Just Under The Gun: Oscar Predictions 2013

      I’ve determined over time that no one who reads this site seems to care about the Oscars nearly as much as I do.

Well, I guess I’ve always known that. What I mean is, no one who reads this site cares about the Oscars within a million miles as much as I do. I'll bet a full half the people reading this article were not aware the Oscars were even happening tomorrow until I posted this. It's just one of the varying things I write on this site that interests me much more than it interests you, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But every year I write a long diatribe about each award, and then people come to the page and scan each section quickly, looking for a leg up to win their office pools. And those are the most interested people that I get.

Frankly, though, I write this site for my own entertainment anyway, so screw all y’all. But since I’d find it much more entertaining if I went out and got some Chinese food right now, I’ll make this quick. A prediction in each category, followed by a sentence or so.

I’m sort of blasé about the Oscars this year anyway. Not sure why I’m not more enthused – I’ve seen eight of the nine films nominated in Picture (and really liked seven of them), for once several of the big awards aren’t set in stone, and I’m one of the few people alive who thinks Seth McFarlane is a good choice for Oscar host. But I didn’t read any Oscar predictions this year, and I normally churn through those. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the telecast, I’m just usually a little giddier.

By the way, I’m definitely live-tweeting throughout the show, so be sure to either check that out or unfollow me, depending on your proclivities.

Let’s start with the technical awards:

Makeup and Hairstyling: It’s strange that this is a tough choice, but it’s a choice between Les Mis (a prestige film where the makeup department just rubbed dirt on the actors faces) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (where humans are covered in ridiculous dwarf makeup). I’m gonna say The Hobbit, though I acknowledge that it’s just because it wins the award for “Most Makeup” rather than “Best.

Costume Design: Anna Karenina. This is the sort of movie that’s designed to win these sorts of awards, since Joe Wright’s last two movies (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) both got nominations in this category. I don’t think either won though, so that may be a bad sign. Still, the Academy loves to give awards to people who keep getting nominated and not winning!

Original Song: “Skyfall” by Adele. Like it’s even a question. The Academy wouldn’t do Adele (or, as I like to call her, “Classy Taylor Swift”) like that. That girl’s been through enough.

Production Design: Anna Karenina. The film had all that cool interlocking staging (the whole movie is reconceived to take place inside a theater), and this is the award that honors that sort of thing. By rights, this should probably go to Les Misérables, but we never saw enough shots of the actual sets to determine if they were as good as they looked while out-of-focus behind people.

Sound Mixing: That is, the award for recording sound on the set. Les Misérables should win this handily, since – if you didn’t know – all the singing was recorded live.

Sound Editing: This is the award for “creation of sound effects,” and it’ll go to Life of Pi. Because it’s a great movie and it’s not going to win anything else.

Visual Effects: Life of Pi. Except for visual effects, I mean. Life of Pi is definitely going to win Best Visual Effects.

Film Editing: Argo. It’s probably going to win Best Picture, which means it’s probably going to win Film Editing. Most of the time, that’s just how it works. That said, it’s not a bad pick.

Original Score: I think Life of Pi wins, but I honestly don’t remember the score from any of the other films, except for from Lincoln, because I thought John Williams did such a lousy job with it. Actually, I have a vague recollection of liking the score in Skyfall, too. I think Thomas Newman did it, but I’m too lazy to check. Wait, no I’m not. Hang on… yes, it is Thomas Newman. Not that it matters. No one’s giving an Oscar to a Bond movie – unless, of course, Adele is coming up to accept the award in a floral dress, gushing in a posh British accent.

Okay, now that the dull techie stuff’s out of the way, let’s move on to the categories no one ever knows anything about.


Live Action Short Film: “Curfew.” It’s the only one I’d heard of. Normally I haven’t heard of any of them.

Documentary Short: “Innocente.” It’s the story of a homeless, undocumented teenager who’s determined to become an artist. How does that not win? It doesn’t even sound like a real movie. It sounds like something made up to win an imaginary Oscar. Here’s a link to the trailer. I think you’ll agree with me.

