OVP: Actor (2017)

OVP: Best Actor (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

My Thoughts: We are going to, after a week off from the blog, hit the Big 4 categories at the Oscars & finish it off with a My Ballot look at 2017 this week.  The 2017 acting races were largely focused on Best Picture, like so many fields for Best Actor recently (only one of these nominees doesn't show up again in our remaining categories), but I will admit out-front that unlike many fields for Best Actor, this one has some differentiation even if it's only Best Picture citations, and is one of the better fields in recent memory.

For starters, only one of these five figures is playing someone in real life, Gary Oldman.  Oldman's performance in Darkest Hour for reasons that are both obvious & a little bit undeserved has not aged well.  Placed against young performers who have delivered on that promise & an acting icon who has (so far) stuck with his plan to not come back from a second retirement, Oldman's prosthetics-driven work as Winston Churchill is generally name-checked as a "bad" acting win, but I'll be honest-I don't see it.  Oldman takes on the guise of a character actor, becoming near unrecognizable as Churchill in appearance and manner, but still having the measured energy that makes an Oldman performance so special.  I loved the way that he plays Churchill as a man-of-history, but also a man who understands politics (Churchill enjoyed winning in all aspects of life), and I think this is a good performance that doesn't get all of its grace from simply "looking like" Churchill.

Based on the title you'd assume that Roman J. Israel might actually be a real person, but he's not.  Instead, he's from the creative mind of Denzel Washington, and more of our real-life people should be based on Denzel if this is the case.  Despite its unusual (SNL-mocked) title and a plot that doesn't really work, Washington plays the twists in Dan Gilroy's story excellently.  This might have read like a filler nomination when it came out, but it's very good work from the two-time Oscar winner.  He finds so many layers into the loneliness that Roman experiences, and makes the greed he feels authentic as he finds success after a lifetime of failure.  It's hard to have the center of a movie realize a new facet of their life and not also totally upend the character, but the Roman we meet at the beginning of the movie is the same man throughout, a testament to Washington's investment into small character details.

I have in the years since found Daniel Kaluuya performances (specifically Judas) that I can sign onto, so I am going to admit (and bury in the center of this article) that I didn't really get the hype around his work in Get Out.  I liked this movie, and the script was very good (though, as I said two weeks ago, Us is much better & more fully-formed), but I think that Kaluuya's very reactive performance in this film never takes off for me.  For me it's because he's not really asked to undergo a traditional narrative arc in terms of "learn what he's like, then we see how he handles the main problem of the story."  Instead, all of his performance is trying to reflect how uncomfortable he is with the story.  He's good at this, but it feels limiting to my understanding of this character-I feel like he's the one character not given enough room to breathe, which serves the narrative, but also makes this feel like a weird performance to cite.

There are moments initially where this feels like it might be the case for Timothee Chalamet.  After all, so much of the first thirty minutes of this movie is him reacting to the world around him, including his new crush Oliver.  However, as the film goes, we get a sense of not only young love, but young love that doesn't know that there's a ticking clock on this relationship (and how special it is).  Chalamet goes full throttle, making his Elio impetuous, reckless, protective...every emotion feels like it's being felt through-and-through even if it's not entirely understood.  Wonderfully, sometimes prickly chemistry with Armie Hammer helps a lot, but Chalamet takes this film to another level with his best work.  He hasn't been as good since, but honestly-how many actors top work like this even if they get fifty years of career?

Our final nomination is for Daniel Day-Lewis, who in Phantom Thread gives us a potential sendoff to a storied career.  Day-Lewis is always marvelous, even if you just observe him from a technical aspect (no actor does the kind of character legwork the extreme method actor puts into his creations).  His Reynolds Woodcock is an angry man, clearly starved as much for perfection (which he's able to make with his creations) as he is for something to disrupt his world...a challenge the actor can't entirely overcome.  The movie takes some weird detours with Alma, and I wouldn't say even DDL can pull off some of the twists late in the game, but that's a ridiculously high bar to ask an actor to achieve, and overall the performance here is a grand testament to a great performer.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Oldman (who, like Janney & Rockwell before him swept the precursors), besting Chalamet, Day-Lewis, Washington, and Tom Hanks (The Post) while Comedy/Musical went to James Franco (The Disaster Artist) against Kaluuya, Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes), Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver), and Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Showman).  SAG went with Oldman atop Chalamet, Franco, Kaluuya, & Washington while BAFTA favored Oldman against Day-Lewis, Kaluuya, Chalamet, & Jamie Bell (Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool).  In terms of sixth place, it was Franco, who had a late-breaking scandal that derailed his nomination, and as it would turn out, his entire career.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I try not to use an actor's personal life in picking who should win or be nominated for these awards, so I definitely would've found room for Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.  Like Chalamet, he has never been as good before-or-since, but he finds a strange amount of sadness in his Oliver, a man who will never experience the world he's briefly being given insight into during a summer in Italy.

