2012 Oscars: Post-Mortem

Not a lot to say here. I feel like I should feel a lot better about getting so many right (of the major categories. Not to insult Sound Mixing or anything, but I'm not even convinced the people who voted on it knew what the category was about). Sadly, the whole thing was mainly a reminder of how little surprise is left by the time it actually comes around.
I could comment on the ceremony itself, but that's been done to death. Billy Crystal righted the ship from last year's debacle which is all anyone expected. The Bridesmaids were the best presenters as expected. Gwyneth managed to neuter Robert Downey Jr, which was sad. Uh, the circus came to town which was...not all that topical, but better than the random testimonials before the commercials.

Oh shit! I almost forgot. I finally figured out why The Artist didn't deserve to win. So, it does a great job of being a meta commentary on the whole black and white movie thing. The acting, while I look at it as somewhat limited, was done extremely well within its confines. The score was great, the dancing well choreographed, and all the technical stuff was at the highest level.
The weakness of that movie was the story. When else has a movie with such a basic story won? And when I say basic, I mean it was exactly the story I would've guessed from a 30 second trailer. There was nothing in it that was surprising, nothing I haven't seen before, and nothing that made me look at it differently. It was the most familiar movie of the 9, and that includes War Horse which played like a [very effective] "greatest hits" for Spielberg. Without an ambitious narrative, all that movie is is a movie proving that we can still make them like they did in the 20s.
This is also before mentioning the whole "bite the hand that feeds you" moral of the story which laments the move into "talkies", which have rightfully defined film-making since when the movie was set.
There are ways to praise the movies of the past without damning those of the present for being different from them. For a great example of that, look no further than Hugo. That movie praises film for it's ability to enhance a story and go beyond the limitations of what came before. In that, Scorsese is telling people to cherish the movies of yesterday for how they led us to the films of today. Alternately, The Artist attacks the movies of today for changing from the movies before them.

Sorry. I guess this turned into more of a rebuttal to the argument for The Artist's greatness rather than saying anything about the Oscars themselves. Whatever. It was either that or I talk about my thoughts on dryer lint or something.

Obligatory Oscar Picks

I guess since I put in the time to mathematically break down the Oscar winner for best picture and all, and TV and Movies is about the only thing I talk about on this originally intended "eclectic" blog, and my loyal followers (See: People I'll be watching this with anyways) are dying to know that I'm going straight chalk with my picks, and I like to have something I can point to when all my picks were right but also delete when they turn out horribly incorrect...uh...this was going somewhere...Oh yeah, for all those reasons, here are my Oscar Picks.

Best Motion Picture of the Year
Winner: The Artist
Dark Horse: Hugo (War Horse and The Help were both considered for different comedic purposes)
My Favorite: Hugo
If this wins, I officially give up: Extremely Lous and Incredibly Misguided

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Winner: Jean Dujardin
Dark Horse: Brad Pitt
My Favorite: George Clooney
If this wins, I officially give up: Demián Bichir (just because I don't know who he is)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Winner: Viola Davis
Dark Horse: Meryle Streep
My Favorite: Michelle Williams
If this wins, I officially give up: Rooney Mara

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Winner: Christopher Plummer
Dark Horse: Max von Sydow
My Favorite: Nick Nolte
If this wins, I officially give up: Joneah Hill (I'm still not comfortable seeing skinny Jonah)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Winner: Octavia Spencer
Dark Horse: Bérénice Bejo
My Favorite: Melissa McCarthy
If this wins, I officially give up: Janet McTeer

Best Achievement in Directing
Winner: Michel Hazanavicius
Dark Horse: Martin Scorsese
My Favorite: Martin Scorsese
If this wins, I officially give up: Woody Allen (because I'm afraid of taking heat if I say Terrence Malick)

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Winner: Midnight in Paris
Dark Horse: The Artist
My Favorite: Bridesmaids
If this wins, I officially give up: Magin Call (seriously, who saw this?)

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Winner: The Descendants
Dark Horse: Moneyball
My Favorite: The Descendants (I really want Community promos advertising "Oscar Winner Jim Rash)
If this wins, I officially give up: The Ides of March (Congratulations. You found a way to make a movie about the Democratic Primaries boring!)

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
Winner: Rango
Dark Horse: -
My Favorite: Rango
If this wins, I officially give up: Cars 2 (through a write-in campaign)

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
Winner: A Separation
Dark Horse: Monsieur Lazhar (when in doubt, pick the one that's hardest to say)
My Favorite: A Separation
If this wins, I officially give up: Footnote (the title reminds me too much of Footloose)

Best Achievement in Cinematography
Winner: Hugo
Dark Horse: The Tree of Life
My Favorite: The Tree of Life (say what you will, but this movie deserves this much)
If this wins, I officially give up: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

Best Achievement in Editing
Winner: The Artist
Dark Horse: Moneyball
My Favorite: Moneyball
If this wins, I officially give up: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

Best Achievement in Art Direction
Winner: The Artist
Dark Horse: Hugo
My Favorite: Midnight in Paris
If this wins, I officially give up: I'm ok with all these

Best Achievement in Costume Design
Winner: The Artist (when in doubt, go straight chalk)
Dark Horse: Anonymous
My Favorite: The Artist
If this wins, I officially give up: W.E.

