The Oscars will be handed out this year on Sunday, March 7th. Among the winners will be a daytime talk show host, one evil motherfucker, the chick from Speed and The Net, and The Dude.
I think. After a busy year in which I started law school, I thought I’d managed to see most of the “big awards” movies, or at least movies during the year that got a great deal of press. I was impressed with myself, really. I mean, I love great movies and love nothing more than seeing something unexpected and honest and surprising.
But then I saw the Acting nominees. This year, they feature performances from 14 movies, 6 of which I’ve seen. So be it. I think I’m far above the national average, and the American population will be watching clips of movies they’ve absolutely never heard of later this year.
This is true even in a year with 10 Best Picture nominees. This move by the Academy – to move from 5 to 10 nominees – has been widely derided as a cheap ploy by the Oscars to lure in more voters by featuring more Blockbusters people care about. Well, the haters are right, but so what? Can you think of another way in which movies like District 9 and Up would be Best Picture nominees? The “Second 5” of the Best Picture race truly had no script, and the nominees were as unpredictable, wide-ranging and occasionally-very-good as the world of movies in 2010.
In any case, my picks for the races:
Best Supporting Actor:
Will and Should Wind: Christoph Waltz Inglourious Basterds
Great performances not nominated: Zachary Quinto Star Trek
I really don’t have much to add to this category besides Zachary Quinto’s complicated, short-fused Spock in Star Trek that, I think, was the real acting surprise in a terrific movie that featured many. This is the category I know the least about – I’ve not seen The Messenger, The Lovely Bones, The Last Station, or Invictus. Have you? I’m willing to guess the combined grosses of those movies pale next to the gross of Inglourious Basterds. And, in any case, Waltz’s Hans Landa - who seems, at times, a sharper Hannibal Lecter – clearly gives the performance least likely to leave your brain. If only because you’ve actually seen the movie.
Furthermore, the other “passed over” actors discussed in this category were as uninspiring as the other nominees. Alfred Molina in An Education was a competently acted saint-parent role in a movie that can only surprise you with how many times you feel like you’ve seen it in other movies without quite being able to name which movie it most reminds you of. That’s true also of Peter Sarsgaard in that movie, whose lot in life seems to be being passed over each year for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. I heard Christian McKay was supposed to be nominated for a movie I’ve barely heard of called Me and Orson Welles, but I wouldn’t know Christian McKay if he slapped me in the fact right now.
Best Supporting Actress:
Will and Should Win: Mo’Nique Precious
Great Performances Not Nominated: Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent Inglourious Basterds, Paula Patton Precious
Up In The Air scored that rare double feat of having two Supporting Actress nominees for Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga. I’ve been a fan of Farmiga for some time now, as, it sounds like, much of the acting community has, since her heralded, underseen performance in Down To The Bone as a small-town cokehead. The woman is fearless, and actually that fearlessness truly did underscore the tougher parts of her charming Up In The Air performance. Anna Kendrick, with her mouthy, fast, deluded, sweet performance in Up In The Air, as well, more than earned her nomination. By this point in the Oscar season, though, you’re aware of the power of Mo’Nique’s performance, right? It’s fine to let this part of the Precious praise-wagon run its course. I truly believe the performance will inspire others to truly go into their characters, no matter how dark or upsetting they are, and even more – to love them for their humanity.
On the other side, I would’ve loved if Precious was a double nominee here too, as Paula Patton’s do-gooder teacher here probably elicited the most tears of anyone in the movie (and that’s saying a lot – I cried several times in Precious, but more about that later). Same goes for Inglourious Basterds’ two powerful, central women. In my praise here, I think that would lead to a category of 6 nominated women for 3 movies, none of whom are Penelope Cruz (nominated for Nine). So be it. Did anyone actually go see Nine? I hear it’s terrible, but I’d like to see how 8 ½ becomes a musical. Plus Cruz’s legs looked fantastic in the trailer. Also, I’ve heard from several people that Maggie Gyllenhaal is actually distractingly bad in Crazy Heart, which I regret I haven’t seen, though from afar it reminds me of a less interesting version of Tender Mercies.