Animated Short Film: “Paperman.” Disney did a good job of promoting this across the web, and I know a lot of voters tend to vote on this without having seen the rest of the films (it isn’t like Documentary Feature, where voters have to prove they’ve seen all five films). Possible spoiler: “Adam and Dog,” a buzzy independent film that also released their entire short to the net last week. It’s a charming concept – how man and dog first became best friends, back at the beginning of time.

Foreign Language Film: Logic dictates that this has to go to Amour, since it’s also nominated in Best Picture and none of the other films are. But the voters who cast their ballots in this category – again, a smaller group than the overall Academy voters – can be contrarians. I’m going out on a limb and picking Chile’s No instead.

 
Documentary Feature: I’ve heard nothing but overwhelming adoration for Searching For Sugar Man. I’m gonna have to see this movie.

 
Animated Feature: This may be the only time I ever do, but I’m going against the Pixar movie. I don’t think Brave takes it. I know Frankenweenie has won a lot of awards, but I say that the Academy goes populist, and picks Wreck-It Ralph. The movie’s so good!

Original Screenplay: This is the tough one. I think Django Unchained isn’t going to win any other awards, so the Academy gives Quentin Tarantino this one. That said, I think both Moonrise Kingdom and Zero Dark Thirty are more impressive pieces of screenwriting. But unless Flight wins for some reason, I’m fine with whatever gets picked.

Adapted Screenplay: Gosh, Argo probably wins here, doesn’t it? It’s not an undeserving win if it does, but I’ve got to hand the award to Tony Kushner for Lincoln. That screenplay is a magnificent piece of historical fiction. I can’t even imagine the research it would’ve taken to make that thing.

Okay, on to the biggest – but least surprising – categories.

Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway. I don’t have to explain why. Everyone knows this is happening. Only Sally Field is even making the press rounds, trying to compete against her. And I don’t see that upset happening.

 
Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones has won everything up until now, so it seems likely he’ll win this. Though word is Robert De Niro is making the rounds, shilling for Silver Linings Playbook, and he never does that. I’d let that influence me, but I don’t think he’s all that impressive in Playbook. He’s good, sure, but not remarkably so.

Leading Actress: There’s a campaign for Emmanuelle Riva that goes something like “we should vote for her, because she’s old and might be dead soon.” Which is exactly the sort of voting nonsense you hear every year. An actress no one had heard of until two months ago, and now the Academy feels the need to show her more support than they’ve ever shown any of their own family members, because people are watching. Anyway, I’m picking Jennifer Lawrence, because people seem to want to avoid voting for Zero Dark Thirty in any way, so Jessica Chastain won’t win. Which makes me sad, because she’s so, so good in that movie.

Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis. I love Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s actually crazy, but in the best possible way. He’s a method actor who actually does become his role, as opposed to most Hollywood actors, who are just making idiots of themselves, wearing 17^th-century underwear for three months because they think it’ll help them get in character.

My favorite Day-Lewis story is from Lincoln is that he started writing notes to people on set, as Abraham Lincoln, in Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting. If they ever made a sequel (and they cannot, for obvious reasons), he’d probably have spent so much time in the character he’d be qualified to run for President. 

He wouldn’t, though, because he’d believe that he already served two terms back in the 1800’s.  

Director: Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. We haven’t given him one of these in a while, and the two best directed films didn’t land nominations for their director, for no apparent reason.

I know I’ve complained about this before, but this really is ridiculous. How hard was it for Michael Haneke to direct Amour, really? I know that there's something to be said for "coaxing great performances out of actors," but in his movies, actors are sitting in armchairs in well-lit libraries, talking to each other. There’s only so much directing that actually need to happen.

Best Picture: Argo. It’s won everything up until this point. Why shouldn’t it win this? And I don't mean that in a mean-spirited way, I really like Argo. It's just won everything, so odds on it wins this.

Sigh. I can't believe that's the shorter version of my Oscar predictions. Next year, I'm gonna give myself a 300-word limit and see what happens.

The Best of Television, 2012: Part 6: My 20 Favorite Shows of 2012

I tried to rank all these by my level of excitement to watch each show, not just my overall opinion of each show's quality. For example, "Mad Men" might have just finished its greatest season, but I didn't look forward to each episode the way I did with "Community."

