Top Five Highlights of the 2016-17 Awards Season

I've vented my biggest frustrations, but the only proper way to put the season to rest is by celebrating those moments which made me most happy.

Top Five Highlights of the 2016-17 Awards Season:

5. Biopic curse broken

We were this close five years ago to having a winning lineup of actors who played four fictional characters, but then Meryl's imitation of Maggie Thatcher thwarted that plan by beating Viola Davis' ordinary hero Aibileen Clark in what we can only speculate was a photo finish. How fitting it then is that Viola is now part of the first winners' circle to feature no real life roles since the class of '97. Chalk it up if you must to a year that was a bit leaner on biopics than usual, but it's still refreshing to see four thespians clutching Oscars for playing the kinds of 'ordinary people' that Viola so passionately celebrated in every acceptance speech this season.

Top Twenty Movies of 2016, Part 2 (#10-1)

And then there were ten. I've tried my best not to squawk about it too much over the course of the year, but I stand by the opinion that 2016 was not a vintage year for film. I do, however, think it may be the year wherein the importance of film (and our cultural sphere, in general) was clearer than ever.

Many might dismiss the pageantry of awards seasons and the minutia of 'Top Ten' lists as utterly frivolous in a year with so much noisy social and political unrest, with much larger (and disheartening) things happening outside the cinema bubble. But such tumultuous times are when we should cherish the movies even more.

The right movie at the right time can have tremendous power; It can soothe the vexed mind with magical escapism, it can educate by giving exposure to unseen people or issues, and it can provide connection to worlds we may never have known we could connect with. These ten movies do all that and then some. Congratulations to them, especially the top five, which represent my personal nominations for Best Picture of 2016.

One Category at a Time: Best Visual Effects

The age-old rule that Best Picture nominees never lose Best Visual Effects to movies not nominated for the Academy's top prize was bucked last year when three effects-driven Best Picture nominees (plus Star Wars) apparently split the vote and allowed the subtle supporting CG of Ex Machina to sneak up the middle for the biggest shocker this category has ever seen. At least that's one theory.

The point is, I don't think I'll be able to trust my own predictions in this category ever again. Even with a stone cold frontrunner in this category, I suppose anything could happen, but let's start by assuming conventional wisdom prevails...

One Category at a Time: Best Animated Feature

The Academy's animation branch saw a record number of submissions this year for Best Animated Feature consideration, which makes it a tad surprising that the final five were so easy to predict, and that the race for the win has been such a non-contest for so many months.

My Award Nominations: Animated Feature

I know, I know, only four nominees seems super lazy in a year which saw record submissions for the Oscar, but I promise if I eventually catch up with other 2016 toons that I like well enough I shall retroactively add them to the ballot.

VES Loves 'The Jungle Book'

To no one's surprise, Disney's "live-action" Jungle Book remake was the toast of the Visual Effects Society's annual awards, taking the group's top prize for Effects in a Photoreal Feature in addition to four other awards.

Oscar nominees Deepwater Horizon and Kubo and the Two Strings won their respective categories for Supporting Effects and Effects in an Animated Feature. Oddly, Kubo didn't win any of the other feature animation categories, which is unusual for a group that has rarely spread the wealth like this in the past.

Rogue One, which had been nominated in six categories (more than any other project), was shut out. Ouch.

Feature film winners after the cut.

My Award Nominations: Costume Design

This might be 2016's strongest craft category if you ask me. So many projects positively dripping with sartorial taste, leaving us with an embarrassment of well-tailored riches. Choosing five Best Costume Design nominees was tough, but choosing a winner is going to be my biggest challenge.

My Award Nominations: Visual Effects

Tomorrow the VES will bestow a bunch of hardware on The Jungle Book (or so I presume), but there was a ton of other impressive work done out there worthy of Best Visual Effects consideration. And I have to hand it to the Academy's vfx branch too: This year, they got it exactly right.
Here are my top five:

Annie Award Winners

I didn't even realize that the ANNIEs were happening this weekend. I guess you lose track of these things when the Oscar race for Best Animated Feature seems like such a done deal. ASIFA-Hollywood did little to sway my prediction by handing their top prize (among many others) to Zootopia, but they spread some wealth to Moana and Kubo. They even handed prizes to three of the five Oscar nominees for Animated Short, making that category even tougher to gauge.

List of movie winners after the cut:

Oscar Noms 2016-17

Today has been too busy for me to provide any kind of in-depth response to the announcement of 2016's Oscar nominees, but here's an oversimplified rundown of The Good and The Bad (we'll hold off on The Ugly since most of these nominees are beauts). I'll have time to analyze each of the 24 races when "One Category at a Time" returns in a few weeks.