Best Achievement in Makeup
Winner: Iron Lady
Dark Horse: Harry Potter
My Favorite: Harry Potter
If this wins, I officially give up: Albert Nobbs (I don't actually care, but there's only three nominees)

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
Winner: The Artist
Dark Horse: Hugo
My Favorite: War Horse (It's almost unfair putting anyone here against The Artist, but I really liked John Williams' work in this)
If this wins, I officially give up: The Adventures of Tin Tin (Because if you pick a John Williams nominee, it should be War Horse)

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song
Winner: "Man of Muppet" (The Muppets)
Dark Horse: "Real in Rio" (Rio) [Default Pick]
My Favorite: Anything else from The Muppets
If this wins, I officially give up: "Real in Rio"

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing
Winner: War Horse
Dark Horse: Hugo
My Favorite: War Horse
If this wins, I officially give up: Transformers 3

Best Achievement in Sound Editing
Winner: Hugo
Dark Horse: War Horse
My Favorite: Drive
If this wins, I officially give up: Transformers 3

Best Achievement in Visual Effects
Winner: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Dark Horse: Harry Potter
My Favorite: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
If this wins, I officially give up: Real Steel

Best Documentary, Features
Winner: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Dark Horse: Pina
My Favorite: Project Nim [Note: Not actually nominated]
If this wins, I officially give up: This implies I've seen any of these

Best Documentary, Short Subjects
Winner: God is the Bigger Elvis [My favorite of the nominated titles]
Dark Horse: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom [Second favorite title]
My Favorite: Incident in New Baghdad [Third favorite title]
If this wins, I officially give up: Saving Face [Least favorite title]

Best Short Film, Animated
[See reasoning for "Best Documentary, Short Subjects"]
Winner: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Dark Horse: La Luna
My Favorite: Sunday [Only if it's a documentary about the making of the music video for "Friday"]
If this wins, I officially give up: A Morning Stroll

Best Short Film, Live Action
[See reasoning for "Best Documentary, Short Subjects"]
Winner: Tuba Atlantic
Dark Horse: Pentecost
My Favorite: Time Freak
If this wins, I officially give up: Raju


There you go. I predict this will be 63% accurate.

Why I Cut the Oscars Some Slack

Every year it's the same thing, "The Oscars suck". Granted, we all watch them or know who the winners are or 10 years down the road start trusting their pick like it was right. It happens. It's the biggest awards ceremony and the one with the most history (I'm not researching that. It's probably true). But, no one really let's the Oscars change their minds about a favorite or least favorite movie. I still hate "Million Dollar Baby" and love "Return of the King". I still don't get "Slumdog Millionaire" and think "Dark Knight" got snubbed.
Also, the LA Times (I think. Once again, this blog gets about a dozen hits, so I'm not researching, just riffing) came out with an article recently about the membership that has a bunch of people crying for reform, or at the very least, gives yet another reason to point to how insignificant it should really be.
The results are pretty damning too. The Academy is over 90% white, over 75% male, and a solid majority voted for LBJ. That is not very diverse at all. It hardly represents the average person's pick for best movie and there are huge segments of the population that are barely, if at all represented. Apparently the voting body is only about 5000 too, which some people say is pretty small. Personally, that seems as big as any other voting body for this sort of thing.

The Oscars are a fun ceremony though, and I kind of hate that it gets shat on so much, so I'd like to help it out a little. Now, where to begin...
 
Let's start with the membership. No fucking duh the membership looks like that.
1) It's lifetime membership and the only thing white than Hollywood now, is Hollywood then. Also, lifetime membership implies a certain age discrepancy. Unless you want to start smothering Warren Beatty in his sleep, there's not a solution to that. And, I don't mean to repeat myself here, but the only bigger boys' club than Hollywood now is Hollywood then. I think the thing really, that people should be looking into is the breakdown of the new membership now. Let's make sure those numbers make sense so this can self-correct itself over time.
2) The Academy Awards are a reactionary group. Hollywood dictates them, not the other way around. Blame the demographics of Hollywood for this. The Academy picks from those available. Now, if Lindsay Lohan gets in but Raven Simone doesn't then we'll talk.
3) I've very OK with the age range. It's a little on the old side (see Lifetime Membership) but the best people in a field generally are older. The goal of the Oscars in it's simplest form, is to have people who know movies best decide on the best that year has to offer. Sure, that almost never happens, but blame the industry, not the demographics of the voters. The closest analogy to this is Obama. Sure he's black, but he's still a politician doing what politicians do.

