Oscars 2011

This year, I faced a hard truth: I get much more excited about watching the Oscars than I do about watching the Super Bowl. 

I was at a conference at the beginning of February, and I didn’t realize until shortly before it started that I would be flying back Super Bowl Sunday. My flight landed about 15 minutes before kickoff—I was initially confused about how I got such a cheap fare on a Sunday afternoon—and considering the 90-minute trip from the airport back home, I knew I’d have to settle for only catching the second half, at best. I was a little bummed until I started thinking that it could be worse: I could be heading back from the airport while the Oscars were on. Then I blacked out from rage. When I woke up, I was wearing only a pair of tattered purple pants and I was struck with the urge to hitchhike to a soft piano soundtrack.

Yes, the Academy Awards are a three-hour-plus showcase for celebrities to pat each other on the back. Yes, the best movies and performances don’t always win, and often, they’re not even nominated. Yes, the presenter intros are cheesy, and yes, studio politicking and ad campaigns carry way too much sway in the voting.

But none of that matters. The Oscars are a grand celebration of the movies, one of the last true cultural touchstones in an evermore fractured and insulated society. It’s fun to debate the winners and losers. It’s healthy to exercise your critical eye. And in a time where any subject that can’t be measured by a standardized test score is being slashed from schools across the country, it’s necessary to be reminded that art and entertainment are not superfluous—that in fact, they’re probably the most powerful unifying agents we have.

Most importantly, there’s zero chance of Justin Bieber robbing someone more deserving of his award.

If you’re not sure what this countdown is all about, check the beginning of last year’s post. And remember, these are the 10 Best Picture nominees ranked as I see them, not how I think Academy voters will see them.

Now on with the show!

10) Winter’s Bone – The movie’s richest asset is its atmosphere: a stark, blue, wood-splitting, tater-slicing, squirrel-skinning terror that buzzes closer to your ear as the movie progresses. It’s Appalachian noir; if you told me the working title was Clarice Starling Begins, I’d believe you. Jennifer Lawrence conjures up a genuine star turn (and a Best Actress nod) while Best Supporting Actor nominee John Hawkes swings his reluctant surrogate father figure believably from detestable meth-head to virtuous, banjo-plucking meth-head. 

Still, this is the one nominee that fell flat for me. Despite its stellar production value, I simply didn’t care about what was happening. Maybe the matter-of-fact approach that the characters have to the awful circumstances of the plot, so integral in making you buy into their authenticity, also works against the movie. These people close themselves off to outsiders, including the audience, which makes it hard to get to know or empathize with them. Or hell, maybe I was just a touch slow and wanted this place’s mythology unpacked a little more explicitly. All I know is that this is the only movie on the list during which I repeatedly checked how much time was left while watching.

9) The Kids Are All Right – This slice of life-as-some-of-us-know-it is buoyed by what could be the best pound-for-pound cast of the year—which is saying something, if you look at the other ensembles on this list. Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo are the Oscar nominees, and deservedly so. (Though there was a bit of a kerfuffle that Julianne Moore, who carried as much of the load as Bening, was snubbed. I’m sure she shed a few tears about it.) Ruffalo brings equal parts pathos, affability, and prickish naivety to his organic restauranteur, a character that could have ambled unremarkably through the film on a slacker-doofus crutch. And Bening is so convincing as the blisteringly rational, kinda boozy anchor of her family that you barely notice how firmly anchored they all are.

While it’s tough to stick a movie this solid so far down the list, just know that it’s not you, The Kids Are All Right... well, actually, it is you. See, you’re like Fat Tire: So utterly well done that you seem effortless to produce—and are therefore a little too easy to disregard in favor of other options. But I mean, the authenticity of the lives you lay bare, your finish, your crisp, refreshing hops, your rich, malty undertones... wait, what was I saying? I’m thirsty.

8) True Grit – I love the Coen brothers. As I said when A Serious Man was nominated last year, no one makes more consistently must-see movies, and very few approach their stylistic range. What makes them truly fascinating is that, despite the wild differences from movie to movie, a Coen flick is instantly recognizable for its aloofness, its strangeness, its willingness to separate the viewer from the trappings of narrative that are so familiar, we forget they don’t exist freely in nature.

