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Someone connected with the Oscars is showing a lot of class. I’m not sure who it is. Possibly someone with the Motion Picture Academy. Or it could be one of the show’s producers. But I want to go on record as complimenting whoever it was who made the decision to have Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty rectify last year’s disaster by having them present the best picture Oscar again this year.
All Oscar groupies remember what happened in 2017 when Dunaway and Beatty announced La La Land had won the Oscar only to be corrected by one of that movie’s producers who admitted Moonlight was the real winner. For some reason, Dunaway and Beatty became the butt of countless cruel jokes and cheap shots over a mistake that wasn’t of their making. Some dope simply handed them the wrong envelope.
The way the Oscars worked — at least the way they worked last year — was that one representative of the accounting firm that tabulated the Oscar ballots was stationed at each side of the stage so that when the presenters came on stage — regardless from which side they entered on — there would be someone there to hand them the envelop containing the information they were to read at the podium. When someone entered from stage right, for instance, the accountant stationed stage left was then supposed to discard his copy of the envelope for that award in his possession. What happened was one of those accountants failed to discard the envelope for best actress when his cohort on the other side of the stage handed it to the presenter of that award. So when Beatty and Dunaway came on stage, that dolt handed them the best actress envelope. That’s why Beatty had this befuddled look on his face when he opened what he thought was the envelope containing the best picture winner and the card inside said the Oscar was going to Emma Stone for La La Land. So when Beatty hesitated, Dunaway basically saw only the movie title on the card and announced it as the winner.
Regardless, Beatty and Dunaway were immediately and unfairly inducted into the Bill Buckner Hall of Shame. Now someone — someone displaying some real courage — is extending them their get-out-of-jail-free card. Yeah!!!
So now the question becomes what will be the name of the picture contained on the card they extract tomorrow night from inside that envelope. I’m hoping it will be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, easily the best picture of last year. But the year’s best picture rarely wins the Oscar. And it would be especially difficult for Billboards to win this year because (1) there has been a terrible and undeserved PC backlash against the movie and (2) its director, Martin McDonagh, failed to receive a nomination from the director’s branch of the Academy. The last time a picture won without its director being nominated was 2012 when Argo prevailed, but that was an unusual circumstance. Argo was not even considered a frontrunner until the Academy’s nominations were announced and the motion picture, correctly I’m guessing, assumed a conspiracy among the director’s branch prevented Argo’s director, Ben Affleck, from being nominated. The directors were angry around that time over the fact that on two separate occasions one of this country’s most revered directors, Martin Scorsese, was denied a directing Oscar he deserved and, in both instances, actors, in their first attempts at directing a film, won instead. The acting branch of the Academy comprises more than 35 percent of its total membership and the directors felt those actors rallied around one of their own instead of giving the award to its rightful recipient. Thus, the directing branch conspired to make sure that wouldn’t happen again when Argo was being considered. It was OK that Affleck was nominated by the Directors Guild because only directors vote for the winner of that award and they could make sure Affleck’s only honor would be the nomination. But they felt if Affleck was nominated for a directing Oscar, the actors would unite to support his nomination, giving him the trophy instead of it going to "a real director." The rest of the Academy was outraged at the actions of the director’s branch and went out of their way to register their displeasure by supporting Argo in other categories in which it was nominated, including best picture. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1989's Driving Miss Daisy to find a movie that won best picture without its director being nominated.
Another thing Billboards has going against it is the preferential ballot. Academy members either loved the movie, the way I did, or they despised it on PC grounds. With the preferential ballot, the best picture winner is not going to be the one with the most first place votes, but the one with the most second, third, maybe even fourth place votes. That rewards a safe choice like the undeserving
Billboards does have a couple of things in its favor. It is loved by the acting branch, which I said, can dominate a category if all its members unite behind one film. After all, Billboards has three acting nominations, two likely acting wins and it won the Screen Actors Guild’s version of best picture. The second thing Billboards has going for it is the Winter Olympics. Seriously. Word out of Hollywood in the last month is Billboards has garnered a lot of last-minute momentum and, because the Academy did not want to compete with the Olympics for television viewers, it pushed back the date of handing out its awards this year, giving more time for that momentum to build. So we’ll see. Still, I’m rooting hard for Billboards, but predicting Water.
The acting winners — McDormand, Oldman, Janney and Rockwell — are all carved in granite and I don’t have any real strong objections about any of them although, except for McDormand, those are were not the nominees I would have really preferred to win. I like Allison Janney. In fact, I really like Allison Janney. But so do a lot of other people so she will be one of those winners who will be celebrated for the entirety of their career; but, personally, I would have cast my ballot for Laurie Metcalf in the supporting actress category. And I think Timothee Chalamet and Willem Dafoe are more deserving recipients of the actor and supporting actor Oscars respectively.
It seems foreordained that Guillermo Del Toro will take home the Oscar for best director, but since the inscription on that award reads "Outstanding Achievement in Direction of a Feature Length Motion Picture," I would have voted for Christopher Nolan’s direction of Dunkirk as the recipient. Think about it. Seriously. Was there a more outstanding directorial achievement last year than what Nolan pulled off with that film?
The overly praised Get Out (OK, it’s a good movie, but certainly doesn’t rise to the level of greatness) stands a good chance of winning for Original Screenplay and I won’t be terribly surprised, although I will be disappointed in the Academy’s judgment, if it does. But I’m sticking with my prediction of Billboards being triumphant in that category,. The superbly written adapted screenplay for Call Me By Your Name should and will win in that category.
I’ve heard The Shape of Water is also favored to win the cinematography award, which is no surprise since Academy voters often simply check off their best picture preferences in the craft categories as well. But Roger Deakins, whose been the cinematographer for some of the most visually stunning movies of the last quarter century but has yet to win an Oscar in spite of numerous nominations, has a lot of "he’s due" support. Not only that, he deserves to win for his shooting of Blade Runner 2049.
I’m predicting Dunkirk will win the film editing prize, but my preference for that Oscar is Baby Driver, one of the most arrestingly edited films in years.
And, finally, yes all you basketball fans out there, I’m betting that Kobe Bryant will win an Oscar.
The rest of my choices look like this:
Costume Design: Phantom Thread
Makeup and Hair Styling: Darkest Hour
Production Design: The Shape of Water
Score: The Shape of Water
Song: "Remember Me" (Coco)
Sound Editing: Dunkirk
Sound Mixing: Dunkirk
Visual Effects: War for the Planet of the Apes
Animated Feature: Coco
Documentary Feature: Faces Places
Foreign Language Feature: A Fantastic Woman
Animated Short: Dear Basketball
Documentary Short: Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (although Edith + Eddie has a shot at winning this)
Live Action Short: DeKalb Elementary
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