Oscar Postmortem

There's the old saying "You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people". As it applies to the Oscars, I normally follow a variation of that: "You'll never go broke underestimating the complacency of Academy voters". You can (and I have) point to numerous cases of Oscar voters snowballing a single film for the technical award wins or awarding 'most' rather than 'best' for the craft categories. That was the basis of my Oscar strategy this year, and did I ever take a shellacking.

Let's start with the most obvious: Best Picture. I'm not very good at picking this award. I've picked the wrong film 3 of the last 4 years. And the one year I did get right - picking Birdman over Boyhood - you better believe I thought about going the other way. I normally get far too much in my own head about it. This year, I decided to take everything at face value and that bit me. I went on and on about why La La Land was the frontrunner all season long, because that was every indication. I also made it clear that Moonlight had all the credentials for an upset pick. As it turns out, after awarding La La Land with a record-tying number of nominations, the Academy members actually stopped and reconsidered what they were voting for, and Moonlight came away the champ. That doesn't always happen, but it did this year. Good on them.

In fact, if there was a theme to my Oscar misses this year, it was that I assumed La La Land was stronger than it was. 14 nominations and major precursor wins across the board can have that effect. Original Screenplay, Film Editing, and Sound Mixing were all categories that sounded reasonable as part of lazy voting. My belief in the strength of La La Land colored my picks elsewhere like Sound Editing and Costume Design despite a lot of historical precedent against it. I'd even argue that, in a world where La La Land won best picture, Joe's Violin would've won Documentary Short and Toni Erdmann (or maybe A Man Called Ove) would've beaten The Salesman for Foreign Film. It goes to show you, it's really damn hard to have the target on your back the whole time. Since Telluride, La La Land was looked at as the Oscar favorite, and few films make that journey the whole way through. For La La Land, the inevitable backlash came late and allowed for "groupthink" to take a back seat. Many categories actually felt like individual assessments were provided.

And even still, the Oscars were plenty predictable in their own way. Film Editing and Sound Mixing continue to be the two most correlated categories, both going to Hacksaw Ridge. Directing and most of the acting awards went to who I (and everyone) expected. La La Land still won a lot (Production Design, Cinematography, Original Song, Original Score) in the less paid attention to categories.

While we'll never know the exact results, Moonlight's best picture win, like Spotlight's last year, looks like the equivalent of [please don't yell at me] the Trump election win. La La Land was the Hilary, with a perceived firewall of support. Bad press late in the game mixed with an under-recognized base of support, along with a few strategic lucky breaks gave Moonlight just enough breathing room to win. FiveThirtyEight even had roughly the same 80% odds for a Hillary and La La Land win. Now, for all I know, Moonlight could've gotten 90% of the first place votes and won in a landslide. Or, it could've been a Moonlight/Hacksaw Ridge split that went down to the 5th round of voting before it was decided. It's not a transparent system, which makes any prediction, at best, a slightly educated guess. I do know one thing's for sure. After the last two years, I'm adding the WGA Award, with all its flaws back into my Best Picture consideration. It's too vital to ignore.

I'll be the first to admit that I put way too much time into my Oscar predictions [and I get way too lost in my own numbers]. Of course, some of that is because I'd love to get everything right as an external justification for my time spent. As nice as that would be, all my examination is not really about that. That's missing the point of this whole blog. Obviously, I like page views and all that, but most of what I do on the blog is my way to sort out my brain. I break down the Oscars because I like to break down movies. Examining each category gets me thinking about things. How much of my La La Land enjoyment is that score? What elements of Hell or High Water make it so damn good? How much of Moonlight is the screenplay and how much is the performances? Should Kubo and the Two Strings be nominated for Visual Effects? (Yes). I miss the trees for the forest too often, and the Oscars gets me to think about the parts rather than the whole. It's a nice, external motivation to analyze movies deeper.

I've gone on way too long with this "brief intro". This is the type of stuff that excites me though. Let's do a quick round of the Good, Bad, and Meh.

The Good

Moonlight
I don't think the Best Picture winner must be significant, but when it is, that's great. I think of the Oscar as "as long as a movie I likes wins, I'm happy". So, I'm happy. There's a lot of firsts that got checked off with this win that all feel overdue. The Screenplay and Supporting Actor wins were the absolute musts for the film from a "what I thought should win" perspective. Best Picture was just gravy. It should've been more of a contender in the craft categories, but I can see how the acting and screenplay in particular get so much focus, that people can forget to consider the rest.

La La Land
This film came away plenty awarded. Plenty of speeches were given. I can say "Oscar winner Emma Stone" now, which pleases me. In a year of great scores, it managed to win. Best Picture would've been nice, but 8 films had to lose, and it lost to a worthy film.

Casey Affleck
Like Moonlight's best picture win, Affleck's Lead Actor is proof that academy voters aren't blind to more subtle work [sometimes]. Denzel winning wouldn't've been a bad pick, but it would've been a typical one.

The Bad

The Wrong Envelope
That was a massive fuck-up. The Academy took a big credibility hit right there. Not to mention Moonlight's moment got upstaged, which sucks for them. That would've been such a great moment both as a sincere Oscar surprise and an historic win on its own. Instead, they have to share headlines about this screw-up. And La La Land. Look, hate the movie all you want, but if you enjoyed that happening to the people who worked on that movie, you are a dick. They handled it in a classy way as did Barry Jenkins [and the rest of the Moonlight group] in his response. A lot of professionals were on that stage processing a production fuck-up they didn't deserve.

Hell or High Water
That movie was too good to go away empty handed. It happens every year, and it's always disappointing.

The Meh

Jimmy Kimmel
He wasn't the greatest host ever. He was far from the worst. I never get tired of his feud with Matt Damon. I'd have him back just for more of that.

Live-Action Short
This is only my second year really tracking the shorts, but I'm confused by Sing's win. Timecode was more of a crowdpleaser (by my estimation) and a couple others were more politically minded. I'm not sure how Sing came away with the win in that field. I liked it. I just didn't think it was as crowdpleasing or substantial. I have a lot to learn, it seems.

Sound Editing/Mixing
That's an odd split. I fully expected a double winner or a La La Land split with Hacksaw Ridge or Arrival in Editing. I'm not even sure what the lesson learned from this result is supposed to be.