Thoughts on the 89th Academy Award Nominations

When I saw the Oscar nominations today, I got emotional. I’m sure many of us did. Looking at the list of nominees, I, like many of you, had a realization. Regardless of what you think of the list of nominated films and performances, something happened today that we’ll remember forever. Looking at the nominees, there’s one conclusion we can all unanimously reach.

Racism is over.

We did it, America! After two years in a row of #OscarsSoWhite, we finally achieved the final measure of equality that so many have been waiting for. When the media correctly dubbed the election of Barack Obama as the beginning of a post-racial America, who could have predicted that it would take this long for the Oscars to get diversity in all four of the acting categories?

It took long enough, but now we’re here. Everyone can take pride in all the progress we’ve made. A woman is president now. The Clinton administration has kept their promise not to re-litigate the Dakota Access Pipeline. Hillary picked the most diverse cabinet in history, and half of Hillary’s cabinet positions will be occupied by women, the first presidential administration ever to accomplish this feat. We don’t know who her Attorney General will be, but it looks like it will be someone who wasn’t named after two leading figures of the Confederacy. It’s hard not to be inspired by the recent progress this country is taking, and I look forward to seeing us move forward even more over the next four years.

Last year when I wrote my thoughts on the 88^th Oscars, I didn’t even comment at all on the nominee’s lack of diversity. I think this was because I had only looked at the nominees list itself, and hadn’t actually gone on social media to see what people were saying, which led me to be totally ignorant of the anger being directed at the awards. At the time, I mistakenly thought the 88^th Oscar nominations did a pretty fine job, with few noticeable snubs and mistakes. Usually, every year there’s a giant bombshell snub or mistake that comes out of nowhere and makes you wonder “How the hell did they get that wrong!?!?!?” In 2013, Ben Affleck didn’t get nominated for Best Director for Argo…even though he ended up winning the Director’s Guild Award for it and won Best Picture for it. In 2014, you had The Lego Movie not getting nominated for Best Animated Feature, Jake Gyllenhaal not getting nominated for Nightcrawler, Ava DuVernay not getting nominated for Best Director Selma, American Sniper somehow getting a Best Picture nomination…

2016 has been the best year all-around in terms of nominations that I’ve seen. That being said, there was still a major snub and several other mistakes or surprises. I’ll start with the bad first.

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE

Before the nominations were announced, I felt sad knowing that Amy Adams was going to get nominated for her sixth Oscar, but would probably lose yet again. It turns out, I didn’t have to worry about that, because Amy Adams didn’t get nominated for Best Actress at all! Despite being nominated for the Golden Globe, Critic’s Choice Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and the BAFTA for Arrival, the Oscars in their infinite wisdom decided not to give Amy Adams another Oscar nomination!

My guess as to why? It’s a science fiction movie. As I noted last year, Alicia Vikander got nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl (A movie where she was the LEAD character), going on to win the award later. Alicia had done Ex Machina that same year, and that’s clearly a supporting performance, one that was worthy of the Oscar….but it’s a science fiction movie. As I mentioned last year:

The only actresses ever nominated for performances in science fiction films are Melinda Dillon for Supporting in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Sigourney Weaver for Best Actress in Aliens. That’s it.

So yet again, we have an actress delivering a great performance in a science fiction movie, but not getting recognized for it. This is especially surprising given the fact that Arrival got a whopping eight nominations, making it one of the most nominated movies of the year. The decision not to nominate Adams is by far the most egregious mistake of the awards this year.

THE BAD

-Viola Davis getting nominated for Best Supporting Actress is…problematic. Davis is astonishing in Fences, and I expect she will win the award. The problem is that it is yet another example of a performance that is a LEAD role, getting nominated in a SUPPORTING category. When Viola was in Fences on Broadway, she was nominated for and subsequently won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Yet, now that she’s in the movie adaptation of the play, she’s getting nominated for Supporting Actress. Viola’s performance is somewhat on the borderline…she’s more of a lead than a supporting character in my opinion, but she doesn’t dominate the film compared to Denzel Washington’s Troy Maxson, who is in nearly every scene of the movie. According to Fences’ imdb page:

Viola Davis’s performance is campaigned as supporting during awards season. This placement was seen as category fraud by some awards pundits. In an interview with Deadline, Denzel Washington said he disagreed with the placement, but that is was Davis’ own decision, which would improve her chances of winning.

