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 Five Pet Peeves of the 2016-17 Awards Season

Alright, the time has come to move on from this craziness. A new year in cinema is upon us, with its own horrors and treasures to discover. But first, one final look back at the horrors and treasures from the recently concluded Oscar derby:

Top Five Pet Peeves of the 2016-17 Awards Season:

5. Back-ended release calendar

This gets me every year, but why are distributers so bent on waiting until the last minute? Nearly all of my essential viewing for the year had to be crammed into December, January and February, which is no way to consume movies. Spread them out, for God's sake! At least Moonlight had the good sense to begin its roll-out in October, and look how that turned out for them. Compare that with another marvelous little movie, 20th Century Women, that held off until freakin' January. You do the math.

No Words -- Should've Sent A Poet

March is the month to decompress, go enjoy some bad movies, and stop thinking about Oscar for a spell. It does even the hungriest awards enthusiast good to take one's mind off the madness. But none of this sabbatical comes before extensive analyses and rundowns of the season that was, so I'll be rolling out my thoughts sporadically as we creep out of winter and into a new movie year.

I normally devote an entire piece to dissecting my predictions, but why even bother this year? With so many categories defying the patterns on which most pundits have come to rely (especially in the crafts), I wound up with an unexpected and historic low of 13 (uck), and in what I foolishly assumed would be a bounceback from last year's lacklustre 16/24.

I can deliver my thoughts on how I reacted to those losses -- some of which provided me with the most satisfying moments of the night, the year, and possibly the decade so far -- at a later date. First I have to go out of order and address the elephant in the room.

You know what I'm talking about.

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...

Busy Guild Weekend: WGA, CAS, MPSE, MAHS

We're into the final stretch, and this long weekend saw a smattering of the remaining guilds announce their winners for the year (only the CDG is left).

The most contested of them would have to be the Writers Guild of America Awards, where the three presumed Best Picture heavyweights Moonlight, La La Land and Manchester by the Sea all squared off against each other for Best Original Screenplay. Moonlight won that distinction, giving me just a bit more comfort in sticking with it for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, although this gives us no further hints in the nail-biter between La La Land and Manchester for the Original Screenplay prize.

With both Moonlight and Lion absent from the guild's Best Adapted Screenplay category, Arrival was able to capitalize. What a wonderful surprise it would be if it could translate its Critics Choice and WGA cache into Oscar gold!

The prize for Documentary Screenplay went to Robert Kenner's Command and Control, which had been shortlisted for the Oscar but failed to make the final five.

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 Film Editing

Since the art of picture editing is so tricky to assess on face value, it can be equally tricky to predict how a large voting body like the Academy will assess it. The Oscar for Best Film Editing usually goes either to the Best Picture winner or probable runner-up, or occasionally something far from winning Best Picture but which obviously features the "most" editing. Over the last fifteen years, three precursor groups in particular have been informative: The BAFTA, the BFCA, and the ACE guild.

One Category at a Time: Best Director

Splits between Best Picture an Best Director have a weird arrhythmic history at the Oscars. They seem to crop up in bunches before to returning to long stretches when it never happens. We seem to be in the middle (or perhaps the end) of one such bunch, which has seen these two top categories go different ways in three of the last four years. Whether or not this is a blip on the radar or a more mainstaying result of the current Best Picture voting mathematics might require a few more years to suss out, but this year it appears that things will return to the status quo.

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.

Moonlight Wins USC Scripter, plus ADG Winners

Moonlight's Barry Jenkins and Tarrell Alvin McCraney won the USC Scripter Award last night, which honours the best page-to-screen adaptations of the year by giving prizes to both the screenwriter and the author of the original source material.

Oddly, the Academy still included McCraney in the Oscar nomination as well, but if you're willing to give McCraney story credit on this project (for writing a play that never got produced), doesn't that mean you're treating it like an original screenplay? I don't think too many people are going to complain about McCraney standing alongside Jenkins with an Oscar in hand two weeks from now, but I'm curious to hear where others stand on this question.

My Award Nominations: Editing

All five of these movies that I've chalked up as having the Best Editing of the year all have one thing in common: Excellent pacing. And yet I'm fascinated at how incredibly diverse their tempos are, some finding rhythm in languid relaxation, others in frenetic montage. Check them out below.

My Award Nominations: Director

Tomorrow the DGA will bestow its yearly honours for the year's best direction in television and film. Barring some kind of earth-shaking upset, we can expect to see Damien Chazelle and Garth Davis take home prizes for Best Director and Best First-Time Director respectively. Best Documentary Direction is a bit more up in the air, but I'm betting it'll be Ezra Edelman for O.J.

My own ballot for Best Director follows:

My Award Nominations: Supporting Actress

What a year for actresses in all roles, big or small. Even if you pulled Viola out and put her in an already crowded Best Actress race, you'd still have more than enough options to flesh out Best Supporting Actress. These are the five ladies I settled on, after much deliberation:

My Award Nominations: Cinematography

The best of 2016's photographic achievements basically came down to a six-horse race for me, and not so different from Oscar's final five. My 'just missed' selection still managed an Oscar nom, and I'm not complaining. I seriously considered allowing myself six Best Cinematography nominees this year, but rules are rules. My five finalists are:

My Award Nominations: Acting Ensemble

The Screen Actors Guild Awards are this weekend, and all eyes will be on the group's coveted Best Ensemble prize, as this is the biggest chance for Moonlight or Manchester (or possibly something else?) to gain momentum on La La Land, which of course is not up for this significant precursor. In light of that, I hereby announce my own preferences for the best acting rosters of 2016:

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: