If I Picked the Winners: Best Actor 1935

     In this week's addition of "If I Picked the Winners", I thought I would go back into the furthest possible catacombs of Oscar history that I have fully explored, which happened to be Best Actor 1935. Now as much as I may be tempted to inflate my own cultural prowess by playing up the fact that I have seen all the nominated films in an Oscar category that took place a full 52 years before I was born, I feel obligated to point out that to the complete viewing of the filmography of Best Actor 1935 consists of watching all of two films. That's right, only two films are nominated in the four alloted slots the Academy gave to the category in 1935, and if you're an "old movie" buff such as my self, both films are relatively famous, so their viewing is expected and not something to point out proudly, like some difficult merit badge.

     The two films in question are 1935's Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Frank Lloyd's "Mutiny on the Bounty", which had an amazing three out of the four nominations, a feat that has rarely been repeated in an acting category (never again in Best Actor, and "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" in Best Supporting Actor are the only other times I can think of off the top of my head), and John Ford's "The Informer". Both film's are considered classics of the era (an appraisal that I would whole heartedly agree with the former, but not quite the latter), and any frequent viewers of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) are likely to have at least caught a glimpse of the films at one point or another. Both films have had a lasting impact on cinema, as proved by the remaking of "Mutiny on the Bounty" in 1962 with Marlon Brando as the star (supposedly much inferior to the original, but since I haven't seen it I can render no judgement), and for "The Informer", influence on auteurs of later generations, such as Martin Scorsese who included a cameo appearance of the film in his only Best Picture winner, "The Departed" (the film's famous last scene makes a brief appearance on a television screen).

     Despite my fondness for Depression-era cinema, I have seen disappointingly few films from 1935. The means the choice of viable alternatives is sparse, with the only possible worthy alternative I can think of being Groucho Marx in "A Night at the Opera" (sorry Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood", your acting, as as well as the movie, are overrated). On the plus side though, this allows us to more quickly get to the actual nominees, so let's do that.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Original Screenplay 2009

     As a sort of companion piece to last week's article, I thought this week I would look at the other side of the writing awards in 2009: Best Original Screenplay. As I've stated before, the Best Original Screenplay category is usually one that is open to cinema's more quirky films, including film's whose sole nomination comes from the category, while the Best Adapted Screenplay category is usually home to the more prestigious multi-nominated films. That's not to say this is always the case, as Best Original Screenplay usually has a few big players (proved by "The Hurt Locker"'s victory in 2009), but it is also the only category where you see movies such as 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" receive the official seal of approval from the Academy. The category then is commonly exciting (at least in terms of who gets nominated, not so much in who wins, which like most categories, is well-known going into the awards ceremony), because it is one of those rare categories that truly feels open. In this category, voters look beyond the obvious usual suspects and consider possibilities that would quickly be shot down in other categories. The result then is a category that quite often serves as a cinematic scouting report, highlighting up and coming writers and directors, such as in 2001, when both Christopher Nolan and Wes Anderson were nominated for the screenplays "Memento" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" respectively.

     As audience members, an original screenplay is exciting because we have no idea what to expect. Given trailers and genre conventions, going into the movie we may have some idea of what we're about to see (especially if the film relies so heavily on traditions and cliches to the point it is "original" in name only), but what is exciting about films with original screenplays is their high standard deviation (or high level of variation for those not up in their statistics) in terms of quality. You could get a "Sucker Punch" (which if you missed my low opinion of the film, you can catch up with by clicking here), or you could get an "Another Year" (which if you missed my high opinion of the film, you can catch up with by clicking here). It's the cinematic equivalent Russian Roulette.

     In my opinion, which I made clear last week, 2009 was a relatively good year for cinema, and this includes original screenplays. In fact, with one lone exception that I will be covering in a moment, the batch of nominees the Academy came up with is excellent. These were films that really pushed the genres they operated in to new directions, truly deserving of every sense of the word "original". The Academy's nominees were actually so good, that this week's list of ideal alternatives consists of one movie, but one that was definitely an unfortunate absence. The missing piece of the puzzle was Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon", a relentlessly gothic German film dissecting the strict, repressed roots of the generation that would become the Nazi monsters of the 20th Century. Had the film been nominated, it would have been the third nominated film in the category to make my Top 100 list (the only three films from 2009 to make my list), but given the Academy's xenophobia, the fact "The White Ribbon" missed the cut comes as no surprise. Enough day dreaming though, let's get down to business.

