As will be shockingly evident in future posts, I'm a bit of an amateur historian on the Oscars. I say amateur because no one has paid me for any of my opinions, reactions, or predictions. For years (about 8 now) I've been working on a loose Alternate Oscars book where I make a case for all my picks from 1927-28 to the present. Danny Peary wrote a book on the exact same subject that has since gone out of print, and well his writing is what set my mind on this crazy project. Even when I think I'm getting close, there's a whole new year of nominees to see, research and bitch about. I recommend checking out his book which can be found on Amazon fairly cheap used here.Now before I get too far off the current topic let's talk about Peary and his book a bit more. Why write it at all if there's already a book on the subject? Well for starters Peary's book was published in 1993 and goes up until the 1991 Academy Awards. Think of how many films have come out since and how often the Academy has chosen poorly (The English Patient over Fargo for instance). Also Peary did not include his picks for best director, he limited his choices to picture, actor, and actress, so there are is a whole other category to gripe about (this is the place where you can retroactively moan about Kubrick's lifetime of snubs and finally give Hitchcock his rightful Oscar for Psycho among others). He also chose to largely ignore foreign films, his justification (quite understandably) was that the Academy has long ignored foreign films. In fact the whole Academy was started to salute the films of Hollywood because way back in 1927 most of the best "art films" were coming from over seas, the establishment saw this as a way to remind people that in addition to entertaining the domestic product could be just as artistically credible.
Now let's avoid the history lesson for now, and get onto the present. For the first time since 1943 (I know I said we were done with history) the Academy has selected 10 best picture nominees. The reasons are bountiful on both sides for and against this change. Art pictures seem to do worse and worse at the box office this year. Plenty of reports have shown that The Hurt Locker lost money in it's initial domestic run and well several of the other nominees in year's past didn't do tremendous box office. So by nominating 5 additional films you are giving them great advertising for people like me who have to see every film ever nominated for a best picture Oscar (there are only 8 films since 1927 to get nominated that I haven't seen). So sure for people who miss most of these films when they first come around, which is entirely possible if you live in a rural area or even suburban enough to not make the lengthy drive it sometimes takes to see these obscure gems. A best picture nomination generally convinces your local multi-plex to bring a film around. It has helped a few films catch a second wind this year.
However the main complaint is that the more nominees you have, the more duds will get nominated. Typically in any given 5 nominee year you have one or two really excellent films, one or two pretty good films that probably didn't need to be nominated, and almost always at least one head scratcher that you'd like to be recounted. Last year was a year I can't say any of the films were excellent. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire were both very good, Frost/Nixon was a pleasant surprise, Milk was also a very good film (although I wonder if Paranoid Park was Van Sant's better picture of the year), and The Reader took the token spot of being garbage. Not to say The Reader was so bad but find me someone in five year's who will voluntarily watch that film and look me in the eyes and tell me it was a better film than The Dark Knight? So last year would have been a good time for the 10 nominees, The Reader wouldn't have stuck out as bad, and people like me wouldn't have reason to gripe that films like The Dark Knight and Wall-E were left off the ballot. Now for those people who think The Reader was actually worthwhile and deserved even more than just a nomination I apologize but can we just go one year without a WWII film winning awards? I won't get political here, but after 6 decades the subject is all but exhausted.
Now let's take a look at this years class. I'll go through each film one by one alphabetically so let's begin with:
1. Avatar - By far the most popular of the nominees this is the one that makes as strong a case for best picture by being simply the best overall production. The staggering budget was a cause for great speculation before it was released. I saw it in 3-D opening weekend and technically was very impressed. However the all important story seemed to be very much "Dances With Wolves . . . in Space." It is a good story, but I probably liked it better when Kevin Costner directed it to Oscar gold back in 1990. This is certainly on a much higher scale, but it is much easier to relate to Costner's film for Americans because it is our own history and we don't have the blanket of a foreign planet and the distant future. James Cameron is easily one of the finest filmmakers working and although his resume might be small it is certainly impressive. However I'm not going to say this film is better than Terminator 2, Aliens, or even True Lies and those films didn't exactly harvest Oscar gold. I think no matter how you look at it there isn't much of a case for this film beyond being technically impressive and looking good.
