One Category at a Time: Best Actress

Another year, another super competitive crunch for Best Actress nominations. Things were so tight this year it prompted Viola Davis to jump ship to the Supporting race, saw Amy Adams miss for a complex Best-Picture-headlining turn and Annette Bening get passed over for some of the best work of her career. And yet as tough as it's been to crack the Best Actress lineup these last few years, eventual winners have been easy to call.

SAG Winners

The SAG Awards added their say to the season last night, as I'm sure you saw.
I didn't so much watch the show as listen to it from the discomfort of my bathroom, while an underdone chicken & rice dish from Korean Grill House pulled a U-turn in my digestive tract.

Most of the guild's decisions require little commentary, more or less confirming front-runner status for Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis and Emma Stone.

It wasn't until the final two film categories of the night we got some fat to chew. While I wouldn't have called the wins for Denzel Washington and the cast of Hidden Figures full shockers, they do add enough of a wrinkle to keep things interesting, or at least raise some questions:

Review - La La Land

We all know the how the showbiz story goes: Boy and girl meet, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl's careers diverge. It's a sturdy formula that the movies have retooled and retold a million times, from the silent escapades of Show People to the melodramatic tumult of A Star is Born (all three of them, and counting) to the worldly post-modernism of Annie Hall to the silent escapades of The Artist – Funny how things come full circle.

Point being, if you want to play that old song again, you need to riff; Improvise; Make it special. Fortunately for hopeless romantics everywhere, 32 year old writer/director Damien Chazelle is indeed a special talent, who has now performed a spectacular riff on the 'Hollywood love story' in La La Land;
A dazzling musical ode to a city, to a genre, and to anyone who ever dared to dream large and love larger.

It was Chazelle's sizzling sophomore feature Whiplash that put him on the map two years ago, snagging a trio of Oscars and topping this critic's 'Best of 2014' list. So when it was announced that his next dream was to make an original movie musical – that rarest of beasts – I was on board. All pretense of objectivity aside, I probably loved this film before the ink was dry on the first draft of the screenplay.

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

For casual Oscar viewers, it's all about the acting categories. The chances to glimpse five famous faces squaring off against each other for a minute's worth of acting clips followed by a 45-second acceptance speech are often the only moments of excitement John Doe gets to experience over the course of a 3-hour telecast full of craftspeople he's never heard of and movies he's never seen.

But to those of us who actively follow the awards season in its entirety, the acting categories are usually the most boring of the night, whereby the winners are so firmly established before final ballots are even submitted that it hardly bears discussion.

Such is the case, as ever, in Best Supporting Actress, which has been dominated by one name and one name only since August! But even if the awards narrative feels stale and predictable by this point, at least we can find some satisfaction in the fact that the performance itself is actually quite an atypical Oscar winner, with the more "obvious" Oscar roles relegated to also-ran status.

Let's start with some of those "obvious" roles...

Review - Birdman

Ids, egos and superegos collide and combust (in a single take!) on stages as concrete as the Broadway theatre and as fantastical as the imaginings of a self-obsessed actor in Alejandro González Iňárritu's Birdman. As in the myth of Icarus, to which his wily script often alludes both visually and verbally, Iňárritu has high-flying ambitions for what is possibly his most personal film to date. But rather than crash and burn, his satiric slant on the artist's odyssey soars magnificently on its dark feathery wings.

Michael Keaton stars – in a performance that vies to redefine his career – as Riggan Thompson, a washed-up former movie star seeking respect and validation by directing and starring in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love on Broadway. He had once played a popular superhero (the eponymous Birdman) in a series of lucrative but disposable comic book blockbusters that brought him fame and fortune, but not artistic fulfillment.

Now, some twenty years after hanging up his dopey bird suit, he's risking so much more than just his money and reputation by mounting this prestigious production. The tenuous relationship with his recovering drug addict daughter (Emma Stone), his fragile sense of self, and even his grasp on reality hang in the balance while the pressure mounts.

Oscar Nominations! ZOMG!

First and foremost, here's the link: http://oscar.go.com/nominees (it's just easier than writing 'em all down).

Second, and more substantially, here are my reactions:

WHOA!WOW!HOLYSHIT!IDON'TBELIEVEIT!AREYOUKIDDINGME!

In a phase 1 as condensed and crazy as this, we could be forgiven for hoping the Academy would throw us a few surprises, and they certainly didn't disappoint. Best Picture was stuffed, boasting nine nominees. Seven of them I anticipated -- Argo, Django, Les Mis, Life of Pi, Lincoln, SLP, and ZDT -- but the two I didn't predict have made me a very happy man; Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour (along with the aforementioned Argo), represent the three best movies of the year in my opinion, and it's a thrill to see all of them up for the big prize. And I thought I wouldn't have any movies to root for!

Review - The Help

Capitalizing on a loll in enticing summer theater fare, The Help offers a swell counter-programming alternative to filmgoers tired of the deluge of loud blockbusters. It's clearly struck a chord with audiences, hurtling Rise of the Planet of the Apes in its second week of release. In the interest of seeing what all the fuss is about, I took it in today and rifled off a brief review.

Fresh-faced college graduate and aspiring writer Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns to her Mississippi hometown of Jackson and is spurred by the old-fashioned racist attitudes of her peers to compose an exposing series of interviews with the community's black housemaids. Of course, finding willing interviewees among the apprehensive help proves a challenge, but she eventually makes an ally in the at-first reluctant Aibileen (Viola Davis), and their boat-rocking project discreetly lifts off.

Review - Easy A

Easy A is a tickling high school comedy about how a clean-cut but invisible student (Emma Stone) embraces a volatile rumour about the loss of her virginity to attain the attention of her peers, only to realize that her new-found notoriety is more a curse than a blessing.

One of the challenges in watching Easy A is trying not to compare it to the movies of John Hughes. It's clear that screenwriter Bert Royal and director Will Gluck posses an unbridled fondness for Hughes' filmography, but they're only partially successful in emulating the man's youth-defining philosophies and style. Part of this may be due to the frequent and self-aware homages to so many 80's classics such Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and The Breakfast Club, that remove us from the experience of this movie, which is funny enough on its own. It need not allude so blatantly to its superior ancestors.

And the film really is funny enough on its own. If Easy A is a distant relative of the Brat Pack staples, then it's a less-distant relative of the more recent Mean Girls by virtue of its rapier wit and modern comedic sensibilities. Most of the credit should go to the cast, who put on a clinic of pitch perfect line delivery, with special mention to Emma Stone. On top of scoring consistent laughs with her casual zingers and appropriately dry facial expressions, she also manages to bring across her character's relative childishness. She acts like an adult, but is actually a little girl who isn't really ready to face the consequences of the monster she's created. Along with a score of bit players whose performances are right on target, Stone elevates the material to the point where we can enjoy it in spite of its flimsiness.

The flimsiness to which I refer includes a premise that holds little water, slightly cartoonish characterizations (such as crazy Christian fundamentalist and two bewilderingly liberal parents), and an ending that's a bit too tidy and indulgent. The film also passes over opportunities to make more sober commentary on the viral potency of gossip and the pitfalls of fame, instead reverting back to cracking wise whenever it comes close to a semi-serious moment. At least the wise-cracking succeeds in and of itself.

This is certainly not an Oscar movie. It's be terrific to see Stone nominated for such a tricky comic performance, but I suppose a Golden Globe nod will have to do.

**1/2 out of ****