Forbes named Houston "The Coolest City In America." No, I'm not kidding.

It probably didn’t raise many eyebrows wherever you are, but Forbes had a headline recently that caused a bit of a ruckus in my neck of the woods. The magazine had a feature rating the “20 Coolest Cities,” and Houston was ranked first.

Now, Forbes’ ranking was a shock, but it's an understandable choice. When a magazine is trying to make some noise and move some issues, they don’t put the obvious choice atop the list, they try to find an unusual pick that’ll garner some buzz. So New York City gets dropped to the bottom of the top ten, and a city occasionally deemed “the armpit of Texas” moves into the top spot.

But the problem with the piece is that whenever you put a financial magazine in charge of figuring out what’s “cool,” you’re going to get an awfully dusty answer. The piece’s creators are fairly thorough: they give a laundry list of statistics for each city, including “diversity index,” “unemployment percentage,” and “net migration.” Because, after all, when you’re trying to track something’s coolness, the first thing you ask is “how do I quantify this?”

Here’s the Forbes quote:

“Houston is known for many things: Oil, NASA, urban sprawl and business-friendly policies.”

When I moved down here, it was all I could do to get people to stop talking about how much I was going to enjoy Houston’s business-friendly policies.

“But the Texas city deserves to be known for something else: coolness.”

Nope.

“Houston has something many other major cities don’t: jobs. With the local economy humming through the recession, Houston enjoyed 2.6% job growth last year and nearly 50,000 Americans flocked there in response… combine that with a strong theater scene, world-class museums and a multicultural, zoning-free mashup of a streetscape and you have the recipe for the No. 1 spot on Forbes’ list of America’s Coolest Cities To Live.”

Only Forbes could possibly write an article on coolness and get to a city’s zoning policies by the third paragraph. They see Houston, which, since it’s mostly shielded from the recession by the oil industry’s financial halo, got fifty thousand people to uproot and move here. Houston must be the place to be! By this thinking, people must have packed up their belongings into oxcarts and rode the Oregon Trail with the sole purpose creating some sort of hipster mecca. “Sure, we’ve all got dysentery, and Ezekiel lost his foot to that rattlesnake bite*, but at least out here I can find people who really share my interests in farming, and not dying of exposure. We can stay up late and just vibe.”

*my knowledge of this section of history may be a bit over-influenced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium.

“Cool” is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “very good; fashionable.”

This article reads like every freshmen term paper ever written.

“We sought to quantify it in terms of cities, ranking the 65 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Metropolitan Divisions (areas that include cities and their surrounding suburbs that are defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget) based on seven data points weighted evenly.”

Because if you weighed those data points unevenly, people would just lose their minds.

Wait, let’s actually think about this for a second. If all those points are weighted evenly, then things like “Arts & Culture Index” and “Recreation Index” are weighted right alongside “Diversity Index?” Milwaukee just got way less cool than it already is.

So, let's let conventional wisdom return for a moment and take a look at this. Let’s really break down this list for a second and see if any of the cities we ranked in front of deserve to beat us (spoiler alert: YES).

20. Denver, Colorado

Oh my god, yes. Obviously Denver is cooler than us. Denver has mountains. Denver still has hippies. People go to Denver to go snowboarding for a weekend and don’t come back for three years. If you say to someone,  “I ended up living in Denver for a year after college,” they will nod knowingly and try to size you up to see if you have any weed on you. If you say to someone, “I ended up living in Houston for a year after college,” they’ll tell you, “you know, you’ve really got to stick with an engineering job for two years at least for it to look good on a resume.”

19. Austin, Texas

Everyone in Texas knows that Austin is the coolest part of Texas. It has the University of Texas. Sixth street. SXSW. Drafthouses. Film companies. Art companies. Art film companies. “Friday Night Lights” was shot there. We get it. Austin’s the place you move to when you don’t know what to do with your life but you think you might be a creative person, despite a wealth of evidence pointing to the contrary.

18. Minneapolis, Minnesota

We might have Minneapolis beat. Texas, as a state, is undeniably cooler than Minnesota. Minneapolis is just cool by Minnesotan standards. It’s a lovely town and I’m sure I could find lots to do. The people there are probably polite on an otherworldly level. But it’s whiter than most polar bears and they probably also refer to soda as “pop.” It’s not cooler than Houston.

17. Bethesda, Maryland

Oh, hell yes we’re cooler than Bethesda. It’s Bethesda. Or, “the greater Bethesda-Frederick-Gaithersberg region.” It snuck onto the list by virtue of its infinitesimal unemployment percentage, which is not the best way to land on a “coolness” list.

I don’t know anything about Bethesda. It sounds like a place that rich politicians retire to. I already resent it with a Holden Caulfield-like intensity.

16. Oakland, California

If we have a chance against any Californian city, it would be Oakland (okay, Sacramento. We could beat Sacramento). Oakland has no buzz. It’s a bay town. It has the Raiders and the A’s. It has a good music scene. Does that put it ahead of Houston?

