Oscar Postmortem Pt. 3: Music

I guess I'm just lucky to fall into the minority of people who actually enjoy song and dance, because there was a lot of it for me to enjoy on Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony. Things got off to an unusual but memorable start with Seth MacFarlane's tongue-in-cheek but controversial “Boobs” song (which speaks more to Hollywood sexism than Seth MacFarlane sexism in my opinion), followed by the odd but inspired pairings of Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron, or Daniel Radcliffe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to join MacFarlane for some vintage swing and soft shoe. Seriously, when will we ever see that specific collection of actors performing together like that? He concludes with a brief, repurposed rendition of "Be Our Guest", always an old favourite:

What a boob!

Tatum and Charlize doing Fred and Ginger. Love the way they look tonight.

I have high hopes of seeing JGL tap into his inner song-and-dance man more often.

Seth's not a bad shoe shuffler himself.

One Category at a Time: Picture

For this annual post I traditionally take a rigidly statistical approach to narrowing down the Best Picture nominees. I simply look for the contenders with the three key nominations of Director, Editing, and Screenplay, and consider them the only ones truly in the running. But in a year as off-kilter as this one, it has become apparent that my usual approach is not adequate.

MPSE winners

The Motion Picture Sound Editors dropped their superlatives last night after the WGA, and it does little to clear up the picture in the Academy's corresponding category. Traditionally, it's the Sound Effects and Foley award that most closely represents the Best Sound Editing Oscar, so that may bode well for Skyfall, which won its fourth guild award here. But War Horse won that from the guild last year and then fell short to Hugo on the big night.

I'm still feeling Life of Pi for either one or both of the Sound awards, and since Les Mis looks good in Mixing, Sound Editing looks good for Pi. It won two of the MPSE's prizes, technically making it the "big" winner of the night.

Speaking of Les Mis, it predictably won the category for Music Editing in a Musical (inarguable, if you ask me), while Wreck-It Ralph recovered from a CAS loss to Brave with a victory in the Animated category. Both films had excellent Sound Designs, so I guess it's fair that they shared these two industry honours. It's a shame neither of them managed to impress AMPAS, though.

ACE, CAS both announce winners

Winners for the American Cinema Editors Awards went pretty much as expected. Oscar frontrunner William Goldenberg took home the award for Best Edited Dramatic Feature Film for Argo, while fellow Oscar nominees Jay Cassidy and Crispen Struthers won for Best Edited Comedy/Musical Feature Film for Silver Linings Playbook.

Malik Bendjelloul continued Searching for Sugar Man's dominance by winning the Documentary category, while Brave bested Oscar favourite Wreck-It Ralph in the Animated category. I'm starting to get some real vibes that Brave is the one that's gonna take Best Animated Feature next week. The marketing of Wreck-It Ralph may well have deterred many an Academy voter from even seeing it, whereas Pixar is a studio that usually garners respect from the industry. I may have to switch my prediction at the eleventh hour.

One Category at a Time: Makeup and Hairstyling

Like it was this time last year, I find myself running around in illogical circles trying to determine the winner of this year's Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Do I go with the most liked film, the coolly received but star-transforming biopic, or the fantasy with the “most” makeup?

One Category at a Time: Costume Design

As it is in Best Production Design, having the most noticeable design elements is an essential factor to winning Best Costume Design, which is why  suspect the likely winner of Best Production Design is also primed to win here too. These two categories do often go hand in hand. Splits between two films nominated in both categories (like the one we saw last year) don't happen as often as one film winning both.

Sifting through the Brits' tea leaves...

The British love their tea, wot? And the British Academy of Film and Television Arts have left all sorts of tea leaves for awards pundits to analyze from today's BAFTA Movie Awards. Even though BAFTA never matches up exactly with AMPAS, we might do well to heed their winners more closely this year, as they could bear more significance in the Oscar race than ever before.

Why is BAFTA significant? It's not so much the membership overlap between them and AMPAS (although that factor is appreciable), but a procedural change the organization made to mirror the Academy's voting practices. In the past, the entire BAFTA membership was invited to determine all the nominees, while only the specific chapters (or branches) could determine the final winners in their associated categories. This often lead to some baffling snubs (Tree of Life's Cinematography snub, anyone?) and peculiar winners (remember In Bruges winning Original Screenplay?).

One Category at a Time: Production Design

Production design is one of those fields in which the Academy almost always votes for “most” over “best”, even if it's at the expense of a film they clearly like more. The sets need to draw attention to themselves in order to take the gold here, and for my money, there's only one nominee in this group that looks like a winner, although it's far from a slam dunk:

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

The Supporting Actress slate doesn't seem has chock full of legit contenders as it has in years past. Not that any of these five performances are undeserving of some Oscar love, but four of them really don't hold a candle to the fifth, making this one of the night's slam dunk categories.

One Category at a Time: Original Song

After several years of embarrassment culminated in last year's laughable pair of Best Original Song nominees, the music branch finally got a clue and decided to abolish their asinine grading system, instead just letting the five songs with the most votes be the nominees. They also went the route of screener DVDs, allowing music branch members to evaluate clips of all eligible songs from the comfort of their own home.

The rule changes have instantly paid off with a respectable slate of tunes which we'll probably hear performed on Oscar night. That basically is what this category is for.

Sunday Top Ten: Top Ten of 2012

Thanks to all who emailed or posted in the comments their top ten lists. I read them with great interest. What fine tastes we all have! [back pat, back pat]

I never got into the habit of publishing an official top ten list when I started this blog. After putting so much work into my own awards each year, an additional list reiterating what I thought were the best films of the year seemed redundant. But I guess it's never too late to start. So here's a ranked, illustrated writeup of my ten favourite movies of the 2012.

Before getting into that, I have to highlight some honourable mentions:

There were some great documentaries this year, at the fore of which are The Queen of Versailles -- which humanizes the obscenely rich while shrewdly dismantling the American Dream -- and 5 Broken Cameras -- which brings a refreshingly personal touch to a complex political issue. 2012 was also a triumphant year for blockbuster franchises. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises gives his influential trilogy the stirring conclusion it deserves, while Sam Mendes' Skyfall respectfully reinvigorates old-hat material with a classy new treatment. Sundance indies refound their mojo after a bit of an off year in 2011. Ben Lewin's The Sessions reveals intimacy that extends beyond the physical with an endearing sense of playfulness and heart. And finally, even though it's not a feature, no article on the best filmmaking achievements of 2012 would be complete without a big sloppy kiss to John Kahrs' superb animated short Paperman. This is probably my biggest cinematic crush of the year. Its groundbreaking innovations in hybrid animation combined with its hopelessly romantic story took my breath away, leaving an impression equal to any feature I saw over the last 365 days.

It. Is. Perfect.

Money shot! This is my favourite image I saw on screen in 2012

And now, the top ten...

One Category at a Time: Sound Mixing

I feel like the sound categories are due for a split. For three years we've had double sound winners (a couple coming at the expense of superior work), adding evidence to the widely accepted notion that your average Academy member can't really tell the two disciplines of sound editing and sound mixing apart.

But every now and then Sound Mixing will go to something not nominated for Sound Editing, and this year is shaping up that way.

One Category at a Time: Actor

The Best Actor race this year was at its most interesting and competitive before the nominations. The big question was which of the six leading men in the hunt would be left off the Academy's ballot. It was never a question of who would end up winning the whole thing, as that has been obvious for a couple of months now.

My Award nominations: Sound Mixing

For the first time in a long time, I have no overlap between my Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing nominees. I guess that's testament to what a rich and diverse year it's been for sound design overall. I'm also pleased to see that three of my five are the frontrunners for the Oscar. Whoever wins it this year will have earned it.

SAG solidifies Argo as Best Picture frontrunner

I was going to liveblog tonight's SAG awards, but the local TV station that was supposed to carry it checked out for the first 40 minutes. By the time they corrected their error, I was too embittered to bother blogging, forced to watch an hour of TV categories before getting back around to the movie ones.

Things shook down mostly according to plan. Daniel Day-Lewis, Anne Hathaway, and Jennifer Lawrence strengthened their holds on Best Actor, Actress, and Supporting Actress respectively. Best Supporting Actor was predictably unpredictable, but it ended up going to Tommy Lee Jones, as likely an Oscar bet as any.

SAG Preview...

Everything has been going Argo's way so far this season, but it might face a road block at tonight's Screen Actors Guild Awards. Actors make up the largest portion of the Academy's voting membership, and while a Best Ensemble win is not out of the cards for Argo's excellent cast, it's not favoured to win anything from SAG.

Rather, the two films poised to get the biggest boost from tonight's proceeding are Argo's stiffest competition for the Best Picture Oscar: Silver Linings Playbook and Lincoln. Either of these movies is in good standing to win the Best Ensemble category (with a slight edge to SLP), and both are first in line to collect a Lead Acting award as well. They'll probably be duking it out in Best Supporting Actor, although that category could go a completely different direction.

The only other film that seems assured of a win is Les Miserables for Anne Hathaway's Oscar destined performance. Still, Sally Field continues to feel like a legitimate dark horse.

Here's hoping Skyfall's fearless daredevils can triumph in the Stunt Ensemble category.

My predictions after the cut.

My Award nominations: Original Song

Most years I find that I have to grasp at straws a bit in order to find five songs I like enough to justify nominating for Best Original Song. I've only got three down at the moment, but I may flesh it out before announcing my award winners:

UPDATE: So yeah, caught up with Ted recently, and very much dug the song. Nice catch by the Academy's music branch.

My Award nominations: Makeup and Hair

This is the only category this year in which none of my own nominees are up for the Oscar. Shame, shame, Makeup branch. Don't you understand that these three movies have the Best Makeup and Hair of the year?

My Award nominations: Acting Ensemble

Lots of great Ensembles this year, but for me, these five stood out:

My Award nominations: Supporting Actress

The field hasn't been as competitive as it has in past years, but I'm still quite satisfied with the five (well, four actually) actresses I settled on. My picks for Best Supporting Actress after the cut.