So, we will have TWO YEARS IN A ROW where the Best Supporting Actress award goes to someone who was the lead character in a movie. The Oscars need to crack down on this nonsense and stop this category fraud, because it appears that this kind of rule-breaking is becoming increasingly frequent.

-The Screenplay categories contain some odd choices. The first odd choice is The Lobster, which was released in 2015, but didn’t get wide release in the United States until March of 2016. The film received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Technically, I believe the movie should have been nominated for the 2015 Oscars, not eligible for this year’s Oscars. But I guess because it didn’t get released into the US until this year no one cared.

The second odd choice is putting Moonlight for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film’s story inspired by a drama school project by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who is one of the people nominated for the award, but McCraney’s play was never actually produced as far as I am aware. Both the Writer’s Guild and the BAFTAs nominated Moonlight for Best Original Screenplay, because of the fact that the piece by McCraney was never actually made or published, so the movie is essentially written by Jenkins himself. Director Barry Jenkins never actually *ADAPTED* anything. Yet because of the fact that it was a movie inspired by another story, it apparently got shifted into the Adapted category despite the fact that there was no real adapting.

This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened—Whiplash got moved to Adapted in 2014. That film was originally a short film by Damien Chazelle, and Chazelle just took his short film and made it a feature-length one, so he didn’t really “adapt” so much as “take my original screenplay and make it longer”. Toy Story 3 got nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, because, according to the Oscars, it was based off of “Characters from the film Toy Story”. These semantics over what counts as “adapted” strike me as being extremely unnecessary and picky. It is especially unfortunate in this case because I thought for sure Moonlight would win Original Screenplay, leaving the Best Adapted category open for a movie like Arrival to win. Now that Moonlight is in the Best Adapted category, nothing will win for that award, so the movies that *actually* adapted other source material will get snubbed in favor of a movie that didn’t truly adapt anything.

-Finding Dory didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Feature? Fuck off.

-Congrats to Suicide Squad and Passengers on actually getting nominated for Oscars despite being terrible movies. Good job, guys! Granted, the awards they were nominated for (Makeup, Production Design, Score) have nothing to do with the quality of the movies. But you have to admit that it’s hysterical that Suicide Squad and Passengers can now call themselves “Oscar-nominated films.”

Also, is Thomas Newman just going to get an Oscar every year now until he dies? Hilariously, Newman now has 14 nominations and has no chance of winning Best Original Score this year (La La Land will win, probably unanimously). Interestingly enough, I looked it up and, apparently, the score for Passengers got no other nominations for Best Score. In fact, Passengers got no other accolades ANYWHERE according to its Wikipedia page, but managed to get two Oscar nominations. I hope whoever did the Oscar campaign to get Passengers some nominations gets a nice bonus because they sure did a great job.

Seriously, this movie is an Oscar-nominated film now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPAC3bD0guA

-Would’ve been cool to have Rogue One get nominated for more than two Oscars. Not necessarily surprising to see it only get two nominations, but as a Star Wars fan I take it as a personal affront.

–Deadpool didn’t get nominated for anything. Not surprising, since its two genres that the Oscars hate, comedy and superhero. But regardless, Deadpool was one of the best films of the year and it seemed like it might’ve had a chance to get a nomination. The Producer’s Guild even gave it a Best Picture nomination!

-Taraj P. Henson should’ve been nominated for Best Actress for Hidden Figures.

-I’m not surprised at all that it got numerous nominations, since it’s Oscar bait as hell, but Manchester by the Sea is the latest overrated TRAGIC ART FILM to get lots of nominations, including Best Picture. Casey Affleck will probably win Best Actor, which I don’t necessarily have a problem with, but I hope the movie loses every other category it’s nominated for. I will relish its defeats.

-Yet again, no animated film got a Best Picture nomination. I would’ve liked to have seen Zootopia, Moana, Finding Dory, or Kubo and the Two Strings make the cut since those four were all among the best films of the year.

OTHER SURPRISES

-This year the acting nominations took me by surprise a bit. I’ve seen every Best Picture nominee this year, and normally that translates into the acting categories too. But this year, the only category where I’ve seen every nominee is the Best Supporting Actress category, which is interesting because that’s usually the category where I see the least number of the nominated films. Even more surprising to me is that I’ve only seen TWO of the Best Actress nominated films this year. I have not seen Jackie, Elle, or Loving. Elle is a foreign film which only came to Winter Park, the other two were independent movies that were not in theaters for very long at all, and I think Loving was also only screening in Winter Park. I think this is the first time since 2010 (the year I first got really active in moviegoing) where I haven’t seen at least three of the Best Acting nominees in any category.

