loonyblog.

Quote of the evening?

In between promoting designers and raving about the competition, celebrities had to listen to some very odd -- and even insulting -- questions.

"Before you were a movie star, you were a serious actor," said ABC's Chris Connelly to Orlando Bloom.

A loss, but a good one.

See, in 1996, I lost because in several categories, I went with what I thought should win, rather than what would win. It's a mistake I've never repeated. This year, while I lost, I managed to get every single major category correct. The only ones I missed were score, song, costume design and cinematography. Unfortunately for me, my father got three of those right (he managed to miss only one this year, a feat to which I tip my hat).

So I graciously accept this defeat. Next year I hopefully won't be as distracted, and will be able to spend more time on research.

My 2005 Oscar predictions.

Continue reading "My 2005 Oscar predictions."

Oscar 2005.

As I haven't been following the craziness over the past few weeks with my usual fervor, I'm not as confident this year as I usually am...still, a bet is a bet, and I don't intend to lose (and the last few years have been painfully close, too). Stay tuned.

Oscar nominations.

Let's start with the actor categories: I was pleasantly surprised to see Jamie Foxx nominated for both Ray and Collateral. I haven't actually seen Ray (I try to see as few Oscar movies prior to the awards as possible...it throws off my predictions), but I did see Collateral, and thought the acting was top notch. It was nice to see Thomas Haden Church and especially Virginia Madsen nominated for Sideways (which is probably my favorite film of the year, although I've seen so few that I'm really not qualified to make that call), although the snubbing of Paul Giamatti is a real shame here. I was a little disappointed to see Annette Bening nominated for Being Julia, not because I dislike Bening by any means, it's just that particular role seemed a little over-dramatic to be a serious contender. Having said all that, the actress category is really interesting this year, with Bening's old rival Hilary Swank back for a second round, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Imelda Staunton both being serious contenders, and then there's the wild card that is Kate Winslet.

For the screenplay awards, I found myself scratching my head over the nomination of Before Sunset for adapted screenplay. Since when did having a separate story credit qualify as adaptation? It's not like this is an adaptation from a printed story...it's a story written specifically for the movie! Oh well, whatever. At least Sideways was nominated for adapted and The Incredibles for original screenplay.

The documentary category shows itself to be forward-thinking for the third year in a row. The days of the World War II documentary being the easy win seem to be behind us, with Tupac: Resurrection and Super Size Me among the nominees. I was actually surprised that Joe Berlinger's Metalica: Some Kind of Monster was overlooked here.

The others: the music categories are downright sad this year, particularly among the nominees for original song...if either Shrek 2 or Shark Tale wins for animated feature I'll lose faith in humanity...hallelujah for the nominations A Very Long Engagement received...visual effects is unusually tough to call this year, as is the makeup category and the costume category is pretty weak as well, with only one real period piece among the lot (and not a very good one at that).

All in all, not a bad list of nominees. Stay tuned for my full picks as we get closer to Oscar night.

To the victor go the spoils.

• Ran (Masterworks Edition)
• Three Colors Trilogy
• This is Spinal Tap (Special Edition)

Oscars 2004 Wrap-up

Last night was the most dull, and uneventful since 1998, when Titanic swept the awards. In fact, last night's 11 wins for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied that record with Titanic and Ben-Hur.

This was all great, except for the fact that I decided to take a couple of chances this year, and every time, the award went to the frontrunner. By the end of the night I was praying that Johnny Depp or Bill Murray would win, or that Sophia Coppola would win just to shake things up a bit. Alas, that never happened.

Incredibly, the only time I was really surprised was when "Harvie Krumpet" won the animated short instead of the Dali/Disney short "Destino." I imagine Roy Disney was shocked as well, and it's a shame, because I was looking forward to hearing his speech (which would have no doubt been a war cry for his attempts to reform Disney).

Fortunately, I only took a chance on a couple of categories, so I still won my bet. But the one category I really am disappointed in myself for missing was documentary, as I really, really wanted Errol Morris to win, but changed my pick at the last minute to Andrew Jerecki's Capturing the Friedmans.