Until then, some off-the-top reactions:

THE GOOD

My Award Nominations: Production Design

It'll be hard for the Academy's designers branch to come up with a bad nominee for Best Production Design this year, even if it doesn't match very closely with my own ballot (outlined after the cut). There's just so much good work out there.

FYC: My Nomination Wish List as Oscar Polls Open

Ballots were mailed today to the Academy's 7000-some-odd voting members,
so now is the natural time for me and Oscar bloggers everywhere to deliver our impassioned last-minute "For Your Consideration" pleas on behalf of the underrated and overlooked of the awards season thus far.

Mind you, I don't circulate in any circles of influence on such matters, but that shouldn't stop any of us from professing what potential goodies we'd luuuuuv to unwrap on nomination morning (our Christmas, y'know). AMPAS could do a lot worse than to at least give these longshots an honest chance:

Actors

While the depiction of Chiron in Moonlight is undoubtedly a cumulative piece between three actors, it's Trevante Rhodes' iteration that has critics most frustrated for being unable to gain any attention outside a bevy of Best Ensemble citations. True, there doesn't seem to be much room for Rhodes in a Best Supporting Actor conversation that's been utterly dominated by costar Mahershala Ali, but why not take advantage of a thin year and place him the category where he belongs: Best Actor. The same logic should be extended to Dev Patel in Lion, screen time be damned. Who's going to argue that the characters these men play aren't the leads of their respective films?

'Manchester', 'Moonlight' and 'La La Land' Lead Early Critics Awards

It has begun. Awards season is "officially" underway after what has been a busy seven days of early -- and I mean ridiculously, unnecessarily early -- precursor citations. The main takeaway: In a studio year as lack-lustre as 2016 was, it looks like critically acclaimed indies will be leading the race, namely Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea and Damien Chazelle's La La Land, while some sneak-peek twitter reactions to Scorsese's recently screened Silence paint it as a major last-minute lurker that could crash the party.

The National Board of Review got the ball rolling last Tuesday, handing Manchester four prizes including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Moonlight trailed with a pair of wins for Jenkins' direction and Naomie Harris' incredible performance.

The New York Film Critics Circle followed up two days after with three prizes apiece for both Manchester and Moonlight, but at the eleventh hour voted in favour of La La Land as Best Film (not an unprecedented move for that group).

That same day, La La Land went on to dominate the Critics Choice nominations with 12. Again, Moonlight had a prominent showing with 10, Manchester with 7 (Full list of nominees will appear at the end of the post with some quick takes).

The LA Film Critics Association rounded out the week by naming Moonlight the best of the year just this afternoon. The film also won Best Director, Supporting Actor and Cinematography. La La Land only earned a single prize from the west coast crew (for music), but was runner-up in five other categories, making it the most represented title in the group's day of announcements. Hmmm... were they afraid giving it multiple wins would smack of homerim?

Review - Kubo and the Two Strings

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not a return to full reviews for me, I'm afraid. Just an exercise to shake some of the rust off. It'll be back to capsules for awards season movies.

In a bustling village square, in some unnamed era of pre-Imperial Japan, a boy wearing an eye-patch and a baggy samurai robe drops a pile of paper on the ground and strums a power chord on his shamisen. As though by instinct, the crowd turns, silences, and gathers 'round with barely-contained excitement.
“If you must blink, do it now,” instructs Kubo (for that is his name), literally commanding the attention of his audience.

As he plucks the strings and taps harmonic on his instrument, his paper springs to life, folding itself into intricate figurines that run, jump, fly and do pantomimed battle with each other, acting out the drama as Kubo narrates a tale of adventure and heroism for the delighted onlookers.

We are (shrewdly) given no explanation of this sorcery, and honestly, we're too bedazzled to care. Just like the throng of villagers rapt by Kubo's paper players, when we sit down to a Laika feature we are being treated to the most elaborate puppet show ever imaginable. Or at least until Laika – the stop-motion animation studio behind this thrilling illusion – imagines a way to make it more yet elaborate for their next trick.

Is It That Time Already?

Has it really been four months since I've posted something? Yikes. Time to scrape the lime deposits off my knuckles and start typing again.

You must excuse my silence this past summer. For once it had nothing to do with professional obligations (those will take their toll soon enough), and everything to with having little to say in regards to the summer movie scene.

Let's face it: This was a lousy summer at the movies.