Oscar 2017 - Epilogue ( ...or why I'm done with this ...sort of ;) )

I don't have other subject this week & I normally don't do this. I think I wrote just one time a post-Oscar entry in the previous 8 editions I covered, no matter if my prediction rate was 100%, 50%, whatever... This year I had 7/10. That doesn't bother me. I always said that I give the predictions for fun, more important are the movies these awards bring on my "should watch" list year by year. Still, you cannot ignore who wins indefinitely...

The Academy Awards have a voting mechanism that should make these in theory the most objective award in cinema. If the Globes have behind something called "The Foreign Press Association" composed of 30-40 people, who you could expect to be more often "politically correct", for the Oscars there are somewhere around 5000+ members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences voting. For 5000 people I would expect to see in the vote result some artistic criteria and less "politics". How do we know it's not like this?... Well...

It's the second consecutive year when the Oscar for best picture gets to a movie who has 3 awards or less in total (last year it did have only 2...). You would expect some correlation between "Best Picture" and other sections won. Well.. maybe if "other sections" include only technical awards we could forget the correlation, but for a movie which had: a Oscar for directing, one for actors, one for cinematography, one for production design, and two for music - and another movie who has an award for actors and one for script ... now tell me, how the 2nd gets to be appreciated overall as the best?

Statistics. Let's check an evolution of "Best Picture" of the previous year in the last 3 decades:

The '90s:

• 1990: Dances with Wolves
• 1991: The Silence of the Lambs
• 1992: Unforgiven
• 1993: Schindler's List
• 1994: Forrest Gump
• 1995: Braveheart
• 1996: The English Patient
• 1997: Titanic
• 1998: Shakespeare in Love
• 1999: American Beauty

The 2000's:

• 2000: Gladiator
• 2001: A Beautiful Mind
• 2002: Chicago
• 2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• 2004: Million Dollar Baby
• 2005: Crash
• 2006: The Departed
• 2007: No Country for Old Men
• 2008: Slumdog Millionaire
• 2009: The Hurt Locker

The 2010's (up to now):

• 2010: The King's Speech
• 2011: The Artist
• 2012: Argo
• 2013: 12 Years a Slave
• 2014: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
• 2015: Spotlight
• 2016: Moonlight

Now tell me... Which ones since "The Hurt Locker" could qualify as a heavy, solid movie, a movie to impress you more than through its subject, a movie that stays in your mind for 10-15-20 year from when you've seen it. Or well... compare the latest with what you got left from "Dances with Wolves", "The Silence of the Lambs", etc...

Some analysis (if we're already at statistics). In 2009, the American Academy had the clever decision that the best movie to be chosen out of 9-10 nominations (for a higher impact on the public of more titles). Now, consider the following... On one hand we have votes given based on artistic criteria. On the other hand we have votes given based on "politically correctness" criteria. The votes for artistic appreciation will always have a higher dispersion rate. Just for the taste factor. In other words, as many the nominees number, as many votes the best movie will lose here. On the other hand, the votes given for "that's fair in this unfair world" will pretty much focus on the same title. Ergo - "Spootlight", "Moonlight" and whatever "...light" follows.

Politically correctness might have sense in casting, in payment rates, and in many parts related to work on a movie. But I think it doesn't have any place in appreciating a movie. The best movie is the best movie for its general artistic value, not because half or more of the cast is black or for the social themes approached as correct and fair may these be. Don't mix that with art. It would be as saying that Rubens is the greatest Flemish painter because he painted more fat women than any other cared to do. It's simply stupid.

It's hard to believe that I got to take the side of a musical I rated with 3 out of 5, especially considering that I don't have anything against "Moonlight", which is a good movie, but not that good... So, let's cut this short: Starting next year I'll only dedicate max one entry for Oscars instead of a full month as I did before. At least until I see it's given based on merit, or we're getting back to the best of 5 system that seemed more fair. Until then, this thing doesn't really matter anymore...

Oscar 2015 - ... what's left to say ...

M. Gustave: The beginning of the end of the end of the beginning has begun. A sad finale played off-key on a broken-down saloon piano in the outskirts of a forgotten ghost town. I'd rather not bear witness to such blasphemy.
Zero: Me neither.
("The Grand Budapest Hotel" - Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness)

I've decided to write an extra entry this year, just before the awards, while thinking if it's not a better idea to get to bed instead of watching live if I get any predictions right. Unfortunately I have other work to do = the decision lies in the end between keeping the TV turned on or not (what do you think we'll be the choice ?). So, I thought it might not be a bad idea to point out some sections I generally avoid (especially since I'm really thinking on not doing another round of this next February). For instance, writing. Where we have the original category: "Boyhood", "Birdman", "Foxcatcher", "The Grand Budapest Hotel", and "Nightcrawler". Here's quite hard to choose to be frank (even "Boyhood" has a decent script), but I guess the winner is the one including the quote above. If it doesn't get at least that ...

The adapted writing section is also hard to choose from. The reasons are completely opposite though = I don't know who's the less weak among the worse roundup I've seen in years: "American Sniper", "Inherent Vice", "The Imitation Game", "The Theory of Everything" and "Whiplash". Cliche, cryptic, classic, dry, and tiring. I'll pick the middle choice, "The Imitation Game":

Joan Clarke: Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
("The Imitation Game" - Graham Moore)

Another section I'm writing about quite rarely is ... make-up. "Guardians of the Galaxy" unfortunately doesn't have any chance, not even here. Everybody gives "The Grand Budapest Hotel" as winner. I would point out "Foxcatcher" though, as the first movie after a series of constant failures in transforming the main character, culminating probably with "J. Edgar".
And if I talked about makeup, let's talk about costumes too. More nominations: "The Grand Budapest Hotel", "Inherent Vice", "Into the Woods", "Maleficent", "Mr. Turner", but easier to predict. I'll go along the general opinion:
If on what's above I usually avoid talking because I'm not really able to tell a lot based only on what I see in a movie, on actors I avoid writing because I'm too subjective. I wouldn't do it this year as well, but I can't help making an exception. For leading actore we have as nominees Steve Carell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper, Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne. All the predictions indicate as winner the last one in this list for the role of Stephen Hawking, who I do not deny requiring a consistent effort. I would point out though as much more complicated to perform the transformation I've seen on Steve Carell in a total atypical role, in "Foxcatcher":
I decided to write this entry also because I thought I ended way too acid this year. However ... :) yet again ... I don't think I've ever seen a list of nominees + the most probable winners (of whom I hope that many won't coincide with my prediction) so ... f***ed up as this year. Culminating I guess with animation, where I won't even bother to enumerate the nominees, out of whom the most probable winner is a sequel (should be easy to pick it out). For me though, it's something else:
which ... is not among the nominees :) But in the end, who cares about who's there & who wins, right ? ;)