News: Tarantino's Next Film Gets a Name and Plot

     Some exciting news today from my all-time favorite director: Quentin Tarantino. A few weeks back, we learned that he was writing his next movie and that it would be a Spaghetti Western, but that was about all we knew. Well  today, we now have a name: "Django Unchained". The name is a reference to a Spaghetti Western by Sergio Corbucci that is simply titled, "Django". The Corbucci film tells the story of a gunslinger who enters a town that is being torn apart by two warring factions, the KKK and Mexican bandits. Just like Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" was not a direct remake of Enzo Castellari's "The Inglorious Bastards", "Django Unchained" will have a separate plot from "Django". Apparently, "Django Unchained" will tell the story of a freed slave in pre-Civil War south, Django (who is not cast yet according to our knowledge) , who is mentored by a German bounty hunter (to be played by "Inglourious Basterds" Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz). The two men work some jobs together for awhile, but eventually Django's mind wonders back home, where he wife is still being held in perpetual forced labor on a plantation by her evil owner. Django and the bounty hunter decide to try and free his wife and take revenge on the plantation owner. The story sounds absolutely amazing, and with Tarantino behind camera, shot in a Spaghetti Western style, this is sure to be another all-time great. Unfortunately, there is no release date yet or even a planned start date for shooting, so we may have to wait a while longer. In the meantime though, if you would like to read more about this story, click here.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Adapted Screenplay 2009

     For this week's edition of "If I Picked the Winners", I will be peering into the recent past: 2009. Being so close to our current time in this never ending story (with no flying dragon-dogs mind you) that we call History, it's hard to say anything profound about the year in cinema that was 2009. The "does it stand the test of time" trial is inapplicable in this case, with at least another two or three years to go before we can even begin to get proper distance for objective judgement, but at this early stage of the game, my own opinion is that history will treat 2009 kindly. It wasn't the stellar year that 2007 was, but still very solid nonetheless. What I especially appreciated about 2009 was the wide variety of high-quality art and entertainment that was offered. Whether you were into sci-fi ("Avatar", "Star Trek"), comedy ("Up in the Air", "Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Funny People", "In the Loop", "The Informant", and for people who like dark meat, "A Serious Man"), family ("Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Up"), drama ("A Serious Man", "The White Ribbon", "The Secrets in Their Eyes", "Precious"),  action ("Inglorious Basterds", "The Hurt Locker", "Public Enemies"), or like myself, a mix of all of the above, then there was some really well-crafted options for you the choose from. Of course, a lot of this is due to some extremely well written scripts (the birth place of all good movies), which will be looking at today.

     Now for most years, it is more likely than not that the stronger batch of screenplays will come from the "adapted" side (movies based on previously published material, which usually means books), but 2009 actually had a stronger year for original material, a rare feet indeed (especially given Hollywood's recent total lack of originality). That doesn't mean the year's adapted screenplays were anything to scoff at. As the year was strong all-around, this meant there were a fair many high merit adaptations, including most of the nominees. Unfortunately, as is par for the Academy, they left off some very worthy contenders in favor of one or two questionable choices. The most egregious error on the Academy's part was their failure to nominate the brilliant Wes Anderson-Noah Baumbach translation of the Ronald Dahl  book, "Fantastic Mr. Fox". Given the Academy's history of under-appreciating the outstanding films of Mr. Anderson, I guess the snub wasn't all that surprising, but seeing as how the film managed a Best Animated Feature nominee, you would of thought the writers might have given the film some consideration. Another film that would have have made my cut, was the Argentine film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, "The Secrets in Their Eyes". Based on the novel, "La Pregunta de sus ojos" (which I believe roughly translates into "The Question in Their Eyes", by Eduardo Sacheri, the film is one of the best modern day crime/noir films I have seen in quite some time (very reminiscent of the excellent Kurosawa film, "Stray Dog"). Finally, as a replacement for the one science fiction film that managed to get a nomination in the category, I would have preferred to have seen Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's reboot of "Star Trek" among the nominees. I'm no Trekkie, but the film was a superb rendering of Gene Roddenberry television series. So much so in fact that the film's sequel is one of the only (out of numerous) continuations of a film series that I am actually looking forward to, but now let's get down to the actual nominees.

