Katherine Hepburn was right!

Katherine Hepburn was the ultimate badass--when asked by Barbara Walters in an interview whether or not she owned a skirt, she replied "I do own just one, and I'll wear it to your funeral."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

K. Hepburn giving such good face!

Hepburn, who won 4 Best Actress Oscars during her career (the most any one actor has ever won--take that DDL and Streep!) also famously said: "the right actors win Oscars, but for the wrong roles."

I couldn't agree more with her, and reading my brother's post (scroll down to see it below) on his favourite performances that didn't win Oscars, I've been thinking about how this is the biggest source of rage I have about the Academy Awards, and really how it creates bad domino effects that affect other wins in other years.

Let's look at some examples...

Sandra Bullock's performance in Gravity (regardless of whether you liked the film or not), in terms of difficulty is hands down the best of the year. If you've read anything about the way the movie was filmed, or seen any interviews with her or Alfonso Cuaron, you know that what she had to do to is just remarkable. How hard would it be to have to imagine all of those things happening to you, while making it look like you were in a zero gravity situation and attached to wires and flipping around etc. UNREAL. In terms of the performances in the Best Actress category this year, I absolutely think her's was the best.

 

(If you want to learn more about how they filmed Gravity watch the video below-it's amazing)

Is Sandra Bullock going to win tomorrow? No. In fact she won't even be the runner-up, or even third (not that we will be privilege to that info). She won't win b/c Sandy already has an Oscar, for a terrible, melodramatic shitty movie that no one saw (The Blind Side, *shutter*) let alone that will ever be remembered.

So Cate Blanchett will win. Both Judi Dench and Meryl Streep have won before (and from what I've gathered from all the Osage: August Country reviews, Streep shouldn't have even been nominated, but the Academy would literally nominate both her an Dench for reading the phone book). I'm not totally sure why Amy Adams never got more momentum in the race--I do think her performance in American Hustle is the best thing about that movie, but the movie isn't very good. In fact the longer I think about that movie, the more I dislike it...

Anyway, Cate Blanchett is a lock. Do I think Cate deserves to win a Best Actress Oscar at some point in her career (she's won a Best Supporting for playing interestingly enough Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator)? Yes, I do. Do I think she should win for Blue Jasmine, in which she plays a neurotic privileged woman? No, I don't. In terms of acting, I don't really think that role was that difficult for a great actress like Blanchett. And don't get me wrong, I love her and think she's fantastic, but winning this year doesn't feel right to me.

Another good example:

Sean Penn. Great actor (although loathsome human being. Also, I can't believe him and Charlize Theron are in love--weird that they won their Oscars the same year too!). Definitely deserves an Oscar. Definitely deserved an Oscar for Dead Man Walking. Incredible performance and movie. Lost to Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Ridiculous. The ramifications? Sean Penn winning an Oscar for Mystic River, not a remarkable film or performance, thus bumping out Bill Murray for Lost in Translation.

Oh, and Al Pacino
Should have won for the Godfather Part II. Lost to Art Carney (who I've never heard of) for a movie called Harry and Tonto (which I've never heard of) which led to the Academy awarding Pacino for A Scent of a (god damned!) Woman-an absolutely horrendous movie also starring Chris O'Donnell-which pumped off Denzel Washington for Malcolm X!

I mean, I could go on--Humphrey Bogart losing for Casablanca (and then winning for The African Queen) caused Marlon Brando to lose for a Streetcar Named Desire! There are tons of examples. 

My favourite oscar losing performances (Al Mrk)

These nominees gave performances that have stood the test the time, typically much better than the originally winners.

1. Claude Rains, Best Supporting Actor, Casablanca, 1941. Absolutely the best supporting performance of all time, male or female. Rains's humour is what relieves the tension of Casablanca. The immortal leads of Bogart and Bergman never crack a smile, and it's Rains who delivers the humour. He gets many of the best lines of the best screenplay ever, and it's his delightful amorality that leaves the ending in doubt every time we watch.

2. Sigourney Weaver, Best Actress, Aliens, 1985. Try to imagine this movie with a man! The arc her character undergoes from the beginning to the end, Weaver's initial fragility to her natural, scared driven will to save those she loves, represents female nature at its best. The best female performance of all time.