The thing is, I didn’t love this movie. It had several standout moments: the Indian’s interrupted last words at the hanging, the midnight ride of Rooster Cogburn, every single second Matt Damon’s LeBoeuf is onscreen, Barry Pepper trying to break his own Battlefield Earth record for Most Unbathed Character Played by Barry Pepper. But strung together, those moments felt surprisingly light. I’m not 100% sure why this movie was made—which isn’t meant to be snarky or flippant. I’m genuinely not sure what the point was, what it was addressing in the grand scheme, or why it attracted the attention of auteurs like the Coens. Which, in a way, is a testament to the way they make movies. Since I didn’t come away from True Grit with a deepened understanding of the universe, I felt cheated. Call it the tyranny of high expectations.

(Of course, they might’ve shot this movie just to prove they could. I like to imagine them sitting around their office, tossing a Nerf ball around and chatting:

Joel: “Hey bro, what’s a movie that no one thinks needs to be remade? Something iconic that people would actually get pissed about having reshot, but then when they saw it they’d have to admit it kind of rules because we’re the goddamn Coen brothers?”

Ethan: “Um... Land of the Lost?”

And since someone beat them to it, they settled on True Grit.)

7) The Fighter – Front to back, The Fighter isn’t quite good enough to be great, but riding the wave of its pitch-perfect direction and a freakishly gifted cast, it overachieves to the point where you can’t really tell it apart from true greatness. It is a boxing movie, so we all know how the story plays out before we go into the theater. (Although it certainly wasn’t helped in this regard by the year’s most unnecessarily revealing trailer. I feel like it needed its own spoiler alert.) Still, like The Blind Side last year—only much more so—the actors effectively raise the stakes of a tried-and-true story. Mark Wahlberg is stoically charming, and Melissa Leo never lets her Aquanetted matriarch sink into parody; she stays vulnerable even when she’s manipulating. I could write paragraphs, pages, about the exquisiteness of Amy Adams—and if I’m being honest with myself, that’s exactly the reason why I write anything, ever.

But the star is, of course, Christian Bale, who is the acting equivalent of the Men In Black neuralizer: With every role, he makes you forget everything you’ve seen him in before. (Which is why he was probably rushing to do a movie right after Terminator: Salvation.) Before production delays forced them out, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon were each attached to play Dicky Eklund before the movie got on track and Bale landed the part. No disrespect to Tyler Durden or Jason Bourne, fine actors both, but can you imagine either of them firing on as many pistons as Bale does? He’s a hypnotically junked-out egomaniac, but every bit as compelling for the fierceness with which he loves his brother as for his nasty habit.

6) Inception – It’s never a bad thing when the most talked-about movie of the year is a Best Picture nominee. (Well, almost never.) But lost in all the Was Leo dreaming the whole time?!? chatter was the fact that this movie had a remarkably high degree of difficulty, and it succeeded on more fronts than not. Director/Writer/Product/Sweater Vest Enthusiast Christopher Nolan infuses his love of heist movies and heartsick dudes seeking redemption with his love of high-concept sci-fi mindbenders (as the story goes, he based the look of Gotham City in Batman Begins off of Blade Runner’s LA post-AI cyberhell). The result is a metatext that’s equally concerned with questioning our own reality and exploding conventional action movie formulas—a shoot ‘em up for people who think shoot ‘em ups don’t need to be ass-dumb to entertain. The irony, of course, is that it has to use the conventions of James Bond-style popcorn flicks—secret mountain lairs, bottomless machine gun clips, villains with foreign accents—in order to break them down. This may have caused some logic issues for some, but I think those people can’t see the dream city for the crumbling buildings.

I once asked my dad, a man who has probably farted away in his sleep more sports trivia than most people ever acquire, why he was so drawn to watching them. He said, “With every game, there’s a chance of seeing something you’ve never seen before.” Well, that’s also why people go see big-budget studio blockbusters every summer. Only most of the time, we all leave disappointed. That’s why Inception, despite the hype, actually is a game-changer. It’s not perfect, it has holes, but it also has ambition. It’s not a sequel or a remake or a repackaging of something nobody wanted the first time around. It’s an indie crime story made with studio money, an old school/new school hybrid that wants to kick you into post-modern pop consciousness.

