ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS REACTION PT. 1 - BEST PICTURE

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS REACTION (Part 1)

I’m actually pretty pleased with this year’s Academy Award/Oscar nominations.

Last year, some of you may recall, I was frothing at the mouth in rage over major snubs for Gone Girl (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay) and actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Best Actor-Nightcrawler). This year…I guess I’m okay. There were some notable snubs and I think the Academy could have done a little better with a few public relations-type things, but, overall, I think they did pretty well.

My big fear coming into this morning’s announcements was that my favorite movie of the year, the low-budget kidnap drama Room, was going to be this year’s Gone Girl. Sure, it had the Golden Globe-winning Best Actress favorite (Brie Larson) at the helm, but it was a small film without a lot of buzz that had very passionate support among those who saw it, but the impression from some pundits was that its heavy, disturbing premise and subject matter would likely deter many from seeing it. Many predictions I saw even the night before the nominations were announced had Room left off their Best Picture rosters, plus Emma Donoghue’s screenplay was thought to be an on-the-bubble nominee for Adapted Screenplay. Well, it snagged both those nominations, plus the expected nod for Larson, and even got one of the morning’s biggest surprises in a Best Director nominee for auteur Lenny Abrahamson, who incredibly nudged Ridley Scott (The Martian) out of the Best Director lineup.

This week I wrote up a little ditty that I never ended up posting on this blog, my forecast for the nomination announcements in terms of my “Dream picks” and my “Nightmare snubs”. A couple of my dreams actually came to fruition. The ominous, drums-heavy score from Sicario—composed by Johann Johannson—snagged a nomination in the Original Score category. Mad Max: Fury Road made the Best Picture lineup and got a nomination for its director, George Miller, who I think did the directing job of the year. And I had listed a group of about seven actors in supporting roles, of whom I thought one might be able to crack the loaded Supporting Actor category’s final five, and one did!

That’s not to say it was all perfect. While I’m happy personally, the Academy is going face some major backlash after, in the wake of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite outcry, they didn’t nominate a single person of color in the acting or directing category (with the arguable exception of Mexican-born Alejandro Inarritu, the director of The Revenant). Idris Elba of Beasts of No Nation, who was thought to be a cert for Supporting Actor, was snubbed. Best Picture hopeful Straight Outta Compton got left out in the cold, along with its cast. The well-reviewed Creed, which was directed by and starred African-Americans, got a single nomination—Best Supporting Actor for Sylvester Stallone. Will Smith was overlooked in the Best Actor category for his role in Concussion. Even Wiz Khalifa got snubbed after his song “See You Again”, from Furious 7, composed in memory of the late Paul Walker, got snubbed in the Original Song category, and that would have been a favorite to win. Now, I don’t know how the Academy votes, exactly, but coming off the backlash from last year, they probably could’ve been a little wider-thinking.

There’s also the fact that the year’s biggest movie in terms of buzz and money, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, didn’t make the Best Picture roster. I’m sure that upset a few people.

But, overall, I’m pretty pleased. There were some surprising snubs, but nothing that infuriated me like last year. Below I’m going to take a quick—well, I’ll try to be efficient—look at the major categories and review who was nominated and who looks like they will, or could, take home a prize on the night of Sunday, February 28.

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The nominees are:

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

Notable snubs: Carol, Straight Outta Compton, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Reaction: Last year, the Academy took heat for filling the most important category with tiny art films no one had ever heard of, with the exception of what became a monster box-office hit in American Sniper. This year, the only films that really fit the description of tiny indie films are Brooklyn, Room and Spotlight (and Spotlight, with a cast of A-listers, doesn’t necessarily feel like a tiny film). The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road were both hits, each making upwards of $150 million domestically. With Best Actor buzz, some big Golden Globe wins last week and a $39 million opening weekend, The Revenant looks like it’ll make a significant dent in the public consciousness. The Big Short and Bridge of Spies have each gotten a reasonable amount of buzz and been respectable at the box office. The snub of the well-reviewed, artsy Carol is a big surprise—that looked like a possible winner of this category—and, like I said, the Academy didn’t do themselves any favors in terms of ratings/popularity/relevance leaving out Compton and Star Wars. Okay, so, The Force Awakens was basically a remake of the original Star Wars, but Compton was another $150 million hit and would have been a big shot in the arm for diversity’s sake. But, with two legitimate blockbusters in the mix and another widely-released, buzzed-about movie relevant right now, this is a step in the right direction.