3. Humphrey Bogart, Best Actor, Casablanca, 1942. It's hard to imagine Bogart struggled to get taken seriously as a dramatic actor. One of the iconic pieces of acting ever, like all of Casablanca it is as deep and fine as it ever was.

4. Al Pacino, Best Supporting Actor, The Godfather, 1972. The initial casting controversy was that the studio wanted a star to play Michael, not understanding that the character has to be ignorable, until he's not, and must be Film's ultimate enigma. Countless viewings of the movie simultaneously deepen and confuse the character. No one understands who the character is, nor will we ever.

5. Al Pacino, Best Actor, The Godfather Part II, 1974. Just two years later Pacino returned and continued the descent of his character. One of the harshest characters in film history, Pacino is all rage and ice, controlled coiled fury.

6. River Phoenix, Best Supporting Actor, Running on Empty, 1987. Phoenix's brilliant talent is on full display here, in an ideal part for a young actor. What a loss of talent Phoenix was. The closing scene is one of the great final scenes in movies.

My favourite oscar-winning perfomances (Al Mrk)

While the Oscars so often get it wrong, they do get things right too. What follows aren't necessarily the best winners, but rather the ones that are the most right.

1.  Dr. Haing S. Ngor. Best Supporting Actor for The Killing Fields (1984). Ngor was not even an actor at all - a doctor by training, he was chosen because he survived the Khmer Rouge himself, and came to the US as one of the boat people. But he delivered such a natural performance that professional actors should take note of what it means not to show off, but to simply act.

2. Gene Hackman, Best Supporting Actor, Unforgiven, 1992. Hackman's competition was Jack Nicholson, who gave one of his typical showy, over the top performances in A Few Good Men. Hackman was a close winner, and richly deserved it, delivering a performance both strong, violent and controlled.

3. Joe Pesci, Best Supporting Actor, Goodfellas, 1990. Because Goodfellas lost in Best Picture to Dances with Wolves, it is often forgotten that the Academy did get one thing right that night, rewarding Pesci's electric performance. He and Hackman's performances and roles offer interesting comparison, as they approached viscously violent men completely differently.

4. Jodie Foster & Anthony Hopkins,  Best Actress and Actor, The Silence of the Lambs, 1991. The year after Dances with Wolves debacle, the Academy made an entire night of great choices, giving 5 oscars to Silence of the Lambs. No Academy decision of the last 30 years has proved to be better. Especially impressive was the decision to place Hopkins in the lead actor category, despite having only 16 minutes of screen time.

5. Linda Hunt, Best Supporting Actress, The Year of Living Dangerously, 1984. Forget that Hunt, a woman, plays a man in the movie. The whole point of the character is someone who is ignored, and who seethes with an anger that he can't express, and that goes misunderstood. Somehow, Hunt gets across specifically emotions that don't come across at all.

6. Liza Minnelli, Best Actress, Cabaret, 1972. Like her mother, Judy Garland, Minnelli' s unique musical and acting talent combination would rarely find the parts she deserved. But this one part is it, and it's rare to find a difficult role so well suited to one performer. One of the great lead performances of all time, male or female.

7.  Walter Huston, Best Supporting Actor, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, 1948. Huston was directed by his son, the great director John Huston, and took a stock, supporting part and completely enlivened it. It's one of most natural pieces of acting ever, and still delights today.

8. George Kennedy, Best Supporting Actor, Cool Hand Luke, 1967. Kennedy is so wonderful in a movie of great performances. His character is acting too, and his charm meshes so well Paul Newman's effortless charisma.

9. Robert de Niro, Best Supporting Actor, The Godfather Part II, 1974. De Niro's warm mobster provides the perfect foil to Al Pacino's ice-cold mobster. Its the only performance of de Niro's career where he's charming.

A brief discussion of the voting rules by Al Mrk

I'm back, briefly, to discuss the voting method for Best Picture. In 2010, the academy changed the voting to preferential ballot. Voters actually list all the the nominees on the ballot, from 1 to 9. When the votes are counted if a movie receives 50% plus 1 of the votes cast it becomes the winner. But with nine nominees this is very unlikely. And this is where the voters' second place choices come in.

