Oscar Postmortem Pt. 4: Telecast Highlights

I always record the Oscars so I can go back and rewatch it later the same week.

It's practically a necessity since I'm often so distracted with my prediction lists and my agony and ecstasy over the winners and losers and whatnot, that I miss some of the little moments that make this whole meat parade worthwhile!

There are still glimmers of fun left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as awards season. So allow me to parse through the 3+hour telecast and highlight the diamonds in the rough. And believe me, it was rough.

Things didn't start off so bad, though. Rather than force host Neil Patrick Harris to struggle through an opening monologue, they fed him one solid joke and then he was off to the races with his song-and-dance routine, "Moving Pictures".

This show got 99 problems, but graphic design ain't one!

Lovely sets and animated title cards.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 1: The Results

Happy New Year, everybody!

With the Oscars having come and gone (after three long hours at the end of three long months), it feels like 2014 is now officially over, and a new cinematic cycle has thankfully begun. But, since I, like most Oscar obsessives (or any kind of obsessive), have trouble letting go, it'll be about a week before I finally cease writing about 2014 in this space. Heed the lessons learned by Cheryl Strayed
(for whom they picked an awful Best Actress clip, btw); Closure takes time.
And so I must always allow myself several days to fully process the mad rush of euphoria and anguish that floods me before, during, and after this annual event.

My post-dated “live” blog of the Oscar telecast itself will arrive later this week, followed by my usual top ten of personal highs and lows of the 2014-15 awards season. But for today, its all about who won and who lost, and my immediate reactions to those, which I should document for posterity before my mind instinctively turns to 2015-16.

For starters, my own prediction results:

One Category at a Time: Best Picture

Ordinarily, any self-respecting Academy Awards prognosticator (is there such a thing?) would be mightily embarrassed to guess Best Picture -- often the most predictable of categories -- incorrectly for two straight years.

But these last two years have been anything but ordinary.

A mere twelve months ago, many pundits, stunned by the unprecedented PGA tie between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave, were calling it arguably the closest race in Oscar history. Flash forward and we have another Oscar race that, while perhaps not the closest of all time, is certainly not at a lack of suspense when it comes to the top prize. It's a good thing.

Traditionally, I've broken down the Best Picture contest by analyzing which films have the requisite trifecta of nominations; Best Editing, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. This year, for reasons that will be discussed, I have to throw all that out the window. The preferential ballot has made it possible for a movie to win without being cited in all three of those categories. A film-by-film rundown seems more appropriate.

My Award Nominees: Best Picture

And the big category is at last unveiled. I don't know who these people are that say it was a weak year for cinema. It thought it was pretty great. Maybe not quite as many four-star knock-outs as last year, but more than your average year if you ask me.

These are the five that knocked me out. My five Best Picture nominees (plus the five runners-up that round out my top ten) are:

'Birdman' Closes Out Dominant Season with CDG Win

The last industry group to announce its winners in advance of Sunday night's Academy Awards was the Costume Designers Guild. They sprang for Oscar frontrunner Milena Canonero's stylized pre-war European threads from The Grand Budapest Hotel in period design, Colleen Atwood's theatrically informed fairytale garb from Into the Woods in fantasy design, and Albert Wolsky's character-serving vestments from Birdman in contemporary design (the movie's tenth and final guild victory of the season).

All three of these costumers are legends in their field, each having already been honoured by the CDG and won multiple Oscars before last night. And I honestly can't protest any of them winning again. Well done!

What to do about film editing and sound mixing?

I've already written my pieces about Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing, but it bears repeating:

These categories are really freakin' tough to predict. More so this year than usual.

Whiplash has the type of editing style that frequently wins Oscars, but have enough voters actually seen the scrappy Sundance alumnus that barely passed $10M at the box office? How many Academy members are buying the "12 years of footage" byline in Boyhood? American Sniper is certainly the wild card in the category and I may stick with it as my final prediction (hey, you need to allow yourself at least a few against-the-grain guesses), but it'll be a game time decision.

Best Sound Mixing is an equally frustrating three-way race. The driving musical rhythms of Whiplash certainly stand out, but it's a question of how many voters have seen it? Don't let J.K. Simmons' domination of Best Supporting Actor fool you; There are a ton of people who will vote for him without having seen his performance (dude's beloved). And will the sound really jump out at people on screener? Birdman has brilliant sound work that excels by not drawing attention to itself, but neither did the likes of Hugo or Slumdog Millionaire. And American Sniper looks strong in sound editing, so how does it makes sense not to predict it here, given how rare splits are?

All of this is simply to say: Don't be surprised if my prediction sidebar toggles back and forth on these categories over the next few days. I'm also having similar debates about Best Foreign Language Film, which I'll address tomorrow.

