On "Snubs"

I usually write a brief post regarding the Oscar snubs each year (I believe there’s an article in the Constitution that insists they are referred to as “snubs”), and so does every major media outfit. It’s such an easy piece, because a lot of times there’s six or seven “deserving” nominees for each category, so you can chastise the Academy for missing out on one or two nominees without mentioning which nominees you would have done without.

I’d like to do an experiment to see if the Academy nominated the other candidates, whether movie sites would still write the exact same article with different names, but without easy access to mind-altering drugs, I don’t know how I’d pull it off.

The big story this year was in the "Directing" category, which skipped most of the heavy hitters – including the two people most likely to win the award – to nominate Austrian Michael Haneke (who I’d never heard of until a week ago, but is now being referred to as “someone always considered one of the masters of the medium”) as well as first-time director Benh Zeitlin. It’s a strange category, and I don’t know who wins it.

So, rather than just complaining about other people’s picks, I’m gonna make my own selections for each of the categories. This sounds like fun! And not like a ton of unnecessary work or anything.

Let’s start with the big category:

Best Picture

Actual Nominees
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

My Picks
Argo
Django Unchained
Moonrise Kingdom
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

You may think this is a sneak preview of my “Favorite Films” list, but it’s really not. There’s three or four films in my top-ten list that don’t shout “Best Picture!” at me, but I still liked more than almost every film I saw this year. We’ll get there later.

These lists aren’t that different – I pulled Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Les Misérables, while adding Moonrise Kingdom and Skyfall. My problem with the nominees isn’t that the wrong films were nominated, just that there were a few less deserving of nomination. I haven’t seen Amour yet (and probably won’t), so that choice is just supposition, but I’m not someone who tends to be intensely impressed with angry-conversations-in-living-rooms movies.

By the way, whoever does the PR for Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild deserves a substantial pay raise. Beasts (which cost less than $2 million to make), made only $11 million, while Amour has made only $300K so far. Neither film was remotely considered for Best Picture nod three weeks ago. That’s an incredible turnaround.

Actor In A Leading Role

Actual Nominees

Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
Hugh Jackman in Les Misérables
Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
Denzel Washington in Flight

My Picks
Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
John Hawkes in The Sessions
Denzel Washington in Flight 

And… that’s it. I don't have a problem with this category, frankly. If I have to stick in one more to fill in the nominations, I’ll add Hugh Jackman back in for Les Misérables. Lord knows the man committed to the role.

Actor In A Supporting Role

Actual Nominees
Alan Arkin in Argo
Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master
Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln
Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained

My Picks
Javier Bardem in Skyfall
Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master
Scoot McNairy in Argo
Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained

I don’t understand all the attention Arkin gets for Argo – he gets most of the laughs in the film but carries none of the weight that the other actors are asked to. I’d rather pick McNairy, who is deeply unnerving in the film. In fact, I’d rather take a number of nominations over Arkin – Samuel L. Jackson for Django, or Dwight Henry for Beasts of the Southern Wild. Frankly, I’d have taken the CGI tiger from Life of Pi over him.

Honestly, I thought a lot of movie companies did a lousy job promoting their actors in this category. Haven’t seen any buzz for Jeff Daniels in Looper or Mark Duplass for Safety Not Guaranteed. Not to mention the complete lack of buzz for Ezra Miller in Perks of the Being A Wallflower, or Eddie Redmayne’s star-making turn in Les Misérables. Or at least three different people in Moonrise Kingdom. Instead, we have five previous Oscar winners going head-to-head. Not a lot to root for there.

Actress in a Leading Role

Actual Nominees

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva in Amour
Quvenzhané Wallis in Beast of the Southern Wild
Naomi Watts in The Impossible

I don’t have any problem with this list. I haven’t seen Riva’s performance in Amour, but there’s no one I’m screaming for in this category. Supposedly Marion Cotillard is incredible in Rust and Bone, and Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea, but I haven’t seen either film. Though apparently in Rust and Bone, a killer whale eats off Cotillard’s legs, so you better believe I’m gonna check that out.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Actual Nominees
Amy Adams in The Master
Sally Field in Lincoln
Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables
Helen Hunt in The Sessions
Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook

My picks
Amy Adams in The Master
Samantha Barks in Les Misérables
Sally Field in Lincoln
Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables
Helen Hunt in The Sessions

Once again, not a lot of difference here. I don’t know how Jacki Weaver managed to snag a nod for her tiny part in Silver Linings Playbook other than that there’s not a lot of competition this year. I did a web search to see if I missed anyone, but most of the focus is on Nicole Kidman missing a nomination for The Paperboy or Maggie Smith for Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, neither of which I saw.