Yes, it does. Think of it this way: if someone told you “check out this new band, they’re fresh out of Oakland!” or “check out this new band, they’re fresh out of Houston!”, which one would you want to listen to?* I thought so.

*possible exceptions for the following genres: country music or gansta rap performed by white people.

15. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The fact that Philly is in Pennsylvania drags its score down, but no, we’re not cooler than Philadelphia. Philadelphia has heaps of history, a rival city not far to the north, and a definable cuisine. I’ll take the Liberty Bell, Eagles and Phillies games, and cheesesteaks over the San Jacinto monument, Texans and Astros games, and Tex-Mex. And I dig Tex-Mex and don’t even like cheesesteaks.

I mean, if Nicholas Cage was here hunting for more national treasure, I don’t even know where we’d send him.

14. Baltimore, Maryland

Oh, we’re cooler than Baltimore. I’ve seen “The Wire.” No one wants to go there. There’s dead people on the wharves like, every day.

13. Fort Worth, Texas

Interesting. Dallas is separated from Fort Worth for this issue, leaving Fort Worth to stand on its own two feet. Dallas is going to make this list, right? Because Dallas is also cooler than Houston.

Not Fort Worth, though. Not by itself. Just picture someone saying to you, “hey, let’s go down and hang out at the Fort Worth stock yards!” See? You’re already bored with Fort Worth.

12. Chicago, Illinois

Last year, 22,000 people migrated out of Chicago, surely fleeing its legendary uncoolness.

This ranking is so ridiculous it's obscene. Chicago is obviously cooler than us. Chicago has a cool nickname. It has deep-dish pizza so good no one else even tries to make it the same way. It has tons of good sports teams. And the Cubs. It has politicians so shady there’s one murdering someone in broad daylight right now, probably with a tommy gun. Everyone knows what Chicago is. Yet somehow it’s down here with the Bethesdas of the world.

11. San Antonio, Texas

Texas’ second-coolest city also fails to make the top ten and ranks incredibly low on the Arts & Culture index, despite the fact that thousands of people flock there to gape at the Alamo daily. It has history so cool people fly in to see it. Not to mention the Riverwalk, and whatever that thing is that’s exactly like the Space Needle. San Antonio has culture. You can sense it when you walk around the place. The only thing you can sense when you walk around Houston is a vague aroma of urination, which is likely why there’s no one else out walking besides you.

10. New York, New York

Let’s take a minute and look at the picture Forbes used to indicate what New York looks like:

Could you find a worse picture to indicate New York? I bet you couldn’t. I bet the web guy at Forbes was so worried that readers would see the New York skyline and their heads would snap back as they suddenly realized, “wait, is Houston supposed to be cooler than New York?” Jay-Z and Frank Sinatra sang about New York. If Houston was going to choose someone to write a song about it, we’d have to pick Kenny Rodgers.

I’m not even convinced that’s New York there. That honestly could be Bratislava.

9. San Francisco, California

By their own metrics, Forbes listed San Francisco with an Arts & Culture score of 98 out of 100. Recreation? 99 out of a 100. Dragging it down? A median age of 41. The average citizen must be so depressed! “So, there’s tons to do and see, but you might run into, like, A PROPORTIONALLY LARGE AMOUNT of old people. Do not want, you guys. DO. NOT WANT.”

I have a buddy who moved to San Francisco a couple months back, and he’s spending essentially all his money on rent, because the markup on property is so insane. You can move to Houston for a bag of nickels. There’s a reason for that.

8. Orange County, California

I’ll answer this one right after I watch a new episode of the CW’s new hit drama, “The Houston.” Texas… Tex-AAAAAS…. Here we CAAAAAAAAAAHHHHMMMME!

7. Boston, Massachusetts.

Let me put it this way, if you set “Cheers” in Houston, it’s no longer an old English pub/sports bar. Suddenly it’s either an upscale bar where you have to wear a tie and heavyset men in suits leer at the waitresses, or a grimy faux-club with a weird, rapey vibe. And no, absolutely no one knows your damn name. 

6. San Diego, California

“Man, I can’t wait until I get off this pristine beach, with its stylish downtown community and weather consistently in the mid-eighties, and get back to the land of business-friendly policies!”

5. Seattle, Washington

Intellectual vibe? Famous rock scene? Gorgeous mountain views and a crystal-clear ocean bay? Tons of local coffee shops? There’s a reason Seattle is a top-five destination for hipsters to gather and breed. In fact, Travel & Leisure just listed it as “the number one city for hipsters” (please don’t make me break down that list, too). No one besides Forbes and Oil Baron Quarterly have ever made us number one of anything. This city ranks decidedly higher than us.*

*This city’s high rank may be incumbent on you being a white person.

4. Dallas, Texas

I want to be clear: Dallas is cooler than us. It’s just not much cooler than us. Remember that Travel & Leisure hipster list from earlier? (and I promise, this will be the last point in which a connect coolness and hipsterdom) Dallas finished 35^th  – that is, last. Even Houston finished a vaguely respectable 26^th, behind such luminaries of hipster culture as Kansas City and Honolulu, and one spot ahead of Anchorage. Anchorage? Honolulu? If there’s even one hipster in either place, I’ll eat an entire jacket made of tweed.

