Oscar snubbery

Meryl Streep should do just one movie next year and she should find the worst script in her agent’s slush pile, team up with Hollywood’s most hacktacular director, ham up her part or phone it in, and then laugh when the Academy nominates her anyway.

Is there a California law that says Streep must be nominated every year no matter what she does or who else is deserving or is it just a county ordinance?

Streep was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing the Witch in Into the Woods. Emily Blunt wasn’t nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for playing the leading role. I’d say the former was predictable and the latter a snub and that both tell you what’s wrong with the Oscar nominations except that I haven’t seen Into the Woods and probably won’t, so what do I know?

Barely enough to justify writing this post.

If that.

Not about to let that stop me.

Here’s my other question: Since apparently any number of movies can be nominated for Best Picture, why are we stuck with only five in every other category?

I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow afternoon after we’ve seen it what degree of larceny I think was perpetrated against Selma’s director Ava DuVarnay, lleading man David Oyelowo, and screenwriter Paul Webb. My bet is that members of the Academy should be indicted on multiple counts.

I know for certain Ralph Fiennes was robbed, probably for the usual reason: the Academy can’t bring itself to reward a brilliant comic performance, and the nominators for the acting categories are actors who should know better. I’m pretty sure of this, though. Benedict Cumberbatch was nominated in the hope that he’ll find a way to photobomb himself during the ceremony. And I don’t take the Oscars all that seriously anyway but until they start recognizing that sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero movies can be as good and better than any other type of movie I’ll continue to greet every nomination announcement with an amused shrug and a snide, offhand post like this one. Bradley Cooper may be very good in American Sniper---and I’m still on the fence about whether or not I’ll see it---but I doubt he’s as good in it as he was doing the voice for Rocket Raccoon. Doesn’t matter, though, as Eddie Redmayne should be working it out with Stephen Hawking on how they will share duty on Redmayne’s acceptance speech.

Meanwhile, I’m happy Felicity Jones was nominated for Best Actress. As I wrote in my review of The Theory of Everything, Redmayne’s performance wasn’t possible without hers. Reese Witherspoon was very good in Wild, no complaints there, although I suspect she got extra points for looking so wonderful naked and so bedraggled but still wonderful dressed. I haven’t seen Still Alice, Two Days, One Night, or Gone Girl.

I’m in a worse position when it comes to judging the deservingness of the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Award nominees because so far I’ve only seen two of their movies, Wild and The Imitation Game. Laura Dern did a fine job, as you’d expect, but her role was more of an extended cameo. Her part in The Fault in Our Stars was a true supporting role and I wish she’d been nominated for that instead. And as I wrote in my review of The Imitation Game, I’m crazy about Keira Knightley but mostly all she had to do was smile adoringly at Cumberbatch, which of course she did wonderfully. I was far more impressed by her work in Begin Again, a much better movie all around anyway and my favorite summer movie that did not feature a talking raccoon among its leading characters. But as good a film as it was, it’s not the kind of movie that should rack up Oscar nominations. It is the kind of movie that adds to its star’s overall reputation and some day it will be regularly featured in Keira Knightley retrospectives.

Mark Ruffalo retrospectives as well.

As for Best Picture, I’m at a loss again there too. Along with Selma and American Sniper I haven’t seen Birdman, Whiplash, or Boyhood. I don’t have any desire to see Boyhood. Probably unfair of me but from all I’ve heard about it, it sounds like I’d feel about it as I felt about another movie from a couple years ago that critics and certain types of cinephile swore was a work of genius by a genius director and I think that in a couple years it will be as well remembered and as much talked about as The Master.

Of course my real problem in forming an informed opinion on any of the categories is I’m not informed.  I just don’t see enough movies in a year to know what and who could have been and should have been nominated instead. As far as it goes, though, the best movies I saw in 2014 included Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. And in their cases, it’s not so much that I think they were robbed, it’s that they never had a chance of being nominated in the major categories that bugs me.

There is, however, one case where we can all agree that a movie got robbed.

Big Hero 6 was fun and How to Train Your Dragon was good enough, but The Lego Movie was awesome.

Ok, your turn. Here’s the list of all the nominees in every category. As hacktacular journalists are prone to say on Twitter: Thoughts?

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Best Song, claw hands down:

Comments

[Jesse Crall]

From a quality standpoint, MR TURNER was robbed out of best picture, LOCKE and its lead actor TOM HARDY were robbed, ditto NIGHTCRAWLER & Jake Gyllenhaal, CALVARY could have gotten some love in multiple categories, Kristen Wiig was unfairly ignored for lead actress...AMERICAN SNIPER and SELMA were both just outside my top-10 so I'm not really crying the blues over the fates of either...Bradley Cooper was amazing, though.

I'd go see BOYHOOD, though. It's very simple, moving, well-done. No pomposity, no bull. Just a great bit of American realism helped along by terrific performances. I'd be shocked if you were anything less than pleased with it.

[wwolfe]

I don't understand why I'm not supposed to be bothered by "Selma's" depiction of LBJ. In an editorial in today's LA Times, John Lewis argued that "Lincoln" was not criticized for omitting any mention of Frederick Douglas. That's not the right analogy, though. "Selma" didn't omit LBJ, it showed him as being something he wasn't. The correct analogy would be if "Lincoln" had shown Frederick Douglas as a supporter of the Confederacy. Had that happened, people would have been justifiably offended - just as they are now justified in being offended by "Selma" showing LBJ as an opponent of the civil rights movement. That doesn't make "Selma" a bad movie, but it is a serious flaw, in my judgment.

[Fiddlin Bill]

If you liked The 400 Blows, you'll probably like Boyhood. The lead actor is very good, and the whole cast for that matter. The longitudinal deal is in a way a gimmick, although it does allow us to actually perceive aging and growth in the cast in ways we usually don't notice, and certainly not in a single film. (However, Jett Rink ages very well in Giant.)