Viggo Mortensen was nominated for Best Actor, which wasn’t that surprising since he got a SAG and a BAFTA nomination for Captain Fantastic. The movie itself though didn’t get much other acclaim other than Viggo and I don’t think it was playing for very long. I know the Enzian had it, and I think Winter Park did too, but I don’t know if it ever made it to Oviedo.

Michael Shannon getting nominated for Nocturnal Animals was quite surprising. Interestingly enough, Aaron-Taylor Johnson WON the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for that movie, yet Shannon was the one who got the nomination. The only major acting award Shannon got for Nocturnal Animals was a Critic’s Choice Award. He didn’t get nominated for the SAG, Golden Globe, or BAFTA. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment at all on whether it’s deserved or not, but it’s interesting that he got an Oscar nomination despite not getting nominated for the other big awards.

These aren’t necessarily surprises in a bad way, I just can’t comment on whether the Oscars got these nominees right or wrong due to the fact that I haven’t seen them yet.

-Also, while “How Far I’ll Go” is a wonderful song, I’m surprised Moana didn’t have “You’re Welcome” be the song nominated for Best Original Song. Both should have been in there, to be honest, but if I had to pick one, “You’re Welcome” would’ve easily been my choice. The song has 48,358,523 views on Youtube and I’m pretty sure 48,358,522 of those views were from me. “You’re Welcome” not getting nominated also means we won’t see Dwayne Johnson sing at the Oscars, which is a tragedy.

THE GOOD

-Joking aside, it truly is great to see history be made with regards to the diversity this year. So many people of color are nominated and it’s fantastic to see. Given the fact that the white male patriarchy struck back with a vengeance last year, at least we can take small comfort in seeing the advances the film industry is making in regards to people of color. The #OscarsSoWhite protest is also a reminder that one of the strongest ways to fight racism is shaming those who practice it. To quote Vann R. Newkirk II:

“Part of the reason we got Brown v Board was the federal government thought segregation made us look bad internationally during the Cold War. Another good example of how shame actually works pretty damn well in fighting racism.” Newkirk also noted that shame “[is] really a system of power checking in itself”

Think about this the next time you see a thinkpiece by a white writer about how we need to move past “identity politics” and reach out more to white working-class voters.

-August Wilson, one of America’s greatest playwrights, finally got his first Oscar nomination…twelve years after he died! I read that part of the reason why Fences took so long to adapt to film was that Wilson refused to let anyone film the play unless it was filmed by a black director. So thank you, Denzel Washington, for bringing it to the screen, and thank you August Wilson for writing it.

-Meryl Streep got her 20^th Oscar nomination! An incredible achievement that seems unlikely ever to be repeated. As a Meryl fan, I’m glad to see she made it to twenty nominations. I hope one day she wins her fourth Oscar and ties Katharine Hepburn’s record for most acting wins (a record she didn’t deserve, in my opinion).

–Kubo and the Two Strings got a technical award for Best Visual Effects even though it’s an animated film. I think this might be the first animated film in history to get nominated for one of the technical awards, which is cool to see.

2016 was a terrible year for humanity, but it was a great year for movies, and there are many wonderful films up for awards this year. Stay tuned, as I will post my list of Oscar predictions in a few weeks.

Stars in the Sky and the Screen

La La Land

128 Minutes

PG-13

12/29/16

 

“Sing,” she said. “Sing a little somethin’ for me.”

-Pilate Dead to Milkman Dead, Song of Solomon

 

La La Land is special.

 

The movie’s opening scene is set on a L.A. highway in the middle of the day, during heavy traffic. As the camera takes us to the scene, one of the women driving her car starts to sing the opening number “Another Day in the Sun.” As she begins, another man in another car starts to sing, too. Soon, everybody gets out of their cars and starts singing and dancing to the song on the highway.