2. The Blind Side - This year's The Reader, at least in terms of the film that least belongs among the nominees. I comfortably believe this wouldn't have been up for the big prize if the Academy stuck to their regular 5. Now before I get too far I'd like to say that the film isn't awful, by no means it's designed in a way that makes it hard to be awful, but impossible to be great. Whenever the words "based on a true story" are uttered in the context of a film there's a part of me that wants to push the panic button. This is a feel good story about an under privileged athlete that finds a second chance with excessively rich white people. I often wonder how much different Michael Oher's life would be if he had no athletic ability whatsoever. It goes back to the Dumbo fable which always seemed to send a wrong message of "It's not right to criticize someone because they might have some magical special talent, if they have no talent however make fun of them all you want." Not to say people are "picking" on Oher in this film but would there really be a movie if it was just some rich white people adopt a big black kid from the ghetto? How Sandra Bullock managed to get a best actress nomination is another story altogether can't say her headstrong performance did anything close to impressing me.
3. District 9 - This I believe is another film that benefited from the extra nominations. When it was released in theaters I didn't have much of a desire to see it. After my brother saw it and reported back with an unfavorable review I just ignored the picture. However when the nominees were announced I had to check it out. Luckily it was already on DVD and I found a film that is quite surprising to find amongst best picture nominees. It was produced in a foreign country, there are no stars in it, it's science fiction, so these typically aren't the signs of Academy recognition. However when a film is well made sometimes you just trust it to someone to recognize it, even the typically out of touch Academy. This was easily one of the best films of the past year and took about 1/10 of the money spent on making Avatar to craft a much better story. The films are similar in their alien life, world's disrupted, and one person becoming one with the species. I don't want to compare them too much because they really aren't terribly similar, but I didn't feel beaten over the head with this film and it's modest but extremely well done special effects, the way I left Avatar feeling like I'd been bludgeoned into believing it was a masterpiece (or I must be crazy to think otherwise). I'd say this has less than 1% chance of winning the big award, but in this case a nomination is probably enough of a victory.
4. An Education - Carey Mulligan is outstanding in this film and is easily my favorite for best actress (whether or not she'll win is another story that I won't get into). The story progresses a little too long without a real conflict which makes you a little off guard when the story takes it's turn. It is of course a story a little too familiar, but you don't harbor great feelings of resentment towards either of the main characters, despite how lecherous David might be. At least this film demonstrates without hardly any budget and a well chosen cast not selected for star power could carry a film. This does have "The little train that could" written all over it and is another film that should just be happy it got nominated, certainly it's Oscar nods have helped it gain some box office momentum. This like Crazy Heart seem to have landed on numerous critic's top ten lists based on acting power alone. However for my personal opinion this is a pretty good film that's not quite best picture material.
5. The Hurt Locker - This is the one that everyone who disliked Avatar is pulling for. The David in the battle with Goliath. Popping up on the top of numerous critics lists and proving that once and for all good films can be made about the conflict in Iraq. Now I'm setting myself to be stoned when I say this but I didn't see what was so great about it. Not that it was a bad film at all, but I just wasn't terribly impressed with it. I'm not entirely sure what everyone else seemed to see in it, and no I'm not one of those people that needs a lot of huge explosions and special effects to be interested in a film. It seemed almost too short and I'm not sure if I agree entirely with Jeremy Renner's best actor nomination, although it is welcome to see a relative unknown getting that career boost. As for Kathryn Bigelow I may have actually enjoyed her vampire film Near Dark more than this. Now before I get hit with too many stones, I did like the film and thought there were some incredibly intense moments, but to crown this one of the best of the decade and a masterpiece for the ages seems to be over exaggerating a tad bit for me.
6. Inglorious Basterds - Based on the somewhat mixed response this received upon it's initial release I was surprised first to see it up for a Golden Globe, but not as surprised to see it in the best picture race (considering one is typically a precursor to the other). Everyone has rightly anointed Christoph Waltz for the performance of the year, even if it is supporting. However, the film itself sure seemed to anger the foreign press in some circles and over here in the US many people found it a little too wordy an lengthy. Those complaints are nothing new for Tarantino films which have long established themselves as dialogue driven efforts. Sometimes (Death Proof) this can be a distraction, but here it helps the film out. Sure the grindhouse fan in all of us would have liked a little more bat-to-head contact, but would this film have gotten a best picture nod if our blood lust was fully satiated? The finale in the movie theater certainly gets as much pent up violence out of its system as you'd like, leaving the viewers with the feeling like the nazis got just what was coming to them. Of course throw historical accuracy out the window shortly after the film begins, which is alright by me, there are enough "based on a true story" films about WWII, and if every year it seems we need at least one film on the subject, I'm glad it's Tarantino. However the fact that Jackie Brown and Kill Bill were both ignored goes back to my Reader complaint about the Academy's love affair with the second World War. I don't see the film winning, but certainly glad it's nominated.