Best Actor:
Will and Should (?) Win: Jeff Bridges Crazy Heart
Great Performances Not Nominated: Algenes Perez Soto Sugar, Souleymane Sy Savane and Red West Goodbye Solo
As I said, I haven’t seen Crazy Heart, but I think Jeff Bridges is an extraordinary actor great in everything, so I’ll trust the consensus that he’s terrific. May I recommend seeing 2004’s The Door In The Floor, which I likely would have voted him for Best Actor were I an Oscar voter, and were he nominated… and were he nominated in that fantasy scenario against Jamie Foxx in Ray. In any case, I’m willing to assume that Bridges is more deserving than the two performances I have seen – George Clooney in Up In The Air and Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker.
From the press I’ve read, Morgan Freeman sounds interesting in Invictus and Colin Firth “heartbreaking” in A Single Man. I’m sure this is true, we have very talented actors in movies nowadays. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that we seem to reward only known-named actors for slumming it and playing “ordinary,” yet when indie movies use non-professional actors who effortlessly play “ordinary” people, we assume they’re just going about their daily routine. Yet if you were to watch Perez in Sugar or the two stars of Goodbye Solo, your hearts would ache for them, you’d be fascinated by their every smile, facial gesture, choice, and movement. In fact, it is their lack of apparent effort that is the mark of their amazing gifts. Their movies are both extraordinarily moving and communicative – better, I dare say, than Up In The Air and The Hurt Locker, which are both very good movies. Would it be so wrong for such performances to earn Oscar nominations?
Best Actress:
Will Win: Sandra Bullock The Blind Side
Should Win: Meryl Streep Julie and Julia
Great Performances Not Nominated: Tilda Swinton Julia, Zooey Deschanel 500 Days of Summer
Well, this is to be the year of Bullock’s coronation, joining the ranks of Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, and Renee Zellweger as actors who formerly did serviceable junk, proved their capabilities in more serious work, won Oscars, and can return to making, largely, serviceable junk. Well perhaps that’s unfair – Witherspoon was a great talent in much of her junk, as was Zellweger prior to winning her Oscar for Cold Mountain, which, frankly, she deserved, despite revisionist questioning from a weird legion of undying Shohreh Agdalshoo fans. I haven’t seen The Blind Side, and unless it’s on at my grandparents’ house 20 minutes in (so I can’t convince them to change the channel), I’ll probably never see it.
Streep, of course, deserves an Oscar every year. I loved her in Julie and Julia, perhaps slightly less than I loved her a year earlier in Doubt and wish she’d kept Kate Winslett at bay for another year, but Winslett is truly a gift to all acting, so it’s hard to whine too much about that. Their competition is interesting, I suppose. Gabourey Sidibe in Precious provides exactly what I described a moment ago as wanting to see – a refreshing, lived-in performance that is the definition of effortless acting. I hope she continues to act for years, but fear that this may be it for her. Carey Mulligan, on the other hand, is likely to have people begging to cast her. It’s strange, because An Education seems to me as though it might have been called A Movie We Want To Be Nominated For Oscars. When it ended, I felt one emotion – anger for seeing movies so supposedly “good for me” that are about themes handled better elsewhere for decades.
Not nominated, I think, is truly the best performance of the year – Tilda Swinton in Julia. This is a woman that can do anything, and unfortunately, her indie movie was seen by even less people than have seen The Last Station (which is also nominated in this category, for its performance by Hellen Mirren, who I’m sure is dignified and captivating). Julia is a truly gripping character-driven thriller in which one train wreck of a woman becomes all there is that we can trust. I don’t want to say too much about the plot because I truly wish that you would see it and get hooked on its surprises and turns. I’ll just say that she is an alcoholic in the movie, and a deeply selfish person, and that you have hopes for her that are as real as they would be for any character you’ll remember rooting for.