Here's a good one. What does "best" even mean? It's subjective, of course. Personally, I'm alright with a little subjectivity in my best picture winner. Considering, the closest you can get to an objective measure would be Box Office Gross + Movie Rentals + Movie Purchases. I don't like that system, because then Twilight would be on a Mad Men-like winning streak. I'd pick a movie about middle-aged white guys with first world problems over vampires just about any day of the week.
The best the Academy can do is to get votes from the most divisions of the industry as possible to come up with something. If you want it to be a popular vote, watch the People's Choice Awards and see how you like those results.

Lastly, and I think, most importantly, do the Oscars actually get to decide anything? I mean really. It's almost March by the time this ceremony comes around (and that's earlier than it used to be). It is the last awards ceremony for movies. Even by the time the nominations come out it's virtually decided who the frontrunners (see: Only movies that could win) are.
Let's take this year for example. The Artist is going to win. A "shock" would be The Descendants or Hugo and even those would be pretty expected. Octavia Spencer will collect the Supporting Actress and Christopher Plummer will get his lifetime achievement award. We know so many of the picks because every other guild, critics association, and film studies group has picked the same exact movies.
Can the Oscars really take some much of the blame for lacking imagination in their picks if they are the same ones all the other groups are narrowing their lists down to?I think it's a healthy load of bullshit for The Artist, but it's not like the Oscars are stubbornly backing that movie even though there's a clearly more deserving movie that everyone else is recognizing. Internationally, the same dumbasses are making the same dumbass picks.

I guess what I'm really getting at is, can't we say the awards season sucks, not just the Oscars?
(And yes, this was an abrupt ending because I have completely lost my train of thought at I refuse to outline this.

Too Much Free Time

All the time people tell me, "you have too much free time." I don't really deny it. I never have denied it. Frankly, I don't know how other people manage to fill their time. I work a full time job, have plans most of the nights of the week, run errands. Still, I manage to binge three seasons of 3rd Rock from the Sun in a week, stay on top of my Netflix queue, listen to podcasts, stay of top of basketball scores, waste a few hours reading about Polpot, and write shit like this. I'm not efficient, so I can't use the argument that I'm too efficient and that's what gives me so much free time.

I'm starting to think I'm simply being more honest about it. All the time I'm asking people how they killed their time that day and they say something like "too busy".

A few times a year, I'll even plan a day where I will be busy, start to finish. Christmas shopping for example. I will plan to go all over town all day long, with plans to do stuff with friends afterwards or something. All day long I will make mention to people "I might be a little late" or "Running way behind schedule. Might have to push it back to 9 instead of 8." Despite myself, I'm still done by 6, and that's only because I wasted an hour and a half at the food court in the mall watching muted Sportcenter.

It shouldn't surprise me though. These are the same people I didn't understand in school. In grade school and middle school, when everyone has the exact same classes, they always complain about having so much homework. I'll give a pass to people in High School because the one I went to could be intense, but even still, no job, not sports, no clubs, how can you be that busy especially since every TV show I talk about from the night before they've see too. College is the one that finally made me realize these people were full of shit. Now, I'm smart. I admit that, but I am by no means especially smart. I had median qualifications to get into my college of choice. Most of the people I hung out with were as smart as me, or smarter, but I never complained about having too much work to do. Even my worst semesters were easily manageable, even with a job. Still, there were always some people who claimed to have so much to do. Granted, I was fine with A-/B+s. They were going for As. Is a 10% grade really worth the grief though?

Now it's really confusing, because people aren't even in school. Maybe one day I'll have an actual busy life. Until then, I guess too much free time will continue to be the albatross around my neck.

"Forest Maze" "Help"

There are some lessons not worth teaching. A big one for me is learning to ask for help. There's value to that, but not when it's being taught by dumbasses.

My freshman year of High School, I had to go on this class retreat and one of those activities was called the "forest maze" where they blindfold you and tell you to follow a series of ropes tied to some trees. From the beginning I couldn't understand how that was a maze, but I wasn't at school, so I wasn't complaining...yet. And the whole time you are blindfolded they tell you to ask if you need any help with the maze. In reality, the "maze" was rope tied to a circle of trees. The only way out was by asking for help. It was fascinating in a nihilist sort of way, blind and going nowhere, but I don't think the people in charge looked at it that way.

This "brilliant" activity rewarded both those too lazy to complete the simple task of asking for help when told to and, of course, those too stupid to hold onto a rope. I, as would be expected, lasted a very long time in this "maze" because 1) I did not need help (beyond being saved from misguided educators) and 2) I took my teacher's word that it was a maze (not a half-assed riddle) and that we were in the middle of a trust exercise. Eventually, they gave up on the last few people left. I wasn't one of them because one of the people already eliminated (or did they win, I honestly don't know) came up to me and spilled the beans. In my mind, that handful of people still playing toward the end were admirable in their own way. They played the game right. They didn't ask for help because they didn't need it. It's following a fucking rope and if they really needed actual help, nothing was stopping them from taking off the blindfold.

God! What a waste of fucking time.

It's a good thing that I lasted toward the end though. I'm not sure how long I'd last if I had to see the "aw, shucks" reactions of people learning their "lesson". I thought it was dumb as shit then and 10 years later, I still do. If only I knew then how to express it.