Oscars Post-Mortem: The Winners

The movies have been gilded and I've had my say – in concentrated tweets of rage or elation, at least. But now with the clearer eyes of a 4-hours night's sleep, I can start poring over the minutia of the now expired Oscar season.

I'll begin my post-mortem purge with a basic rundown of the winners, uncoloured by my yo-yo-ing feelings on the show itself (more on that in time). I need to allow the heat of the moment to subside before truly evaluating my thoughts on who was victorious and who should have been.

On the whole, I'd have to call it a fairly satisfying night, though not from a predictive standpoint. I was steeling myself for a face-plant this year, and with so much divergence among the major guilds, you could hardly blame my uncertainty. It bore itself out with a rather dismal 16/24; My poorest showing since 2011.

But I can hardly complain about such poor fortune when it's delivered in the form of Spotlight's nail-biting triumph in Best Picture, its refinement and intelligence ultimately besting the ostentatious hollowness of The Revenant and the misjudged gimmickry of The Big Short. For much of the season (ever since the PGA) I had never felt so disengaged in the outcome of the Academy's top category, but now I can't recall ever being this excited by it.

MPSE tie keeps Sound Editing Oscar race tight

As though it weren't already tough enough to predict the sound categories for tonight, the Motion Picture Sound Editors went and split their top honour (Feature FX/Foley) between the two presumed Oscar frontrunners for Best Sound Editing; The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road. I think this very neatly epitomizes just how closely the craft categories are going to be contested between these two movies, whether in the sound categories or design categories or editing or cinematography or effects. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out 10 hours from now.

In other (happy) news, Love & Mercy, Inside Out and Son of Saul also received Golden Reel Awards last night for their terrific sound work, even though Oscar sadly didn't take notice. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Bridge of Spies took one apiece as well. Lots of wealth spread by the MPSE.

Best Sound Editing: Feature English Language – FX/Foley (TIE)
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD & THE REVENANT

Top 20 of 2015 continued (Top Ten)

And so I arrive at that time of year when I have to suck it up and commit to a top ten, although it's been a bit harder in the past than it was this year. That's not to comment on the relative quality of the class of 2015 to any other year. I think it was a very fine year indeed, just one with less position shifting than usual. Subsequent viewings of certain titles merely galvanized their place on this list, with little depreciation (or significant appreciation) in value. We'll see if the years allow any of them to rise to the top.

The only oscillating I ended up doing came down to my top two. Imperfect, arguable masterpieces both -- you could also say the same of #3 and #4 -- who each sat in my #1 spot for lengthy stretches throughout the year; A testament to their staying power. At the end of the day, I had to go with the one that moved me most at first blush. Even once multiple revisitations have softened its novelty, that intense initial response is a hard feeling to forget.

But all ten of these deserve gold stars. They have given voice to the voiceless, kept us on the edge of our seats in moments of silence and bombast alike, horrified us with brutal truths, and made human emotion beautifully tangible. Without further ado, my Top Ten Movies of 2015:

My Award Nominations: Director

My final official nominee announcement this year is Best Director. Rather than similarly highlighting just my five Best Picture nominees, I'll be publishing my top 20 pics of the year in two lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. But for now, the five helmers whose storytelling most impressed me in 2015:

The Revenant and Mad Max stilling burning up the artisan guilds

The Cinema Audio Society and the Makeup and Hair Stylists Guild announced their best of the year last night, and unsurprisingly it was The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road (respectively) that came away as the big winners, solidifying their grasps on those correlative Oscar categories.

Mind you, these are still far from sure things, and the biggest competition these two movies face in Best Sound Mixing and Best Makeup and Hair are... each other.

My Awards: Animated Feature

I'm nearing the end of my personal nominations, and today I post my picks for the specialty categories of Foreign, Documentary and Animated Features. Inevitably, there's a fair bit of overlap with AMPAS, as I never get around to catching much more than what's up for the Oscar in these niche arenas.
So, you know, subject to change and all that.

Here are my top options for Best Animated Feature:

My Award Nominations: Original Score

I'm checking off the music categories today, starting with Best Original Score. Read on to see (and hear) which soundtracks I dug the most from 2015's cinematic drop.

My Award Nominations: Editing

My roster of personal nominees continues growing this weekend with the visual post-production categories and music.

It's one of those years when I wish I could include about seven or eight nominees for Best Editing. It pained me to make some of these cuts (heehee), but I like the final five I've wound up with:

Inside Out dominates Annie Awards

While all eyes were on the DGA last night, ASIFA-Hollywood held its annual Annie Awards. It was a great night for Pixar Studios, which scooped every single eligible category, mostly for Inside Out (quelle surprise), although The Good Dinosaur was tossed one very deserving consolation win for its visual effects.