News: Oscar 2012

     I know it's a bit early to be discussing the 2012 (or really 2011) Oscars yet, we did get our first morsel of news yesterday regarding this year's Academy Award show. There had been speculation that the Academy would try to move the show up another month (yet again), to try to add some spice to the show by quickening the pace of the awards season, but this turned out not to be the case. Academy president Tom Sherak confirmed the following Oscar schedule:


Dec. 1, 2011   Official screen credits forms due
Dec. 27, 2011 Nomination ballots mailed
Jan. 13, 2012 Nominations ballots due by 5 p.m. PT
Jan. 24, 2012 Nominations announced at 5:40 a.m. PT
Feb. 1, 2012 Final ballots mailed
Feb. 6, 2012 Nominees luncheon
Feb. 11, 2012 Scientific and technical awards
Feb. 21, 2012 Final ballots due by 5 p.m. PT
Feb. 26, 2012 Academy Awards at 5:30 p.m. PT

In other words, we'll be having a show in late February again. While I personally would like to see some more surprises in the awards show (at least in the major categories, the winners having been painfully predictable), the only way this would be possible is if the Academy was able to circumvent the multitude of preceding award shows, many of which have a heavy crossover with the body of the Academy. Had the Academy moved everything up a month, no doubt all the other award shows would have followed suit (they become absolutely meaningless if their not precursors to the Big Rodeo), so unless the Academy can think of some way to banish all other movie award ceremonies (save the Golden Globes maybe, which do differ from the Academy quite often), it doesn't really matter when the awards are held. They won't get anymore exciting.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Picture 2003

     When I look at the slate of Best Picture nominees from 2003, it appears to have been a true high-water mark, or a crescendo if you rather, for the industries' "epic" films. While we still suffer from the aftershocks of Hollywood's obsession with "the epicness of epicdom" (two made up words, I know, but that's just how self-consciously epic these films are, ordinary words from the English language do not adequately describe them), in 2003, the tone still felt new and fresh, which not only allowed for successful box office receipts, but high critical praise as well (thus the Oscar nominations). In the years following, while the box office receipts may have remained consistent, Tim Burton's dreadful version of "Alice in Wonderland" is a prime example of this ongoing monetary success (thank you world for continuing to encourage this sort of garbage), the grades from critics and enthusiasts have slowly fallen away as the genre has become increasingly stale. In 2003 though, we had mostly good films from the genre in our rearview mirror ("Gladiator",  the first two "Lord of the Rings" films, and to a lesser extent, "The Patriot"), so the potential for the genre was promising and people were ready to bite on anything that had the slightest whiff of saga. This is why you see two films ("The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World") among the nominees with a colon in their title (a surefire sign of how epic a film is), and while "Mystic River" and "Lost and Translation" exist well outside the boundaries of the "epic" genre, I am tempted to throw in "Seabiscuit" into the "epic" mix as well.

     There may be no swords, bow and arrows, or large battle scenes in "Seabiscuit", but tonally it carries a lot of similarities to these films. The heavy use of cliches and conventionalities without the slightest sense of acknowledgment or self-deprecation, blatant ploys to smother the audience in sentimentalities, and exaggerated finales where everything comes down to "this one moment", plague all three of these films. This should really come as no surprise, seeing as how the "sports" genre and the "epic" genre are really parallels of one another (is a "game" not just a low stakes version of a "battle"?), and the tone of the modern day sports film has seen the same shift to overwrought drama that the epic has experienced in the last few years, which is why I include "Seabiscuit" in the group of epic films.

