The Academy Awards are this coming Sunday, of course, where you can see glamorously (or appallingly - sometimes both?) attired movie stars strutting their stuff. Or you can even watch the clips of the nominated movies themselves, if the movies are what actually interest you. One of the traditional Oscar parlor games is looking back and seeing which films or artists were denied Oscars, and which got awards instead, through the 20/20 hindsight lens of "What were they thinking?". One such example is from the Telegraph by Tom Chivers, here, where in the context of the Best Picture nominees, he bluntly describes as "the 10 worst injustices in Academy Award history". Another was just today, on All Things Considered, with Bob Mondello here. You can talk about whether you agree or not in the comments, below the flip....
First, being a loser, self has to admit that he hasn't seen all 21 of the movies that Chivers mentioned as (a) what won and (b) what should have won. (My count is that I've seen 15.) Some are painfully obvious, like the 1st on his list: anyone now who honestly thinks that How Green Was My Valley is a better film than Citizen Kane has no cinematic judgment whatsoever. Even then, some people probably realized it. But for political reasons, it was easy to punish the upstart outsider Orson Welles for essentially roasting the life of the very much still-alive William Randolph Hearst, in his first directorial effort, no less, and to reward the "safe choice" and "their guy", John Ford.
To address one of Chivers' themes, Mondello mentions another reason why films like Kramer vs. Kramer can beat out Apocalypse Now:
"Because they're the biggest chunk of the Academy, [actors] also wield a lot of influence. And they, in fact, tend to go for actor's pictures. You'll see something like Kramer vs. Kramer gets a nod over Apocalypse Now. Because Apocalypse Now is a director's picture - it's Francis Ford Coppola showing off, and he's fabulous ... but Kramer vs. Kramer is sort of a domestic drama - that shows off actors, and actors get into that a lot."
In other years, there's an element of "consolation prizes" in the awards, such as to Billy Wilder and The Apartment, and to George Cukor and My Fair Lady. In the case of Wilder, Some Like It Hot was released the previous year, but got crushed in the Oscars in the wake of Ben-Hur. It's not hard to see the Academy trying to make up for that 1 year later. For George Cukor and My Fair Lady, until then, Cukor, one of Hollywood's finest directors, had never won an Oscar. So he was overdue. The choice of My Fair Lady, besides rewarding Hollywood's then-penchant for honoring prestige musicals (think An American in Paris, Gigi, and West Side Story), also indicates a "safe" choice of intelligent escapism vs. cutting-edge current events, Dr. Strangelove being a case of the latter.
Just looking at this past year, I joked (to myself, of course - no one else I knew saw this movie) that the best 2009 film acting performance that would not be nominated for an Oscar would be Christian McKay, from Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles. (For once, 3CM was right.) It's unfortunately understandable, because the movie didn't get the exposure and publicity that it could have. It wasn't for lack of effort from various quarters:
(a) Richard Linklater, Zac Efron, Claire Danes and McKay went on Charlie Rose's show last December 7
(b) It got some nice advance write-up in the NYT, including:
i. A write-up about Robert Kaplow, the author of the novel Me and Orson Welles
ii. This article by Dennis Lim
iii. A rave review by A.O. Scott
(c) It played a number of film festivals, including:
i. Toronto, September 2008 (one report here)
ii. New Orleans, October 2009, reported by Mike Scott in the Times-Picayune, where he wrote:
"As the closing credits rolled after Friday's screening, the capacity crowd at the Prytania Theatre burst into applause when McKay's name and face appeared on-screen."
iii. It also played the St. Louis International Film Festival (no, 3CM didn't it then - he saw it later)
Unfortunately, the Charlie Rose and NYT demographic can only carry one so far. The next box office take for Me and Orson Welles in its theatrical release? $1,190,003.
(There's a lesson there for people on this blog: just venting about the latest bit of Republican douchebaggery on DK and nowhere else doesn't do much for righting that injustice.)
So, even though McKay was denied a nomination, he's gotten noticed for his performance as Welles by those in the know, as reported by David Gritten here in the Telegraph:
"Now he's a hot property and has two more film roles under his belt. He plays an MI6 man in the Howard Marks biopic Mr Nice and he did a few scenes in Woody Allen's next film...."
Here's a mini-interview of McKay, about his portrayal of Welles, not to mention a eunuch at an early phase of his career:
Going back to the Oscar "consolation prize" idea, one of the nominees who definitely falls into that section is Jeff Bridges, nominated for Best Actor for Crazy Heart (which I haven't seen, and I've heard it basically described as a newer version of Tender Mercies, even to the point where Robert Duvall is in both movies). The buzz everywhere is that The Dude will definitely abide tomorrow night, and that he is long overdue for an Oscar.
So there we are, a Friday Night at the Movies diary (like this one from last night - retro-pimping loser, that 3CM) essentially transposed to Saturday night. Below, besides the usual SNLC protocol, for your loser stories of the week, feel free to discourse on movies if you're so inclined :) .