I’m pretty sure it was all a dream, though.

(Oh, and if on Sunday night you’re listening to the Best Director nominees and get worried that whoever’s reading from the prompter might have accidentally skipped Nolan’s name, take comfort: Nothing’s wrong. He wasn’t nominated. Inception is up for prizes in the Best Picture, Screenplay, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Original Score, Art Direction, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing categories, but apparently it directed itself.)

5) The King’s Speech – No list of nominees for the big prize would be complete without a prestige period piece, a character study about a powerful political figure, or a feel-good yarn about someone overcoming a disability. The King’s Speech is all three in one. Throw in the British accents, and Oscar probably messtified the inside of his shiny gold pants.

At times, this movie is wildly funny, and it boasts the year’s best montage (mon-tage!) and some tremendous production design. Colin Firth so perfectly captures the sonic rhythms of his character that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Kanye West produced his dialogue. Geoffery Rush gets the funniest lines and deadpans them in beautiful contrast to the hammy failed stage actor/speech therapist he plays. But really, the highest compliment I can pay it is that, having only seen the trailer, I was convinced it wouldn’t be able to make me care about the would-be king’s speech impediment. It seemed to have too many of the easy trappings I mentioned above, and after all, in a time of severe economic downturn, a king’s PR problems seem like nice problems to have.

But they got me (mostly) by establishing the context. There was an enormous amount of pressure—especially in that country at that time, with an enemy like Hitler stirring his own countrymen not far away—to appear strong, capable, unflappable. So if you couldn’t even say “unflappable,” it was a big deal. I’ve got it this far back, though, because while it struck me deadly in the mind and the heart, it never quite sunk into my gut. I understood the movie’s point of view, I admired its craft, but I wasn’t necessarily moved by it.

(Along those lines, am I alone in thinking that this movie told the wrong story? I was much more fascinated with a king abdicating his throne in a time of impending war so he could run away to Baltimore with an American divorcee than I was with that guy’s brother’s public speaking issues. Someone has to have made a movie about King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, right? I’d watch 90 minutes of them househunting or going through customs at the airport.)

4) Black Swan – A delightfully fucked-up mainstream hit, no movie delivered more for its $10 this year than Black Swan. Yet for all the thriller/chiller shocks, eerie masturbation fakeouts, and Winona Ryder face stabbings, the tension here comes from within the characters, much as the Black Swan lurks within the White—or, if you prefer, as Stefan Urquelle lurks within Steve Urkel. In a physically unforgiving role, Natalie Portman channels through her ingénue’s body the desperation of someone holding onto her sanity by the fingernails her mother creepily trims. It’s a flawless performance, a thing of painful beauty to watch.

Darren Aronofsky is moving steadily toward Coen Bros territory—except that where they use black humor to burrow into issues of faith and fidelity and philosophy, Aronofsky bludgeons his subject matter and lets us see what we want in the blood trail. Black Swan is his most visually striking movie yet—The Fountain included—because even the heady effects shots seem organic to the story. And when was the last time a movie made you say “What the fuck?” to yourself so many times? (In a good way, I mean. Not in a Nicolas Cage way.) From mysterious scratches on a dancer’s back to a night of Portman and Mila Kunis out drinking and flirting to opening night at the ballet (a high-art take on the junkyard scene in Superman III), you never truly know where you’re going next—a rare gift in the age of internet spoilers and DOA plot twists.

(Between Portman here, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and the entire cast of Requiem for a Dream, it seems like Aronofsky has an innate need to physically torture his stars. Is he on a human rights watchlist somewhere? Should we be concerned for Hugh Jackman on the set of the next Wolverine movie?)

3) 127 Hours – Making a movie is hard enough in the first place. But it gets harder when 1) Everybody going to see your movie not only knows the ending, but knows how we’ll get there; 2) You restrict yourself to shooting the majority of the action in a space roughly the size of an outhouse; and 3) You cast a heretofore shaky leading man whose most memorable onscreen moments are a guest stint on General Hospital and this bullshit. Yet Danny Boyle did all that and came out with a stirring, stunning redefinition of what we think are our physical and spiritual limits.