That ranking is probably fair, but it doesn’t matter. Dallas feels wealthy. It feels like a destination. People in Houston drive to Dallas to shop or take long weekends. People in Dallas only drive to Houston if the Cowboys are playing there.

3. Los Angeles, California

Just imagine if Us Weekly was centered in Houston. “Haylie and Hillary Duff came back to visit their parents for the weekend!” “Stars! They’re just like us! Mike Jones visits the optometrist!”  “Is Lyle Lovett back together with Julia Roberts? No, he’s not!”

There’s a reason thousands of people packed a minor league stadium to watch a 50-year old Roger Clemens lumber to and from the pitching mound. We’re starved for any sort of celebrity at all.

2. Washington, D.C.

Okay, this ranking is insane, too. D.C. is not cool. It’s full of politicians. Politicians are not cool, with rare exceptions (circa-2008 Barack Obama being the most recent example). It’s full of gun violence. Gun violence is not cool. It’s built on a marsh. Marshes are not cool.

Still, there’s a mystique to D.C. All over the city, every restaurant, every coffee shop, every closed door could be concealing a massive, world-changing meeting. Is money changing hands? Are pork-barrel military supplies being promised? Dignitaries from every possible country are shuttled about behind smoked glass, with well-armed and besuited goons escorting them every step of the way. Things are constantly happening.

People in Houston still have posters up celebrating the fact the Super Bowl was held here. In 2003.

1. Houston, Texas

It looks ridiculous even seeing it here, doesn’t it?

While we’re at it, let’s review a pile of other American cities that are also cooler than Houston: Las Vegas, Atlanta, Miami, Miami of Ohio (which is not a city, I know, but its mascot is “Scoop the Redhawk”), New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Orlando (14-years-old and under only), Portland, both Gotham and Metropolis (but not Coast City, and definitely not Sub Diego), Charleston (summertime only), Asheville (ditto), San Jose.

Still, let’s not go overboard. There are a lot of cities Houston is a lot cooler than. They include: Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Albuquerque, Kansas City, Wichita, Tampa, Tulsa, Omaha, Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, Des Moines, Buffalo, Waco, and any city in Ohio.

And, of course, Newark.

Why I'm Against The Red Sox Fire Sale, Even If I'm The Only One.

I sent this email to my dad, then realized I felt strongly enough about it to copy it over here as a post. Enjoy.

The problem I have with the trade is that people act as if we saved any money here. They think in terms of a salary cap: that now that we've gotten more money saved, we can use that money elsewhere. That's $250 million back in our pockets.

No, that's $250 million back in John Henry's pockets. And he can do whatever he likes with it, but he certainly doesn't have to spend it on this team.

 The acquisition of the Dodgers for $2 billion - and their sudden move to land talented, expensive player - may seem like a gigantic gamble, given that they're the only team making these sorts of financial decisions. But they're also the only team reading the landscape correctly.

 

The value of an MLB team is rising at a precipitous rate. Teams are signing billion-dollar deals with networks. In the last five years, the value of these big-market teams has skyrocketed, and every economic indicator says that they're going to continue to. Here's the Forbes list from last year that shows the rise. The Yankees banked $500 million last year from gate receipts and royalties from the YES network, and that's just a piece of their gigantic empire. Yet they're working to drop under the luxury tax by next year, and they're willing to be less competitive to do so.

 

The Sox are on that level. They're minting money in Fenway, and from NESN, and from the millions of hats and shirts and what-have-you. They have the cash to keep these players without blinking an eye. But they want to pretend that they don't, because it's cheaper to say "we don't have the financial leverage" after you bought a top-flight left fielder you don't really need than it is to pay for the starting pitching you actually do need. Somehow, in our minds, it became Carl Crawford's fault we couldn't afford that starting pitching. On some subconscious level, we blamed him for our lack of talent in other areas.  

 

And our trades that followed just made things worse. We traded away Josh Reddick and Jed Lowrie even

though we were down on outfielders and had no other shortstop. Both have played well for other teams. Neither pitcher we got worked out. 

 

The Dodgers are looking the other way. Most teams are still "moneyballing" - looking for inefficiencies, trying to grab players other teams are overlooking. The Dodgers are spending money to grab top-price talent, even with uninviting contracts. Because that's the real inefficiency here - that teams are willing to shed unwanted contracts, even if the players receiving the cash are still pretty good.

  

By the way, that Forbes list says that the Sox spend $25.4 million on operating income, compared to $1.2 million for the Dodgers. How is that possible?

  

Essentially, what the Sox bought was relief. People were done with this team, especially Beckett, and the trade signalled a reset, and that's what people wanted. The prospects we got are pretty good, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that these guys are gone.

Somehow, Sox fans became a hive mind, and believed that the team had been backed into a corner and the only way out was to rid ourselves of these players. It didn't matter if it was the truth, it was what everyone believed. 