As for the obligatory celebrity watching: Heather and I were waiting for Renee Zelwegger to hyperventilate in that dress of hers (I mean jeez...how tight was that corset she was wearing?)...I thought Errol Morris gave a great speech (and found it funny to see what a goofball he is when he's actually in front of the camera)...Jack Black and Will Ferrel were surprisingly good in their singing prior to handing out their award for original song...Sophia Coppola reminded us all why she's a much better writer and director than she was as an actress...I loved Sean Penn's quiet, restrained speech...ditto for Tim Robbins...I thought all the song performances were wonderful, especially "Belleville Rendezvous", which really makes me want to run out and see The Triplets of Belleville...speaking of songs, while she didn't win, did anyone else notice how great Annette O'Toole looked?

As always it was an entertaining show (and kept to a pretty tight schedule...it only went over by ten minutes or so), but after last year's surprise wins, I was hoping for a bit more excitement. Oh well. Hopefully next year will be another one that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.

This morning I woke up with less confidence in my choice of Capturing the Friedmans over The Fog of War (especially now that I see my father chose the latter), but otherwise I remain as confident as I'm going to get.

Here's the rundown of the major categories:

• Best Picture: LOTR: Return of the King
• Best Director: Peter Jackson
• Best Actor: Sean Penn
• Best Actress: Charlize Theron
• Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins
• Best Supporting Actress: Shohreh Aghdashloo
• Best Original Screenplay: Lost in Translation
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Mystic River

Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!

As I do every year, my picks will be placed online. A full article will run on Shacknews on Friday containing my complete list of picks, plus the reasoning behind them. I'll post the straight list here as well.

And of course, for anyone that's interested, you'll be able to check the results after the show at this address, which will show my picks, my father's picks, and the final tally.

Oscar Nominations '04: First Impressions

Continue reading "Oscar Nominations '04: First Impressions"

It begins...

Today the New York Film Critics Circle released their awards, and topping the list as best picture is none other than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Other notable winners include Hope Davis as best actress (for American Splendor and The Secret Lives of Dentists), Sofia Coppola for best director (for Lost in Translation) and Capturing the Friedmans for best non-fiction film.

More Oscar Thoughts

I'll get to my thoughts in a minute, but first let me fully debunk 8BJ's claims. Previous violent films to be recognized by the Academy include Platoon (1987), The Godfather I & II (that'd be 1973 and 1975 respectively), Braveheart (1996), and The Deer Hunter (1979). What Jake seems to be unwilling to accept is that Gangs of New York was neither a popular movie, nor was it a particularly well-liked movie both in and out of Hollywood. And that means a whole lot more than how violent it is.

But that aside, I've been trying to come up with my own theory for why Polanksi won, and I'm coming up pretty short. As best as I can guess, there was backlash suffered from the over campaigning for Scorsese and Chicago by Miramax and Harvey Weinstein, which led to many voters moving on to the next on their list. Or simply that people were so divided between those two, that the votes were split completely, allowing for a small lead to put Polanski over the top. But honestly, I haven't a clue why he won. Personally, I think it's great. He deserved it for Rosemary's Baby, he more than deserved it for Chinatown, and among the other nominees, he deserved it this year as well. Good for him.

One last fun bit of Oscar trivia...this article at MSN Entertainment (spotted on OscarWatch) points out that Spider-Man's Kevin O'Connell broke the record for most Oscar losses, having missed out on his 16th award when he lost the sound category to Chicago. Keep at it, Kevin! If Randy Newman can win eventually, I'm sure you will too.

Post Game Wrap-up

Well, it was quite a show, wasn't it? Before I get to my general thoughts on the evening, the results of my annual bet with my father: for the third time in the roughly 15 years that we've been doing this thing, I'm saddened to report that we tied, and it's all thanks to Nicole Kidman. I must say, I really was surprised that she won, and it really did have to be a close call with her and Renee Zelwegger. Still, I owe the fact that I didn't lose to my long-shot pick of Pedro Almodovar for screenplay, and I'm perfectly happy to take a tie as opposed to the shame of losing outright.

