Here it is, the last solicitation of the season. You know the drill, but no boundaries. Ask as many questions as you want. And get ’em in fast because we’ll be recording soon-ish.
Here it is, the last solicitation of the season. You know the drill, but no boundaries. Ask as many questions as you want. And get ’em in fast because we’ll be recording soon-ish.
Comments
51 responses to “Taking questions for Oscar Talk”
Do you think that Inception was one of the top-5 nominees all along given the strong below-the-line support it had?
What was the best performance piece of the show, for you guys?
What do you think the Academy will want for next year’s show, given that their attempts to “appeal to a younger demographic” as Ms. Hathaway pointed out, seemed to misfire on so many counts?
(This is mainly regarding Franco, as I thought Hathaway did a good job under the circumstances)
Also, doesn’t the outcome of the last two years speak of how negative an effect the expansion of Best Picture to ten nominations has been?
If not Kevin Spacey, what do you think of Sandra Bullock as a host (as Tweeted by Guy last night)? Or maybe Bullock and Streep together? That would be classy and funnier for sure than last night.
The real head-scratcher for me was Live Action Short. I saw all five nominees and GOD OF LOVE was at the bottom of the heap by a considerable margin. It seemed so amateurish, self-conscious, pretentious and ultimately empty — like a mediocre student film or vanity project. Any idea what the voters saw in it? Could it have been the cliched, LENNY-esque dirty black-and-white “style”?
An addendum to my question in post #1.
If you do think Inception was always one of the top 5 BP nominees, which one would have fallen out of there, Black Swan or True Grit?
I mentioned this on Anne blog comments section, but this may be a good place to bring it up. Dave Karger, like Anne, was one of the few people to stick with “King’s Speech.” Karger admitted in a talk with Tom O’Neil that he wavered at points, but stuck. He said that it’s challenging to make predictions on convos with voters, because as Scott Feinberg pointed out none of you have the number needed to make it reliable polling. But the hunch that the movie’s emotional pull would sway voters informed his predictions. Did you have a similar kind of hunch beyond your sources?
Secondly, does this year afford hazards against splitting direction and picture? Earlier when it looked like Fincher would garner the DGA, Sasha argued that not only do splits rarely happen, but they were difficult to predict.
Finally, I love “Inception” and Pfister, but I feel like he has done and will likely do better work, and Deakins is so accomplished. What will it take for Deakins to win the Oscar?
This might be kind of a vague question, but why do you think that the Oscars have the reputation of being the best or most important of the end-of-year awards? For example, even though “The Social Network” won many, many more prizes than “The King’s Speech,” “The King’s Speech” will still be considered the winner of the 2010 awards race, and if Annette Bening had managed to upset Natalie Portman, Natalie Portman will be considered to have ultimately lost the race, even though she won nearly everything else. Is it just because the Oscars are chronologically the last, is it because they are one of the oldest, or is it something else?
Duncan, I don’t think the expansion can account for the hosting decisions, or James’ Franco’s attitude.
It seems every year I hear people complain about the show, almost as if by instinct. Two minutes into the show everyone at my Oscar party was booing. What, in your opinion, was the best Oscar show?
Given the large below the line support for Inception, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been one of five nominees, Jaws-style, with Darren Aronofsky as the Fellini to Nolan’s Spielberg. What do you think of this? Personally, Pfister winning Cinematography was my favorite win of the night, for what I consider to be Children of Men-level groundbreaking work.
Do you think The King’s Speech not winning a single craft award indicates a much closer race? Only winning 4 out of 12 nominations and still taking Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay has to be some kind of record.
What are some of the films you are most looking forward to this year? How is the Cannes and Summer lineup looking?
Will Deakins ever win?
And can they please call the category best production design so inception would stand a better shot?
@DarkLayers – Things have become entirely too mainstream, and it feels like they’re just pandering to a specific audience that they don’t necessarily have. Didn’t the auto-tune segment prove that substantially?
What are the most important lessons you learned as a pundit from this year’s Oscar season?