As a nice change, the organization added a category for Independent Feature Animation. Is it a ghetto category? Sure. But small, scarcely distributed animated films would never stand a chance against widely seen studio fare. I'm delighted to see Ale Abreu's wonderful Boy and the World took this prize, and hope that it helps ensure the continued success of international GKIDS pickups in future awards seasons.

Equally delightful was the decision to give Best Animated Short to Don Hertzfedlt's brilliant World of Tomorrow. Fingers crossed for the Oscar!

Check out all the feature film winners after the cut.

Visual Effects Society winners

Not a lot of love spread at the VES honours last night, as Star Wars: The Force Awakens took four prizes (two for the Millenium Falcon chase alone) and The Revenant three (two for the bear sequence alone), leaving but a single consolatory win for presumed Oscar frontrunner Mad Max: Fury Road (for its sandstorm). Granted, the prominence of stunts and in-camera effects was always going to make Mad Max a tough sell with the guild, but this doesn't help.

I've been wondering if this is the year the Academy finally bucks the trend of always opting for a Best Picture nominee in this category given the chance. There are three of them up for the VFX Oscar after all (Mad Max, The Martian and The Revenant), and split allegiances could create a perfect storm for Star Wars to speed up through middle. This seems the natural place the recognize it for its record-breaking box office. As in many craft categories, I'm waiting for BAFTA to shed some light.

On the animated side of things, the VES finally, for the first time I can remember, didn't give all four prizes to the same movie. The Good Dinosaur won three (which, quite frankly, it deserved), but they threw a bone to Inside Out for the beautifully expressive character animation of Joy. Good call.

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature
“The Revenant”

One Category at a Time: Best Animated Feature

With a limited number of eligible entries being submitted each year, it's usually no hard task predicting the winner of Best Animated Feature. Last year's contest may have been a nebulous one due to the vacuum created by the shocking omission of The LEGO Movie, but strange circumstances of that ilk are the exception to the rule.

This year we're back to the status quo with a bona fide lock that's entirely deserving of that designation. But first, let's briefly peruse the other nominees, which represent a diverse cross-section of styles and stories. For these four, the true value is the nomination, which will hopefully draw new audiences that might otherwise have passed them by.

ACE winners and SAG Predix [UPDATE: Winners]

It's a busy weekend of guild activity. The American Cinema Editors handed out hardware last night to all the usual suspects: Amy and Inside Out received their due in the ghettoized doc and animation categories (but seriously, the editing in those two are good enough to be up for the Oscar), while the current fruntrunners for the Academy's editing prize, The Big Short and Mad Max: Fury Road, got to split the top honours due to comedy/drama distinctions. I'm leaning the way of The Big Short coming out on top in the end, but a BAFTA win for Mad Max may yet give me hope.

Both of those are also in the hunt for awards from the Screen Actors Guild tonight. Mad Max is sure to take the prize for Best Stunt Ensemble, but The Big Short has its eyes set on the more significant Best Ensemble category. If Spotlight is going to make a push back in the latter half of phase two, it must start here. If it loses, however, then it truly is a runaway train.

Three of the four individual acting categories feel locked into place, but for Best Supporting Actor due to the absence of presumed frontrunner Sylvester Stallone. If Mark Rylance or Christian Bale (the only SAG contenders nominated for the Oscar) win, then I think this is still a race to the finish.

My guesses:
Best Stunt Ensemble: Mad Max [WINNER: Mad Max] Because d'uh.
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale [WINNER: Idris Elba] So this ends up not affecting the Oscar race for the moment. Only the forthcoming BAFTA ceremony can shed any light on who Sly's greatest challenger really is.
Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander [WINNER: Alicia Vikander] Category fraud lives.
Best Leading Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio [WINNER: Leonardo DiCaprio] Cannot be stopped.
Best Leading Actress: Brie Larson [WINNER: Brie Larson] But will the Brits prefer her to Irish darling Saoirse Ronan?
Best Ensemble: The Big Short [WINNER: Spotlight] Thank God! This is enough to at least keep the Best Picture race interesting for another week. And even if this proves to be the only major prize that Spotlight claims over The Big Short, it's certainly the most satisfying and deserved prize to win.

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

With only a handful of weeks before the Oscars, now is the time for me to start formulating some predictions, and I'll start with what may be the surest lock of the year, Best Original Screenplay.

It's hard to imagine the prize going to anything but the former Best Picture frontrunner Spotlight. Though it's no longer favoured to win the top award after The Big Short's momentum shifting PGA win, Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer's dense journalistic procedural will surely be given its due here.