Directing

Actual Nominees
Amour – Michael Haneke
Beasts of the Southern Wild – Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi – Ang Lee
Lincoln – Steven Spielberg
Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell

My Picks
Argo – Ben Affleck
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
Life of Pi – Ang Lee
Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson
Zero Dark Thirty – Kathryn Bigelow

It seems crazy to drop Spielberg from this list, since I currently think he’s going to be the winner here, but I think that his best decisions about the movie were all done as a producer – landing Day-Lewis, Field, Jones, etc., not to mention getting Janusz Kaminski to shoot the film. As a director, he really steps back and lets his actors go to work. It’s a good directorial decision, but not a tough or flashy one.

My only holdover is Ang Lee for Life of Pi – the movie I hope wins this category this February.

Other Categories

I’m pretty – maybe even “very” – happy with the nominees in other sections. I was glad to see Roger Deakins land a cinematography nominee for Skyfall, and was pleased to see the Academy managed to nominate five deserving animated movies. I noticed both “Snow White” movies got costume design nods, which is the kind of correct decision the Academy never makes. There’s finally five songs in “Original Song,” and they had the sense not to nominate that dumb Jon Bon Jovi song. 

I was psyched to see John Kahrs’ gorgeous short, “Paperman” get a nomination, since I’m hoping it marks a return to form for Disney in the realm of hand-drawn animation. I thought the technical categories went to a nice blend of Argo/Life of Pi/Skyfall/Zero Dark Thirty, and there weren’t any nonsense nominees in the visual effects category for once (The Avengers had to get nominated somewhere).

Even the screenplay categories are pretty good. In “Original Screenplay”, the only one I’m not wild about is the Flight script, so I would have jammed Looper or Safety Not Guaranteed in there. I think Life of Pi is perfectly deserving as an adapted screenplay nominee, but unlike Lincoln or Argo, there wasn’t much work to be done to transition it from book to script. The best bits were already there. Am I insane to watch Joss Whedon’s Avengers script in there? I will admit that I probably am.

 All in all, a pretty good collection of nominees this year, with only one category having an obvious miss. And while a couple of the acting nominees seem set in stone already (count on Day-Lewis and Hathaway as locks, with a strong possibility that the Globes and SAG awards will clarify the other categories – my early guesses are Tommy Lee Jones and Jennifer Lawrence, with Emmanuelle Riva as possible spoiler), but no obvious selection for Best Picture, which makes things more enjoyable.

Best Concert Movie That Isn't A Concert Movie: Shut Up And Play The Hits!

The movie opens on LCD Soundsystem’s frontman and creator, James Murphy, awakening in his bed the night after his band’s triumphant final show. He gets up, a curious expression on his face. He checks his phone, looks at as if he’s going to call someone back, then thinks better of it. He feeds the dog. He takes the dog for a walk. His expression doesn’t change. We begin to realize that we are watching a man with no concept of how he feels, who has awoken for the first time in his life with no purpose at all. He wanders aimlessly through his massive white apartment, picking things up and putting them back down. He isn’t sad or bereaved. He’s just lost.

He goes out and runs errands, visiting his manager, closing down his offices, meeting his band for one last celebratory dinner. At his manager’s behest, he goes to take one last look at the band’s instruments, locked away in storage room somewhere, before they are parceled out and sold. He stands in a dingy cement, surrounded by rows of guitars and keyboards, and without warning, just starts crying. He stands there, unmoving, for a long, long, minute, weeping without a hint of control.

These scenes are intercut with songs from the previous night’s performance (actually, these scenes intercut the performance), a wildly successful show at a sold-out Madison Square Garden, with enraptured fans dancing wildly about. The band plays the songs with end-of-the-world gusto. The concert is brilliantly captured by a horde of hidden handheld cameramen. He’s joined on stage by A-list guests like Reggie Watts and Arcade Fire (fine, one for two). It’s the best concert film I’ve ever seen. Yet none of it sticks with me like the images of a middle-aged man, weeping alone in a gray basement room, sadly and deliberately closing a chapter on his life.

Best Adaptation: The Perks of Being A Wallflower!

