2013 Academy Awards - My Reactions

     Every year I tell myself the same thing: “I’m not even going to look at the Oscar nominations.  I don’t care about the Academy Awards.”  Now, I never waste my time watching the inane ceremony (especially with Seth McFarlane hosting it, and with Michelle Obama making a surprise appearance), but I always end up checking the Wikipedia listings afterward to see who won.  We all have a bile fascination with who is nominated, who wins and what our take on that is.  The Academy may be completely irrelevant, having repeated failed to recognize truly groundbreaking cinema since the late 70’s, but maybe that’s why we’re so fascinated by it.  It just lives in its own little world.  We can go anywhere else to see a more definitive assessment of a year’s movies, but the Oscars is different. 

     Also, the 2013 Oscars wasn’t so bad.  Usually the quality of the Best Picture Oscars is decided by one factor: the quality of the type of movies that the Academy will not consider giving an award to, and 2012 seemed to be defined by highly anticipated genre movies that were either disappointing (Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, The Hobbit) or merely adequate (Avengers).  Now my favorite movie of the year so far was Skyfall, but I thought that its story had too many flaws to be a Best Picture; I was rooting for it to win some other awards, though.

     I will note that I haven’t seen all of the movies I’m about to mention here, so this article is subject to some change.  I’m only commenting on the awards I actually have an opinion on.

BEST PICTURE

Argo

     I was a bit surprised that this won the award.  I’ve heard Lincoln was a very good period movie, and it was no doubt written as an absurd parable in honor of Obama.  That combination of cinematic traditionalism and political progressivism made it seem like a shoe-in for Best Picture.    

     Now I haven’t seen Amour, Les Miserables, or Silver Linings Playbook, but of the nominees I did see this year, Beasts of the Southern Wild was the most deserving.  I also would have rooted for the very fun and original Django Unchained.  Zero Dark Thirty no doubt suffered from the manufactured controversy concerning its alleged endorsement of torture, and I think awarding Argo was like a poor man’s version of awarding 0D30 without the heat.  In other words, typical Oscar politics.  Though I enjoyed Argo well enough, it was a one-and-done.  A very by-the-numbers film about a spectacular historical event with some moments brightened by Alan Arkin and John Goodman.  An example of how sometimes just because an event is amazing, it doesn’t make it translate too well to film.  Zero Dark Thirty managed to make real-life espionage and a foregone conclusion genuinely exciting to watch.  Kathryn Bigelow made her opposition to torture clear and she deserves some credit for not whitewashing history.  Also, Looper deserved a nod for being a smart, above-average sci-fi movie that wasn’t based on pre-existing material. 

     Could have been worse.  The movie I was rooting against was Life of Pi.  It wasn’t technically a bad movie; it was just really boring.  A plodding film that had an attention-getting gimmick without actually being a genre movie, it was just the type that the Oscars would nominate.

BEST DIRECTOR

Ang Lee – Life of Pi

     Seems fair enough, although for all the problems I had with Django, I thought that Quentin Tarantino deserved it more, if not Christpher Nolan for Dark Knight Rises.  Also Wes Anderson for Moonrise Kingdom and Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty.

BEST ACTOR

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln

     This seems right, even though I didn’t see any of the films nominated for this award.  Day-Lewis looked great in commercials, though.  Of course, Robert Downey, Jr. got snubbed again for his performance as Tony Stark.  Andrew Garfiled also deserved a nod for outdoing Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man.  Still, I’m glad Joaquin Phoenix is acting again.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christolph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz – Django Unchained

      Personally,I think this is the most egregious snub that occurred this year.  Christolph Waltz was very fun, but why the hell wasn’t Javier Bardem nominated for his performance as Raoul Silva in Skyfall?! 

He was absolutely spellbinding in that film.  While Bardem already won an award for No Country for Old Men, he really broke out into a new acting style with Skyfall.  Waltz also already won a well-deserved award for Inglourious Basterds.   Another snub was against Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performance as Calvin Candie was arguably the best of his career.  And hasn’t John Goodman won an Oscar yet?   

     As for the other nominees, Tommy Lee Jones is always fun (well, except in Batman Forever), and Philip Seymor Hoffman deserves an Oscar nod every time he leaves the house (although that statement may apply more to Joaquin Phoenix).     

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway – Les Miserables

     Haven’t seen any of these movies, but kudos to Hathaway, and I mean that.  She looked great in commercials for this movie.  Way to stop sucking in the course of a year.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained

     I'm happy this one won.  Also, I don’t think Moonrise Kingdom was Anderson’s best work.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Brave

     Well, unless Cars are involved, I guess this shows that the Academy has a knee-jerk reaction to give this award to Pixar every year.  Brave was okay but utterly lackluster, and most everyone seems to agree with me.  Pirates! Band of Misfits was a funny and well-animated movie that was far more deserving.  The decent Rise of the Guardians was not nominated for some reason and it was better than Brave.  I have yet to see Wreck-It Ralph (I’m reluctant to as a result of the uncalled-for presence of Sarah Fucking Silverman), but everyone says it’s really good, and possibly the first deserving 3D movie from non-Pixar Disney.  I haven’t seen ParaNorman or Frankenweenie.  A very disappointing award.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Waiting for Sugar Man

     Probably the most ridiculous of all the Academy Awards since they awarded the work of fabrication that was Bowling for Columbine.  Still, the winner did seem to have an impressive story behind it, and I’m glad they didn’t just indulge their liberalism this year. 

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Adele – “Skyfall”

      Now this was the biggest triumph of this ceremony.  Usually, this is one of the more irrelevant awards.  All these years the Academy has ignored memorable songs to give the award to some forgettable pop song and occasionally the most saccharine song in a Disney movie.  But here, they actually came through and not only nominated a good Bond song but also awarded it!  Thank you Best Original Song Oscar, for not sucking for once!  None of the other songs were as good as this one, and I’m particularly glad that Seth McFarlane didn’t win for his bland entry.  At least the other songs deserved the nomination.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Claudio Miranda - Life of Pi

     Life of Pi was a gorgeous movie and also another example of Hollywood’s love affair with the color cyan.  However, I was disappointed since I was rooting for Roger Deakins’ Skyfall.  I think Dark Knight Rises deserved a nod, too.    

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Jacqueline Durran – Anna Karenina

     I would like to see genre movies dominate this category more often.  This year I would have liked to see The Hunger Games for its attention-grabbing costume designs, Dark Knight Rises for Bane’s costume, Cloud Atlas or Looper.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Life of Pi

     I guess this is fair enough. Avengers was nominated even though visually it didn’t have anything over Transformers.  Dark Knight Rises looked good overall, but I think would have been disqualified for that awful, cartoony football field bombing.  Prometheus and Cloud Atlas were more deserving.