Sunday Top Ten - Pet Peeves of the 2011-12 Oscar season

This little custom of mine has become a nice form of post-Oscar therapy for me. It's perfect for bringing some closure to the season and releasing the pressure valve on the season's many frustrations. You may note that I didn't include any of this year's big nomination snubs, and there were plenty to choose from: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for Art Direction, The Tree of Life for Visual Effects, Captain America for Original Song... but I came to terms with those a month ago, so it's more useful for me to unload my other awards season woes, some of which you might share, others you might disagree with. You'll have to keep reading to find out.

Oscar Post-mortem

Where to begin on last Sunday's Academy Awards?

Obviously The Artist was the big winner, taking five trophies including Best Picture, Director, Actor. Hugo matched that tally with five craft wins, while the dreadful Iron Lady won two (gak!), and the list of one-win wonders includes The Help, Beginners, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Muppets (becoming the first Muppet movie to win an Oscar! YAY!)

Surprises were few and far between, and those that we did get were decidedly unpleasant ones if you ask me. The biggest of said unpleasant surprises was no doubt Meryl Streep's victory in Best Actress, but don't let me give you the impression that I'm vindictive. I'm as big a fan of the lady as the next man. Year after year, Streep continues to solidify her claim as the greatest actress of her generation with consistently excellent performances, unfortunately often in films less-than-worthy of her gifts. If there's any living thespian deserving of three Academy Awards, it's her...

...but why did it have to come at the expense of Viola Davis? This was clearly her year, and hers was clearly the best performance of the five. Not to pontificate too hard on the Academy's (and Hollywood's) demographic tendencies, but when is she going to have an opportunity like this again? I wonder if this might be Oscar's most severe mistake in years.

CDG opts for W.E., Potter, Dragon Tattoo

Certainly didn't see this coming. The Costume Designers Guild bestowed their prize for Excellence in Period Film to Madonna's reviled W.E., only half of which is period, and the only Oscar nominee I haven't been considering as a viable winner. Figures. Well, congrats to Arianne Philips. Having been unable and unwilling to see the film, I can honestly say I have no comment.

Meanwhile, my hunch that Harry Potter would receive guild approval panned out, while the dark hued modern threads of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo took home the Contemporary award.

One Category at a Time: Film Editing

For ten consecutive years, the winner of the ACE Eddie has gone on to win the Academy Award for Film Editing, proving a reliable barometer for pundits. It's usually the ACE winner for Drama that shoulders the most Oscar clout, but this is a rare year in which the ACE winner for Comedy is an equally (or even more) viable contender on account of being the Best Picture frontrunner.

ACE winners clarify Best Film Editing race

Only one notable surprise at last night's American Cinema Editors awards. While The Artist predictably took home the Best Edited Feature prize in the Comedy/Musical category, and while Rango continued its precursor dominance in the Animated Feature category (I'd have liked to see Michael Kahn win that for Tintin), it was the subdued editing of The Descendants that beat out the Best Picture buzz of Hugo, flashier editing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and superior editing of Moneyball in the Drama category.

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

If you're no stranger to the blog you probably already know that Best Cinematography is always my favourite category at the Oscars. Not only because of my personal fascination with the craft, but because it always proves so devilishly tricky to predict. It's an area where the precursors tend to be deceptively offtrack, and ideologies on how the whole Academy votes shift from year to year. This year's slate (the only one I correctly predicted 5/5) houses five contenders which are equally plausible winners for completely different reasons. My rationales, accompanied by my favourite shot from each nominee, are outlined after the cut.

One Category at a Time: Actress

Before the SAG Awards dropped I was pretty conflicted in this category. Based on the distribution of precursor attention, it seemed that we had a tight three woman race for the Oscar, but now that the Actors have had their say, it looks like the frontrunner has a more comfortable margin. The Oscar lineup is mostly the same as SAG’s, except that Rooney Mara (one of the best performances of the year) slid in over Tilda Swinton (THE best performance of the year!). Oy vey. She really is the anti-Meryl Streep; consistently brilliant performances every year but rarely an Oscar nod to show for it. I suppose we should be thankful on her behalf that she has one for Michael Clayton, because she honestly doesn’t care about awards. Right on, Tilda.

