Oscar Nomination Reactions 2013

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln

The 2012 Academy Award nominations were released this week. Chris Neumer gives his reactions and gets inside why nobody is ever snubbed, why dramatic film making and good film editing don’t go hand-in-hand and what Daniel Day-Lewis’ new nickname should be.

by Chris Neumer

If you woke up (a little late) on Thursday morning and were surprised to see that the Oscar nominations had been announced, you’re not alone.  I spoke to a number of people later in the day who were caught quite off guard as well.  “They don’t usually come out before the Golden Globes,” one person stated.  And they don’t.  This year, the Academy decided to bump up the nominations by two weeks, giving us a whopping six weeks before the actual telecast.

For Hollywood, this makes sense: this is two extra weeks of audiences going out in droves to see the Best Picture nominees.  Silver Linings Playbook especially seems like it will benefit from this; so much so that I wouldn’t be opposed to calling the extra two weeks the Silver Linings Playbook two weeks, much the same way the ability of an NBA team to resign its own free agents without regard to the salary cap is called The Larry Bird rule.  But more on this in a bit.

Unfortunately, for the public, this extra two weeks means two extra weeks of Oscar predictions and reading the same stories ad nauseum,  I think it’s possible that this might have an adverse effect on the actual broadcast of the Oscars too.  I mean, if they added an extra two weeks of hype prior to the Super Bowl, there’s a pretty good chance I’d be so disgusted by hearing about the two teams so much that I might not care to watch the game.  There is a saturation point for media coverage of big events and I feel as though American society is pretty damned close to that point at present; giving the public even more time to appreciate this saturation seems like it could have some negative side effects.

What didn’t change was that the Oscar nomination ceremony took place at an insanely early hour, 5:30AM in LA, and provided their own form of entertainment.  For some reason, I always enjoy hearing the gasps from the audience for the surprise candidates and the smattering of applause that accompanies the favorites.  (And if this is any indication of anything, which I don’t think it is, Denzel Washington is going to run away with the Best Actor award).  More to the point, I have no idea who the people in the audience are.  While I have no issues believing that some film critics and entertainment journalists might gasp at the announcement that someone named Benh Zeitlin got a Best Director nomination—they are a rather bitter and cynical bunch—I have some issues with them clapping lovingly and graciously at the announcement of Washington’s name.  There’s a better chance of Jonah Hill playing wide receiver for the New England Patriots than of a collection of film critics warmly applauding an actor’s good fortune in a professional setting.

As usual, I had several reactions to the nominations that, like the Academy, I list here in no particular order.

BEN AFFLECK WASN’T NOMINATED FOR BEST ACTOR OR BEST DIRECTOR

Let’s get the big one out of the way first: Ben Affleck was not nominated for Best Actor or Best Director for his work on Argo.*  He was cheated out of his rightful nominations!  Ignored by blind Academy members!  Snubbed!  Double exclamation point!!  And sure, it’s a little bit surprising given that Affleck was nominated for a Director’s Guild Award and did helm one of the best reviewed and received movies of the year, but it happens.  I mean, Quentin Tarantino, Tom Hooper and Kathryn Bigelow weren’t nominated for Best Director either.  The problem, again, is that there are 10 (possible) Best Picture nominees and only five Best Director nominees.  The math is not kind.

* It should be noted though that Affleck did get nominated as Argo’s producer for the Best Picture award.

What’s most interesting about this to me is that a large number of gossip sites spent the fall explaining that Affleck was campaigning so hard for the Oscar for Argo that he was letting his marriage fall apart.  He was being polite to the paparazzi, doing bucket loads of interviews with everyone from The NY Times to the Washington High School Bugle, etc… and, forget winning the Oscar, he didn’t even get nominated!  I guess he’s going to just have to go back to his gorgeous wife in his multi-million dollar home in his expensive hand-tailored clothes, lamenting the fact that he is one of nine people in the world to have directed a motion picture nominated for Best Picture.  Oh!  The humanity!

THE NOMINEES ARE READ IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

“The nominees are read in no particular order,” Oscar host Seth McFarlane stated prior to the Academy Award nomination announcements.  As opposed to acknowledging that the it’s possible that there is some weird hidden message in the nominees—the Best Supporting Actors were announced in the following order: Christoph Waltz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Deniro, Alan Arkin and Tommy Lee Jones—why not just announce them alphabetically?  Boom, no conspiracy theories then.

