Top Five Highlights of 2014-15 Oscar Season

Yesterday I unloaded most irksome bugaboos of the 2014-15 awards season in a flurry of list-ified rage. Venting is healthy, right? But if there's one thing healthier, it's accentuating the positive. So as my final word (I swear!) on the Oscar derby that ended almost a week ago, here are my five favourite treasures of the season:

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 4: Telecast Highlights

I always record the Oscars so I can go back and rewatch it later the same week.

It's practically a necessity since I'm often so distracted with my prediction lists and my agony and ecstasy over the winners and losers and whatnot, that I miss some of the little moments that make this whole meat parade worthwhile!

There are still glimmers of fun left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as awards season. So allow me to parse through the 3+hour telecast and highlight the diamonds in the rough. And believe me, it was rough.

Things didn't start off so bad, though. Rather than force host Neil Patrick Harris to struggle through an opening monologue, they fed him one solid joke and then he was off to the races with his song-and-dance routine, "Moving Pictures".

This show got 99 problems, but graphic design ain't one!

Lovely sets and animated title cards.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 1: The Results

Happy New Year, everybody!

With the Oscars having come and gone (after three long hours at the end of three long months), it feels like 2014 is now officially over, and a new cinematic cycle has thankfully begun. But, since I, like most Oscar obsessives (or any kind of obsessive), have trouble letting go, it'll be about a week before I finally cease writing about 2014 in this space. Heed the lessons learned by Cheryl Strayed
(for whom they picked an awful Best Actress clip, btw); Closure takes time.
And so I must always allow myself several days to fully process the mad rush of euphoria and anguish that floods me before, during, and after this annual event.

My post-dated “live” blog of the Oscar telecast itself will arrive later this week, followed by my usual top ten of personal highs and lows of the 2014-15 awards season. But for today, its all about who won and who lost, and my immediate reactions to those, which I should document for posterity before my mind instinctively turns to 2015-16.

For starters, my own prediction results:

My Award Nominations: Best Actress

People are always moaning about this being a weak category. Every year it seems. I don't know about you, but I had a hard time deciding who to leave off this ballot. There are just as many worthy contenders missing the cut here as there are in the Best Actor race.

I'd love to shine my light on more of the under-recognized actresses of 2014, but these five (a handful of them already Oscar-nominated) were tops for me. Herewith, my Best Actress nominees:

One Category at a Time: Actress

Can we call a moratorium on Best Actress always being called a "weak" category? More often than not this kind of talk stems from people who are too lazy to search for talented leading ladies flying well below the mainstream radar, and who balk at the notion of an awards-caliber performance coming from a less-than-awards-caliber film.

Yet nearly every year the Academy comes up with five terrific nominees, and if it seems like the pre-nomination field is thinner than that of the leading men on the other side of the gender divide, it certainly speaks more to the systemic male dominance of the film industry than to the quality of the lesser seen -- though not necessarily fewer -- Oscar-worthy female performances.

In fact, having a category in which the multi-nominated Oscar heavyweights don't figure in as prominently as they would in, say, Best Actor, can be a blessing, as it forces audiences and Academy members alike to seek out titles that could use the exposure. If this crop of nominees can encourage a few more people to go see Wild or Two Days, One Night, then it aught to be celebrated rather than dismissed as "weak".

SAG Awards bolster 'Birdman' for Best Picture, but not Best Actor...

Well, if you don't count Best Stunt Ensemble (which went to the solid work in Unbroken where I had guessed The Hobbit), I aced my SAG predictions...

... and I'm not entirely happy about that.

First of all, let's not dwell on the supporting races or on Best Actress. Those categories are all but sealed up with Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons, and Julianne Moore all coming out on top in their respective categories.

Let's also not dwell on Birdman's well deserved victory in Best Ensemble. It may not have been my absolute first choice but its cast was excellent and makes a fine winner. If you want to theorize about how "easy" it is for a movie about ACTING to win with the Screen Actors Guild, go ahead, but this is a merited honour for an outstanding collective performance.

What I think we do need to talk about is Best Actor. I had an unsettling feeling that tonight would be the night when frontrunner Michael Keaton would finally be unseated by Eddie Redmayne for his much more awards-typical performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. I don't want to give the impression that I begrudge Redmayne any accolades he receives for his impressive physical transformation, but this is not the outcome I wanted to see.

Golden Globes live blog

6:44
The stars are arriving. The show will start in an hour and a bit. Pumped up!!!

(You can read lots of fashion snark on Twitter, including from me, but I'll keep this space clear until the show starts)

NBR pipes up for 'A Most Violent Year'

The significance of the National Board of Review is always debated when they chime in each December. Since it isn't really a critic group or an industry organization, they can sometimes make choices that will certainly not be reflected by the Academy two months down the road. Then again, sometimes those odd choices can serve as a nifty exposure boost for a low-profile contender (remember Jacky Weaver back in 2010?)

This year, it's J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year that could benefit the most from their singular taste, picking up mentions for stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in addition to the Best Film honour. As a small film just on the outside of the Best Picture bubble (kinda like Chandor's All Is Lost, ultimately an under-seen awards disappointment last year), this could do a real service to the film.

Sunday Top Ten - People who need an Oscar... IMMEDIATELY

It's been great to take a nice long break from any Oscar-related discussion. It's mostly a source of negative energy, but I think I've had a sufficient layoff from my awards bitterness to survive an Oscary list. I'll try to put together an Oscar list with a more positive theme one of these days, but this week I'm drawing attention to those poor individuals who, for no good reason, have been unfairly slighted by the Academy a few too many times.

It shouldn't bother me as much as it does. After all, the brilliant work of these people speaks for itself. A rational person shouldn't need the Academy to validate one's admiration of these artists by bestowing on them the title of Academy-Award-winner. But the Oscars are hardly rational themselves, and they certainly bring out the irrational in me. Here, in my irrational opinion, are the ten (or more) people, still working at the top of their game, who need an Oscar IMMEDIATELY.