Anyway, the nominees – all five of whom I predicted for nominations back in April!:

Art Directors Guild winners

Production Design in a Period Film: Hugo

Production Design in a Fantasy Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2

Production Design in a Contemporary Film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Glad to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo get its due in the Contemporary category for Donald Graham Burt's terrific sets, fending off Best Picture nominees The Descendants and Extremely Loud. The other two winners are pretty much expected, and might represent the best bets for Oscar's Art Direction trophy. I go back and forth on whether it's Harry Potter or The Artist that's next in line behind Hugo. It's probably a moot point anyway.

ADG, Annie preview

Not much to do nowadays but twiddle our thumbs waiting for February 26th, but at least some scattered guild announcements will keep us from nodding off to sleep.

The Art Directors Guild will have its say tonight, where I expect Oscar nominees Hugo and Harry Potter will come up big in the Period and Fantasy categories respectively. They seldom show much imagination in the Contemporary category, which usually goes to whatever nominee has the most Best Picture buzz. At that, I'll make my guess for The Descendants, even though it should be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by a country mile.

Meanwhile, the Annie Awards also land tonight. I'm not sure how they'll be distributed, but you can expect the feature film categories to be shared between Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots.

One Category at a Time: Sound Mixing

After an off year which only saw two nominees score duel Sound nominations, it was back to business as usual this year with four overlapping between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. They obviously don't call it Best Sound Mixing for mixing it up. It may seem a tad redundant after yesterday's rundown of similar Sound Editing nominees, but let's have a look at the playing field anyway.

One Category at a Time: Sound Editing

Some odd inclusions and exclusions in Sound Editing this year, in which I only correctly anticipated two of the five nominees. Pretty dismal performance on my part, but with such high-profile snubs, perhaps that's understandable. Among the slighted films are Super 8, which dominated the guild announcements with three nods from the MPSE. No room was made for animated efforts Tintin or Rango either. Ditto Mission: Impossible. But enough of that griping; let's examine those that did make the cut

Reactions to 84th Oscar nominations

It all went down this morning more or less as expected. Hugo and The Artist unsurprisingly led the field of 2011/12 nominees with 11 and 10 Oscar nominations respectively. The next closest were Moneyball and War Horse with six apiece, followed closely by The Descendants and Dragon Tattoo with five (although the latter was squeezed out of the Best Picture lineup).

The most notable of the few inconsequential surprises was the breadth of the Best Picture slate, which ended accommodating nine nominees. Apparently Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wasn't dead in the water after all; it was just extremely quiet and incredibly close to a Best Picture nomination. I thought I had dodged a bullet in not having to watch this critically derided film, but now I'll have to check it out. With only one other nomination under its belt (for sentimental favourite Max von Sydow, who could stealthily usurp Plummer's long overdue Oscar), one can't help but feel that this particular Best Picture nominee is out of place. This year's Blind Side? I'll hold off on a true opinion until I see it.

My Awards nominations: Actress

Not as packed as last year's stellar slate, but I still had some tough decisions to make Here are the five Leading Actresses who made the cut:

VIOLA DAVIS in The Help:

Davis' subdued expressiveness communicates a great deal of fear and sadness, but also a gradual self-realization and growing estem which gives the character her arc. Her exposition of backstory carefully seeps through even when it's not yet there on the page.

ROONEY MARA in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

Mara is gripping and magnetic as the misanthropic investigator who can dish it out as bad as she gets it, if not worse. The performance is mannered, distinctive, and ballsy. Mara embraces Salander's emotional maladjustment with alarming confidence, which is what makes her so fun to watch!

ELIZABETH OLSEN in Martha Marcy May Marlene:

Olsen is superbly ambiguous, every facial tick revealing unspoken anguish and uncertainty. Her internalization of an indoctrinated mind at war with itself informs her external struggle to reassimilate with her family and society, which feels painfully authentic as a result.

TILDA SWINTON in We Need to Talk About Kevin:

Swinton is becoming the anti-Meryl-Streep in that she's giving awards worthy performances every year that never seem to get awards attention. That'll hopefully change with this quietly controlled turn. She owns every moment with her subtle command of understated but deep-running emotion.

CHARLIZE THERON in Young Adult:

Theron's thorny, darkly comedic portrayal of an alcoholic, emotionally juvenille trash novelist teems with precise, bitchy mannerisms. She paints a caustic collage of depression, anxiety, and severe psychological immaturity; a woman (rather, girl?) drowning in her own bitterness.

