One Category at a Time: Best Picture

In just over two days from now the 89th Academy Awards will be underway and everyone will be tuned in to see just how many Oscars La La Land can win on its triumphant march to Best Picture. Anyone predicting an upset in the top category at this point is just looking for attention. This is a done deal. Sure, you could point to its lack of a SAG Ensemble nod, a stamp which every Best Picture winner since Braveheart managed to attain en route to Oscar immortality, but why split hairs? We know why it didn't get that nod (it's far from an ensemble piece), and we know it doesn't matter. A happy ending is coming for the marvelous musical that hit the ground running this season and never looked back.

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 Adapted Screenplay

When AMPAS made its ruling to move Moonlight to Best Adapted Screenplay from its Original designation, it looked as though the way was paved for Barry Jenkins to claim at least one Oscar of his own for one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. But the situation is not so cut and dry...

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actor

Strangely enough, before the critics started announcing their winners back in December, this seemed like the most nebulous category. Now it's one of the most galvanized, with one name dominating the conversation (give or take an odd Golden Globes loss).

One Category at a Time: Best Original Score

Oscar watchers rejoiced this year when we saw a Best Original Score lineup populated almost entirely with first-time nominees. Usually the music branch has proved the most insular one in the Academy, only reserving one or two slots for fresh talent every year. Perhaps recent diversification initiatives are starting to take effect, though the branch clearly still has its favourites.

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actress

With all the major precursors and most regional critics groups lining up behind a single performance, this year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar seems to be pretty open-and-shut. But up to a point this season, that wasn't the case.

One Category at a Time: Best Cinematography

You know how much I love guys like Chivo and Deakins and Richardson,
but I gotta be honest: It's soooooooooooo refreshing to see some new faces in the Best Cinematography race. With only a single previous nomination between the five of them, this year's nominees represent a future full of promise for the art form, and one of them will be nabbing their first Oscar.

Wealth-Spreading BAFTA Keeps Season Interesting...

The Brits have been known to throw a monkey wrench into awards season every now and then, even when ultimately bowing to the status quo. Such is the case today as they handed the unquestionable Oscar frontrunner La La Land their Best Film prize, but it was far from the clean sweep which many pundits believe the Academy will bestow upon it. While its five-category haul is impressive, it ultimately lost more prizes than it won, putting thoughts of it matching the Oscar record (11 wins) into serious doubt. I'm especially skeptical of the design categories and Original Screenplay.

Other notable successes include Lion and Manchester by the Sea, each taking a pair. Lion feels like something that could surprise anywhere on Oscar night, especially in Adapted Screenplay. Manchester, on the other hand, feels like a surprise shutout just waiting to happen, with Denzel taking Best Actor from Affleck, and Chazelle Best Original Screenplay from Lonergan, but we shall see.

List of winners and some commentary to follow:

BEST FILM
La La Land - Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt

On to Oscar...

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
I, Daniel Blake - Ken Loach, Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty

Hardly a surprise, given its nomination in Best Film.

'La La Land' Dances Off with DGA, 'Lion' Roars at ASC

Damien Chazelle and his La La Land directorial team took top honours from the Directors Guild of America last night, all but squashing any remaining doubt as to who this year's Academy Award Best Picture winner is going to be in three weeks.

What we can still ponder in the meantime is the extent to which it will dominate the Oscars. While many still anticipate a clean sweep, there's more than enough reason to suspect it's showing weakness in some categories. For instance, will the BAFTAs (next Sunday) and WGA Awards (the Sunday after that) imply Best Original Screenplay going to something like Manchester by the Sea, or perhaps even Hell or High Water? Will the two design categories go to period or fantasy efforts as they tend to do?

Even Best Cinematography has been thrown slightly into question after the American Society of Cinematographer's bestowed their top honour upon Greig Fraser for his beautiful work Lion, a beloved player this season that voters might feel is due a consolatory win in at least one category.

For now, there's still plenty to keep my interest up.

My Award Nominations: Sound Mixing

Last week I gave the sound designers and editors their due, and today I look at those who best implemented their sounds into the acoustic machinery. As usual, there's often some overlap between my nominees for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing (though not nearly as much overlap as the Academy's), so two movies are double-dipping as the best sounding film of the year for me. Find out which two they are, plus three other terrifically mixed projects after the jump.

My Awards: Adapted Screenplay

Competitive field this year, especially with previously assumed originals Moonlight and Loving being shifted (correctly, I believe) to the race for Best Adapted Screenplay. Here are the scribes who I feel did the best job at turning their non-cinematic source material into beautiful moving pictures:

My Award Nominations: Original Score

As always, the evolving state of movie music continues to yield distinctive, unique work every single year. Which five Original Scores from 2016 did I decide on? Have a listen after the cut...

Directors Guild nominations

The DGA is the last industry group to speak up before tomorrow's Oscar ballot deadline, so it may be too late for it wield any influence, but its timing is possibly a very strong indicator of what our top tier Best Picture contenders are.

To nobody's surprise, Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) and Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) all assumed their preordained spots in the DGA lineup.

Joining them are Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) and -- in what I'd only characterize as a slight surprise -- Garth Davis for his first feature Lion. Davis might not have the name recognition of Gibson, Scorsese or any of the other contenders who failed to earn a nomination today, but he does have the pull of a damn good movie; One which may have been underestimated until this past week of guild success. Logic and stats suggest that one of these two gents will be replaced on the Oscar ballot for Best Director, but which one, and by whom?

Over in the documentary category, the DGA went with O.J.: Made in America, Weiner, I Am Not Your Negro, The Eagle Huntress and Life, Animated. All five are still in the running for Oscar.

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?

Thoughts on 'Lion' and Others [Updating...]

Within minutes of this posting the Critics' Choice Awards will start, the first televised awards show of the season. But since it's happening a month earlier than it normally does, it will hardly count as the most significant awards news of the upcoming week. Tomorrow will see the unveiling of the Golden Globe nominations, followed by SAG nominations on Wednesday.

As all this happens, more contenders begin creeping out of their limited release hidey holes. I caught up with one such contender this afternoon, The Weinstein Co.'s big hopeful Lion, which hasn't been that healthily represented in first half-dozen-or-so critics awards, but the Academy will rectify that.
The movie is pretty great.