Sunday Top Ten: Pet Peeves of the 2011 Oscar Season

Here's an early installment of what I hope will be a successful feature on the site this year. Didn't make sense to wait 'til May before unleashing this one. Best get this therapeutic bout of bitching out of the way early, so I can move on to some more positive thinking!

#10: Late releases
Nominees released in 2010 were terribly back-ended this year. True, this is basically the case every year, but there were so many good ones I couldn't see until February, and it just made the awards-watching season all the more hectic.

#9: The King's Speech marketing
Oh, that Harvey Weinstein. This is the third season in a row his Best Picture pony has irked me by its mere inclusion in the lineup. Granted, The King's Speech is far better than Inglourious Basterds and The Reader, but the type of advertising campaign it got was way beneath it, from that lame, poorly photoshopped poster to this hammy trailer that "reminds us we're all human".

#8: Dull show
I was so miffed by the 2010 Oscarcast that both it and its producer Adam Shankman soared to the top of last year's list of seasonal pestilences. But that didn't give this year's show a free ticket, and indeed, producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer managed to disappoint. Some of the blame could be laid on the predictability of the winners, but lazy writing, poor hosting, and a severe lack of focus ensured that this year's Oscars were a snooze.

#7: Spousal snubs
In a year that saw some terrific tandem acting from performers playing husband and wife (or wife and wife), it was such a shame that only one half of each whole was represented by the nominations. Julianne Moore was sidelined all season long (save for the Golden Globes) in favour of her Kids Are All Right costar Annette Bening, Aaron Eckhart gained no traction whatsoever despite giving a gut-wrenching performance opposite Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, and Blue Valentine's Ryan Gosling was tragically left out of the Best Actor race while Michelle Williams eked into Best Actress. There's just not enough room for all the greatness.

#6: Lee Smith snub

There's one every year. Two years ago it was the rude exclusion of Bruce Springsteen's “The Wrestler” from Best Original Song, last year it was the unjustifiable omission of District 9 from Best Makeup, and this year it was the unfathomable snub by the editors branch of Lee Smith for arguably the finest film editing achievement of 2010, Inception. What can I say? It's nothing less than a complete and utter embarrassment.

#5: The Social Network vs The King's Speech, offline
I tell ya, it's kind of uncomfortable sitting down to Christmas dinner with your entire extended family and being the only person at the table who didn't LOVE The King's Speech. I liked it, sure, and yet nearly everyone I've talked about it with has accused me of damning it with faint praise, simply because I wasn't as over-the-moon as they were. Conversely, being the only person around the water cooler who thought The Social Network was the year's best movie made it an awfully lonely season out in the real world.

#4: The Social Network vs The King's Speech, online
Normally, I take comfort in the fact that if my regular human contacts don't share the same taste in cinema as me, at least there's an enormous community of film aficionados on the Internet with whom I can commiserate in The Social Network ultimately falling short to The King's Speech. And yet, what I found online was far uglier and more oppressive than the one-sided but polite discussions that vexed me offline. Depending on who you read, you may have avoided some of it, but the noise of Social Network fans cruelly and unfairly besmirching The King's Speech was still deafening.

#3: Melissa Leo

One of the season's biggest talking points by far. Some people found her crazy award show antics endearingly eccentric, and that's their right. Just like it's my right to find them vain and tacky. From her self-centred acceptance speeches to her gaudy personal ad campaign to her accidentally-on-purpose use of the dreaded F-word on Oscar's stage, to me, it all reeked of arrogance. And to be honest, I thought the performance was good – not Oscar-good. Costar Amy Adams would have made a much more deserving and welcome winner.

#2: Alice in Wonderland
Somebody shoot me in the head. I hated this movie as soon as it hit the 30-minute mark when I first saw it last March. I wrote a quick pan and prayed that I wouldn't have to write about it for the rest of the year. Apparently, that was too much to ask. Its overcooked, uncoordinated, domineering, in-your-face design elements had no problem coasting through the season by sheer “virtue” of their retina-battering conspicuousness, eventually scooping two Oscars (a number infinitely more than it deserved), reinforcing the theory that the Academy is almost always more impressed by quantity than they are by quality.