Some other thoughts on the results:

• Re: Michael Moore's speech: you give an award to Michael Moore, that's what you get. I agreed with what he was saying, but wish it wasn't quite as angry as it was. But then, I wouldn't have expected anything less from him, and something different would have felt phoney.
• Was it just me, or did Diane Lane look absolutely stunning? If the way you dress to the ceremony is what determined the winner, she should have gotten that best actress award.
• Adrien Brody? Roman Polanski? Good gravy, who saw that one coming? All hard-earned awards to be sure, but very surprising. Also surprising was the audience's favorable reception of Polanski's name being called. Given his past, there just as easily could have been some boos.
• The winner of the best speech award goes to Conrad W. Hall, for that loving tribute to his father. Really touching, and that award was well deserved.
• Runner up goes to Adrien Brody, who managed to give a message of peace without being blunt or angry. Very classy.
• Nicole Kidman looked this year like Jennifer Connelly did last year. Gorgeous women looking frumpy. It's a crime, really.
• It's definitely a shame Eminem didn't accept his award or perform his winning song...either would have been an entertaining moment.
• The show felt a lot more thrown together this year...the gathering of past winners was nice, but kinda pointless. And what was up with not performing the winning scores?
• He didn't win, but I think I'm going to have to run out and buy Philip Glass' score to The Hours. The snippits played during that best picture segment reminded me of how good it was. And while Glass didn't win, at least he lost to Elliot Goldenthal for his decidedly un-Oscar-like score for Frida. Very surprising, but at least it was a quality soundtrack.

So there you have it...another Oscar year behind us. While it wasn't included in my bet with my Father (or mentioned in my article at Shacknews), I was pleased to see my off-the-books prediction for The Chubb Chubbs be accurate. Pixar is always the favorite for the animated short category, but Mike's New Car just wasn't up to their usual quality level (being basically a DVD extra, this was to be expected). If you missed some part of the show, here's the full list of winners, care of the official Oscar site. G'night everybody!

Here we go...

We're only a few hours (okay, like nine) away from the Oscars...yee haw! If anyone's interested in a printable ballot, you can feel free to use the one I threw together for my father and I. Although be warned, it only has the categories we're betting on, so stuff like makeup, sound and sound editing aren't on there.

Heather's out of town again, which is probably a good thing, since she goes to sleep early, and the Oscars always run late. This way I can be as loud as I like, especially when the phone starts ringing in between awards.

Between now and game time I have some minor things to do, including looking at an apartment, but mostly I think I'm going to sit here and try my best not to run out and buy a Game Boy Advance SP.

Let the games begin!

Best picture: Chicago
Best director: Rob Marshall (Chicago)
Best Animated feature: Spirited Away
Best actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York)
Best actress: Renee Zellweger (Chicago)
Best foreign language film: Nowhere in Africa
Best supporting actor: Chris Cooper (Adaptation)
Best supporting actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago)
Best documentary feature: Bowling for Columbine
Best original screenplay: Talk to Her
Best adapted screenplay The Hours
Best original score: The Hours
Best film editing: Chicago
Best cinematography: Road to Perdition
Best song: I Move On (Chicago)
Best costume design: Chicago
Best art/set direction: Gangs of New York

The final stretch...

As promised, my picks will run in an article on Shacknews tomorrow. Once that's online, I'll post a list of them here, and of course on Sunday I'll provide a post-game wrap-up here.

My bet aside, I am confident in my picks this year. With Chicago we have an honest-to-goodness Oscar movie, and I'm choosing it for a handful of major awards (but not all).

Was Gollum snubbed?

While the acting categories are never the most progressive, there have certainly been a handful of flukes, like Anna Paquin's stunned acceptance of her award, or the unusually insightful choice of giving an award to Kim Basinger for her decidedly non-flashy role in L.A. Confidential. But as nice and groundbreaking as it would have been for Serkis to get a nomination, it's hampered by two major problems.

