It’s that time of year again. Football is over, spring
training is in full swing, my new residence of State College, Pa. is seriously COLD
and the awards season is about to culminate with the Academy Awards, hosted by
Chris Rock and airing Sunday, Feb. 28 at 8:30 p.m. (ET) on ABC.
Most of the discussion leading up to this year’s ceremony
has centered on the fact that there are no minorities recognized among the 20
acting nominees for the second straight year. In response, several actors of
color announced they would boycott the ceremony and Academy president Cheryl
Boone Isaacs (an African-American woman) vowed to overhaul the voting procedure
to allow for more diverse representation.
Although it’s admirable for Boone Isaacs to take a stand,
it’s also become slightly comical that the only time anyone talks about
Hollywood and diversity is when the Oscar nominees are announced.
In short, this is NOT an Oscar problem, it’s a Hollywood
problem. The Oscars are simply a reflection of a film industry in
which the number of minorities and women in a position of power is comparatively
small.
People point to “Straight Outta Compton,” “Creed” or
“Concussion” as films starring, written or directed by minorities that were unfairly
snubbed by the Academy but these aren’t all-time great films that are being
ignored. They are good films with good performances that simply didn’t make the
cut, but they appear to stand out as examples of discrimination because they
are among the woefully small list of award-caliber films produced by
minorities.
Think about it: if there were dozens of prestige pictures
being made each year by a diverse set of filmmakers, would it be so glaring
when Michael B. Jordan isn’t nominated for Best Actor for "Creed" or “Straight Outta
Compton” doesn’t earn a Best Picture nod?
And it’s not like anyone shouldn’t have seen this year’s
crop of nominees coming. Anyone can look at the credits for the slate of films
being released each year and see that females and minorities are under
represented. But that doesn’t stop Jada Pinkett Smith or Spike Lee from
feigning dismay at Hollywood’s award season dismissal of diversity. It’s
evident all year long.
The fervor over
diversity has died down in the weeks since the nominations were announced but
it will surely reignite with Rock emceeing this year’s ceremony. Rock created
controvesy in his first hosting stint in 2005 by ruffling the feathers of the straight-laced
Hollywood establishment and it’s unlikely he’ll go easy on them Sunday night.
As for the awards themselves, there are some locked-down categories and some that are still up in the air. What’s unique about this
year’s awards is that one of the awards that is still in question is the
biggest of all – Best Picture. Eight films are nominated for the big prize, but
only three have a legitimate shot at winning the top honor – “The Big Short,”
“The Revenant” and “Spotlight.”
“The Big Short,” Adam McKay’s comedy-drama about the 2008 financial crisis starring Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale, came out of nowhere when it was released in December but has steadily gained momentum ever since. My first impression after seeing it was that it was a culturally important film that Americans should make a point of viewing but there’s a difference between being an important film and a great film. There’s nothing particularly remarkable or original about the filmmaking in “The Big Short” and while McKay uses clever devices to explain the Wall Street lingo (like Selena Gomez playing blackjack while breaking down subprime mortgages) the subject matter is still often times too “inside baseball” to be completely engaging.
That said, the Oscars have a history of sometimes
honoring films that spark the public consciousness in the moment but don’t
really stand the test of time, like “Crash” defeating the superior “Brokeback Mountain” for
Best Picture in 2006. That’s happening right now with “The Big Short” as
millions of Americans outraged by Wall Street greed have latched onto it as a
culturally-relevant film. Working in its favor as well is that “The Big Short”
won the top prize earlier this month at the Producers Guild of America Awards,
which is usually an accurate prognosticator of what will win the Best Picture
Oscar because the two awards follow a similar voting procedure. Since 2002,
only one film (“Little Miss Sunshine” in 2007) has won the PGA Award but not
the Best Picture Oscar. That’s a very encouraging track record for “The Big
Short.”
It’s still not a lock though because actors constitute
the largest voting bloc and the Screen Actors Guild named “Spotlight” as the
top ensemble. It’s not as accurate an indicator as the PGAs, but six of the
last 10 Best Picture Oscar winners also took top honors at the SAG Awards.
“Spotlight,” a drama about the Boston Globe reporters who
exposed the Catholic Church sex scandal in 2002, was the early favorite to win
Best Picture when it was released in November, but it never ran off with the
competition. It’s the kind of film where it’s extremely difficult to find any
flaws, but it doesn’t really blow you away with its filmmaking artistry. While
it’s an exceptionally well-made and taut drama, it’s difficult to pinpoint
anything about it that makes you think it will be particularly memorable 10-20
years from now.
The final film that could win Best Picture is Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu’s “The Revenant.” The film came out so late in the year (it
didn’t even get a wide release until January) that I didn’t include it on my best films of 2015 list because it hadn’t had its wide release yet. If I had
seen it in time, it absolutely would have made the cut. “The Revenant” is
beautifully shot, exceedingly well-acted (Leonardo DiCaprio is a lock to win
an overdue first Oscar for Best Actor) and manages to tell a compelling
narrative over more than 2 ½ hours. Just in the first 10 minutes there were a
handful of shots that looked impossible to achieve and the behind-the-scenes
stories about the film’s difficult production have only made “The Revenant” a
more impressive achievement.
“The Revenant” took the Best Drama prize at the Golden
Globes and Inarritu won the Director’s Guild Award, but it’s possible the
Oscar’s older voting bloc will be turned off by the film’s brutally realistic
depiction of the early 1800’s American Frontier or are turned off from hearing
about production stories like DiCaprio actually eating raw bison liver. It also remains to be seen
whether the Academy is ready to honor Inarritu again so soon after he won Best Picture,
Director and Original Screenplay for “Birdman” just last year. Not since 1950
has a director won Best Director two years in a row and a director has never
helmed two consecutive Best Picture winners.
My predicted winner? As much as I ‘d like to see
“Spotlight” or “The Revenant” win (or even “Room,” but that ain’t happening), I
think the PGA Award’s history of accurate predictions will likely hold up and
honor the wrong film with “The Big Short” coming out on top.
Here’s the lowdown on some of the other categories:
Best Actor: as
I stated above, DiCaprio is overdue
and he fully committed to his role in “The Revenant.”
Best Actress:
Almost as much of a lock as DiCaprio, Brie
Larson is a pretty sure bet to earn a deserved win for “Room,” in which she
plays a traumatized young woman bonded to her five-year old son under harrowing
circumstances.
Best Supporting
Actor: This isn’t a terribly strong category and I’d probably give the
honor to Mark Ruffalo for “Spotlight,” but I think the acting bloc will be
anxious to honor Sylvester Stallone,
a deserving winner for reprising his performance as Rocky Balboa in “Creed.”
Best Supporting
Actress: Another tight category with no clear-cut favorite but Alicia Vikander appears to have gathered
momentum for “The Danish Girl.” I haven’t seen “The Danish Girl” yet, but if
Vikander gives as strong a performance as she did in “Ex Machina,” it’s a
worthy honor. Kate Winslet in “Steve Jobs” is a possible spoiler, though.
Best Director:
For most of the year, George Miller seemed like an obvious frontrunner for his
visionary filmmaking in “Mad Max: Fury Road” but the scope and scale of Inarritu’s work in “The Revenant”,
coupled with his DGA win, makes him the frontrunner.
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