  

If 2010 was supposedly a transition year, I can't imagine what next year will be. We have holes in our rotation, our bullpen, our outfield, at first base and short. And still an incredibly expensive roster. Are we supposed to believe that Sox fans are really going to wait around until we get our decimated farm system in order? That anyone's going to be that patient?

  

We're acting like a guy who made some bad investments and ended up over their head. We're not. We're billionaires who bought an expensive house but then quailed when we saw how much upkeep would be. 

  

If we're billionaires, let's act like billionaires. Let's not pretend to be something we're not because that's the way we feel the Sox are supposed to be.

Good Friday - Exploring "Torn"

Good Friday at our church is entrenched in tradition, to which I am a latecomer. Because we've had a history of having worship leaders on staff who go on to much bigger things (Chris Tomlin, Brandon Heath, Robbie Seay), from the moment I arrived on campus, I was barraged with conversations constantly harking back to our (fairly recent) days of yore, with sighs of "I miss when.." and "it was way better..." We are not a forward-looking community.

Our biggest signature move was to rent out the massive outdoor concert venue across the street from us each Easter weekend. We centered the event around a big concert on Good Friday led by our worship leader du jour. When we needed to cut costs, we moved the weekend back to our campus, but then we built a hefty stage on the lawn, hauled out every watt of moving lights we had and rented a heap more, and had succession of events that drifted slowly from "energetic worship" to "energetic rock festival," all played before our less-than-energetic members (we're Methodists. We don't jump. At most we... lean).

A couple years ago, I joined a worship committee that sacked all that, moved the service back into our sanctuary, killed the rock-show vibe and tried to revert the service back to a night of worship and teaching as strong and unified as we could manage.

It's been a couple of years of that now, and I'm proud of the work I've gotten to do on those services. I won't wander off into a diatribe of what worship is or why it matters, because you've likely (definitely) read much better thoughts than mine before, but as much as we've maintained a good deal of spectacle in these services (we are who we are), it's been nice to center the evening around community and worship, and to focus on the meaning of that particularly sacred evening.

This is all unnecessary introduction for these three videos I did for this year's service, based around the theme of "Torn" - two stories, totally unrelated, but deeply connected to what happened on that Friday a long time ago. If you'd like to see all the videos in context, the sermon they're interspersed in is up at The Woodlands United Methodist website.

I've never been happier with work I've done, or more excited about the stories I got to tell. These videos are my favorite of all my work.

Oh, well. Not bad.

So, I got a grand total of 14 out of 24, which I guess is not bad, but could be a lot better. The Artist lost Best Editing and won Best Actor and Best Costume Design, an award I was certain would go to Hugo. Instead, Hugo won everything else below the line, including both sound categories, ending the night tied with The Artist for the most wins of any movie with five.

In all honesty: I still like my Oscar ballot. Evidently the Academy like Hugo a lot more than I expected them to, giving it awards both deserved (Art Direction) and undeserved (Visual Effects). I took calculated gambles on one or two categories (Best Actor, Cinematography, Visual Effects), but the surprises came in other categories, like Editing and Best Actress.

Someone was complaining today about some of the awards that were handed out that I agreed with: can we agree that even though it was easy to predict, it’s nonsense to have The Iron Lady win for Best Makeup over a film like Harry Potter? That movie had dozens of artists making people into very convincing goblins and werewolves and half-dead wizards, while Iron Lady made Meryl Streep look like Meryl Streep in makeup.

And sure, no one wants to give an Oscar to a Transformers movie, but isn’t Transformers 3 clearly a more impressive piece of special effects than Hugo? Sure, Hugo is a much better movie than Transformers 3, but this isn’t the award honoring that. Why do we feel the need to give Hugo an honorary Oscar in a category that it obviously isn’t the best nominee in? 

Well, that’s the way these things work. Lesson learned. Other lesson learned: I really should’ve picked the short film starring Ciarán Hinds that was directed by the guy who did Hotel Rwanda. That was an oversight.

Your Guide To the 2012 Academy Awards

Every year I write this column, and lately, I've been wondering why I do.

There are hundreds, thousands of these columns written every year, some of them by people who’ve seen all of the films nominated, including the short films and the documentaries. And then there’s me.

I’ve seen only five of the nine films nominated for Best Picture, none of the animated films, none of the documentaries, none of the shorts, and none of the foreign choices. And that’s after seeing thirty-six theatrical releases this year (some of those were on DVD, but still). If I were writing this column as "the outsider's perspective", I would have a legitimate case: some of the best predictions are made by people with no knowledge - and no bias - of any kind.

Unfortunately, I'm not. I'm just gathering my vague sources of information together and making half-blind guesses. There's no reason you should listen to me.

Except for my eerie accuracy, of course. I've had an untouchable three-year run at the Oscars, and I have no intention of stopping now. Of the 24 categories, I’ve posted correct guesses of 19, 19, and 17, which exceeds the results of most prediction experts, including people who do this full time, like Dave Karger and Mark Harris (note: I did not actually research this to find out if it was true. But it stands to reason). And frankly, I don’t see any reason why that accuracy should stop now.