The first, and I hate to say this to those hardcore fans out there, is that it simply wasn't that good of a performance to begin with. Yeah, it was good, and compared to Jar Jar it was practically Hamlet, but was he really that good? I think the underlying acting was better than the CGI exaggerations, but that's part of the performance too, and you can't simply ignore that.

Which raises the second problem: who do you nominate? Andy Serkis may have been "the guy in the suit," as that article points out, but unlike John Hurt in The Elephant Man, there was a great deal of external work that went into it, which the actor had nothing to do with. When you talk about great performances, you have to appreciate the subtle nuances, and the little ticks in expression. Serkis had none of that, because it was all put in by the animators. So even if Gollum was determined to be an Oscar-worthy performance, not only would Serkis be nominated, but so too would every animator who worked to bring that performance to life. And considering how many people worked on that movie...you can see how complicated that would be.

Acting and animating are very similar, yes. But unless there is only one person involved, it no longer qualifies as pure acting, and crosses over into pure animation. In my mind, for a "synthespian" to be nominated in an acting category would require one of two things: either the performance was 100% created by the digital actor via super-sophisticated AI, or the acting was performed entirely by the actor in the motion capture suit, and what we see on the screen is merely the exact same performance only with a different skin. I'm not saying that either one of those won't happen in the future, but it's a little early to start working on those acceptance speeches.

Not so fast there, Roman...

Of course, I guess they're not counting Bob Dylan who accepted his award via satellite back in 2001, since he already was hooked up to a satellite feed for a performance of the song that eventually won the Oscar that evening.

I don't defend Polanski's actions, either the original crime he committed or the fact that he fled the country (which, given that it was consensual sex is the worse of the two crimes, if you ask me) but if he manages to finally win an Oscar I'd like to see some kind of acceptance speech, if only because of how personal a movie The Pianist was for him.

TiVo update: it hasn't locked up on me again since my last post (phew) but I have had some playback glitches...I'm definitely not out of the woods yet.

Oscar Nominations

This has actually gotten more stressful in the last few years, since I have published my picks annually (first at Blue's News and last year at Shacknews). This year will be no different, and I'll probably be putting them up at the Shack, otherwise they'll be here (or most likely both).

Also not helping is the fact that my father has discovered the value of serious research in picking the winners. Previously he based his choices on gut instinct or personal opinion, which resulted in my beating him outright virtually every time. In the 10+ years that we've been doing this I've only lost once, and I've tied once, putting a great deal of pressure on me to keep up my winning streak.

But it's been getting harder with each year. A few years ago when Titanic was the big movie, everything was simple. And two years ago when American Beauty was the front runner, I successfully predicted every one of the major categories (and almost had a full set for every one...I went against my instinct and bet on American Beauty for editing over The Matrix...a poor decision indeed). Last year was really touch-and-go there for a bit...thankfully I went out on a limb by picking Halle Berry, but that was really a last-minute choice. Without that I would have tied again.

So what do I think of this year's lineup? It's a bit too early to make any predictions, but based on my thoughts on the movies nominated, I'd say it's a good batch. It's nice to see The Pianist nominated for so many categories, although we won't know how good a shot it has until after the guild awards come out. I was thrilled to see Philip Glass nominated for original score (for The Hours), and it's nice to see Conrad L. Hall and Paul Neuman on the list for Road to Perdition (for Cinematography and Supporting Actor respectively). The biggest surprise is of course Michael Moore's nomination for Bowling for Columbine in the Documentary category. Seeing it nominated for a Writer's Guild Award was pretty strange, but this was even more surprising, given the Academy's previous habit of skipping all but the stuffiest documentaries (previous movies to be skipped include Crumb, Hoop Dreams and Moore's own Roger & Me).

But again, it's too early to make any real predictions. In the coming weeks I'll be doing just that, so stick around and I'll go through the list with a fine-toothed comb.