[UPDATE:] I'm also reneging on a couple of my initial thoughts in the shorts. All will be finalized by Sunday morning at the latest.

'Birdman' and 'Sniper' Both Win MPSE Awards

The Motion Picture Sound Editors spread the wealth at last night's Golden Reel Awards, bestowing trophies upon the Oscar-nominated sound editing teams of Birdman, American Sniper, Unbroken, among others not cited by the Academy's sound branch; Big Hero 6, Get On Up, The Liberator, and Warsaw Uprising.

American Sniper's victory came on its sole nomination, Best Sound Effects and Foley, commonly seen as the closest descriptor of the Oscar for sound editing.

I'm starting to smell a bit of a Hugo-v.-War-Horse situation brewing in the sound categories...

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

With the writing on the wall for Birdman as Best Picture and with all four acting races more or less calcified, the screenplay contests are now the biggest question marks of the major categories, and Best Original Screenplay may be the most perplexing of them.

Most years, with prestigious adaptations duking it out in their own ring, this award serves as a nifty consolation prize for a film that stands out for its uniqueness of premise or snazziness of dialogue, but is just slightly too left-of-centre to win in the top category. Even Best Picture winners Million Dollar Baby and The Artist were trumped in this arena by decidedly more imaginative efforts.

Chivo Wins Fourth ASC Award for 'Birdman'

The American Society of Cinematographers is a guild that knows the score. They've honoured Roger Deakins three times for some of his richest, most indelible work, and they've awarded Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki four times for Children of Men, The Tree of Life, Gravity, and now Birdman.

'Birdman' Complicates Sound Mixing Race with CAS Win

In a busy guild evening that also included the WGA and the MHG, The Cinema Audio Society announced their picks for the best mixed soundtracks of the year last night. While the former two guilds decided on winners that basically align with the current pundit logic of who will win the respective Oscar categories for writing and makeup (The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and possibly Guardians of the Galaxy), the CAS has thrown the Best Sound Mixing contest for a bit of a loop.

Birdman, with its artfully arranged sonic subtleties and crazy guild momentum, bested its louder competitors (and fellow Oscar nominees) American Sniper and Interstellar. Alejandro G. Inarritu's backstage dramedy is clearly the industry favourite overall, primed to claim the Best Picture Oscar in a week's time, but it would just make such an atypical winner in this field. Even Hugo had more conspicuous sound work.

'Guardians' & 'Budapest' Each Win Pair of MHG Awards in Tight Race for Oscar

Of the five feature film categories that the Makeup & Hairstylists Guild uses to distinguish the year's best achievements in their field, two apiece were won by Oscar nominees Guardians of the Galaxy and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I suppose this does little to clear up that super tight category, except perhaps to confirm that the transformative work in Foxcatcher, though effective, is a bit too subtle to trump those showier accomplishments.

Birdman, meanwhile, got a nifty tip of the hat for contemporary hairstyling. Lots of wigs and stage dos in that movie. Nice call, MHG.

One Category at a Time: Director

Most years, the Oscar for Best Director goes hand-in-hand with the Oscar for Best Picture. It stands to reason that if you really love a movie, you love the way it's directed, but sometimes a tight race between two films can result in enough of a discrepancy for the categories to split. What we have this season is not simply a tight race between two films, but between four or five films, meaning dozens of winner permutations are possible.

Point is, we could see a Picture/Director split for the third consecutive year, and even though the critics have made it clear who their preference is, that frontrunner is not necessarily as safe in the hands of the Academy.

One Category at a Time: Actor

It seems every year that Best Actor is, if not the most competitive Oscar category, then certainly the cruelest. Every season we see at least a half dozen nomination-worthy performances unable to make the final five. The whole Selma and #OscarsSoWhite controversy may have unwittingly made a thespian martyr of David Oyelowo for his tragic snub, but he's in good company with the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, Timothy Spall, Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Miles Teller, Matthew McConaughey, Andy Serkis, and the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman on the sidelines. There just isn't enough room.

It makes it particularly true that it's an honour just to be nominated for these five men, a couple of whom can relax and enjoy the show with the knowledge that they won't be winning. For those of us who follow this awards madness closely, however, it will be the one suspenseful acting award of the night, as we nervously wait to see if a beloved veteran can fend off the late advances of younger A-listers with more typical Oscar roles.

"Ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist, Oscar nominee."

BAFTA Clarifies Some Races, Obscures Others

So the EE British Academy of Film and Television Awards just wrapped up not long ago, but you won't get to watch the ceremony until later tonight because for all their fine cinematic tastes, the organization still hasn't evolved past their daft custom of broadcasting the show after all the winners are all public knowledge. Get with the times, BAFTA!