Oscar’s Choice: Some will frame this in years since as a closer race between Chalamet & Oldman, but the latter was so far in front that it's probable he won a majority rather than a plurality.

My Choice: Chalamet, hands down.  My favorite performance of 2017, possibly my favorite performance of the 2010's.  Just superb work.  Behind him I'll go Oldman, Day-Lewis, Washington, & Kaluuya.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to stick with Timmy & I, or do you think Oscar got it right with Winston Churchill?  I'm the only person who has actually seen Roman J. Israel, as it feels like more a poster than a movie at this point?  And who would Franco have ejected if his scandal hadn't broken (I know most would say Washington, but I kind of think it was Kaluuya in fifth)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2017: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

My Thoughts on the 94th Academy Awards

One of my unspoken rules of 2022 (which has become far more spoken the longer I live by it) is that I don't have to have an opinion on everything.  In a world where we are basically required to constantly be angry, whether performative or genuine, or to be appalled, shocked, dismayed, saddened, and whatever emotions are most en vogue that particular day, I have found that that is not healthy for my mental health.  I have therefore allowed myself to not have a lot of opinions on things that in a past life I would have forced myself to invest more energy & time into.  I do this approach with a large amount of self-awareness.  Not having an opinion on everything does not mean not having an opinion on anything, and it does not mean only having opinions on things that directly impact me, because that's not self-help, it's just abusing your privilege.  But I have found, as occasionally awkward as it may be (I've literally said to people in conversations trying to make me take a side "I just don't care to have an opinion on that") that this is one of the healthiest decisions I've made in a while.

But I also know that in the coming week I'm going to have to have an opinion on Sunday night's Academy Awards, and most critically the infamous "slap" moment, new ethos be damned.  My personal brand is far too synonymous with the Oscars & movies to escape this particular pop culture hot potato. For those who missed yesterday's Oscars, during the presentation of the Documentary Feature category, Chris Rock made a joke about how Jada Pinkett Smith was auditioning for GI Jane 2, mocking her appearance and specifically that she came to the show with a bald head.  Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia, which she made public a few years ago, a fact that it's not entirely clear Rock knew, but one might be able to infer he probably had an idea given he's familiar with the Smiths (he roasted Pinkett Smith the last time he was at the Oscars so this isn't a one-off situation), and because Rock himself did a documentary about Black women's hair in 2009 called Good Hair.  At best it was in bad taste, at worst it was deliberately cruel.  

Following the joke, an irate Will Smith walked to the stage and slapped Rock, in what initially seemed to have been a weird comic bit that was then confirmed to not be scripted as Smith yelled profanities at Rock after returning to his seat.  A visibly shaken Rock quickly presented the award, and got off-stage.  Photos show in the moments after that Smith chatted with Denzel Washington, Tyler Perry, and Bradley Cooper, before going onstage moments later to a standing ovation for his Best Actor trophy win for King Richard, during which he apologized to his fellow nominees & the Academy, but notably not to Rock.

This, I'll be honest, is the kind of thing I'm trying not to have an opinion on.  I'll provide some historical context here-as far as I can find, this is the first time someone has gotten into a visible fight on the stage at the Oscars.  The 1974 Oscars arguably came the closest, when Hearts and Minds producers made an anti-war statement about Vietnam, which culminated in stars as diverse as John Wayne, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Brenda Vaccaro, & Bob Hope all coming to blows backstage, with (according to reports), Hope pinning Oscars producer Howard Koch up against a wall until Sinatra said something countering the winning documentarians' views on the war.  But onstage, in front of everyone...no, this had never happened before.

