BEST PICTURE: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 3. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a giant fucking gimmick of a movie, but it’s harder to get irritated about Best Picture nominations when there are so many of them – good play, Academy! One notes that the “up to ten” gimmick for Best Picture has now changed its content, because this used to be an excuse to get mass-popular flicks into the Best Picture race, at least in appearance if not in substance, and this year the locks were Django, Zero Dark, Les Miz, Argo, Life of Pi (ugh, Life of Pi) and Lincoln, and instead of putting in The Avengers or something stupid like that, instead we get a couple of arthouse films (I haven’t seen Amour yet but I hear it is Critically Brilliant) and Silver Linings Playbook, which is pretty good. Would have liked to have seen Looper or Brave get the tenth slot, but oh well.
BEST DIRECTOR: Michael Haneke for Amour, Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, Ang Lee for Life of Pi, Steven Spielberg for Lincoln, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 8. No Quentin Tarantino for Django is criminal; if you’re nominating Django for all those other awards then it is ludicrous not to give Tarantino a nod, but it looks like Django has pissed too many members of the Academy off because it committed the sin of having people in the 1850s South say “nigger” a lot when referring to black people, or something. (Yes, I know there are more serious criticisms of the movie. No, I don’t think the Academy members were really thinking about that.) Leaving off Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty smacks of “we gave the chick an award like, two years ago, what else do you want?” Ben Affleck definitely deserved a nod for Argo and that sucks too. See above for my feelings about Beasts of the Southern Wild and Life of Pi being overrated garbage.
BEST ACTOR: Bradley Cooper for Silver Linings Playbook, Hugh Jackman for Les Miserables, Daniel-Day Lewis for Lincoln, Joaquin Phoenix for The Master, Denzel Washington for Flight.
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 1. I thought Flight was a mediocre movie at best, but Washington’s performance is excellent and the only reason it is watchable other than the part where the plane crashes. There is basically nothing bad here. Maybe you would want to see John Hawkes get a nod for The Sessions – I did – but it’s not a criminal oversight to go with who they did.
BEST ACTRESS: Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty, Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook, Emmanuelle Riva for Amour, Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild, Naomi Watts for The Impossible.
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 5. Wallis is a very cute child but she was not really “acting” in any sense of the word (as those involved in making the film have made quite clear) so… come on, acting is a THING, it’s not just “being onscreen while in a movie” or else Morgan Spurlock would be going for Best Actor nominations and I don’t think we can take that. Everyone else is a fine choice. But come on, Academy, have some standards.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin for Argo, Robert DeNiro for Silver Linings Playbook, Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, Tommy Lee Jones for Lincoln, Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained.
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 2. Basically this category has given up any pretense of being anything other than “the category for older, mostly white actors who we want to give an Oscar for either being the most entertaining bit of the movie or because they deserve a lifetime achievement award that isn’t just our lifetime achievement award.” Hoffman is this year’s attempt to try and disguise that fact. Samuel L. Jackson for Django would have been a far better choice to do that job, but eh.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams for The Master, Sally Field for Lincoln, Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables, Helen Hunt for The Sessions, Jacki Weaver for Silver Linings Playbook.
Crashie Rating (out of 10): 1. Because does it really matter? We all know Anne Hathaway is winning. It’s not even going to be close, because she sang her big song in a Dramatic Single Take With No Edits.
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It’s also absurd to think of Hoffman in “The Master” and Waltz in “Django” as “supporting actors”. Both are easily onscreen enough to be in the lead actor category.
I’d raise the Best Picture Crashie rating for leaving out Moonrise Kingdom.
Thank you for calling out Life of Pi.
Looks like Lincoln is going to be the thing that wins all the things, instead of Les Mis, as you originally predicted. Haven’t seen Lincoln so I don’t know if that’s an improvement.
Re: Supporting Actor, I’ve seen lots of comments elsewhere saying “hey where’s Leo DiCaprio?” but I agree with you, Sam Jackson is the real snub.
It’s a vast improvement if it happens because Lincoln is an excellent movie all around whereas Les Mis is reasonably okay, but it’s not like Spielberg doesn’t have experience with crashing and burning re: lots of Oscar noms before.
Even when he has the MOST noms though? (Maybe yes, haven’t checked.) And since 2nd most noms is Life of Pi, and given the Best Director snubs, it’s looking like I’ll be rooting for Lincoln…
The Color Purple is famous for this. Saving Private Ryan won Spielberg his second Best Director statue but otherwise crashed and burned in the “big” categories. Et cetera.
Does anyone really take the ‘we do ten for Best Picture now’ thing seriously without there also being ten slots for Best Director?