The nearest challenger -- a distant second despite being a perfectly respectable option -- is probably Matt Charman and the Coens' austere political quasi-thriller Bridge of Spies, being the only other Best Picture nominee in the field.

PGA Preview + My Award Nominations: Original Screenplay

Tonight all eyes will be on the Producers Guild of America, who have matched the Academy all six years of the expanded Best Picture era so far. Pundit logic suggests that Spotlight (my prediction) is the only movie that can survive the rigors of the preferential ballot, although I wouldn't put it past them to be sufficiently impressed by the gargantuan production that was The Revenant. Spotlight is a relatively small and very talkative movie after all; Not the type that usually wins Best Picture, but I'll try to remain optimistic.

While the producers' decision may ultimately end the perceived race for the Academy's highest honour, the race for my own awards is just getting started. Each weekend from now until the Oscars I'll be publishing my own list of personal preferences, starting with Best Original Screenplay.

Last minute FYCs, and thoughts on H8teful, Saul

Oscar nomination balloting closes this Friday, and even in a season as scattered as this, it feels like some highly deserving contenders are still getting the short end of the stick. Dig deep, Academy! Lack of consensus is only exciting if you get imaginative instead of voting in default mode. You could do a lot worse than giving this handful of long shots a good hard look:

Creed for Best Picture

I was actually saving this FYC for Sicario, but after a strong guild showing thus far, I figure I should send my wishes to a more needy but equally deserving contender. This is one of the most satisfying mainstream entertainments of the year, and for it to have been overlooked by the Globes, BFCA, and PGA (where I had harboured hope for it) is disappointing to say the least. But it's not too late for the Academy to do right!

Review - Inside Out

Leave it to Pixar – the animation haven that made us believe a rat could cook, and a house could fly, and a robot could fall in love – to make their latest brainchild... well, the brain of a child. Or more specifically, the feelings that make it tick.
As such, Inside Out is the studio's most ambitious concept to date, and also one of its greatest triumphs. This wonderful invention of cinema does more than make you laugh and cry (and it will make you do both); It blithely examines the human condition and what it finds is deceptively profound.

Riley Anderson (voiced by Kaitlyn Diaz) is a perfectly normal, perfectly happy 11-year-old girl. Her early life growing up in Minnesota may seem a bit ordinary on the outside, but her gray matter is anything but gray. Pixar represents it as a bubblegum-tinted world of pure imagination, overseen by the five core emotions – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger – that literally push her buttons from a command booth in her frontal lobe.

Giving voice to these tiny balls of neurological energy are a quintet of TV comedians who would seem almost too perfectly typecast in a lesser film. It's to their (and the animators') enormous credit that we never get distracted trying to picture the actor behind the caricature.

Early Oscar Predictions: Music

Obviously, it's impossible to judge a film's soundtrack before it's released, or even recorded which may be the case with many of this year's upcoming prospects. Thankfully for us obsessive prognosticators, the music branch has some old habits that can lay the foundation for early guesswork. For starters, they are notoriously insular, usually only choosing one or two first-time nominees per year in the Best Original Score category.

So who are some branch favourites with multiple irons in the fire this year?

Early Oscar Predictions: Animated Feature

Animated films are a special case in which the vast majority of the work is carried out in post. Years are often spent on the animation alone, and that's not even taking into account all the other elements such as effects, music and sound.

Walt Disney animation has dominated lately, winning back-to-back Best Animated Feature Oscars and two Best Animated Short Oscars in the last three years, but they have no feature in contention for 2015. With one of the big three American studios sitting it out, one would think that a DreamWorks entry should make the cut, but do Home or B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherwordly Operations really strike anyone as Oscar-worthy? I have my doubts.

Instead, it may be Disney's corporate acquisition Pixar that reclaims some of their lost lustre by double dipping, as for the first time ever they are cranking out two original films in the same year.

Early Oscar Predictions: Original Screenplay

Guess what, guys: It's officially the first day if Spring (though try telling that to the weather), and what better way to kick off the season of new life than by Springing forward into the new Oscar season with some early predictions!

Each Friday until the end of April, I'll be adding new categories to the sidebar with accompanying articles. In the spirit of the filmmaking process, the category order will be based on the order of steps of making a movie. "Loosely" based, at least. There's nothing about these early guesses that isn't completely loosey goosey anyway. But one thing we can assume with some degree of certainty is that most films start with a screenplay, so too will that be our starting point.

First off, even though some pundits have already read many of 2015's buzz-
worthy scripts, landing a nomination depends much more on how well the film is received overall than on the calibre of the writing. It makes spitballing these categories as much of a crapshoot as Best Picture, but there are some distant Best Original Screenplay contenders that certainly look promising enough on paper.