Anyway, I'm not really interested in the program so much as the results. Boyhood shrugged off last night's possibly crippling DGA loss to keep its Oscar hopes afloat. Also winning for the film were Patty Arquette (lock) and director Richard Linklater (not so much a lock).

Other big winners include The Grand Budapest Hotel with five, and The Theory of Everything and Whiplash with three. Oscar frontrunner Birdman took home only a single honour for Emmanuel Lubezki's virtuoso cinematography.

But what I was hoping this last major precursor of the season could really do is help illuminate some of the Academy's more unpredictable races. The British Academy is, after all, similar in membership size to AMPAS, and can therefore offer some clues on what sort of films will appeal to a large group in certain categories.

The Die is Cast: Inarritu wins DGA

The Directors Guild of America has spoken, naming Alejandro G. Innaritu's Birdman the best directed film of 2014, echoing the preference of both the Producers and Screen Actors Guilds.

That's the game, right? The only movie to collect that triumvirate of awards and not win Best Picture was Apollo 13. I suppose some could argue that with Oscar voting having just opened and with well over a week before the polls close, there's enough time for a backlash to take effect. However, backlash is always more of a media reaction to the awards race, and doesn't really reflect any shifting opinions within the industry. If Birdman somehow loses Best Picture, and it might, it'll be because some other option was always more popular within the Academy the whole time, not because voters suddenly decide they dislike it on account of its awards success thus far.

I, for one, can't complain about this. Birdman is one of the year's best, and what a refreshing change of pace it'll be to see a comedy win the Academy's top honour.

But that still doesn't quite settle things in Best Director...

My Award Nominations: Best Cinematography

This was a great year for this category. Many DPs exhibited rich and varied work that was not only visually dazzling, but saturated with thematic subtext. Whittling it down to ten was tough enough, but then choosing five after that was even more painful (Bradford Young, I'm so sorry!).

Here are my Best Cinematography nominees for 2014, each accompanied as usual with a frame that stood out to me as especially memorable:

VES Makes Right Call on Apes, Over-praises Big Hero 6

The Visual Effects Society declared its superlatives for the 2014 year in film last night, and the big victor was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, taking home three trophies including the top prize of Best Visual Effects in an Effects-Driven Film. Can't argue with that assessment, although the Academy might. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was similarly successful with the guild on 2012, only to be pipped by the prestige veneer of Hugo. Interstellar -- which won a single VES Award for its awesome Tesseract -- seems like it's in a position to pull off a similar coup.

"Apes at VES... strong. Apes at Academy... weak."

Other feature film winners include Birdman for supporting fx (easy call), and X-Men: Days of Future Past picking up two awards for the dazzling work in that kitchen sequence.

On the animated side of things, the group continued their maddening pattern of handing all four applicable categories to the same film, the beneficiary being
Big Hero 6. Look, it had really cool simulation effects animation and certainly deserved to win something (namely, that character animation category which it should have won at the ANNIES), but the work in How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Boxtrolls is equally impressive. Seriously, when was the last time the VES spread the wealth in these categories? I'm struggling to think of a year when there wasn't a sweeper.

Check out all the winners after the cut.

One Category at a Time: Sound Editing

For the first time in as long as I can remember, none of the Academy's nominees for Best Sound Editing are ones I would have nominated myself for my own personal ballot. But that's not to imply that the sound branch has dropped the ball. Quite the opposite, as the five they settled on are a most respectable lineup.

It speaks more to the diversity and high quality of the work from which to choose, and there's never a dearth of aural accomplishments in a town that cranks out bombastic blockbusters and sonic showcases with such exhausting regularity.

It's worth noting that the Academy at large will sometimes throw a bone to the 'loud' action movies in this category over Best Picture nominees (Skyfall,
The Dark Knight, and The Bourne Ultimatum are recent examples), although if they can have their cake and eat it too, they will; Best Picture nominees that are also 'loud' movies -- such as Gravity, Zero Dark Thirty, Inception or The Hurt Locker -- are hard to beat.

My Award Nominations: Best Actor

It seems that every year there are more brilliant leading male performances than five spots can possibly do justice to. Hey, Academy, forget Best Picture... THIS is the category you should expand!

I had no easy task settling on five for Best Actor. Ask me again tomorrow and there could be five new names entirely!

One Category at a Time: Sound Mixing

The sound categories are one arena where the Academy and I haven't always seen eye to eye -- or heard ear to ear, if you will. Only two of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Sound Mixing are represented on my own personal ballot, which is at least two more than I can say about our complete lack of overlap in Best Sound Editing (which I'll dig into on Thursday).

Still, even if I don't agree that whatever they deem to be the best is actually the best, they've never voted for a movie whose sound mix is outright bad. But this year there's a very real possibility of that happening.

What's that, Matt? Speak up!

I can't hear you over this intentionally muddled sound mix!