Below are my picks for this year’s Oscars. But, as usual, I feel obliged to preface them by stating my abiding lament, which I first stated over a decade ago in “My Review of the 2008 Oscars,” February 25, 2008.
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With all due respect to critics and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy), how much a film makes, not whether it wins an Oscar, is the generally recognized measure of its success. This, especially considering that winning an Oscar is more the result of crass political campaigning than any assessment of artistic achievement.
Indeed, it might surprise, if not disillusion, many of you to learn that studios covet the Oscar for Best Picture primarily because — as Sumner Redstone, the owner of Paramount, conceded in a moment of extraordinary candor — it guarantees millions more in box office receipts. …
I’m on record stating how much I dislike the annual Academy Awards show (the Oscars). Because I have little regard for preening, pampered poseurs showing off their borrowed frocks and bling-bling as a prelude to a nearly four-hour show — only six minutes of which anyone really cares about (i.e., the time it takes to present Oscars for actor and actress in a leading role, actor and actress in a supporting role, best director, and best picture).
And, remarkably enough, the host comedians do little to relieve the boredom of the interludes between these carefully spread-out moments.
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Of course, nothing betrays Hollywood’s institutional amnesia quite like the Oscars having three hosts this year. Because one can only deduce that producers are hoping to make up for going host-free for the past three years. Except that this ignores why they were obliged to go host-free in the first place.
That said, from the Golden Globes (reduced this year to a discredited farce on Twitter) to the BAFTAs, the entertainment industry hands out far too many movie awards these days. This is why the Oscars are becoming more of an afterthought than a crowning achievement. Not to mention the sapping of suspense this backslapping season now entails; that is, given the increasingly groundhog-day look and sound of the winners.
But, with two Black hosts and a fair number of non-white nominees, at least this show won’t be haunted by racial the controversies I wrote about in commentaries like “Ghosts of Nightmares Past: #OscarsSoWhite…Again,” January 14, 2020.
Anyway, without further ado, here are my picks. As usual, I limit them to the six, and only, categories most people care about. This, with all due respect to others nominated in categories like Makeup and Hairstyling…
- Actor in a Supporting Role
Troy Kotsur in CODA: Because patronizing Academy voters see his disability as an advantage. And acting in the reflected glow of his Oscar winning co-star, Marlee Matlin, only reinforces their patronizing predilections in this respect.
- Actress in a Supporting Role
Ariana DeBose in West Side Story: Because, well, she is the last best hope to vindicate the great promise of this Steven Spielberg reboot.
- Actress in a Leading Role
Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye: Because, with all due respect to Jim Bakker and The PTL Club, what Chastain channeled so compellingly and endearingly was Faye’s pioneering outreach to the gay community. After all, it was at a time when AIDS had far too many people treating its members like lepers.
- Actor in a Leading Role
Will Smith in King Richard: Because they owe him, in the first instance, for Ali. But, of all the biopics Hollywood has celebrated and awarded, I can think of none more deserving than this depiction of the improbable way Richard Williams made tennis phenoms of Venus and Serena.
That said, some members of the Academy would be forgiven a little eye rolling as they voted given the spectacle Smith has made of his promotional tour for this film. Because I’m not sure what public service he thought he was providing by making so much tabloid fodder of his married sex life.
- Directing
Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog: Because it would be too anti-climactic for her to have made history by becoming the first woman to be nominated twice for directing, only to lose twice. This, especially given that, like Smith for Ali, the Academy owes her too – for The Piano.
That said, many would have you believe that, like Smith, she too gave members cause for eye rolling with this infamous gaffe while accepting the Critics’ Choice Award for best director:
Campion stands up and says this in her award speech: ‘And Serena and Venus, you are such marvels. However, you do not play against the guys, like I have to.’ And, a moment that should, and could have been celebrated by all women, irrespective of their race or class, became an example of what sounds like peak white feminism.
(The Independent, March 15, 2022)
Except that nothing is more “peak white feminism” than white women being more offended by Campion’s awkward attempt at flattery than these serene Black sisters themselves. Frankly there was something very, er, maternalistic about all this outrage. Most Blacks know that, even as microaggressions against us go, this was tame.
- Best Picture
The Power of the Dog: Because it will serve as an everlasting middle finger to homophobic cowboy wannabes like Sam Elliott. He of course is the actor best known for playing tough cowboys in movies. Apparently, this clearly made him feel entitled to diss the portrayal of the lead cowboy in this film as too effeminate to be celebrated.
Related commentaries:
My review 2008…
OscarSoWhite…
Brangelina…
Greta…
12 years a Slave…