Seasons greetings, all ye faithful readers! As Katie-Bar-The-Door puts the finishing touches on Bedford Falls, I thought I'd put the finishing touches on my alternate Oscars polls — three quick votes on some of the supporting acting categories that I've had time to rethink. Have at it!
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
And now for something completely different. From here on out, I'll round up twice the usual number of suspects, you vote for as many Oscar-worthy contenders as you like, and when I eventually circle back to 2016, I'll take the top vote-getters and turn them into my official nominees. And if you don't like my choices, add one of your own.
How do you like them apples, dude?
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Ted 2 turns out to be my answer to a meme floating around the internet a couple of years ago — name a movie you like released since 2000 that scored less than 50% (i.e., was panned by most critics) on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer.
This turned out to be much tougher than I anticipated, largely because I rarely bother to see movies that have been critically panned. I counted only thirty-nine movies with a "splat" rating that I've even seen — forget liked — and only twelve of those in the theater. What can I tell you? I never go to a movie on its opening weekend, I pay attention to the critical buzz, and I trust my gut when I see the preview. It's like those commercials for Cici's Pizza — if it looks bad when people are being paid to make it look good, it's probably terrible.
Anyway, of those movies, Ted 2 is the only one that almost made my annual top ten. Sure, it stars a foul-mouthed, dope-smoking teddy bear, but it has some clever things to say about what it means to be a human being, and the dangers of treating some of those beings as less human than others. If its brilliant second act hadn't been done in by an utterly inane third, I would have nominated it for best picture. Check it out.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
A combination of personal favorites and consensus picks ...
Note: while I have set up the polls so that you can only vote once for picture, director and the four acting categories, you may click on multiple answers in the Special Award poll.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I started writing a rant the other day responding (eight years late) to Neil deGrasse Tyson's rant about the scientific inaccuracies in the 2013 movie Gravity and then decided before I was done that I didn't care anymore. That pretty much sums me up these days, fighting to finish a thought before my brain throws in the towel.
If you're not a regular viewer of the Science Channel, Tyson is the degrassehole who kicked Pluto out of the solar system. When Gravity first came out, he was as full of helpful nitpicks — e.g., "Nearly all satellites orbit Earth west to east yet all satellite debris portrayed orbited east to west" — as he is evidently full of himself.
I have no doubt everything he said was true (he is after all an acclaimed astrophysicist) but his criticisms were also beside the point. Going to the movies for scientific accuracy is like going to McDonald's for salad. I mean, sure, there might be one in the back of the fridge, but do you really want to eat it?
What's important is that a movie establishes its rules up front and then lives by them, come hell or high water. Warp drive in Star Trek? Vampires in Nosferatu? Letters of transit in Casablanca? Not even remotely realistic. But we accept them because the characters in the movie accept them and make their plans accordingly.
Gravity establishes the rules early on and lives with the consequences to the very end.
I think Tyson made the same mistake a lot of people make when watching a movie, confusing the plot's mechanics with the story's meaning.
If you haven't seen it, Gravity is the story of an astronaut (Sandra Bullock) who is marooned in space after a catastrophe destroys her ship and kills her crewmates. Armed with nothing but her wits, a spacesuit and the oxygen on her back, she makes one harrowing leap after another into the unknown, searching for a way home before she runs out of air or burns up in the atmosphere.
That's the plot.
What it's about, though, is a woman who's been marking time since the death of her daughter, drowning in a pool of grief she can't escape. Sure, she's still active — she's an astronaut, fer Chrissake! — but she's going through the motions. Now, however, thanks to circumstances beyond her control, she has to make a choice whether she's going to get on with her life or join her daughter in the great beyond.
If you did this same story starring a woman sitting in a silent room with a ticking clock, the critics would lap it up with a spoon, but nobody would watch it. Put her in a spacesuit and play out her therapy while she's gasping for oxygen? Now you've got something.
It's like that show from a couple of decades back about a middle-aged man with mother issues who pours out his soul to his psychiatrist every week. Pretty dull stuff, right? But make him a gangster, call him Tony Soprano? The rest is television history.
Love Gravity or hate it, to base your opinion on its fidelity to astrophysics is to confess you don't know what movies are for.
Oh, and for the record, Neil deGrasse Tyson loved Gravity. Me, too.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I picked The Avengers as the best movie of 2012, not because I'm a fanboy — I only got around to watching the entire Marvel series this year — but because of its cultural impact. The Marvel Universe is more lucrative than Star Wars, and more entertaining to boot. And without this first of the super hero mashups, that doesn't happen.
That it's also smart and witty is the cherry on top of the sundae.
Which is not by way of trying to sway your vote. Just explaining mine.
By the way, whatever else you may think of Silver Linings Playbook, it does feature the funniest-ever review of one of my favorite Ernest Hemingway novels:
Okay, have at it:
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
If you're looking for Shame, Melancholia or The Tree of Life, you've definitely come to the wrong place ...
No Meryl Streep either. She won an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady but seriously, come on! Talk about your "dingoes ate mah baby" performances! The Academy can't find somebody else to honor?
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