I don’t think Inception was in the top five. The Matrix won four Oscars, including best film editing and that was not in the top five. Films like Inception, Matrix and TDK will never, ever be in the top five.
Anywho, where does this rank on the all time list of worst/most boring telecasts and where does Franco rank on the list of worst hosts?
By the way like Chad tweeted last night I lost no love for Franco but he should have known he was not the man for the job. He didn’t even put any effort into it.
The most comfortable and entertaining people on stage were Kevin Spacey and Sandra Bullock. The producers can’t be that blind can they?
Is it due to the executives and marketing branches(with supposed populist tastes?) of the Academy that The King’s Speech, Tom Hooper won? And also did Annete Bening lost to Portman mainly for that reason? I kind of though the Actors’ branch had really good taste.
Don’t you think Social Network barely escaped being the most over-rated film of the past 20 years?
With The King’s Speech winning, an over-rated film was lent a sense of modesty and of the under-dog and a very good film had the chance to take center stage and be the toast of the town.
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What do you have to stay about that whatever rhetoric people may wanna spin eventually, a low budget British indie beat a bona fide mainstream American studio film with considerably more money behind its Oscar campaign?
Personally I thought the ceremony was pretty good, not the best thing since sliced bread but not too bad.
Strolling around the bloggosphere Monday morning you’d think the show’s producers accidentally set fire to the Kodak, and quite frankly I can’t remember a time when the show was met with good reviews.
Do you think at this point there’s anything that could actually make for a good reception or is dumping on the Oscars just part of the grand tradition of Oscar reporting?
When Deakins lost last night I thought about all the buzz coming from Now but then realized he is going to have to deal with Lubezki next year. Maybe he will just never win?
Watching last night, it occurred to me that it would be awesome if, along with the main oscars, there was a `10 years later’ revisionist vote for academy members, to see how well films have stood the test of time after those easily induced warm and fuzzy feelings have faded away, leaving the cold hard fact of quality. Imagine how different 1999 would look. I guarantee Cider House Rules, Green Mile, and maybe even Sixth Sense would be absent, and Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, and Magnolia would be in. It could be a way of correcting these blights on Oscar history, like Costner beating Scorsese in 1990, or Hooper beating Fincher in 2010. Of course, it would mean the Academy admitting they were wrong the first time, but it’s a fun fantasy in alternate universe land. Although of course, if we were in an alternate universe, they wouldn’t screw up so badly the first time.
Duncan, there’s a significant difference. That’s not the decision to expand, that’s the effort to be hip. Even if the latter drives the former, the desire to appeal to the big audience is the culprit rather than a decision that reflects that impulse.
The ten nominees weren’t the reason for the auto-tune segment, and that’s what you singled out: ” the outcome of the last two years speak of how negative an effect the expansion of Best Picture to ten nominations has been,” not “the outcome of the last two years speak of how negative an effect of the drive to appeal to a broader and younger audience.”
How did Tom Hooper win? I know people loved The King’s Speech, but apparently not enough to give it that sweep of techs that would be easy to give it to a film of its genre, and they even liked The Social Network enough to give its score a shoutout (though less surprising than people think, I think, because the Academy has generally been pretty hip in its music tastes lately).
How cool is Luke Matheny? That’s really the only thing I’m taking from this year’s ceremony.
why do the colors of the King’s Speech look so drab and flat? and who is tom hooper?
What does Anne have to say now about Luke Matheny and God of Love?
I was at a benefit last year in honor of Billy Crystal, in which Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg spoke. All three agreed that, if asked, they would co-host next year’s Oscar telecast in some sort of Comic Relief reunion. So, uh, both you and Anne and any other blogger listening— make that happen.
What do you think the lack of below the line support means about how they voted this year? Is it that they didn’t like The King’s Speech *that* much or that they were more thoughtful than prior trends may suggest (i.e. giving technical awards to Best Picture frontrunners they don’t really deserve?)
Incidentally, which was the last Best Picture winner to not win anything before the line? American Beauty?