Just missing the cut: "30 For 30", "Veep", and "Parenthood."

20.  Bent (NBC)

19.  The League (FX)

18.  Bob’s Burgers (FOX)

17.  Battleground (Hulu)

16.  The Good Wife (CBS)

15.  Archer (FX)

14.  Happy Endings (ABC)

13.  The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)

12.  Louie (FX)

11.  Key and Peele (Comedy Central)

10.  Girls (HBO)

9.    Awake (NBC)

8. 30 Rock (NBC)

7. Downton Abbey (PBS)

6. Parks and Recreation (NBC)

5. Mad Men (AMC)

4. New Girl (FOX)

3. Community (NBC)

2. Game of Thrones (HBO)

1. Sherlock (BBC)

 

The Best of Television, 2012: Part 5: - Sometimes Shows Get Worse

I’ll post my Top Twenty television shows immediately after this entry, but I noticed a theme as I was putting the list together, and couldn’t help but point it out. It seems three of my top ten shows, including both of the top two, are:

a. had their second season in 2012

b. were inarguably worse shows than they were the year before.

“Sherlock”, “Game Of Thrones”, and “Downton Abbey” all returned last year to great fanfare. Sometimes it takes a little while for these sorts of shows to catch on, but word had spread, DVDs were passed about, and Netflix accounts and free HBO trials were taken advantage of. Each of these shows had a significantly bump in viewers for their second season premieres than they’d had for their first season finales. And each show found themselves facing real backlash before they’d even reached midseason.

The degree in variance among the three shows ranged from “slightly disappointing” to “significantly worse.” BBC’s “Sherlock” was only mildly damaged, with two just-below-standard episodes whose weaknesses were forgotten by the time an appropriately nail-biting finale rolled.

“Game Of Thrones” was more deeply wounded, though much of that was to be expected. It had been lauded for its brave decision to follow the arcs of the novels it was based on and execute its main character at the end of Season One. TV writers were orgasmic. “It just shows you that anything can happen!” And, anything could; including the show predictably struggling to find cohesion without a central figure to hold things together. The show became so disjointed that entire weeks would pass by without us knowing what several of the major characters were up to, which is a rough strategy for a show built around a giant, interconnected narrative.

Still, faithfulness to a much-adored novel is a weakness I can easily forgive. Much more galling were the decisions Julian Fellowes made on “Downton Abbey.” Television pundits were shocked when people started showing up in droves to watch this decidedly sudsy turn-of-the-century drama (the show is up to a very un-PBS eleven million viewers per episode, almost three times what NBC is doing at the same time, and was the second-highest watched show on Super Bowl Sunday), which pretends to be about class struggle and social politics but is mostly about people in period costumes having unrequited romances. The class struggles and social politics only come into play if they can create roadblocks to those romances, so that the characters can stare longingly at each other at formal family dinners.

So what did Fellowes do in his second season? Crank the soap opera elements up so high the feathery charms of the series collapsed under the weight of desperate plot machinations. Matthew has disappeared! No, now he’s returned! Now he’s gone again! Now he’s paralyzed! He’ll never walk again – until two episodes from now! Just in time for his fiancé to die! Just down the hall from where that other servant died last episode! But there’s no time to focus on that! A soldier with a burned face has appeared from nowhere! And he has amnesia! Is he someone from Edith’s past? Who knows? He’ll disappear at the end of the episode so that some other pile of nonsense can happen!

I didn’t make any of that up.

I mean, viewers understood that this show was all nonsense, a sugary concoction that had little tie to the era it was recalling. The mistake is to not let the audience pretend they don’t realize this, and letting amnesiac burn victims wander in and out of plotlines does tend to spoil the effect. 

So why are all three shows in the top ten? Who knows? I guess I’m as fickle as the breeze.

Or maybe it’s that while the shows took a hit, they didn’t lose whatever quality it was I loved most about them. Or all three shows were so good that they could stand to take a quality hit. Or I just really like British actors. I’m not sure.

