Oscars Post-mortem, Part 1: Fashions

Nothing snaps me out of an Oscar hangover quite like gawking at red carpet eye-candy, and there was lots of it going around on Sunday night. I'm no style a-fashion-iado, but I know what I like, so humour me while I drool over the hottest looks one last time before digging into the telecast itself...

My Award Nominations: Leading Actress

Yesterday I bit the bullet and committed to five nominees for Best Supporting Actress. Trying to do the same for the leading ladies was even more brutal. Forget five to ten Best Picture nominees... Let's apply that rule to Best Actress instead!

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?

'Manchester' Expands Just Before Awards Start Dropping

As November winds to a close we find ourselves on the eve of awards season, which is even earlier than usual this year thanks to the National Board of Review's ridiculously premature awards announcement slated for Tuesday. Many of the titles we'll be hearing over the course of the next month from regional critics groups and the like won't even be available to the public until the last possible week of 2016, with presumed heavyweights La La Land, Fences and Silence all bowing at Christmas (or much later depending on where you live). Might this allow the established love for the marvelous Moonlight to shine through when Oscar balloting starts? One can only hope.

But another modest indie that might challenge Barry Jenkins' humanist portrait for the lion's share of critical prizes is Kenneth Lonergan's much-buzzed-about Sundance hit Manchester by the Sea, which began its gradual expansion this weekend. Much has been written about how emotionally devastating the picture is, made all the more palpable by its chilly New England environs, but audiences may be surprised to discover it's practically a comedy of manners built upon grief. Lonergan is less interested in telling a tight, tidy story than he is in simply sitting us down with these characters and trusting us to find fascination in the varied -- at times amusing -- ways they respond to tragedy (which of course, is never tight and tidy anyway).

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

Review - True Grit

If it weren't for the end credits, one would never have guessed that True Grit had been made by the Coen brothers, for it has less of their cinematic idiosyncrasies than any film they've ever done. And maybe that was the best way to go about it.

Young Mattie Ross (wonderfully played by Hailee Steinfeld) has a blood vendetta against one Tom Chaney for gunning down her father. As determined as she is foolhardy, Mattie hires an acerbic U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to help her track down the felon and bring him to justice, with the aid of a Texas ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) who also wants to see Chaney hanged, but with more fiscal motivations in mind.

While I do bemoan the film's overall lack of personality (surprising for the famously quirky Coens), I'd be lying if I denied that I had a great time watching it. This is an old-fashioned Western from top to bottom, and depending on how much you enjoy the genre, that may suit you just fine. The tradition of a group of lovable characters (if somewhat rough around the edges) on a rollicking adventure always brought a smile to my face in the films of Budd Boedecker and John Ford, and the Coens' adaptation of the Charles Portis novel is similarly delightful, even if artistically unremarkable.

It is a lovingly made picture, with detailed period sets and costumes from Jess Gonchar and Mary Zophres, a fine score from Carter Burwell, and elegant photography from the one-and-only Roger Deakins.

Nominations are probably coming for some of the craftspeople mentioned above, and also one for Haille Steinfeld, but I don't buy that Supporting Actress bullshit the studio is plugging. The role is a leading role, plain and simple. If she does indeed earn a Supporting Actress nomination (as some of us have been predicting since spring), it'll be a simultaneous triumph and embarrassment. I'm also hesitant on the Best Picture nomination so many see coming. Maybe I'm wrong, but somehow I don't quite see the Academy going for this.

*** out of ****