I’ve said it before in my commentary on the film (my only review of a film this year, I think!), but young adult novelists with no directorial experience aren’t supposed to be able to create moving, subtle, sweet adaptations of their works. I know John Goodman joked in Argo that “I can train a rhebus monkey to be a director”, but directing is hard, you guys. Go watch that Werner Herzog documentary if you don’t believe me (it’s called Burden of Dreams, about the creation of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, and it’s the film that convinces hundreds of film students a year to say, “y’know, maybe I’ll become a writer’s assistant.”). Speaking of Argo, which we’ll be revisiting later, but I’m more impressed by Stephen Chobsky’s unforeseen directorial skill than I am by Ben Affleck’s reinvention as a director. And that is not a slight on Affleck or Argo in any way.*

*Nor is that giving a pass to the horrendous snub Argo received in the Oscar directorial nominations. Cripes, Hollywood. Get it together.

The Hunt For The Most 90's Song of All Time: Part Four

Barenaked Ladies – “One Week” 

90’s Band Name: A bar band that chose their name on a whim because they thought it would be funny, then stuck with it because they were scared to lose what few fans they had. The 90’s is the last time this could’ve happened. We don’t even have “bar bands” anymore, unless the bar is in Clive Davis’ kitchen. (4/10)

90’s Musical Stylings: Barenaked Ladies are undeniably a 90’s band, but the production on “One Week” makes it seem like it could’ve come any time the past 20 years. However, it does feature as classic 90’s trope: white people rapping during pop music. (4/10)

90’s Cred: The band’s breakout single, the song famously spent all of one week atop the Billboard pop charts, before it was pushed off by a Monica song. Like most BNL singles, the trick wasn’t that it dominated the charts, it’s just that it didn’t leave them, hanging around for almost a year. Much more importantly, it was parodied by Weird Al Yankovic at one point. (3/10)

Pop Culture: I thought that this is where this song would shine. In movies or television shows, when someone wants to indicate that a scene happened in the late 90s, they’ll often play “One Week” – or so it thought, because I’d seen it once on “The West Wing” and that episode of “How I Met Your Mother” with Katie Holmes. It turns out the only examples of this are on “The West Wing” and that episode of “How I Met Your Mother” with Katie Holmes. It was featured in American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You, though, so it’ll get a couple points for that (4/10)

Music Video: Directed by McG (+3) and featured a Pussycat Doll, which has nothing to do with the 90’s but does make it easy to understand how McG ended up producing that bizarre “The Next Pussycat Doll” show. It also features – and I say this with love – the uncoolest band I’ve ever seen. From Tyler Stewart’s glasses, to Ed Robertson’s goatee, to Stephen Page’s… everything… this band is just impossibly uncool. Look carefully at Stephen Page’s face. That’s the face of a guy who is the fourth-funniest guy on your trivia team, but thinks he’s definitely the funniest guy on your trivia team. Ed Robertson’s facial hair is an abomination. He also raps an entire verse without ever taking off his guitar, as if the music video needed him so keep strumming the whole way through. There’s a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang reference and a Dukes of Hazzard reference, neither have anything to do with the song or with what’s happening in pop culture at the time. It’s a disaster. Nothing about this video works. (5/10)

Final Score: We’ve come to the point in this search where we need to talk about what this whole thing is. This is a very popular song from 1998, and it’s permanently connected with the era. But while it’s a particularly 90’s song, it’s not only a 90’s song. It’s a popular song from a 90’s band, and it can still be played today without someone saying “man, remember when we used to listen to stuff like this?” In the same way that Guns N’ Roses are an 80’s band, but “Sweet Child of Mine” is not the most 80’s song of all time. That probably belongs to… I dunno, “Mr. Roboto,” maybe. I don’t know the 80’s that well. The point is, “One Week” only scores only a (20/50), and I’ve learned my lesson about what kind of songs to feature in this section.

Spice Girls – Wannabe (1996)

90’s Band Name: Looks like I learned my lesson quickly. Spice Girls sounds like (and is!) a girl pop group, which is a very 90’s thing to be. Remember girl pop groups? Lukewarm harmonies and cheetah-print spandex? Ah, the memories. (7/10)

90’s Musical Stylings:  Bubblegum pop and a lot of people who can’t sing that well coming together to sing not that well together. Could’ve come from any era if it wasn’t for that electronic piano sound, the screechy shout-singing (“I wanna HUH! I wanna HUAH!”), and a long white-person rap (“so here’s the story from A to Z, you wanna get with me, you gotta listen carefully.”) that sounds like it was written in half an hour. But it wasn’t, because the whole song - and this is true - only took half an hour to write. So they couldn’t have spent more than five minutes on the rap. (9/10)