I believe American Beauty won cinematography, Jorge.
Million Dollar Baby too won 4 Oscars, all in the Top 8, no techs.
Departed too won just 4, with just an editing win to account for techs.
True, but some people argued there was more love for “King’s Speech” and being a period drama with a lot of nominations, it seemed like a natural for at least a couple of wins.
@Daniel Hardy,
Reading your question, I was struck by what seems like a rather obvious irony of someone arguing against Academy’s choices based on one’s own (rather severe) predispositions.
There’s also that paradox of trusting the Academy to properly measure how well films stood the test of time, the very same Academy you didn’t think made very good picks in the first place.
I say all this endless revisionism accomplishes nothing. They picked what they picked. Let it go.
Who do you think is “hip and appeals to a younger demographic” but is also the type of talent (stand-up, all-around entertainer, Hollywood insider) appropriate to host the Oscars? Clearly, Franco was all wrong, and Hathaway was more in the Hugh Jackman vein. Is there anyone under 40 who fits the bill?
Daniel Hardy, did you see the “recall the gold feature” in Entertainment Weekly?
Do you prefer a year when everything is really obvious prediction-wise, or do you enjoy surprises even if it comes at the price of your Oscar pool?
Annette Bening is now, after her 4th Oscar loss, joining the inofficial list of “overdue” actors to win. I’d be interested: Who do both of you consider the most overdue living actors and actresses to win an Academy Award?
(My top 3 are: Albert Finney, Julianne Moore and Glenn Close.)
Cinephile, Peter O’Toole?
Whether the results pleased or displeased you, it’s good to keep in mind that the AMPAS vote-counting system leaves a lot of mystery about how the “winners” won. The BP “winner” may have had fewer #1 votes than one of the “losers.” The BP “winner” may even have “won” even though a majority of voters placed the same “loser” above the “winner.” (Yes, the vote-counting method allows that to happen.) In the non-BP categories, the “winners” may have “won” with only 41% or 31% or even 21% of the votes. (Yes, one can “win” even though most voters vote against the “winner.” In fact, that probably happens a good deal of the time.) It’s impossible to know how much support the “winners” really had, which helps to keep the results in perspective.
When I saw Annette Bening’s Oscar clip, I felt heartache for Julianne Moore. She totally deserved a place up there with Bening..but who will u kick out among the 5 ? They are all so strong…
Given that there are really very few genuine upsets on Oscar night and precursor awards are such reliable predictors, why did we hear so much talk of a Benning upset?
Because a lot of people felt warmth for her among membership!
Can you please address the issue of misogyny?
Members of the old boys club (Firth, Bridges, Penn, Crowe) never miss an opportunity to win an Oscar but when it comes to best actress, it’s a “strictly babe” zone. Why is no one talking about this? why has no one addressed the issue of blatant misogyny in AMPAS?
Cheers!
What are you expecting the movies to be watched (in terms of Awards) for the next Oscar Season? (The Tree of Life, The Iron Lady,…)
How will Oscar prognosticating change next year, given the complete failure of the critics awards to identify the winning picture and director.
* Misogyny because ageism only applies to female actors, not the men.
@DarkLayers: Yep… I know. He’s so overdue it’s almost in another league. But he is already an Honorary Winner so I didn’t include him in my top 3. Still, he is actually the synonym for Oscar overdue.
You talked earlier this year about the incredible difficulty of getting films like Black Swan and The Fighter produced. With The King’s Speech, The Social Network, Black Swan, and The Fighter all at or around the $100,000,000 mark at the domestic box office (and True Grit way ahead of that), do you see any signs of encouragement for prestige filmmaking?
Or will David O. Russell have to sign on to Fantastic Four 3 if he wants to get work at all?
This is unrelated to the ceremony itself, but can you guys recall any instance in recent memory in which the perceived frontrunner in a category missed on a nomination, as happened with Waiting for Superman?
If you were to judge solely on the clips of the acting nominees used last night, who would you have picked?