Typing this, it sounds like this scene could be corny or lame. But when I saw the opening scene, I was blown away. “Another Day in the Sun” sounds like a song that could’ve been right out of a Golden Age 1950s musical, and the choreography and dancing further reminded me of that era. But it’s the setting that makes the scene. I’ve never seen any musical take place on a packed highway in the middle of the day during traffic. Have you ever been stuck in traffic, listening to music, and just wishing that you could get away from it all? Have you ever watched a musical and thought, “I wish people broke out into song like that in real life?” Have you ever wished you had music playing in the background of your life? The opening scene of La La Land captured these feelings *exactly* for me, but instead of thinking it, the characters do it. They just stop what they’re doing, get out of their cars, burst into song, celebrate and dance, and then get back into their cars and continue on their day.

La La Land juxtaposes two unique, difficult feelings: it manages to feel like something from the Old Hollywood era musical, while simultaneously being filled with wondrous, unique scenes and song and dance numbers that feel new.

You’ve seen the story before. You might have seen it many times before, in many different genres, in many different movies. Mia (Emma Stone) is a barista who dreams of being an actress in the movies. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist working in restaurants who dreams of owning a jazz club one day. They meet up. They fall in love. They struggle to balance their relationship with their dreams and the realities of life.

There are so many aspects of La La Land that are praiseworthy it’s difficult to begin. The costumes are filled with bright, vibrant colors that pop out. The cinematography is masterful, and I think even people who don’t know much about cinematography in movies would be impressed. At one point during the song “Someone in the Crowd,” the scene is set in a large backyard around a pool at an LA party. The camera is filming the people from the surface of the water within the pool, and pans in a creative 360-degree rotation around the crowd. The musical numbers and the score are fantastic. I’ve already listened to the songs multiple times since I saw the movie. I want to buy the soundtrack, which is a probably the best compliment a critic can give to a musical.

Damien Chazelle, the director, is 31, and has made three films so far. His first, a 2009 movie Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, I don’t think ever got mainstream release (its box office performance was $35,556 and it only opened in five theaters according to Box Office Mojo). But since that movie, he has made Whiplash and La La Land. If I were to make a list of the best movies this decade, both of those would make the cut. It’s astonishing how a filmmaker so young can seemingly come from nowhere and reach superstar status, and that’s where Damien Chazelle is now. Expect to see his name a lot more in the future.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone both deliver great performances, but Emma Stone is the star of the movie for me. There’s a song that Mia sings towards the very end of the movie, during a movie audition. The song’s lyrics and music are beautiful, but more than that is the sense that Emma Stone poured her heart and soul into the song and into Mia. I read that the movie had parallels with Emma Stone’s real life: both she and Mia were school dropouts who moved to Los Angeles when they were young to become actresses. This is one of those performances where you can tell the actor isn’t just acting, but actually feels such a connection with her character that only they could bring to the role. There are plenty of actresses who could’ve played Mia and done a great job, but could they have poured their experiences into Mia the way Stone does?

I can describe the technical aspects of La La Land forever, and talk about how great these aspects are, but I can’t truly capture what seeing it felt like. Like the highway scene at the beginning, every scene feels like there’s something special in it. At one point in the movie, Mia and Sebastian head to the Griffith Observatory. They start dancing in the planetarium together. And then, Mia’s necklace starts to lift off into the air as if they just entered zero gravity. Both Mia and Sebastian start to rise up into the air and dance in the stars. Most movies would’ve just kept Mia and Sebastian in the planetarium, and would have thought that having them floating up into the stars would’ve been cliché or cheesy. But La La Land goes there, and it’s just a breathtaking moment.

There’s a lot of joy and beauty in La La Land, but it also has a lot of sadness, too. It’s a movie about following your dreams, whether in love or in your career, but it also knows how hard it is to follow through on everything you want in life. In my review of Woody Allen’s most recent film Café Society, I wrote that He’s like a surgeon who is slowly sticking a needle into your heart. You don’t notice it at first and it doesn’t feel painful at all, until the end, when it suddenly becomes noticeable. Both Café Society and La La Land are similar in that they have a bittersweet quality that you don’t normally see in movies like this. The ending isn’t depressing the way some Oscar-bait movies are (Manchester by the Sea anyone?). Mia and Sebastian end the movie being happy in life, but they don’t get everything that they desire, either. The ending has a true-to-life quality that makes you smile for what they are, but sad for what they could never be.

La La Land captures the thrill, awe and wonder that only movies can create. It’s a celebration of dreamers and all their triumphs and failures, all their sadness and joy. Watching La La Land, you will be remember the phase “movie magic,” and know what it means.