Best Director:
Will Win: Kathryn Bigelow The Hurt Locker
Should Win: Quentin Tarantino Inglourious Basterds
Should be nominated: Rahman Bahrani Goodbye Solo, Neil Blomkamp District 9, Wes Anderson Fantastic Mr. Fox, J.J. Abrams Star Trek
Look, I want to not shit on the Oscars the year that they’re about to give the first female an Oscar for directing. Good for them. I wish, of course, they’d extended diversity in a different direction this year and rewarded a true visionary, Bahrani, who evokes poetry out of what appears to be DV, hand-held simplicity. I wish they looked to people with voices, like Blomkamp and Anderson, and – and I’ll get to Avatar in a minute – big style action that truly blows you away, by which I mean Star Trek.
The Hurt Locker is very good. Avatar is very good, and truly is the first movie designed be soaked in using the 3D format, for which, if it should win any category, it’s this one. What a vision to pull off, James Cameron is truly a distinguished director. I also very much enjoyed Up In The Air and cried a lot at Precious, which sort of makes me resent it. Tarantino, to me, is the filmmaker with a voice, the real deal who – like we allege of Cameron – keeps proving himself by delivering top quality movies. No one expected Inglourious Basterds to be as extraordinarily compelling as it is, a tense tête-à-tête in one fiery conversation after another. Funny, deeply entertaining, entirely gripping. This is Tarantino at his finest, and – to invoke an age-old Oscar argument – he’s a deeply important director who has affected movies and never won. Let’s give him one while he still deserves it.
Best Picture:
Will Win: The Hurt Locker
Should Win: District 9
Should be nominated: Star Trek, Julia, Goodbye Solo, Paranormal Activity, Fantastic Mr. Fox
Yup, those are the nominees I would choose if I had to get up to 10, along with some group of the ones nominated. Still, given all of that, I would pick District 9, my best argument for why the 10-nominees thing is a great idea. What an original, gripping, completely innovative movie. I remember looking at my friend 20 to 30 minutes in the movie and saying “I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen in this movie.” None. I didn’t know if the aliens were going to break out in a musical number. You spend so much of the movie wondering what kind of movie you were even in – is this satire? A mockumentary? Sci-fi? A zombie movie?
The point is that District 9 to me proves how great we are at making movies. All of those expectations only make the real unpredictability of the movie more satisfying. You find yourself invested in aliens, in the people hunting the aliens, believing in places you’d never find yourself believing. For a while the movie seems ridiculous, but then you think, well these things happen in the world all the time – why wouldn’t we react this way if there were aliens? I’ve heard people say to me, whining, that it’s just a movie telling us to be nice to other cultures. I disagree, it simply chronicles the many ways humans react to things that are unknown to them. It chronicles our responses and behaviors, yet uses them to tell a taut, mesmerizing thriller. There’s absolutely nothing like it, and it towers above some very very good movies it’s nominated against.
Should I talk about those? I suppose my opinions on Precious, Avatar, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, and The Hurt Locker are up in this list somewhere. They’re all quite good. I could be a little more explicit about Up In The Air, which is very timely and competent, though I admit I know I was supposed to fall in love with it and never quite got there. Up is wonderful… but also gets a little “so what” as it keeps going, though I love its creativity and emotion. I haven’t seen A Simple Man but probably will at some point. The Blind Side is a likely terrible movie I’m glad is nominated – my grandmother loved it, and some movie should represent the Grandmothers of the world if movie geeks like me get District 9 listed in the Top 10.
So there are my picks for this year. We made a lot of great movies in 2009 and have a lot of great talent who will pick up Oscars. At the end of the day, that means there is probably less to whine about than you’d think.
Note: One category I have to put in another word about is Best Animated Short Film. A great, great 17 minute movie called "Logorama" is nominated, and I’ll cheer very loudly if it wins.
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