In terms of my thoughts-violence is never the answer, and while Rock was seriously out-of-line & arguably deserved being heckled or booed (attacking a woman's medical condition, particularly in such a public way in front of her family was tacky & gross), Smith took it a step too far by physically accosting him.  I honestly don't have more to say than that, both because Smith won't face any legal ramifications (Rock won't press charges because that's how Hollywood works, a fact Smith was well aware of when he got to sit back down afterward), and because it's difficult to say how all of us would've reacted in that same scenario given the struggles that Pinkett Smith has gone through in the past few years as a result of her medical diagnosis.  I want to believe I'd be super enlightened in that scenario, but if someone I'd love had something that had caused them mental anguish to be mocked in such a public way...I'd be angry too.  I will say that this will become a permanent mark on Smith's star persona-when he dies, it'll be in his obituary that he ruined the biggest night of his career through violence, and one of the last big stars of the 1990's to still feel relevant to today's movies arguably saw a huge chunk of his career go up in flames last night.  He'll always work, but he'll never be able to get the universal appeal star position he had going into last night back again, no matter how much his press agent tries to mend fences (there's at least a 50/50 shot that Rock & Smith will end up presenting together next year in hopes of Hollywood trying to cover its glossy veneer in a rare break to an increasingly over-produced star system).

Smith's actions cover up the rest of the night (this will forever be known as the "Will Smith Oscars"), which had some good, but quite a bit of bad in what I'll admit was the least-anticipated Oscars of my lifetime (had I not been going to spend the weekend with my parents like I do most years, I was seriously considering not watching the ceremony in protest).  Let's start with the hosts, who I think did pretty well all-things-considered.  The opening monologue was well-done, with Amy Schumer coming off arguably the best of the three (something I wouldn't have guessed in a thousand years as her brand-of-humor felt like such a poor fit for a night as staid as the Oscars).  The bit with Sykes and the Oscars museum was good, Regina Hall's "find a man through Covid testing" bit was good in theory even if it didn't actually work, and I love when the hosts get into costumes, so the costume interlude was great.  Not everything worked, particularly the jokes about the movies being "too elitist" (more on that in a second) and the seat-filler bit from Schumer at the end of the show (with Kirsten Dunst), but they brought an energy to the show that was lacking last year.  I know this criticism is frowned upon, but I don't think the Oscars work well if they don't have some humor or visual splendor, and last year was a dud.  You need the audience to feel like they're having fun, and while that doesn't require crudity or even being all-that-accessible (inside baseball jokes usually land well because you want to laugh along with movie stars), you need humor.  So for me, the hosts get a thumbs up-it's a tough job, and they largely landed the plane.

The presenters were more of a mixed bag.  I loved the tributes to Pulp Fiction, White Men Can't Jump, and Juno-I am enthused with reuniting stars & reminding the audience at home why they love going to the movies (I'm not including The Godfather reunion both because it would've been more impactful if they'd gotten Keaton, Duvall, Shire, & Caan-if you're at the Oscars, go big-and because they didn't really do anything except stand for a second & then leave).  I also was great with some of the newer faces of Hollywood (excellent use of Jacob Elordi & Rachel Zegler)-the best way to invite the next generation of filmgoers is to make sure their matinee idols are seen, so more of that please.  The musical performances, for the most part, worked, with all of the nominated songs selling well, though "We Need to Talk About Bruno" elicited "wait, why are they singing that if it's not nominated?" questions from my house (and I suspect we weren't the only one) and it was choreographed horrendously (easily the night's worst number).  The night's best moment was the "save it for last" duo of Lady Gaga & Liza Minnelli.  I am not a fan of Gaga as an actress, which I've shared here many times, but I admire her as an entertainer, and it was super classy of her to present on a night she was expected to be a nominee.  Even better, she brought out screen legend Liza Minnelli to join the pantheon of people presenting Best Picture, and in the process honored Cabaret & one of the last living links to Classical Hollywood in the process.  More of that please-more, more, more of that (also, I saw on Twitter a proposal to have Lady Gaga serve as host & I'm totally onboard with that-someone hire her immediately).

But other aspects of the night's presenters were terrible.  What, exactly, was Shawn Mendes (who is neither an actor nor someone who has had his music play a large part in films) doing up there (I never object to looking at Shawn Mendes, but come on)?  Worse, though, was having three athletes, including antivaxxer Kelly Slater, showing up for no apparent reason to introduce a segment about James Bond when Judi f-ing Dench was in the audience. Stupid, absolutely stupid, and proof positive that it's not the hosts who deserve any of the blame for last night, but the producers.

Because even if you subtract the Will Smith incident, the producers and writers of last night's show had no handle on what to do.  The show lacked flow.  The comedy was never stemming from the night, but felt entirely (save for Schumer's ad-lib about Smith's incident, which a comedian of Schumer's ability could do in her sleep) like it was written before.  Gone are the days where Billy Crystal would do bits throughout the night about Jack Palance's pushups or Cuba Gooding's effusive thankfulness.  Here, we have a tightly plodded show that felt like you were stuffing as much in as possible without it ever feeling organic.  