Just missed: Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs, Stephanie Sigman in Miss Bala,
Meryl Streep in The Irion Lady, Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn

ACE Eddie nominees

Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic):
The Descendants, Kevin Tent, A.C.E.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Angus Wall, A.C.E. & Kirk Baxter, A.C.E.
Hugo, Thelma Schoonmaker, A.C.E.
Moneyball, Christopher Tellefsen, A.C.E.
War Horse, Michael Kahn, A.C.E.

War Horse very much needed this to keep its Best Picture hopes alive. Nice to see Tellefsen nominated for his precise work on Moneyball. He'd make a handsome winner, but alas, I fear this is headed the way of Dragon Tattoo.

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical):
The Artist, Anne-Sophie Bion & Michel Hazanavicius
Bridesmaids, William Kerr & Michael L. Sale
Midnight in Paris, Alisa Lepselter
My Week with Marilyn, Adam Recht
Young Adult, Dana E. Glauberman, A.C.E.

What!? No Beginners!? And in lieu of that they nominate My (Excruciatingly Long and Clumsily Paced) Week with Marilyn!? Oh, A.C.E. Bow your heads in shame. I'd say The Artist has this sewn up.

Best Edited Animated Feature Film:
The Adventures of Tintin, Michael Kahn, A.C.E.
Puss in Boots, Eric Dapkewicz
Rango, Craig Wood, A.C.E

Michael Kahn is easily the most deserving of this lot if you ask me, but that doesn't necessarily mean the animators branch will nominate the film. Puss in Boots might be emerging as Dreamworks' better bet over Kung Fu Panda 2.

Best Edited Documentary:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
, Joe Bini & Maya Hawke
Freedom Riders, Lewis Erskine & Aljernon Tunsil
George Harrison: Living in the Material World, David Tedeschi

None of these are on Oscar's shortlist so it's a moot point. But I must inquire as to where Senna is? I didn't think highly of the film itself but there's no denying it's an editors' piece if there ever was one.

My Awards nominations: Cinematography

My nominees for Cinematography are:

Drive (Newton Thomas Sigel):

L.A. is sleekly conveyed through Sigel's luminous photography; a mesmerizing display of soft lighting and focus to offset the brutality of the content.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Jeff Cronenweth):

The film may be an empty exercise in style, but such style! The green-saturated coloration fits the murky story nicely. Some experimental shots work well.

Midnight in Paris (Darius Khondji, Johanne Debas):

The midnight sequences are beautifully shot with warm, textured lighting, before jolting us back into Gil's painful present with the hard, bright light of day.

The Tree of Life (Emmanuel Lubezki):

Be it the indelible vastness of an otherworldly shore, or the minute delicacy of a floating butterfly, Lubezki's compositions are lush and hypnotic.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Seamus McGarvey):

McGarvey captures Eva's adhesive guilt through dozens of arresting (if not subtle) images symbolic of bloodstained hands with deep, cascading reds.

Just missed: The Artist, Bullhead, Hell and Back Again, Hugo, War Horse,
Miss Bala, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Martha Marcy May Marlene

DGA nominees

DGA nominees
Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Martin Scorsese for Hugo

Well, maybe Dragon Tattoo's citations from the PGA and WGA weren't flukes after all. Colour my a bit confused. Does the industry really love this movie that much, or is this perhaps residual love for Fincher given how the Social Network/King's Speech thing worked out last year? Just speculating here, but of course I'm biased, because I'm not nearly as big a fan of Tattoo as the guilds are.

More 2011 Reviews

Some more miniature reviews to add to the pile.

WGA nominees announced

We have to remember not to put too much stock into these nominees. Many screenplays in the hunt for Oscar recognition were not signatories of the WGA, thus were not eligible. Anyway, here they are:

Original Screenplay
50/50
Bridesmaids
Midnight in Paris Being the only viable Best Picture contender, I imagine this is the winner
Win Win
Young Adult

Obviously, The Artist, which was ineligible, is likely to replace one of these on the Oscar ballot. I say Bridesmaids is the weak link. The Academy and I may not always agree but they usually try to keep it classy. However, Young Adult may be a bit too acerbic and sour to win them over, but if any branch is willing to give Diablo her fair shake, it's the writers.

