial couldn't even achieve. 

If Trial manages to pull off that Screenplay victory along with its potential Editing win, I would be very worried about it winning Picture.

I just feel like in order to win Best Picture, a film needs to win either Director or Screenplay...it is very hard for a film to pull it off otherwise. 

People have brought up the support for movies like Minari, Judas, The Father, and Promising Young Woman that could benefit from this scenario. However, in the case of Promising Young Woman, I still think it has a lot of detractors and even if it does pull of Screenplay and Actress wins, I think it won't benefit from the preferential ballot.

The other 3 films I mentioned easily could but none of them have had the kind of precursor to show that the tides could go their way. If Nomadland does end up losing, I feel like its loss will be even more unprecedented than other recent unexpected losses.

I do often wonder if a film may finally win the top prize with only an acting win or even strictly Best Picture by itself. The only time the latter incident occurred was twice in the 1930s so obviously times are far different to really gauge that.

So I will stick with Nomadland but I do have to say I feel a little less confident about it than before.

____________________________________

CONCLUSION:

And what that, we now just have to wait for the results tonight. I will more than likely post my reactions tomorrow at some point so be on the lookout for the that.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!