ALL THE BEST FILM EDITING NOMINEES WORKED ON FILMS NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE

The editors who worked on Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty all received Best Film Editing nominations.  On one hand, it kind of makes sense that the nominations for the more technical awards like Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best Film Editing go to the best films.  It’s a combination of great parts that makes the glorious whole!  On the other hand, while I definitely understand the connection between Best Director and Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Picture and even Best Cinematography and Best Picture, it seems slightly narrow minded to suggest that there is an overwhelming connection between Best Film Editing and Best Picture.

To me, editing is most important in action movies and comedies.  Fight sequences can be rendered hard-to-follow and sub-par with bad editing and amazing to watch with good editing.  The same holds true for comedies.  Jokes that seem really great in trailers are turned middling and unfunny in the actual movie.  Why?  Because the creators of the trailer were able to cut away from the joke after it was delivered.  For reasons that I should probably investigate at some point in time, cutting away immediately after a joke is delivered makes it infinitely funnier.

I suppose arguments could be made in regards to Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty that they are action movies and I suppose arguments could be made that the unusual nature of Life of Pi makes it more in need of good editing, but for the life of me, I can’t see any arguments to be made for Silver Linings Playbook.  It’s a semi-tragic romance movie.  How The Bourne Legacy, Skyfall or even 21 Jump Street or Ted or some other film didn’t sneak into this category is beyond me.

Of course, there is some precedence in this regard.  Seven out of the last ten Best Film Editing Oscars have gone to the Best Picture winner.  The three that didn’t were The Aviator (which was also nominated for Best Picture), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Bourne Ultimatum, the latter of which I use as a shining beacon of what I’m talking about.

Not that this is here or there, but while researching this, I learned that the same editor was nominated for Best Film Editing for working on American Beauty, The King’s Speech and Center Stage.  Tariq Anwar.  Anwar is Indian and has worked on quintessential American, British and teenage movies.  Now there’s a man with range!

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN IS THE ONLY BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR NOMINEE NOT TO HAVE WON THE AWARD PREVIOUSLY

Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only Best Supporting Actor nominee not to have won the award previously… but he won a Best Actor Oscar.  There are no underdogs in this category, no feel good stories, no one to root for (or against) and no ‘Who the hell are they?’ nominees ala Jacki Weaver or John Hawkes.  The Best Supporting Actress category doesn’t have the same issues, as Weaver, in an Oscar first, is actually reprising her ‘Who the hell is she?’ role from 2011 when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Animal Kingdom. This means something, but what that is, I have no idea.  The closest I can come is that Weaver is the opposite of Kim Kardashian: she’s famous for not being famous… although she isn’t famous, which may or may not cement this point, I’m not sure about that either.

THE SNUBBING ACCUSATIONS DON’T EVEN MAKE SENSE ANYMORE

Depending on what stories you read, upwards of ten different movies were snubbed for the Best Picture.  Deep breath: The Dark Knight Rises, Moonrise Kingdom, The Master, The Avengers, The Hobbit, Skyfall, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Flight, The Impossible and Anna Karenina, amongst, I’m sure, many others.  So there were ten possible nominations (only nine of which were used) and apparently ten other films that were ‘snubbed’.  I guess this means that 19 films should have been nominated for Best Picture?

But, more importantly, as I mention last year, in regards to the Best Picture nominees, no film ever gets snubbed.  It’s just not possible.  In order to get nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, a movie has to get a minimum of 5% of the total vote.  In this year’s voting, only nine movies got that 5% necessary to earn the nomination.  So, those movies that were snubbed?  Less than 300 people out of the 6,000+ Academy members thought those films were one of the ten best of the year.

It’s weird to think that 95% of a group of intelligent film insiders could agree on something and the media is convinced that the insiders are wrong.  95 percent!  Think about it!

WHOEVER WROTE THE SCRIPT FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT SHOULD BE BEATEN, FIRED AND THEN BEATEN AGAIN, THOUGH THE ORDER OF THOSE THINGS IS IMMATERIAL

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane is hosting the Academy Awards.  Hopefully he can use the next six weeks to get better at his witty banter.  The below exchange that he had with Emma Stone was so bad, it made me wonder whether McFarlane hated Stone and was using this opportunity to make her look bad in front of America.