90’s Cred: Obviously, this category is gonna have a perfect score, because during their height, there was no one bigger than the Spice Girls. In fact, when you think about it, the Spice Girls may be the biggest novelty music act of all time. This song went to number one in 98 different countries and led to Spice Girls mania, and eventually led to the creation of Spice World, a whole movie just about the Spice Girls. Trivial Pursuit declared them the biggest cultural icons of the 1990’s, a poll they won by 80 percent. That’s insane. (10/10)

Pop Culture: Smaller than you’d expect. Outside of Spice World, “Wannabe” was featured on an episode of “King of the Hill,” (+1) an episode of “Daria,” (+1) an episode of “Sabrina The Teenage Witch,” (+1) and for some reason, the movie Small Soldiers (+1) (remember Small Soldiers? It was like a dark version of Toy Story where the government created evil toy soldiers that went to actual war with humanity. Which I’m not opposed to, because Small Soldiers made $55 million, so our herd could probably use some thinning). It was also featured in Contact somewhere (+1), which seems just impossible. Anyway, Spice World gives them a pretty good bump here, too. Looks like it’s a (7/10)

Music Video: There’s so much to cover here. The video was shot all in one shot (+1), on a distorted fish-eye lens (+1), and features the band in a collection of skimpy neon outfits (+1), most of them belly-baring in some fashion (+1). They rush into a snooty hotel filled with old people with monocles (yes, there are multiple monocles in this video) and just wreck the place with their “girl power” (+2). This video could not look less rehearsed. The band trips over things, runs into walls, and consistently fails to hit their marks. They have a short dance break (+2) in which most of them mess up their parts. Their label was concerned that the girls’ rowdiness would be considered “threatening,” which has more than a smattering of sexism to it. Since the video was (ahem) obviously shot in cold weather, it was banned in some parts of Asia. (8/10)

Final Score: Cripes. I knew that this song would be a powerhouse, but I didn’t realize it would be this dominant. There’s just no way to disconnect the Spice Girls from the 90’s, and this song proves that. We might already have our winner. A dominant (41/50).

Calloway – I Wanna Be Rich (1990)

Our first request! Daniel asked me to cover Calloway’s kitschy one hit.

90’s Band Name: They’re a band named after their last name, like future entry Hanson, which is enough of a pattern to grant them a few points, but I don’t know if it’s enough to separate them from non-90’s bands like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, and Santana. However, their first names were Vincent and Reginald, which amuses me for some reason. You wouldn’t think two brothers named Vincent and Reginald would start a band together. Maybe a fox hunt coordination company. (3/10)

90’s Musical Stylings: Okay, this is gonna be trouble. I’m sorry, Daniel, but despite appearing in the 90’s, there’s nothing 90’s about this song. It’s an 80’s song to its core: the drum machine and crazy drum fills, the synth, the plinking keyboard, the falsetto on the bridge, the random whistle blowing, the moaning all through the breakdown. It’s just an 80’s track that came a year too late.  However, it is awfully fun, and I think it’s worth sticking with this breakdown because the music video is fantastic. (0/10)

90’s Cred: They’re a one-hit wonder (+1), so they get a point, but nothing more. However, their Wikipedia entry ends with this: “After the hits dried up, the Calloways concentrated on production work. Yet they still release albums to this day.” I see your sneaky snideness, Wikipedia, and I love it. (1/10)

Pop Culture: It was used in an episode of “Beverly Hills 90210.” Gotta count for something. (1/10)

Music Video: HOO BOY. Where to begin?

This video starts with the two Calloways in their living room, in glorious sepia-toned footage, just doing bro stuff. You know, dancing, playing on their keyboards, ironing, lifting weights, all while singing to each other. You know, like brothers do. There are lot of tight shots of both the weightlifting and the ironing, as if the director watched Vincent (or Reginald) iron and told the cameraman, “make sure you get a lot of this hot ironing action.”

Speaking of hot action, there is a ton of weightlifting footage in this video. Reginald (or Vincent) really wanted to show off his athletic prowess, so there he is, pumping barbells over and over again. Since watching someone do curls is a bit dull, the cameraman zooms wildly in and out as he lifts. At one point, the cameraman accidentally zooms in on his crotch, then quickly drops the camera down so that it’s filming Vincent (or Reginald)’s sock. For some reason, this makes the final cut.