I’ll post my predictions below, with one major caveat: this is the year of The Artist. It will win Best Picture, and as a result it’ll also land a number of other categories. But it’s still unclear just how many more categories that is. Sometimes a movie goes on a tear and just collects everything in its path, and if that happens with The Artist, you’ll see “surprise” wins in categories like Costumes, Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, or Art Direction. It'll be easy to spot early on – it’ll land something it shouldn’t have, and you'll see the costume designer or director of photography climb the stage in shock and talk about the thrill of working on such an unusual projects as this.  At this point, you would be wise to see if your pool allows you to change your picks midway through the show, and if so, to change everything up to and including Sound Editing* to The Artist. Be warned.

* Please note on your ballots that The Artist, being a silent film and all, is not actually nominated for Sound Editing.

Best Picture

Nominees:
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

It’s The Artist. And it’s not close. I mentioned after the Golden Globes that I thought it unbeatable, and since then it’s won at the Producer’s Guild, it’s won at the Director’s Guild, and now no one even knows what movie would be the dark horse that could beat it.

I had movies I liked more than The Artist this year, but it’s a sweet, interesting film and making a silent movie is a gutsy thing to do, and so I have no problem with this. In five years, we’ll have forgotten about it, and while everyone will have vaguely fond memories, no one will think to themselves “y’know, I should go watch that again.” It’s a one-off. But as one-offs go, it’s pretty good.

Directing

Nominees:
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
Hugo (Martin Scorcese)
Midnight In Paris (Woody Allen)
The Tree of Life (Terence Malick)

Another year, another chance to honor Martin Scorcese for Raging Bull and Mean Streets by giving him an Oscar for a different movie.

I know there’s much to be said for the work Scorcese did in Hugo, but if it’s The Artist’s year, then it wins Best Director, too. If Scorcese hadn’t already won for The Departed, he’d be a lock here, but he did win, so we don’t have worry about that. Plus, since The Departed was good, but not great, there’s a general sense among Academy voters that they don’t want to honor him twice for movies significantly worse than the ones made in his heyday. So count on a win for Michel Hazanavicius and a charming, French-accented speech, probably about courage and overcoming naysayers.

By the way, I’m offering 6-to-1 odds whether anyone will name-check Uggie, the dog, during their speech. 10-to-1 if it’s someone not actually in The Artist. Easy money, you guys. Any takers?

Actor In a Leading Role

Nominees:
Demián Bichir - A Better Life
George Clooney - The Descendants
Jean Dujardin - The Artist
Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt - Moneyball

Ah, the first big decision of the night, and the only big category still in any sort of real doubt.

Until a few weeks ago, George Clooney was the runaway favorite for this award. But The Artist kept snagging awards, and The Descendants kept being pushed further and further to the sidelines, and then Jean Dujardin landed the top spot over him at the SAG awards. Oscar enthusiasts everywhere gasped and said “if Clooney can’t even win at the SAG awards, what chance does he have at the Oscars?” After all, other actors love Clooney. And now some Frenchman is going to come and steal his thunder? Not in my America! Let’s take back our awards and rename our fries! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Whoops, got off track there. In all seriousness, I don’t think the SAG award is a real precursor. The Screen Actors Guild doesn’t have a way to honor a Best Picture – the closest they come is “Outstanding Performance By a Cast,” an award that went to the dozen-or-so actresses that carried The Help rather than the two people (plus one dog) who carried The Artist. I view Dujardin’s win as an anomaly rather than a sign, and I’m picking Clooney. But keep in mind what I said at the beginning of this post. If this is The Artist’s year as much as I think it could be, this will be the extra award it’s most likely to snag.

Actress In A Leading Role

Nominees:
Glenn Close - Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis - The Help
Rooney Mara - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams - My Week With Marilyn

It’s a two-woman race between Viola Davis and Meryl Streep, who are apparently good friends (they were in Doubt together, and I recall Streep name-dropping Davis from the stage after landing an award that year, saying “give this woman a movie!”) and both exceedingly gracious about this sort of thing. They’re both quite good in their respective movies, and despite a string of nominations as long as both arms, Streep hasn’t won an Oscar since 1983 (for Sophie’s Choice).

I wrote about this earlier, but think the streak continues. Viola Davis is incredible in The Help, she’s won most of the awards up to this point, and people want to vote for her. It makes them feel good.

African-American actresses don’t get a lot of good movie roles, and while everyone’s very excited about her now, Davis may not get another chance like this. Meryl Streep certainly will.

Actor In a Supporting Role

Nominees:
Kenneth Branagh - My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill - Moneyball
Nick Nolte - Warrior
Christopher Plummer - Beginners
Max von Sydow - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Christopher Plummer plays a dying father coming out of the closet. The other actors are nominated for roles that are not that. Next.

If you're looking for more effective discussion of the issue, it's also fair to note that Plummer has won pretty much all the awards up to this point. The only guy who's won awards other than him, Albert Brooks, did not manage to snag a nomination here.