While James Franco seems to harness a lot of his James Francosity in the adventurous and charismatic Aron Ralston, he also taps into primal wells of regret and despair and courage—the type of things you think may be buried within you but hope you’ll never have the opportunity to dig up. Honestly, I didn’t know he had this kind of performance in him. (All we had to do was pin him under a boulder.) Lost in all the (much-deserved) talk of the Oscar host and fellow MFA’s performance—and the visceral shock of the arm-snapping scene—is the fact that this is one seriously gorgeous looking movie. Boyle virtually reinvents the way people will film stream-of-consciousness thought from now on, jumping from synapse to synapse, dense crowd to abandoned mountain, with a documentarian’s knack for making us look beyond what he’s showing. I’ve read about Hollywood going into preproduction on films based on Chutes and Ladders, Battleship, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, and The Wonder Twins. Ridiculous as all of these seem, I never completely dismiss any idea because I tell myself there’s always a chance Danny Boyle might make it. In which case, I’d be compelled to watch.

2) Toy Story 3 – I wasn’t the biggest fan of Up, Pixar’s Best Picture nominee from last year. (Though it’s the movie I most lie about liking in casual conversation, because when you tell someone you didn’t like Up, they look at you like Chris Hansen should be waiting for you in a kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade and a chat transcript.) Toy Story 3, on the other hand, moved fluidly from wordplay to sight gag, heartache to action, tension to torment to redemption. Conceptually and in the execution, there wasn’t a single misstep. And if that sounds overblown for a cartoon, well... SPOILER ALERT When the toys decide there’s no way out of the incinerator and silently join hands, I didn’t cry—I got chills. Was I really watching personified toys in a kids movie accept the reality that they were about to die? This blew my mind. Let me put it simply: If you weren’t moved by the incinerator scene, please throw yourself into one. END SPOILER ALERT

Aside from the visual quality of the animation, which seems to get better with every Pixar release, I loved the attention to detail—which probably has something to do with the fact that these guys only put out one movie a year. (It’s a release schedule Michael Bay should adopt, only instead of once a year, he should release a movie once every never again.) The way Woody runs, all felt and panic; the pancake; Sid from the first movie returning as a garbage man; the opening scene, possibly the best representation of how a kid’s mind works when he’s playing with toys that’s ever been put to film (or a hard drive, or whatever). While watching it I caught myself, multiple times, with a huge damn smile on my face. I haven’t flat-out enjoyed a movie this much in a long time—and I was this close to ranking it number one for the year. I’ve been going back and forth in my head for weeks. While it was in fact my favorite movie of the year, it just barely loses out on being called the best because of...

1) The Social Network – This is probably the movie that converted the most devotees between the time it was announced and the time it was up for award consideration. How many people did you talk to who said they had no interest in seeing a Facebook movie? (And how many people posted something to that effect on Facebook?) Yet here it is, an ironclad masterwork and a commercial hit, a seamless blend of exceptional writing, directing, and acting delivered at the ideal cultural moment.

Jesse Eisneberg, performing alongside former boy band impresarios and future superheroes, is mild-mannered enough that you don’t expect his cynicism, his emotional ruthlessness. For our collective fascination with movies like Saw or live feeds of street violence in other countries, nothing wigs us out more than detachment. Mark Zuckerberg is an electrically amoral anti-villain, someone who may well have committed the crime of the century—only we’re too pleased with the aftermath to care. Beginning with an epic back-and-forth between Zuckerberg and a soon to be ex-girlfriend and building in scene after perfectly rendered scene, The Social Network makes all its players as helpless to prevent what’s happening as we who are watching it. We may love that for once, the handsome and fit and intelligent and well-bred Winklevoss twins don’t get what they want, and we may feel for Eduardo, too trusting of his backstabbing friend, and we may cringe at the disregard Sean Parker has for the bodies strewn in his wake. But in the end, we’re a generation of watchers, more likely to post our feelings online than to act on them. (Irony!)