After this first round, the last place movie is eliminated. But it's votes actually stay in - the second place movie on each ballot is then cast and the votes are redistributed. What this means is that last place movie (ninth place, this year) is actually very important, as it's second place votes are guaranteed to be counted, whereas the third place movie is actually not. It will stay on ballot without any chance of winning.

This process is repeated, with the last place movie being dropped each round, until a winner is found. My understanding is that this process was chosen to ensure winners have a broad base of support, and have to receive s substantial number of second place votes. It also allows votes to support more than one movie, which is fair as many people have several movies they enjoyed during the year.

Info-graphic of every Dress worn by Best Actress winners

DRESS PORN!!!

My favourites (other than Cher's Bob Mackie gown of course!) would have to be:

Julie Christie in 1966 (she wore a god damn gold lamé jumpsuit that her artist boyfriend made!) 

Grace Kelly (b/c she was perfection):

Ingrid Bergman (also b/c she was perfection, but especially b/c she wore a matronly blouse, knee length skirt and flat shoes, as a reflection of the war stricken times in 1945-so badass!)

Joanne Woodward (bonus b/c of hunk husband Paul Newman-Jesus he was HOT)

What are your faves?

Why having more Best pic nominees actually sucks, and ends up hurting good movies and performances

Back in 2009 (as a result of the outrage felt that The Dark Knight, which grossed half a billion dollars and was a really good movie, wasn't nominated for Best Picture) the Academy Awards announced that the number of films nominated in the Best Picture award category would increase from five to between five and ten- a throwback to the 1930s and 1940s, when eight to twelve films were nominated. The prez stated: "Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize." 

5 years into the new system, implemented to help give recognition to both more commercially successful mainstream films as well as smaller films that tend to be overlooked, it hasn't done anything good. Actually, it's fucked up the Oscars even more.

A little while ago, my brother Alex (the other A Mrk) sent me a really interesting article illustrating how increasing the number of slots for best picture nominees has actually lessened, not increased, the number of Oscar contenders. (To read the original article see: here). 

This year’s major-category nominations (i.e. Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and the 4 acting awards) - 44 nomination slots in all - were spread among just 12 films-the fewest number of films represented in the past 30 years (and as the article points out, the 2nd and 3rd lowest number of films represented happened in the past 5 years, since the rules changed about the number of best picture slots).

Why this is happening: 

1. earlier voting deadlines which means voters have to prioritize what they see (read: they'll only watch the big films and also fall susceptible to the movies with the most money to throw around on their nomination campaigns)

2. Backloaded release calendars: have you noticed that all "Oscar" movies come out in the last 2 months of the year, so as to keep a momentum going with voters? This means that other good films and performances from the rest of the year get overlooked, and people just end up voting for what they saw most recently.

3. The absurd amount of money put into nomination campaigns. Now, production/distribution companies will pick one of their movies to throw all of their money behind in their campaigning for Oscar noms. Again, this means that many films get thrown by the wayside.

Anyway, what does this mean for the average film obsessive like myself? Well, not much I guess, considering the Oscars get more and more bullshitty each year. But it does mean that what I think some of the best films of the year were don't get nominated, which means less people see them, which means they make less money, which means film studios decide to make less movies like that. So, that sucks!

Do you think this years 12 movies nominated over the top 8 categories are the best movies you've seen this year?

(12 years a slave, American Hustle, Captain Philips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, The Wolf of Wall Street, August: Osage County, Blue Jasmine, and Before Midnight)

I would probably only have 3 (Gravity, Her, 12 years) on my best of 2013 list. What do you think?

My 2014 Oscar predictions

As we are now in the final countdown before my favourite day of the year, I thought I should share my Oscar picks (although this year's winners seem to have been set in stone for about the last 6 months).

Oh well, no matter...here are my picks, and as always, the bolded/checkmarked nominees are what I think will win, and where I have highlighted yellow, is what I think deserves to win (I know, no one asked me...)

Do you think I'm wrong about anything? Let me know!

If you want to join in the fun and enter an Oscar pool go on over to my 2 faves online: Vulture's Oscar pool and Lainey Gossip's Annual Red Carpet contest