7. Precious - Here's a film that I really, really didn't want to see. Despite hearing it being praised far and wide even being named Rolling Stone's film of the year, I couldn't get myself excited about it. The subject matter seemed like the depressing stuff of Oscar dreams. Watching it I was quite shocked at just how brutal it was. This is an absolutely awful environment that shows all the worst sides of inner city poverty. There is nothing to feel better about and even when Precious leaves her awful mother her own medical condition makes you feel like nothing is going to be really better. Lee Daniels however makes the film one of the more interesting directorial efforts of the year and the style infused into the picture was certainly a relief from all the constant fighting and real life horror. Gabourey Sidibe is a welcome new comer but not sure how much "acting" she did. She just seemed to mumble and meander through the film not showing much of a range. However as an overall film it was much better than I thought and although this isn't a film that calls for repeated viewings it certainly is artistically credible to hold it's own against any of the nominations.
8. A Serious Man - Rebounding from the disappointing star-studded Burn After Reading is this distinctly Jewish Coen Brother's offering featuring very few if any recognizable faces. It has their strange sense of humor and their typical fascination with torturing their heroes through one failure after another. Seeing how this film did practically nothing while in theaters and the Coen's recent Oscar success I can't see this getting the top prize, however it is a quite good film. After all few filmmakers have proven themselves as durable and constantly interesting as the Coens. This films selection here seems part tribute to the filmmakers and that plea for credibility that not every film nominated is a big budget star driven affair. As directors Joel and Ethan Coen are in top form here which makes me a little disappointed that they weren't able to get a best directing nomination. Although this is a depressing story it doesn't weigh you down the way Precious does, it's more black comedy where you have to laugh at the never ending stream of misfortune that befalls our lackluster hero.
9. Up - Well before everyone starts thinking I hate every film, let me say this is in my opinion the best film of 2009. I haven't seen enough films from the year to make a well informed top 10, but I didn't see anything better the past year. I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad thing for the state of Hollywood that Pixar is continuously making the best films around. Unfortunately since establishing a best animated feature Oscar, the best they can ever seem to do is win that award which could very well be renamed The Pixar Oscar. Up was light years above (no pun intended) nearly every other film I saw last year (similar to The Incredibles 5 years earlier). The story was funny, exciting, and deeply heartfelt and emotional, which is sometimes lacking in Pixar features. In fact this is the first animated film in decades that I think actually made people cry. It proves that you can make family entertainment that is entertaining for the whole family and not just torture for adults to sit through as kids laugh at people falling and lots of flatulence. Since the film is also up for a best Animated Feature Oscar which means that will most likely come as a consolation prize. Surprisingly that category has five nominees as opposed to the usual three, but that's neither here nor there. If the best film really did win the best picture Oscar this would have as much if not more Oscar buzz than Avatar, in fact the people in this are probably even more lifelike than in Cameron's film.
10. Up in the Air - When this film was first coming out this seemed like an easy front runner for the best picture Oscar, but once Avatar took over the box office, things didn't look as good, plus it's loss at the Golden Globes was another blow. Jason Reitman has been making some good films (although I detested Juno) this is easily his best film. It has the same brisk pacing, the same fine balance between comedy and drama and is driven by good and compelling performances. Clooney is good, but well he'll always be just George Clooney. His two female co-stars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick seem to outshine whenever they share the screen. In fact Kendrick seems to be fully arriving, and hopefully this film can help springboard her the same way Juno did to Ellen Paige. I loved the film and would not be disappointed at all if it did sneak away with the top prize. Perhaps the same reason the film is excellent is the same reason it might not hold up as well, because it is so definitive of our times. This is the most timely film released this year and would serve as a nearly perfect snapshot of what America was about in 2008-09. For that reason though in five or ten years this might seem dated but that's a matter for time to decide, but even timely films can still be compelling years after their contemporary relevance (Casablanca probably the biggest example).
So that's my two cents on this year's crop, lets see who wins and I'll try and respond to what should have won and what great travesties were committed.
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