#1: Deakins still Oscarless
Months ago, when the trailer for True Grit came out, certain bloggers boldly predicted that this would finally be Roger Deakins' year. I wanted to believe them, and I was even convinced to the point of predicting it myself after nominations, but deep down I knew their premature predictions had jinxed it. So here's a prediction for you:

Roger Deakins will NEVER win an Academy Award.

If he can't get one for the most typical of movies to win Best Cinematography, what's it going to take? The worst part is, I really want to be happy for Wally Pfister, who himself was overdue, but not by nearly as many years as Deakins. I was unable to enjoy what should have been a reason to cheer. This year's Oscar ceremony was ultimately a night I wouldn't mind forgetting, and this early catastrophe certainly set the appropriate tone.

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

This category is the only interesting one in the major categories, with a shaky frontrunner primed for an upset by a couple of potential spoilers.

Said frontrunner is Melissa Leo in The Fighter. Not to take anything away from her hard-earned success this season, but I really don't see what makes her performance so special. She does a good job, but I can't say I'm as taken as everyone else appears to be. Having swept the Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG Award, the smart money's on her, but she feels very vulnerable. Her acceptance speeches always seem to come across as being a bit full of herself, and word that she's recently embarked upon her own personal FYC campaign may be the grain of sand that tips the scales in someone else's favour.

Someone like Hailee Steinfeld, whose terrific realization of Mattie Ross in True Grit is the best performance of the five. There's a lot of support for the film and the performance, and this may be the place the Academy recognizes it, if Deakins' cinematography doesn't come to fruition.

Or it could go to Amy Adams, who gives a superior performance to Melissa Leo's if you ask me, and who's at just the right point in her career to win an Oscar, but this strikes me as a less likely possibility, given how much support Melissa Leo is still pulling.

Helena Bonham Carter might (just barely might) shock us all if The King's Speech is really going to sweep, but probably not. As for Jackie Weaver, good for her! It's great to see unknowns get recognized for obscure films, even though you know they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Will win: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Runner-up: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Should win: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Should have been nominated: Lesley Manville, Another Year

SAG winners

Well, went a perfect 6/6 with my predictions, although that's hardly saying much given the incredibly predictable nature of the nominees this year... or any year, for that matter.

So obviously The King's Speech is the one to beat for Oscar's top honours, but the question is to what extent will it sweep? How many of its overly generous six craft nominations can it capitalize on? Art Direction, Costume Design, Score... probably. But there's such more deserving work to choose from in those categories. How many people honestly think Desplat's work is better than Zimmer's or Powell's or Reznor & Ross'? Will they actually go for Beaven's subtle threads over Atwood's "look-at-me" wardrobe? Is this just my own personal bias clouding my judgment? Or are there still cases to be made for the other nominees?

Too many questions. I hate all this uncertainty!

Anyway, the SAG winners, not that you need me to remind you.

Best Ensemble: The King's Speech Best Pic is a done deal.

Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech All hail the King.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan All hail the Swan Queen.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale , The Fighter Moving right along...

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter I'd say the Oscar is pretty safe now.

Best Stunt Ensemble: Inception Predictable, but well deserved.

SAG preview

I don't know if I'm gonna watch these tonight. It's an awfully long show and there are only five categories I give a damn about, and even saying that is a stretch.

We know who's going to win Best Actor, Actress, and Supporting Actor (and probably Stunt Ensemble), but Best Ensemble and Supporting Actress are still very much up in the air.

If Melissa Leo triumphs here as she did at the Globes and the Critics' Choice, it looks like the Oscar is hers. But if anyone other than her wins, I think that gives an edge in the race to Hailee Steinfeld, who could benefit from vote splitting between Leo and her Fighter costar Amy Adams (who actually gives the better performance).