     Were there any superior alternatives to these epic films though? For any one year (including 2003), there is always a growing list of films from that year that I still wish to see, so while I haven't become the expert of "films in 2003" that I would like to be, I still feel I am able to answer this question with a definitive, "Yes"! As you may have ascertained from the opening paragraph, I am a tough critic of Tim Burton's recent films, but in a decade of average to sub-par work, the one shining exception to his recently abysmal output is 2003's "Big Fish", a delightful return to form about a son and his dying father's "tall tales", and a film superior to almost all of the Academy's nominations. Another film that I would have preferred to see as a Best Picture nominee over most of the actual nominees, is my favorite auteur's film, Quentin Tarantino, "Kill Bill Vol. 1". Other possible substitutes that I would have preferred over some of the nominees include the Harvey Pekar biopic, "American Splendor", the Jack Black rock comedy, "School of Rock", the small little dramedy about the life of a dwarf (pun absolutely intended), "The Station Agent", and the true story of the journalistically fraudulent life of Stephen Glass, "Shattered Glass". As always though, we must come back to reality, so let's get down to ranking the nominees.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Actor 1967

     After covering a category from my favorite year in cinema (2007) last week, this week I keep the good vibrations going by covering a category from what is probably my second favorite year in cinema, 1967. Being before my time, to say 1967 is my second favorite year in cinema may sound a bit peculiar and random, like it was drawn out of a hat in a raffle, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The late 1960's was an interesting time in the world of cinema, just as it was in almost everything else. The radical shift in culture opened up the medium to more experimentation, as well as the ability to go places and do things that the moral norms would not have allowed before. For instance, "The Graduate", one of my favorite films of all-time (which we will be discussing more about later in this article), tells the story of a young man having an affair with his neighbor's wife, a woman who is very much his senior. Not only does the film tell this sordid perverse tale of seduction and robbing from the cradle, it does so in a humorous manner, which makes the film the inimitable classic that it is, but would also have been too offensive to the sensitivities of the populace just a few years earlier. Previously, a story about such outrageous promiscuity would only be told in the utmost dour, melodramatic fashion ("Peyton's Place" anyone?), but being a new time and era, Mike Nichols and company were brazen enough to push the genre in new and exciting places (like Robert Altman would do for war films three years later with "M*A*S*H"). Another example from 1967 of the deconstruction of the old norms in favor of the establishment of new ground rules is the film "Bonnie and Clyde". The film caused and enormous stir for its (at the time) graphic depiction of violence. Formerly, while there was definitely a lot of violence in films' plots, when it got down to the real action, the violence was mostly implied or sanitized. "Bonnie and Clyde" took this trick and spun it, causing a ruckus in the short-run, but creating a whole new language of cinema and paving the way for countless films down the road (like almost every Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino film).

     It's this sort of radical thinking about the conventional practices of cinema that endears 1967 to my heart (the only year with two films in my Top 10). It also makes deciding between nominees very difficult, especially for this Best Actor category. It is a truly impressive lineup (probably one of the greatest single categories in Oscar history), with every nominee being a household name giving one of their signature performances. It truly is ridiculous the amount of talent displayed in this category. I don't say this often, but you have to give credit when credit is due, so to the Academy, big kudos for the Best Actor nominees of 1967. It may be your masterpiece. In fact, I don't really have any viable substitutes for any of the nominees. Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" I guess could be two possible candidates, but the movie was released in 1966 in some countries, so I'm not really sure of their eligibility for the year. The only other possible nomination-worthy performance that comes to mind is Lee Marvin in "The Dirty Dozen", which, had he been nominated over my fifth ranked performance in the category, would have been fine by me, but I wouldn't necessarily call it an improvement. Before I get into the rankings, I would like to stress one more time how difficult the process was this week. In particular, deciding between the top two performances was incredibly agonizing, as both performances rank up there with my all-time favorites. In the end, I made a decision for better or worse, because I don't believe in wimping out and doing a stupid "tie" like too many critics do on these sorts of lists. Just know that the difference in my mind between the first and second ranked performance is miniscule, microscopic, infinitesimal, as they both rapidly approach the limit point known as perfection.