Having said that, we may get another type mismatch this year, but I find it far more likely Lincoln simply wins both.
Although given how crazy the Academy can be, I wouldn’t count out life of Pi.
Oh.
Man, I adore Christoph Waltz– with an adoration that may be unhealthy, even– but him over Sam Jackson? No.
Was further proof that the Academy clearly smokes crack really needed?
Beasts of the Southern Wild was one of those movies I was curious about this year, but never got around to seeing. Most of the stuff I’ve heard is positive, though. I totally agree about Life of Pi, though.
Anyone want to elaborate on what makes BotSW gimmicky?
As expected, we disagree about Beasts of the Southern Wild and Life of Pi. They were both quite beautiful in my opinion. I do agree that Lincoln would be a better choice for Best Picture (although as yet unconfirmed reports seem to indicate that Zero Dark Thirty may be even better) than Les Miz. Really, though, I’d be fine with most of these choices winning, as the ones I’ve seen are either good or excellent movies and the ones I haven’t are by all accounts quite well-made. I’m mostly relieved that The Master didn’t get a nomination for Picture/Director/Screenplay, since all of those aspects of it were lousy (the acting nods are alright).
Life of Pi is indeed beautiful to look at, but to my mind, suffers from a meandering story that mostly didn’t happen, and an ultimate message of “if you must choose between facing hard truths and indulging in absurdist fantasies, the ethical and heroic choice is the latter”.
While I am normally sad at under-representation of excellent animation in nominations like this, I can’t feel too bad at the lack of Brave – it wasn’t a bad film, by any means, but didn’t have that special spark that really infuses the best of the Pixar films.
Honestly, Wreck-It Ralph is the movie this year that really displayed that sort of heart, to me, and so is easily the one I am rooting for in the Animated Film category.
If Wreck-It Ralph doesn’t win Best Animated it will be a goddamn travesty.
Wasn’t MGK going to write about that at some point?
“Life of Pi is indeed beautiful to look at, but to my mind, suffers from a meandering story that mostly didn’t happen, and an ultimate message of ‘if you must choose between facing hard truths and indulging in absurdist fantasies, the ethical and heroic choice is the latter’.”
Really? I’m not surprised at some of the antipathy towards Life of Pi–it definitely earned its criticisms–but I can’t help but feel that much of its point is precisely to argue against an epistemology that dictates that what is more believable is inherently more true. There’s literally no reason to believe the second narrative–aside from it being introduced with the revealing question of “Do you want a story you can believe?” “We want the truth,” it’s shot as a graceless perfunctory talking head, and it’s a collection of travel narrative stereotypes. It only has the weight of truth because it appeals to long-standing beliefs of what such a narrative should sound like, as opposed to the meandering, confusing, wonderful tale the film actually reveals.
I would note as well that Martel and Lee, while perhaps idealistic at points, are both very concerned with the metafictional elements of the story–since neither version ‘really’ happened, what on Earth is the point of believing the uninteresting, cliched version of the tale? An appeal to realism or ‘hard truths’ hardly seems to hold weight under these standards.
Exactly. Look at Baron Munchasen.
Something I didn’t know until Scalzi mentioned it:
Everybody nominated for Best Supporting Actor already has an Oscar. De Niro has TWO Oscars.
I’ve decided to kind of root for Christoph Waltz or Hoffman, on the grounds that those two should be in all of the movies.
My biggest pissed off vote is that Skyfall could have been the tenth Best Picture nomination but was snubbed. The good news is that Skyfall did get Best Cinematography and deserves to win it (the scenes in Shanghai, Macau, and the finale with the burning mansion are just visual feasts). I’m just afeared that the Best Song for Skyfall is gonna miss (Bond songs have been nominated but never won an Oscar) to whichever Les Mis song is up for consideration, because that’s gonna be another freaking Titanic-ish juggernaut movie and Hollywood just freaking loves musicals (headdesk).
I *do* think Mark Ruffalo should have been nominated for Bruce Banner in the Avengers movie: his was a well-acted smooth take on the haunted scientist with anger issues.
Whatever the token “new” Les Miz song is, the fact is that Adele is nominated, and Adele gets all the awards, always. This is a fact of nature, whether we like it or not.
Plus, where’s Leonardo DiCaprio? Never thought I’d be saying this for him, but come on, people.
I don’t think Les Mis can take song, since it’s not original for the movie?
Also: Paranorman made it in! Paranorman is really, REALLY good you guys
They wrote a new song for Les Mis, seemingly for the sole purpose of getting a Best Song Oscar.
@Luc:
If Martel’s point was to argue that “believable doesn’t equal true”, then he shouldn’t have included solid evidence (within the novel’s world) that one tale was true and the other not. The movie mentions things like “bananas don’t float” and there being no record of the giant storm (only a mild disturbance), and in the book there’s corroborating testimony towards the “realistic” story.