Best Ensemble could go three ways as I see it. If The Social Network wins, then it jumps back into a dead heat with The King's Speech for Best Picture. The actors make up almost a third of the Academy membership, and a vote of confidence from them is a powerful advantage. If The King's Speech wins, then it adds more fuel to the fire. Or it could go to The Fighter, if they don't think awards for Bale and Leo is reward enough, and that throws a whole new monkey wrench into the works.

My Predictions:
Best Ensemble: The King's Speech
Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Best Stunt Ensemble: Incpetion

BAFTA nominations

With Oscar ballots already handed in I don't think these will have any affect on next Tuesday's nominations, but BAFTA always has some intriguing predictive qualities. For instance, the absence of supposed Supporting Actress frontrunner Melissa Leo in lieu of Miranda Richardson and Barbra Hershey (yay!) is of note. The strong showing for The King's Speech, which I imagine shall triumph here, may also indicate the The Social Network isn't out of the woods yet as far as Oscar goes.

Best Film
“Black Swan”
“Inception”
“The King’s Speech”
“The Social Network”
“True Grit”

Best British Film
“Another Year”
“Four Lions”
“The King’s Speech”
“Made In Dagenham”
“127 Hours”

The Social Network owns the Golden Globes!

The Social Network wins 4, The Kids Are All Right and The Fighter each take two.

Best Picture (Drama): The Social Network
Best Picture (Comedy or Musical): The Kids Are All Right
Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network
Best Actor (Drama): Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Actress (Drama): Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Actor (Comedy or Musical): Paul Giammatti, Barney's Version
Best Actress (Comedy or Musical): Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter Is the Oscar hers?
Best Screenplay: The Social Network
Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3
Best Foreign Language Film: In A Better World nice boost for this Oscar hopeful
Best Original Song: "You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me", Burlesque
Best Original Score: The Social Network

-Ricky Gervais wasn't funny at all. His jokes are so classless and unappealing. Fail.
-So The Social Network is clearly not just an early season fad. If the guilds confirm it has an industry favourite, then I'll have to finally put it in my #1 Best Picture slot.
-Does Melissa Leo have the Oscar wrapped up? Her precursor wins are lining up, but that acceptance speech was all kinds of arrogant. Will it hurt her chances?
-It's looking like "You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me" is primed to bring Dianne Warren her first Oscar after six (soon to be seven) nominations.

Review - The Fighter

I really wanted to like David O'Russell's The Fighter. Who wouldn't? An uplifting true story about boxer Micky Ward's triumphant comeback after years of being held back by his family; should be riveting stuff, and make no mistake, there's plenty to like about the film, but I ultimately found it to be a relatively underwhelming exercise in listless filmmaking.

Mark Wahlberg plays Ward, a struggling boxer trained by his crack-smoking half brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) and managed by his mother (Melissa Leo). But the under-confident Ward gets a shot in the arm when his new girlfriend (the quite terrific Amy Adams) spells out how his family has been more of a hindrance than a help, all of them more concerned with attaching themselves to Micky's potential glory.

The film has a lot going for it on paper, but an uneven pace and lack of structure subdue its strengths. The first half is more about the charismatic Eklund than it is Ward, removing focus from the central character. Not that Dicky Eklund isn't fascinating to watch, and indeed, Bale delivers an impressive portrait of addiction, but it does prevent us from really getting to know or care about Micky Ward. The stirring title bout at the film's finale is strong enough to leave a good taste in my mouth leaving the theatre, but it doesn't exactly undo the indifference I felt for the rest of it.

All that said, the recent bevy of Golden Globe and SAG nominations shows a clear base of support for the film that will probably translate to a number of Oscar nods: Picture, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress (probably two) at the least, with a possibility of Film Editing as well.

**1/2 out of ****