The Race: This is the most wide-open race for the big prize in years. You could spin it any way you want—especially in light of The Revenant and The Martian’s dominant showing at last weekend’s Golden Globes—but this year’s Best Picture race doesn’t feature a head-to-head, one of whom definitely will win (a la Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker, The Kings Speech vs. The Social Network, Boyhood vs. Birdman); there’s not even a head-to-head with a third film serving as a potential spoiler (a la 2013—12 Years A Slave vs. Gravity, with American Hustle hot on their heels). So, how’s this gonna shake out? You got me.

Carol was the only one of the year’s really tiny films that seemed to have enough passion surrounding it to maybe propel it to a win. In fact, it was the only one of the really tiny art-house films that seemed likely to be nominated in this category. Without it…well, let me just say, despite pockets of die-hard support for Brooklyn and Room, those movies should just be happy to be here. Oh, last year’s winner Birdman wasn’t a huge movie, but it had a larger scope, a star-studded cast, and more of an entertainment factor/widespread appeal, than Brooklyn and Room (plus, it was about actors and actresses and show business, so, you know, brownie points). A win by either of these films would be a major surprise and, let’s face it, probably bad news for the Academy, since neither is a movie the average person has heard of.

Bridge of Spies had a higher profile—directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks—but I don’t think it was anyone’s pick for movie of the year; most of the buzz I heard was that it was a decent period piece but not among its director or star’s best. The nomination’s the honor.

It’s hard to know what to think of Mad Max: Fury Road, a much more action-driven film than the Academy usually recognizes, in regard to this competition. It obviously inspired passion and is likely to sweep the technical categories (and I think it’s got Best Director locked up), and it landed on more critics’ Top Ten list than any other movie last I looked. That said, it was constantly criticized for for having almost no plot, and is the Academy really ready to laud a film whose characters have names like Immortan Joe, Rictus Erectus, The People Eater, and Splendid Angharad? I’m thinking no.

The Martian will probably end up the most financially-successful and widely-seen of any of the nominees; it also received good reviews and very favorable word-of-mouth. Within weeks of its early October release, it was being hailed as a possible frontrunner. Though it did win a couple major Golden Globes, they were controversially in the Comedy category (which inspired a great deal of debate and derision), plus, a lot of its awards season momentum has lately been stolen by fellow mainstream hit Mad Max. It once seemed headed for Oscar gold in the Directing category for legendary helmer Ridley Scott, who has been nominated three times and never won (even if his movie Gladiator won Best Picture in 2000), but Scott was surprisingly snubbed for Best Director. Three years ago, Argo became the first Best Picture winner in a couple of decades to win Best Picture without even a nomination for Best Director (helmer Ben Affleck’s snub was a huge surprise, considering he won the Golden Globe), so it’s possible The Martian could go the same way. However, Affleck was considered the dead-red, no-doubt frontrunner that year. By this point, Best Director this year seems to be headed to either Mad Max’s George Miller (the Golden Globe favorite) or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu of The Revenant (the Golden Globe winner and last year’s Oscar winner for Director). Scott still had a good narrative being a classic name with no Oscar on his mantle, but, by this point, he was set in most people’s minds to be, at best, the runner-up to Miller. His snub, while very surprising, is unlikely to generate the same kind of shock (and corresponding sympathy votes) Affleck’s snub did—shock that propelled Argo to a Best Picture win. (It’s also important to remember Argo was one of the front-runners for Best Picture anyway, with maybe a slight edge on its primary rival, Lincoln. The Snub gave it the last little emotional edge it needed to become the favorite.) A Best Picture win for The Martian wouldn’t be a total shock, but it feels like The Martian’s momentum has faded away.

The Big Short is a really interesting case, a movie that only looked appealing because of an A-list cast (Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt) but that seemed to be about the kind of thing that makes you bang your head against a wall—the ins and outs of the not-too-distant financial/housing market crisis of 2008. I passed up seeing it to this point because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing I wanted to spend $10 on to hear people talk about for two hours in the theater. However, along with Spotlight, this talky but clever dramedy has gotten every Best Picture equivalent nomination from every guild and major awards group, which is saying a lot. Director Adam McKay—best known for directing Will Ferrell comedies like Anchorman, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys—just became a double Oscar nominee in directing and in writing for his contributions. The fact that it was beaten in the, um, “Comedy” category by The Martian was actually considered a surprise, given its momentum. I’ve heard it actually has a pretty legitimate entertainment factor, with star cameos and random interludes to keep the pace flowing and the energy high even when its content is loaded. I’m trying to think of a recent Oscar nominee with a similar profile—a talky, slightly-snarky take on recent, real-life events—and the closest thing I’m coming up with is The Social Network, which won the screenplay Oscar and in some corners was favored to beat The King’s Speech for Best Director and Best Picture (it lost both). That film, however, was undeniably a much-harder-hitting drama. Still, while I haven’t seen The Big Short yet, it is definitely a serious contender.