I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’ve had lots of shows that I’ve battled with decisions that they’ve made or directions that they’ve taken. Doesn’t bother me.

The problem is when I stop caring.

The Best of Television, 2012: Part 4: - The Trouble With Television (A Counterpoint)

There are people who love a good “comments” section (sick, depraved people, the way I see it). I’m not one of them. Not on any terms. Not in a well-run discussion forum. Not the “abandon all hope, those who read below” bit underneath YouTube videos. Not even the “fun to read for the insanity of it” of a Reddit thread gone awry.

It’s not even the people loudly shouting their opinions in all caps. It’s the people who work terrifically hard to create a quasi-intellectual response to the article or subject.* These are people who consider themselves significantly superior to the people typing in all caps, but when you read the comments, you realize they see things in terms just as black-and-white. Their comments are no more open-minded than those banging angrily away at their keyboards (people writing in all caps may be typing normally, but reading it always sounds like they’re just slamming their fists up and down on their laptop).

*It’s the same level of self-absorption as getting a blog (which will be referred to from this point forward as the correct level of self-absorption), but then deciding “it’s not enough for my opinions to be available. I must take my brilliance to the people.”

Take television. The vast majority of people who talk about this subject online see it as a massive divide: there is brilliant, smart television (“Breaking Bad”, “Mad Men”, “Arrested Development”) and there is dumb television made for idiots (“Two and a Half Men”, “Big Bang Theory,” “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”). And the tragedy of our age is that everyone wants to watch the latter, and no one wants to watch the former, and so our society swirls down the drain.

That’s nonsense. Television exists on a very narrow spectrum. As much as television has improved as an art form in the past thirty years (and the divide between “Mad Men” and “My Mother The Car” is quite remarkable), it’s still the same thing. It’s still generic stories, run through executives and past corporate sponsors, filmed in a rush, then delivered to you in weekly doses interrupted by advertisements. Television, as a medium, has changed drastically only by the measure in which television can change without no longer being itself.

I know this is starting to sound a little bit sophomore-in-college Intro To Media Studies paper (“Sheep! You are all sheep! Things would be so much better if I was in charge!”) But when we talk about television, it usually sounds like we think the gap between “Two and a Half Men” and “30 Rock” is the gap between the Piss-Christ and the Mona Lisa, when deep down we know it’s really the gap between McDonald’s and Chick-Fil-A.*

*I should be clear that I am speaking only in terms of “quality of chicken products,” not “ideological sentiments.”

Television is fast food, and it’s bad for us, and we know this. But we make the point that “Mad Men” is ‘perhaps the greatest television drama ever created.’ So it becomes “appointment television,” because you have to make a commitment to quality art. “Community” is ‘the funniest show no one’s watching.” “Scandal” is ‘trashy television done brilliantly.’ Even “The Bachelor” is ‘a reflection of our society’s appetites and obsessions.”  Our entertainment becomes more than a flickering black box that fills up our evening hours, it becomes cultural literacy, because addiction is always justifiable if you squint at it long enough.

Alex Pappademas did a mesmerizing piece last week on fired “Community” creator Dan Harmon, who is referred to as a “genius” in almost every article written about him (unless they refer to him as a “tortured genius”), including that one. And Harmon goes on a tirade at some point about this very subject. “That there's a difference between any of this s--- is the greatest joke that television ever told,” he says. “I mean, as the creator of ‘Community’, I'm telling you: It's all garbage.”

He’s not wrong. The difference between the best television and the worst television we’re ever going to see is a small divide, created only by our inability to look elsewhere for comparison.

Of course, I’m still going to watch all of it. I may be past the point of pretention about all of it, but I’ll still watch TV shows because I like TV shows, and I always have. I could spend my time learning the history of fresco painting, or how to create my own subsistence farm, or military naval maneuvers, but I don’t want to, and I don’t see the need to pretend that I ever would.

Television grows in importance in our society, but it’ll never reach the point where it’s actually important, and I don’t really care. I don’t need to gild something to make myself feel better about it. Being reminded that somewhere out there, chefs are preparing lobster bisque doesn’t make me love fried chicken sandwiches any less.