Actress In a Supporting Role

Nominees:
Bérénice Bejo - The Artist
Jessica Chastain - The Help
Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer - Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer - The Help

Octavia Spencer should win this, for all the reasons mentioned about Viola Davis. The other nominees include another actress from The Help (Jessica Chastain, who is most notable for probably being nominated for the wrong movie - she should’ve been nominated for Tree of Life), and a just-happy-to-be-here Melissa McCarthy. Her only real competition is Bérénice Bejo from The Artist (for obvious reasons), and Janet McTeer (for playing a woman disguised as a man, which the Academy loves).

Spencer’s won too many awards in a row to pick against her. It’s gotta be her.

Animated Feature

Nominees:
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

The movie that won the Golden Globe for this, The Adventures of Tin-Tin, which has that shiny Peter Jackson-Steven Spielberg résumé, missed a nomination here, apparently as a result of being “motion-capture” instead of “traditional” animation. I won’t pretend to understand the logic behind that, but it leaves a pretty clear path for Rango to win this category going away, as it faces two uninteresting sequels (Puss In Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2) and two buzzless independent films (A Cat In Paris and Chico & Rita, neither of which have been released stateside).

Cinematography

Nominees:
The Artist
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
The Tree of Life
War Horse

There’s a lot going on in this category. Logic would dictate that The Artist should snag this award – the likely Best Picture winner is a film wholly dependent on its cinematography.

(Forgive me if I get a bit verbose here, but I love cinematography and this is one of my favorite awards to consider)

The line the cinematography in The Artist walks is a tougher one than critics have acknowledged: it has to effectively tell the story in a way that a modern audience would be engaged by while also remaining wholly faithful to the style that it’s imitating.  Even though the film’s DP, Guillame Schiffman, nails both categories, I imagine most of the credit will instead go to the film’s director, Michel Hazanvicius.

More to the point is that technical prowess only takes you so far, and there are other films nominated here more impressive in their filmmaking acumen: Hugo for its inventive 3-D work, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for its remarkable digital creation. And Janusz Kaminski’s (a five-time nominee and two-time winner) work on War Horse is no less impressive than his usual efforts, only less praised. So I’ll instead pick Emmanuel Lubezki’s luminescent work in Tree of Life.

Regardless of DP, every Terence Malick movie is artfully shot in a way that it soon becomes apparent that the cinematography is the movie. I’ll post the trailer here so you know what I mean.

I’ll put it this way instead: all of these movies made me admire their photography. Tree of Life makes me want to be a photographer.

Art Direction

Nominees:
The Artist
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
War Horse

Usually this one’s a little more obvious than it is this year. Either the likely Best Picture winner is a big costume drama or historical epic that its art department takes home the trophy as well, or there’s one big standout work in that clearly deserves the award, even if it takes no awards other than this one. Last year was a good example of the latter, as Alice In Wonderland walked home with the award despite mediocre reviews.

This year? Stuart Craig should really take it for Harry Potter, but at this point it’s the eighth movie, it’s the fourth time he’s been nominated, and it would really be a “lifetime achievement” award if he won. Don’t count on it. The likely Best Picture winner is nominated here too, but some old cars and shiny floors and Mary Pickford’s old bed (that’s a real thing) seem like not a lot of art is being directed. That leaves a quaint time-travel movie with minimal interiors (Midnight In Paris), a war movie no one is all that passionate about (War Horse), and a movie about French train stations from the turn of the century directed by a legend (Hugo). Since Hugo snagged eleven nominations but won’t run off with any of the major awards other than maybe – maybe – Best Director, I’ll pick it here. I’ll assume this’ll set off a mini-run of Hugo wins.

Costuming

Nominees:
Anonymous
The Artist
Hugo
Jane Eyre
W.E.

This one’s a bit of a toss-up. The old rule of thumb about any Academy Award is that it doesn’t go to the person who did the best (fill-in-the-black here), it goes to the person who did the most of whatever their category is. The most acting, the most editing, the most whatever. But none of these nominees fit that category.

Anonymous nailed its Shakespearean costumes quite well, but no one is going to award anything to a movie about Shakespeare from by the guy who directed 2012, Godzilla, Stargate, and The Day After Tomorrow. On that note, W.E. is directed by Madonna, so that’s out too. Jane Eyre was perhaps too accurate (read: bland). No one likes handing out trophies for frumpy frocks.

That leaves our two most-nominated films, Hugo and The Artist. I’m reluctant to lean away from the clear favorite, but I have to think that hundreds of turn-of-the-century Parisian waistcoats beat a half-a-dozen flapper dresses. I’m picking Hugo.

Documentary Feature

Oh, I am not jumping into the documentaries yet. These categories don’t count. Let’s leave these until later.

Music (Original Score)

Nominees:
The Adventures of Tintin
The Artist
Hugo
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
War Horse

Ah, back on solid ground. There are five lovely scores here, including two from John Williams, who is securing his 46th and 47^th nominations here (for The Adventures of Tin-Tin and War Horse – both Spielberg projects, naturally). Even when you consider that every Hollywood score seems to be composed by either Williams, Howard Shore (also nominated here), or Hans Zimmer (with a touch of James Horner and Danny Elfman around the edges), that’s a pretty impressive feat. Both of his scores are very good, and Shore’s is more than serviceable, but they won’t win this. Neither will Alberto Iglesias for his contained, subtle work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Ludovic Bource did the score for The Artist – yeah, you see where I’m going with this – and even if it’s maybe not necessarily the best score of the choices, he layered that film with wall-to-wall music, and it’s the most important score to its film of the choices named.