That leaves Spotlight and The Revenant, and it’s easiest for me to picture either one of these movies’ names being called at the end of Oscar night. Spotlight—which many pundits have considered the frontrunner since the beginning of end-of-year awards conversations in the fall—has a profile not unlike recent Best Picture winners Argo and 12 Years A Slave, in that it’s a very well-received, well-crafted film about a real-life event, in Spotlight’s case one that was very relevant to the average, everyday American. It has an A-list main cast (Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, supporting acting nominees Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams) and cracks along despite having no action or romance, and dealing with some sobering subject matter. That said, despite a reasonable appeal in chronicling a major, recent, real-life story about real people, and a respectable box-office cume so far, it feels like its momentum in awards races may have taken a significant deep as later-released films like The Big Short and The Revenant have come on strong.

Since last Sunday, I’ve read many a pundit or “expert” go on about how we shouldn’t read too much into The Revenant’s Golden Globes domination (wins for Best Actor, Director, and Best Picture-Drama, with Actor the only prize it was favored to win going in). We shouldn’t. The Golden Globes are issued by the Hollywood Foreign Press, a group of foreign journalists less than 100 strong. It could’ve taken just 20 or 30 first-place votes to give it enough of an edge to win over its four fellow Best Picture-Drama nominees (Spotlight, Carol, Room, Mad Max: Fury Road). Things will be different with the supposedly-7,000-member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. However, what can’t be denied is this—The Revenant has the most going for it, right now, of any of these nominees. A dark, bloody, violent, two-and-a-half-hour film, it opened to a domestic gross of $39 million last weekend—almost enough to knock the four-week-old Star Wars: The Force Awakens off its perch—and those tickets were sold before it won those three Globes Sunday night. Now it’s grabbed headlines for winning the three biggest Globes and leading this year’s field with 12 Oscar nominations, plus it has the likely Best Actor winner (Leonardo DiCaprio) and features another nominated A-list star (Tom Hardy). While I haven’t heard overwhelmingly-positive word-of-mouth from those I know who’ve seen it, it’s undeniably a solid film with a wow factor that will keep people coming to the theater, and, by the time of the Academy Awards broadcast on February 28, I bet it’ll be at worst the third-highest grossing Best Picture nominee, behind Mad Max and The Martian.

Now, last year, American Sniper—another hotly-anticipated, R-rated, violent picture—came on very late, receiving six Oscar nominations when it had had minimal showing at any other awards show (not a single Golden Globe nomination), opened the weekend after the announcement of the Oscar nominations, and blew the doors off the box office. In days, it was the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee, and easily the highest-profile contender for the big prize. It didn’t win. But it’s important to note that, last year, even Sniper’s prodigious box-office success placed it no better than a distant third in the Best Picture race, behind the almost-sure-thing Boyhood and its chief challenger, Birdman. The Revenant may have just jumped right into the chief challenger spot in this race. There is certainly a precedent for Best Picture going to technically-dazzling, eye-popping dramatic epics (Ben Hur, Dances With Wolves), even those of the extremely bloody variety (Braveheart, Gladiator). Sure, it has some dark, tough subject matter, but, especially with DiCaprio the Oscar front-runner in his category, it’s sure to be viewed by a vast majority—if not all—the voting members of the Academy. Fairly out-of-left field nominations this morning for Visual Effects and Tom Hardy’s supporting performance indicate how noteworthy The Revenant already is.

There you have it. The Writers, Producers, Directors and Screen Actors’ Guilds will each have their own shows and hand out their own types of top honors that could change the narrative (Spotlight could cement its “frontrunner” status, The Big Short could look even more formidable, The Revenant could add to its already-impressive trophy case), but that’s roughly the order I envision at this point. So….

Will Win: I’ll say Spotlight¸ though that is admittedly mostly because most critics and pundits have considered it the front-runner for months.

Main Challenger: The Revenant, which certainly has the most momentum right now (should it surprise at any of those Guilds’ award shows, it will seem more legit)

Could Win: The Big Short has obviously struck a lot of people’s fancy

Dark Horse: The Martian. This could be Ridley Scott’s last, best chance to be on the Oscar stage. He could still do it if this puppy wins Best Picture. 

In the coming days, I'll break down the other big categories including Best Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting, and Screenplay. I promise they won't all be this long. Since Best Picture is so wide open this year, I figured a more detailed analysis might be fun (for me, if not you) and, hopefully, informative.