The main draw for me wasn’t Facebook being slid under the cultural microscope, it wasn’t the phenomenal Eisenberg, and it wasn’t the Trent Reznor-scored soundtrack (though all those things delivered). I wanted to see this movie because Aaron Sorkin wrote it. I daresay there’s not a bigger West Wing fan on the planet than me; I just finished watching it through for the fourth time. Sorkin’s stuff has a rewatchable quality that other big name screenwriters seem to lack. He’s timely, sure, be it with Jed Bartlet or Mark Zuckerberg, but he’s also timeless. His stuff feels like it could’ve existed in the 80s or the 40s as easily as it does now. Not surprisingly, this movie had the year’s best exchange of dialogue:

Cameron Winklevoss: What, do you want to hire an IP lawyer and sue him?

Divya Narendra: No, I want to hire the Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer!

Tyler Winklevoss: We don't even have to do that.

Cameron Winklevoss: That's right.

Tyler Winklevoss: We can do that ourselves. I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me.

And for what it’s worth, the first and second runners-up probably also came from this movie.

What are we ultimately looking for from a Best Picture winner? It doesn’t have anything to do with content—plots of past winners have varied wildly from Holocaust survival tales to sword-and-sandal epics to two losers toting their dead boss around a beach for a few days. (What? Weekend at Bernie’s didn’t win Best Picture? Goddamn it. I don’t even know you anymore, America.) I think we want to be moved, and we want to be sure other people were moved the same way we were. So which movie this year better reflects the desire to feel like part of something bigger than yourself?

As far as who I think is actually going to take it... it’s close. While I think The Social Network is most deserving—and will be, win or lose, the film we remember most fondly and vividly in the years to come—I don’t think stodgy Academy voters will be able to talk themselves out of The King’s Speech. (See what I did there?) Plus, as I said about last year’s Best Picture winner, every movie is made better by the presence of Guy Pearce. He’s the nose that’ll help this movie break the tape at the finish line.

"But Brian, who’s going to win the other races?"

Glad you asked, internet.

Best Director: David Fincher. Tom Hooper is closing in fast, but Fincher’s direction is so deft that you probably didn’t notice all the action in The Social Network came from the boardroom back-and-forth of concurrent lawsuits. He makes copyright litigation enthralling.

Best Actor: Colin Firth. Like with Jeff Bridges last year or Denzel Washington in 2002, it’s just his time. If you have to be a contrarian, there’s a roughly 7% chance Jesse Eisenberg could pull off the upset. (Between the two, I’d actually like to see Eisenberg take it, if only because he found a way into a part that didn’t have such an obvious way in.) However, if it were up to me—and honestly, why isn’t it?—I’d give it to James Franco, who was riveting for 90 minutes of being stuck in a crevice.

Best Actress: I’ll say Natalie Portman even though Annette Bening may take it home as a makeup Oscar for her passed-over turns in American Beauty, The Grifters, and that other thing she did that no one saw.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale. Done and done.

Best Supporting Actress: The well-meaning but sorely misguided among us think this is already in the bag for Melissa Leo. And true enough, if Hailee Steinfeld had been nominated in the Best Actress category instead of here (which she should’ve been; she’s onscreen more than Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges), I wouldn’t argue with these people. But unfortunately for Leo, Steinfeld is the unnervingly motivated, precocious-but-not-precious center of True Grit in one of the best performances of the year, regardless of the category. (Also, have I mentioned the lovely and amazing Amy Adams already? Because she is both lovely and amazing.)

Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler, The King’s Speech.^* Typing out all that stuttering is hard work.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network.^* Lock of the night.

^*Last year, I correctly predicted every category except the two screenplay awards. For real, y’all: I don’t know shit about writing.

Enjoy the show, everyone! Here’s hoping Franco takes some time out from the monologue to recite some slam poetry or something.

Comments

[Anna]

"Well-meaning but sorely misguided", Brian? Ouch. We'll see who's misguided tonight.

Okay, I can't tell who your boner is bigger for-- Amy Adams, or Toy Story 3. Actually, I think it's bigger for Amy Adams, which is good, because that's at least understandable and perhaps deserved. She is, in fact, bonerific. Or "lovely and amazing," as you say. Always keeping it classy, eh?