McFARLANE: [Emma Stone] is one of the brightest talents of her generation.  Some say she is better than Meryl Streep.  [Pauses]  Who, who says that?

STONE: I don’t know.  Nobody.  A lot of people.  Let’s just read the nominees.

That exchange made me feel very uncomfortable.  Helping nothing was the fact that it followed quickly on the heels of this exchange:

McFARLANE: Emma Stone is the star of the new film Gangster Squad…  I’m not sure you’re the star, that seems like an ensemble piece to me.

STONE: Just keep reading.

There is an art and a formula to supposedly witty banter where the two presenters put each other down.  And it isn’t to have Person A put down Person B and then move on to Person A putting Person B down again.  Person B needs a comeback!  For example:

McFARLANE: Emma Stone is one of the brightest talents of her generation.  Some say she is better than Meryl Streep.  [Pauses]  Who, who says that?

STONE: I don’t know.  Nobody.  A lot of people.

McFARLANE: Really?

STONE: The AFI said I was a rising star.  The Hollywood foreign press said I was the best under 30 actress today and the NY Times called me classless and sophomoric.

McFARLANE: Wait, what?

STONE: Wait, I’m sorry, that’s what they said about Ted.

Zing!

If I could just get my Oscar nominations without feeling like the people delivering them hate each other, it’d be a great start.

PARAMOUNT ONLY GOT TWO NOMINATIONS

According to Deadline.com, Fox got 31 nominations.  Sony got 24, Disney, 17 and New Line, which may or may not actually exist, depending on the accounting sheets you look at, had 3.  Paramount got 2, both of which were for Flight.  This is one more nominations than Ouat Media, Cinedigm, Premium Films, Relativity Media, Kino Lorber and something called Submarine Deluxe received.  It’s time to step up to the plate and A) learn how to market things better (remember when they bumped Shutter Island back out of Oscar contention?), or B) start making some good movies again.  Two nominations?  Two?  Some company called Participant Media that I’ve never heard of got seven nominations.

THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK EXTRA TWO WEEKS

As I mentioned previously, the Oscar nominations came out two weeks earlier than usual.  There are now six weeks in between the nominations and the Oscar telecast instead of four.  No film stands to profit from this more than director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook.

As of January 9, Silver Linings Playbook had grossed a little more than $35.5 million at the domestic box office.  It is, by far, the lowest grossing of the Best Picture nominees that had a wide release at the time of the nominations.  The other members of this designation, Argo, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi and Lincoln, currently average $110.4 million apiece.  Only Life of Pi has not topped the $100 million mark and it’s going to shortly, sitting pretty at $91 million.

Silver Linings Playbook however is at $35 million.  For whatever reason, this is not a film that has resonated with audiences.  Now that it has garnered every conceivable nomination possible, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography and, yes, Best Film Editing amongst others, it is finally catching people’s attention.  The Weinstein Company has to be excited as hell at this.  Unlike Paramount, Weinstein actually knows what it’s doing come awards season and they know how to translate Oscar nominations and wins to box office dollars.  The King’s Speech grossed $135 million domestically.  More impressive still?  More than half that total, $74 million, came after the Oscar nominations were announced.

I’ll be curious to see if Weinstein can figure out how to get Silver Linings Playbook to the $100 million mark by the Oscar telecast.

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS IS SUCH A STUD, HE GOT NOMINATED FOR BEST ACTOR AND NOBODY IS EVEN TALKING ABOUT IT

Every year that Meryl Streep gets nominated for an Academy Award, there is some kind of mention about how many times she has been nominated and what a talented actress she is.  Daniel Day-Lewis has taken this to the next level.  He got nominated for Best Actor this year for his portrayal of Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I believe, and nobody is even talking about it.  Why?  Because he’s Daniel Motherfucking Day-Lewis and this is what he does.  He gets nominated for and wins Academy Awards.

He has been nominated for five Best Actor Oscars over the last 22 years (and won two of them, with the possibility of a third with Lincoln).  Yup.  Five.  But what really sets this apart is the fact that Day-Lewis has only appeared in 11 movies during that time.  Almost half of his lead roles end up with him getting nominated for an Oscar.  More than half his projects end up with him getting nominated for British Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

While there is a slight chance that Denzel Washington will take the Best Actor statue, it’s really Day-Lewis’ to lose.  At what point do we start talking abut Day-Lewis being the best actor of all time?