Music (Original Song)

Nominees:
"Man or Muppet" - Bret McKenzie
"Real in Rio" - Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown, Siedah Garrett

I’ve complained about this already. There are only two songs nominated, and one of them is named “Real In Rio.” No one wants to vote for a song that sounds like a tourism ad. The winner’ll be “Man Or Muppet,” from The Artist.

I kid, I kid. It’s from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, of course.

Makeup

Nominees:
Albert Nobbs
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Iron Lady

Another short category. There are only three films nominated: The Iron Lady, Albert Nobbs, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Potter deserves it, but at this point in the game there’s no question of what should win, only what will.  Mark Harris had a great point about this one:

“Two types of movies win this award: Those with immense prosthetic transformations (The Wolfman, Star Trek, How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and those in which an actress is persuasively transformed into a famous person (La Vie en Rose, Elizabeth, Frida). The Iron Lady… is both.”

That’s all the argument I need.

Film Editing

Nominees:
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Moneyball

I am already angry about this category, even before its been awarded. Because I know already that it’s going to go to the wrong movie. It’s gonna go to The Artist, or maybe Hugo, where the degree of difficulty for editing is fairly low, as opposed to a movie with a high degree of difficulty: Moneyball, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I don’t mean this to sound denigrating, and I don’t mean this to sound cocky, but there’s probably no way around either, so I’ll just press on: I could’ve edited The Artist. It just isn’t that tough a film to assemble. At the very least, I could’ve pieced together a solid rough cut that a better editor could’ve touched up later, but for the most part, there’s not that much mastery required to put this movie together. The film is mostly shot in long, master takes, or with a pair of medium shots that you’d crosscut between, or with a sequence of shots you’d clearly assemble in a certain order. Once you’d gotten a handle on the trickiest bit – editing in a way the replicates the style of silent film editors who didn’t have a century of film language bred into them – it’s all smooth sailing.

Compare that to the work the editors of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had to do. The New York Times did a great slideshow of the editors breaking down what they had to just for one four-minute sequence early in the film, its well worth your time, if just to understand the amount of detail that goes in to every scene you see on screen. Its director, David Fincher, shoots an unbelievable amount of takes of every shot, and then, incredibly, divides up the frame so that he can pick his favorite take of everyone in the scene.  Then the editors have to stitch the frame back together with all of Fincher’s favorite performances. The pacing and tone of the editing changes depending on where the scene is, who the character we’re following is, and what time period it is. It’s an unbelievably complex process.

But for some reason most Oscar predictors seem to feel the opposite of me. Everything I’ve read indicates that The Artist is a lock for this award, and how difficult it is to tell a story with no dialogue, and yadda yadda yadda. None of them know what they’re talking about when it comes to editing, but they do know what they’re talking about when it comes to Oscar predictions. And they’re right – most of the time, the editing award matches up to the Best Picture winner, unless there’s a particularly showy war movie or cerebral action piece. That said, the Academy does love Fincher – he won last year for The Social Network. But they also love Thelma Schoonmaker, the editor of all of Martin Scorcese’s movies (I’m not a huge fan of her work, but she’s won seven Oscars at this point, so who am I to judge?). I think Hugo and Dragon Tattoo split the non-Artist vote, and The Artist takes the prize. But just know my heart’s not into it.

Documentary Feature

Not yet, not yet. I’m not ready.

Short Film (Live Action

No.

Sound Editing/Sound Mixing

Nominees:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse
Drive/Moneyball

Okay, I can handle this. Usually, these two categories are paired: the film that wins one will win the other. So we can win this by process of elimination: the films that are nominated in one category but not the other (Drive, Moneyball) are out. There’s a Transformers movie nominated, so we can toss that out too. That leaves Hugo, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and War Horse. Not a lot of interesting soundscape things in Dragon Tattoo, really – and no Fincher movie has ever won this award – so that leaves Hugo and War Horse. It’s a choice between critical adoration and war movie, and that’s a tough call. I’m gonna go with War Horse, but keep an eye on Hugo during this award show. It has the potential to go on a run and sweep all the non-Artist Oscars. Plus, no one really liked War Horse that much.  Then again, no one like King Kong that much, either, yet it’s got three Oscars on its presumably giant mantle.

Visual Effects

Nominees:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Hugo
Real Steel
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Alright, process of elimination again: the Transformers movie is eliminated by virtue of being a Transformers movie, and Real Steel is eliminated for being even stupider. That leaves Harry Potter (which has never won this award) Hugo, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Now, ready for a crazy fact? If you kept reading on that Mark Harris article I linked to, you would’ve seen that since this award was created in the late 70’s, when given a choice between a Best Picture nominee and one that didn’t snag a nomination, the voters have voted for the Best Picture nominee. Every. Single. Time. So logic says Hugo.