I’m all for stories that celebrate the power of storytelling and triumphs of the imagination and idealism and the like. But Baron Munchausen isn’t a “real” character, he’s a mythic representation. What’s at stake is really Sarah Polley’s ability to hope and dream and etc. So the Martel ending to Baron Munchausen would be something like “well actually, Sarah got raped and murdered and torn apart by wild animals. But let’s pretend that never happened!! Yay for us!!”
Tim, never underestimate the Oscars giving the Best Song award to the wrong song.
Evidence: the theme to Norma Rae beating out “The Rainbow Connection.” The theme to “Beauty and the Beast” beating out an even better song from the movie “Be Our Guest”. A mopey love song from Lion King beating out the stirring “Circle Of Life.” And for Bond themes, no wins ever which is shocking considering a huge number of them – “Goldfinger,” “Diamonds Are Forever,” “Live and Let Die,” “Nobody Does it Better,” “For Your Eyes Only,” “A View To a Kill,” “The World Is Not Enough,” and “You Know My Name” would have won in a sane world…
I’m not sure what corroborating evidence you see here. The “bananas don’t float” line is disproven in the book, but even in the movie the characters agree that bananas float–the whole point is that the character brings up the line about “bananas don’t float” not because it’s true, but because it SOUNDS true. In turn, the “realistic” story stands as warning of the dangers of the world you create when you automatically conflate those two–a warning that, judging by audience reaction to the book/film, some people could sorely need.
I don’t think it’s just about the power of imagination, except in as much as it concerns able to imagine possible truths outside of the field of your own experience. The more appropriate analogy would be if, at the end of Baron Munchausen, a very sincere character with no knowledge of the events in question tried to argue that none of his story could have happened on the grounds that he–and the corporate interests he represent–don’t believe it.
Really, Paul? Diamonds Are Forever? I mean, I’ll debate some of the others, but that one?
Hathaway has earned the statue. No performance in any movie last year grabbed me as hers did.
Of course, the things that make Jackson’s performance and the character of Stephen in Django Unchained so troubling and compelling are precisely what prevented him from scoring the nod he deserved. Especially as much of the racial criticism of the movie revolves around that character (and it’s a subject on which reasonable people can differ), so the Academy doesn’t want to bother because they don’t like being controversial.
Diamonds Are Forever, awesome bass riff.
I’m with Luc–I didn’t read Life of Pi (which I agree is hardly a masterpiece) as being a celebration of lying as so many are interpreting it. It struck me as just as likely that a lot of the stuff Pi talks about happened to him–if you can’t buy into the fantastical nature of some of it, credit it partly to hallucinations and ocean madness–and that he felt the need to concoct a “true” story when he realize how crazy it all sounded. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the supposedly “true” story isn’t depicted as anything other than Pi talking, and that it’s immediately followed by the journalist saying “Aha! So the tiger represented X!” which is a bang-on representation of how some people want to read all fiction, let alone myths and parables. In fact, I’d argue that’s exactly what a lot of its critics are doing to the movie itself.
More to the point, there was just too much heartfelt detail in the Richard Parker story for me to believe that it all came out of Pi’s head. I think this movie is akin to The Usual Suspects–some of the supposed “lie” is true, but we can’t know exactly how much.
Of course, I never read the book, maybe it completely shoots down this theory. But I think Lee very deliberately left room for multiple interpretations, and people are siding with Pi’s second story as “true” just because of the context.
As for the animated category, I’m delighted by it, even though Brave (which was just OK) is probably going to win by default. But seeing The Pirates! and Paranorman on there warms my heart. (Paranorman would be my personal pick to win, but I wouldn’t be overly outraged by any of them winning.) And hey, how cool is it that three of the five nominees are stop-motion?
I wasn’t trying to argue that Adele’s song was the better song. As with most Bond songs, it’s terrible. Most songs ever up for “best song” are terrible as a law of nature. The point is that, if Adele is up for an award, she will get that award.
It’s her world, we just live in it.
Adele gets all the awards?
Next up: for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry… ADELE!
Adele shows up at a suburban soccer tournament and receives the MVP trophy…
Any others she can win? 🙂
I think “Adele, WWE Heavyweight Champion” has a nice ring to it.
Seriously Brave wasn’t even the best animated movie this year.
I don’t usually find myself in this position, but having seen all of the “Best Supporting” performances, I’m calling it a crime if Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams don’t win. They were in BY FAR the crappiest movie of the bunch and made it reasonably compelling thanks solely to their sheer presence and skill.