Adapted Screenplay
The Descendants Here's your winner... (sigh)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
Moneyball

The Adapted Screenplay situation looks fairly close to my predicted Oscar five. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy wasn't eligible, but I'd expect the Academy to prefer it to Dragon Tattoo. War Horse never was a writer's showcase, so it's still strong for a Best Picture nomination. But for the win? I don't know. A Screenplay nomination is uber important.

Documentary Screenplay
Better This World
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Nostalgia for the Light
Pina
Position Among the Stars
Senna Winner?

Disappointing that Project Nim didn't show up here. I thought it was quite well written. At any rate, Pina and If a Tree Falls are the only two nominees on the documentary branch's shortlist, and I seriously doubt Pina's chances anyway, so this doesn't help us much in predicting Best Documentary.

PGA nominees

All seven of my predicted Best Picture nominees showed up on the PGA's longlist, so that doesn't give us much to chew on. The three remaining PGA nominees are somewhat surprising. I'd have thought the populist nominee would be either Potter or Apes, but they opted for Bridesmaids instead. I'm tickled pink to see that The Ides of March got some love. Maybe its Oscar chances aren't dead in the water after all? As for Dragon Tattoo, it obviously survived its late opening, but I still doubt the Academy will go for it.

Best Picture
THE ARTIST, Producer: Thomas Langmann
BRIDESMAIDS, Producers: Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, Clayton Townsend
THE DESCENDANTS, Producers: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Producers: Ceán Chaffin, Scott Rudin
THE HELP, Producers: Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus, Brunson Green
HUGO, Producers: Graham King, Martin Scorsese
THE IDES OF MARCH, Producers: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Brian Oliver
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum
MONEYBALL, Producers: Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz, Brad Pitt
WAR HORSE, Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg

In animation, they opted for five instead of the expected three. I say Tintin is in the most vulnerable position, if only because its mo-cap format might sour traditional animators.

Best Animated Feature
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, Producers: Peter Jackson, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
CARS 2, Producer: Denise Ream
KUNG FU PANDA 2, Producer: Melissa Cobb
PUSS IN BOOTS, Producers: Joe M. Aguilar, Latifa Ouaou
RANGO, Producers: John B. Carls, Gore Verbinski

One Category at a Time: Best Cinematography

As soon as the Tree of Life trailer hit the Internet, Oscar pundits began proposing that this year's Best Cinematography award may be Emmanuel Lubezki's to lose. The shots featured in the trailer are indeed gorgeous - just the sort of thing they usually go for in this category. Lubezki should already have an Oscar for Children of Men. Can the four-time nominee finally collect his due? Or are we heading for a repeat of this past year's Best Cinematography disaster?

David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remains a question mark in many categories. His last two films have been nominated for their cinematography, but they were Academy-friendly Best Picture contenders. If The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can manage to impress AMPAS on the same level as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or The Social Network, Jeff Cronenweth may see his second nomination in as many years.

Stephan Goldblatt will bring life to the South of the 1960s in The Help. He's been nominated before for shooting a similar time and place in The Prince of Tides, and hopefully will be able to bring the same magic to this project. But The Help doesn't strike me as a typical nominee in this field (although it's hard to judge without having seen any footage). It'll probably need serious Best Picture heat to make it in here.

I like to assume that the always extraordinary two-time winner Robert Richardson only just missed a nomination this past year for his awesome work on Shutter Island, but he was probably further down the list due to the film's unpopularity. Perhaps Martin Scorsese's Hugo Cabret will be more to the Academy's liking. It'll surely have lots of wonderful sets and costumes to show off. Being one of the top DPs in the business with seven nods to his name, Richardson must always be considered a contender.

Another two-time winner, Janusz Kaminski, has a strong bid this year courtesy of Steven Spielberg's War Horse. Both of Kaminski's Oscars came for shooting Spielberg war pictures (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan). Come to think of it, all of Spielberg's Oscars came for those two movies as well. I'd say that's a pretty successful collaboration, and good reason to predict Kaminski will pick up his fifth career nomination.

Predicted five:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo Cabret
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Also consider: Coriolanus, Cowboys and Aliens, Harry Potter 7, Moneyball, Super 8, Water for Elephants.