I still say Apes takes it, though. Hugo is magical and the 3-D work is very good, but if we awarded films for being 3-D, we’d probably have to hand Piranha 3-D an honorary Oscar.

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Nominees:
The Artist
Bridesmaids
Margin Call
Midnight in Paris
A Separation

Is Woody Allen nominated here? Yes? Well, that was easy.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Nominees:
The Descendants
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Academy loves Alexander Payne – they’ve nominated him in this category as far back as Election – and The Descendants has the privilege of being in the writing category that doesn’t include a Woody Allen script. I know it’s unwise to pick against Hugo, but I can’t recall ever hearing anyone gushing about its sharp writing at any point (it’s based on a children’s picture book, after all). I’m sure that Moneyball will get some love here – both Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin worked on the Moneyball script, that’s a stunner of an Oscar pedigree. But The Descendants is the more emotional movie (Brad Pitt weeping in his truck aside), so you have to figure this category belongs to them.

Foreign Language Film

Nominees:
Belgium, Bullhead
Canada, Monsieur Lazhar
Iran, A Separation
Israel, Footnote
Poland, In Darkness

I’m tempted to call Iran’s A Separation a lock here, since it got some Best Picture hype as well as an Original Screenplay nomination. But the films that have been the big favorites in the past – I assumed The White Ribbon and Pan’s Labyrinth were unbeatable, and was shocked to see Israel’s Waltz With Bashir lose to the Japanese Departures - have all missed out on the prize. And Poland has a movie this year that’s about the Holocaust, which, in the realm of Important Movie Subjects, is tough to beat.

The voters in this category (and the following categories) are a smaller group – you have to have seen all five of these movies to vote, and there aren’t screeners sent out, so you have to have the free time to go to whatever small LA or New York theater is showing them. So who knows where this category’ll end up? It’s going to be decided by a few dozen voters.

That said, everyone’s gushing about what an incredibly moving film A Separation is, so I’ll go with the favorite, even though it violates one of my standard Oscar voting rules: never bet against AIDS or the Holocaust.

Documentary Feature

Nominees:
Hell and Back Again
If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Undefeated 

Oh, man, are we back here again? Fine. Fine! I’ll do it.

Everyone will talk themselves out of voting for Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory – the final chapter in the 20-year fight by the Paradise Lost filmmakers to get the West Memphis Three released from prison – but I don’t know why. This is a story that a number of Hollywood celebrities latched onto (after seeing Paradise Lost, Peter Jackson made his own documentary about the subject), and awarding a film about their release is the exact sort of victory lap the Academy loves. Its only real competition is Hell and Back Again, an apparently quite disturbing doc about an injured soldier returning from Afganistan and trying to rehab his badly injured body and psyche.

Documentary Short

Nominees:
"The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement"
"God is the Bigger Elvis"
"Incident in New Baghdad"
"Saving Face"
"The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom"

Interesting thing I learned this year: almost all of the votes in this category are decided by Academy members who attend a screening of all these movies back-to-back-to-back, then vote immediately after. So the challenge isn’t “which movie of these is the strongest”, but “which movie of these will stand out the most?” I’m assuming it’s Saving Face, a film about a plastic surgeon returning to Pakistan to help women whose faces have been scarred by acid attacks – often by their husbands, who are almost never made to stand trial. Just watching a one-minute clip of the film was a rough experience.

Best Short Film (Animated)

Nominees:
"Dimanch/Sunday"
"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore"
"La Luna"
"A Morning Stroll"
"Wild Life"

Critical consensus indicates that Pixar’s "La Luna" (an endearing twee short about a boy helping his father and grandfather keep the moon lit) will win this category, but I’m doubtful. In its last six years of entry in this category, Pixar is 0-for-6. Instead, I’ll pick "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore", which, in addition to being charming and fun, is also a pretty awesome iPad app.

Best Short Film (Live Action)

Nominees:
"Pentecost"
"Raju"
"The Shore"
"Time Freak"
"Tuba Atlantic"

The last category! We made it! We made it!

This category is always awful. I haven’t seen any of these five films – in fact, there’s never been a year where I’ve seen any of them – and so it’s always guesswork based on video clips, trailers, and online sentiment. Four of these films are indie-type comedies of the offbeat variety (“Tuba Atlantic” is about a dying Irish man trying to signal his brother in New Jersey via gigantic horn, for example). I’ll pick the one that isn’t – "Raju", about a couple who adopts a young Indian boy, then learns that perhaps his parents aren’t actually dead.

Well, that’s it. It’s done. Thank goodness.

There was a time I wrote this article with a chip on my shoulder – I’m weirdly competitive about award show predictions – but now that I’ve been so accurate for a couple years in a row, I’m more inclined to root for my favorites over my predictions (well, those favorites that got nominated, that is. But I’ve certainly griped about that enough).

Best of luck on your Oscar ballots! Keep in mind that those who have taken my picks as their own in years past have been known to have a little extra change in their pocket come Monday morn. Just sayin’.