By the first verse, the guys are complaining about how they have no cash and everything’s going wrong (possibly because they spend all their time ironing and lifting instead of looking for jobs). Their car gets repossessed, a storyline that is easy to grasp because the video has 8 separate shots of the boys waving their arms and yelling at a man who tows their car away from their house. Just for safety, they also have this:

A shot of the repossession notice itself.

Almost immediately, however, the narrative goes the other way, as we are briefly introduced to this mysterious figure.

Who is she? Someone unattainable, apparently, because of the lack of riches. Perhaps she is a very expensive prostitute.

The video finishes with an exceptionally poorly choreographed dance sequence, punctuated by a series of spinning high kicks. The band is clearly really into these high kicks, because, midway through one of Reginald (or Vincent)’s kicks, the video cuts to the crowd cheering, then cuts back to Vincent (or Reginald) finishing the kick. Epic.

Were this a “Most 80’s” or “sexiest ironing” video, I would award them ALL THE POINTS. As it is, (0/10). Sorry, boys.

Final Score: Not 90’s. But I’m glad I got to be a part of this. (5/50)

2012 Award For Movie That Did The Most Damage To Its Brand: Brave!

First off, I know a lot of people would argue here for The Hobbit. Ignore them. They can call up Mario Lopez*, cause those people be haters. Also, we’ll get to The Hobbit later.

*got that pop culture reference in just under the gun. What’s that? Missed the window entirely? No one ever watched “H8R” anyway? No one reading this has any idea of what I'm referencing? Well, "H8R" was a CW show where celebrities went to yell at fans who said mean things about them on the Internet and... you know what, just forget it. This isn't worth saving.

Sometimes, I’m disappointed with a movie but it’s for me hard to understand exactly why. There’s just a vague sense of malaise, a low waw-waw playing somewhere in the distance. Actually, sometimes I don’t even realize it myself. I remember coming home in high school after seeing Men In Black II and my dad saying immediately, “I guess you didn’t like the movie, huh?” That was the first moment I realized I had not.

That’s not the case with Brave. The movie’s flaws are glaring: a half-baked storyline, underwhelming characters, and a strong example of what Ebert always refers to as “the idiot plot” (that is, a problem that could be fixed instantly if the characters acted even slightly logically). If you haven’t seen it, I won’t reveal here what is, in fact, Brave’s best trick: an abrupt right turn in the story halfway through that takes the movie in a fun new direction. It’s just as soon as it does take that turn, the movie’s two main characters abandon all reason and crash wildly, aimlessly, through the rest of the story.

That a children’s movie has a few story flaws shouldn’t be news, except that Brave comes from Pixar, the gold standard of animation and a company that made its name on story and character development. Even as Dreamworks and their own parent company Disney scrambled to catch up, every year Pixar has been laughably ahead of the game in this regard. If we give them a pass on the insisted-on-by-Disney cash grab that was Cars 2 (which everyone’s been very understanding about), this is the first movie that Pixar’s handed us where animation trumped imagination.

Here’s why they should know better: early on in Pixar’s run, they began expanding their moviemaking department so that they weren’t just cranking out one film at a time (a schedule that would give them a film every three years or so). The team that made Toy Story was working on A Bug’s Life, while their B-team began work on Toy Story 2, which was conceived as a direct-to-DVD movie. But Toy Story 2’s story just wouldn’t come together, and as the movie got further and further into development, it became more and more of a mess. At the same time, Disney decided to bump Toy Story 2 from a DVD to a theatrical release.

Fortunately, the creative team working on A Bug’s Life finished and were able to come in and rescue Toy Story 2. In a weekend, they’d reconceived the whole movie, and a frenetic nine months later, released one of their most critically acclaimed films (it has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to this day). And they promised themselves that they’d never make another movie where they didn’t put their top creative talent in charge.

Until Brave, they kept that promise. Look at the list of writers and directors on Pixar films up to this point, and Pixar’s top names can be spotted on every film: John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, Lee Unkrich. And then we get to Brave and… Mark Andrews? Brenda Chapman? Who are these people*? 

*it turns out Mark Andrews was a Pixar story supervisor (a story supervisor is a writer who gets paid extra), and Brenda Chapman directed The Prince of Egypt, a movie that was considerably more successful than I remembered. 

I get that Pixar’s top players are going to have to hand over the reins at some point. In fact, one of their greatest successes was bringing in acclaimed-but-forgotten director Brad Bird, so you have to cut them a little slack here. But I think they’re going have to be a little more careful next time they try to pass on responsibility, because I’ve lost a little faith that someone’s really watching the store.