Sunday Top Ten: Pet peeves and highlights of the 2013-14 Oscar season

The big show is coming up on being only a week old, but it feels like ages ago, so I think it's high time for me to finally put the season to bed. 2014 is now here, with its own slate of hotly anticipated Oscar hopefuls in the pipeline, and it's time to get to work on scoping out those, but not before capping off the awards derby that was with my annual list of highs and lows.

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

This category seems pretty up in the air if you ask me. With neither of the two strongest Best Picture nominees in contention here, it feels as though this prize could go a few different ways. A similar situation arose last year when Django Unchained, Amour, and Zero Dark Thirty all seemed to have an angle in this race because none of them had a hope of actually winning Best Picture (whose highest contenders were adaptations). I can also envision three of this year's nominees as potential winners, so let's start with the one I am picking (with trepidation) for the win.

Review - Blue Jasmine

Boasting an acrid, career-best star turn from Cate Blanchett, Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine is perfect late summer counter-programming for the discerning film goer; a cynically witted character study that proposes it's not the tragedies and crises (be they self-imposed or fateful) that define our lives, but our ability to put the past behind us and move on.

Jasmine (Blanchett) used to thrive on the vain luxury of her Manhattan high life. Constantly indulged by her wealthy businessman husband (Alec Baldwin), she blissfully turned a blind eye to his crooked dealings and extramarital affairs. We are reminded of this part of her life via frequent flashbacks, but presently, all the extravagant dining and dancing and diamonds and drinks have completely vanished from Jasmine's world. Well, except for the drinks.

Descendants rounds out good weekend with WGA win

It was a good couple of days for The Descendants, which took home an unexpected editing prize from the ACE and a less surprising USC Scripter award last night, and just this evening nabbed the Writers Guild of America's honour for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is likely on its way to the Oscar as well, and it bugs me to no end. Not to be too harsh, but lazy voice-over narration and tonal inconsistency aren't exactly qualities of a brilliant adaption. I had held out hope that the guild might opt for the dense thematic fibers of Moneyball, thus boosting its Oscar hopes, but no dice.

Meanwhile, Woody Allen collected another Original Screenplay award for Midnight in Paris to go along with his Critics Choice and Golden Globes awards. This comes to precisely nobody's surprise, especially with its chief competition for the Oscar, The Artist, out of the running on one of the guild's maddening technicalities. Here's hoping the momentum will carry over with the Academy.

As has become a trend this year, the guild's documentary category gives us absolutely no help for predicting the Oscar, as the Documentary Screenplay category went to the un-nominated Better This World. This is the first year I can remember when none of the Best Documentary nominees had a single guild win.

One Category at a Time: Director

The die has been cast in the Best Picture category for several months now, but it seems that every year pundits start pontificating the possibility of a Picture/Director split. Is it just boredom with the scent of inevitability?
Is it wishful thinking from the frontrunner's detractors?
Is it skepticism that a first-time nominee can win over more established, Oscarless filmmakers? Whatever the reason, every year some people seem to come up with some excuse to predict a split. But don't do it! Splits are rare and when they do occur there's no consistent rhyme or reason as to why.

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

I'm having a really tough time deciding how to feel about the slate of Best Original Screenplay nominees this year. On the one hand, there's nothing more gratifying than to see the two legitimately best screenplays of the year mentioned alongside each other. On the other hand, there's nothing more irritating than to see two uninspired screenplays squeeze out underrated gems like 50/50 and Young Adult in the one category where they could have earned some recognition. And then there's the Best Picture winner's token nomination for Writing. No strong feelings either which way about that one.

My Awards nominations: Original Screenplay

On the heels of the WGA's announcement, here are my five best Original Screenplays of 2011:

50/50 (Will Reiser):
That the story of a young man diagnosed with cancer could be treated as a comedy is something of a small feat. That the humour never strays into morbid territory is more impressive still. One of the most emotionally compelling aspects Reiser's screenplay is how it devotes balanced attention to Adam's family and friends.

Beginners (Mike Mills):
This gentle little drama about the generation-spanning challenge of finding happiness succeeds in great part due to Mills' thoughtful screenplay. It's beautifully restrained, employing a melancholy sense of humour when needed to lighten his film's understated but deep-running sadness.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin):
Durkin is clearly a talent to watch. His screenplay is an artful psychological study that unobtrusively guides the audience to their own understanding of what is dream and what is reality, what is paranoia and what is justified fear. The story does meander a bit, but it feels real that way.

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen):
Playing both cynic and sentimentalist, Allen presents us with a humourous and perplexing psychological love affair that draws us to an epiphany about the root of nostalgia and our human dissatisfaction. It is his freshest, most imaginative premise since The Purple Rose of Cairo.

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi):
A complex, layered story whose painful truths are universal ones. It delves deep into human conscience and exposes the dangerous inconsistencies between our personal moral codes, our responsibilities to model ethics for our children, and the emotional consequences of neglecting those responsibilities.

Just missed: The Artist, Rampart, The Tree of Life, Young Adult

Review - Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris opens, as one would expect from a filmmaker as nostalgic as Woody Allen, with a music montage starring the great city itself. And yet what we see is not quite the same city immortalized in art, song, and story from decades past. While landmarks such as Le Champs Elysees or The Eiffel Tower feature prominently, Allen carefully includes in each shot some peripheral reminders of how times have changed the City of Love; a scaffolding here, a chain-link fence there, tourists reading maps, the lights of congested traffic overpowering the old-fashioned streetlamps – all juxtaposed against a 1920s jazz standard on the soundtrack, recalling his 1979 masterpiece Manhattan.