But TOY STORY 3?!?! Come ON!!!!! Number two?! You've lost your mind. Listen, I saw this movie on an airplane, and it couldn't even keep my interest when I was STRAPPED to my seat with no place to go. I switched my channel to the movie Just Wright, starring one Queen Latifah, and found myself much more engaged and entertained.

Now that they've upped the Best Picture nominees to ten (in my opinion, a horrible move by the academy), there's bound to be some undeserving riff raff that sneaks into the race-- in my opinion, that would be Toy Story Three, Inception, and maybe even The Kids Are Alright (though I wholeheartedly endorse Bening's nomination (even though Portman's going to take it, and deservedly so)).

I was surprised to see that you put Winter's Bone so low on your list-- the lowest?! Something tells me a little part of Jon Sealy's heart just died. I get what you're saying about the cut-offedness of the characters-- but I don't see how they could have been presented in any other way. Make them more engaging, more outwardly open and boisterous, and suddenly you've got a cross between Deliverance and Jesco the dancing outlaw (look it up). The entire movie was so bleak, lean and (I hate to use this word) haunting, it ultimately reminded me of The Road-- obviously a good thing.

Okay...this is the longest comment ever, so I'll just wrap up with MY ranked list. See you on the other side of Leo's win.

10. Toy Story 3
9. Inception
8. The Kids Are Alright (-----------> more like the *movie* is alright-- am I right?! Haha!)
7. The Fighter
6. Winter's Bone
5. 127 Hours
4. True Grit
3. Black Swan
2. The King's Speech
1. The Social Network

*can I just say how great it is that there are TWO nominees this year that center around the severing off of a limb? Awesome.
**Your True Grit analysis-- I just realized that I didn't address my thoughts on this. I loved the movie for precisely what you were criticizing it for-- it somehow managed to be light. To me, this is a testament to its strength as a western. Bridges was perhaps the most hilarious (and sexy, obviously. Errr, lovely and amazing. Whatever. ) he's been since Lebowski, and any scene with La Boeuf had me giggling like a little schoolgirl. And I do think that your analysis of why they shot the movie is probably true-- I think they just wanted to shoot a good old-fashioned western for the hell of it...but, a Coen western, nonetheless.

[Brian]

I think you may be using Toy Story 3 as a scapegoat to justify the fact that you enjoyed Just Wright. Don't take that out on Buzz and Woody, Anna. That's on you. I can understand thinking it may not be the second-best movie of the year, but out-and-out hatred? Insanity! I suppose the only relevant follow-up question I could ask would be: What actually occupies the space where your soul is supposed to be? Is it a liquid or some kind of noxious vapor? Does it feel strange, not having one? Does the void show up at airport security screenings? Are you able to see your reflection in the mirror?

(But to answer your first question, I'd burn every copy of TS3 in existence if it meant Amy Adams would so much as spit in my general direction.)

I do think I need to watch True Grit again. It really might've just been a question of going in with the wrong expectations. I did enjoy it. And despite the fact that I agree 100% that the Best Picture field should be whittled back down to five, this is a strong field. You could make a self-respecting argument that nine out of the ten have grounds to win the award. (I, too, fear for Jon Sealy when he figures out which one didn't make the cut.)

Speaking of which, it's true, they couldn't have made the characters in Winter's Bone any different. They were authentic, but that only gets you so far. It's like teaching creative writing, when you tell a student that the asshole roommate character in his story isn't interesting and they counter by saying, "Well, that's based on my actual roommate, and that's the way he really is." True enough, but that in itself isn't a reason to justify his place in the story. (The Town would've been an interesting alternative nominee, even though Ben Affleck's I've-been-doing-some-soul-searching beard at the end almost singlehandedly invalidates the entire movie.)

I hadn't thought of the severed-limbs connection between nominees. Outstanding! I hope James Franco gets his arms stuck under something during the ceremony. Maybe Anne Hathaway?

As far as Leo v. Steinfeld... the time for talk is over. Like the Highlander, there can be only one. Cue the Queen song and cut to Hailee swinging a sword.