This was driven in large part by cutting eight categories from the night.  I will admit, to be forthright, that I didn't entirely notice the difference the first 1-2 categories they did it for.  It felt disjointed, but someone who wasn't entirely paying attention or thinking too hard would be forgiven for not realizing that these weren't being awarded in real-time.  However, three problems occurred in this situation.  One, you couldn't go on social media if you didn't want these awards ruined for you (I learned that the hard way when Sound was announced prominently on my Twitter feed & I realized I needed to get off of social media to not have winners spoiled, which is exactly what the Oscars didn't want us to do in a year where mentions are a key indicator of how important an event is).  Two, it was clear after a while that these weren't the actual speeches, perhaps most so when Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed won and there was too little time for it to register at home for audiences that someone they knew had just won an Oscar.  And three, it didn't shorten the show.  The ceremony was considerably longer than last year, running forty minutes over the initially-promised three hours, and thus cutting these categories did nothing but insult the artists and fill the show with endless, idiotic pablum.  In a show where Power of the Dog and Drive My Car were insulted for being too high-brow & out-of-touch, movies with minimal mainstream pop culture cache like Minimata and Army of the Dead were given high-profile moments, and somehow the producers said with a straight face that Justice League contained the most "cheerful moment" in movie history.  Pathetic, honestly, it felt pathetic...you spend hours insulting great movies and then try to gloss by the fact that a bunch of Reddit fanboys made you honor two completely disposable blockbusters.

This gets at the biggest problem for the Oscars-they have no sense of what makes them special, and I'm not entirely certain if they know how to get that back.  What makes the Oscars special isn't that they honor movies, it's that there are 94 years of honoring them.  Tradition is a valuable tool, and the Oscars run roughshod over it last night without getting any gain.  Ratings will be up, but that was inevitable given that box office on these movies was better than last year (and honestly that there were more movies that people could see), but nothing was gained.  The show was filled with no surprises from the envelopes...literally the only category where the frontrunner didn't win was Animated Short Film, which was presented off-screen.  Twenty years ago, the Oscars were relevant not necessarily because they were honoring a lot of really famous films (movies like The Hours and The Pianist were not huge box office bonanzas), but because we genuinely weren't sure who would win.  If the Oscars can't figure out a way to make it so that anyone who pays attention can get 20+ predictions right simply by guessing the frontrunners, the show will go extinct.

One of the best ways they can do that is by giving Animated Feature Film to another studio.  Last night, Encanto, which admittedly was my personal choice, won, and as a result, 90% of the last ten winners of this category were Disney or Pixar product (the sole exception is 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which nearly lost to Incredibles 2).  This is wrong-one studio should not have this kind of a stranglehold on a category no matter how good their movies are.  I do a lot of OVP articles on this blog, and I'll admit that in those ten years I'd give Disney a few of the trophies (about half), but even I would've voted for The Mitchells vs. the Machines last night just in hopes of someone upsetting Disney.  Particularly in a year where ABC (owned by Disney) totally screwed over half of the Academy by moving eight categories to the commercials so that Disney could keep a tribute to one of its movies and a trailer for one of its upcoming properties in the show, it says a lot about how little the Academy truly cares about those artists that they didn't take the chance to send the Mouse House a message.

Our Miss Brooks (1956)

Film: Our Miss Brooks (1956)

Stars: Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, Don Porter, Robert Rockwell, Jane Morgan, Richard Crenna, Nick Adams

Director: Al Lewis

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Eve Arden: click here to learn more about Ms. Arden (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I am going to attempt something that I don't entirely know if I'll be able to pull off today with another Saturdays with the Stars double-feature (it's entirely possible that this becomes briefly into Sunday).  The copy of the movie that I wanted to watch later today for a double feature (I'm aware we missed last week) isn't great, but I'm going to hunt for a better copy later today or I'm going to find a different movie as I don't like leaving Eve Arden totally in the lurch with only three films for the month (she's such a good & varied actress, I want at least one of her post-Our Miss Brooks films to be watched).  So for now, with hope in my eyes, we're going to start out with Our Miss Brooks the big-screen adaptation, and hopefully we'll finish off her month later today or early tomorrow (and in April, we get back to once a week...that's more me begging the universe to calm down after an unmanageable March).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Connie Brooks (Arden), an English teacher who has recently moved to town and gotten a job at a local school.  It's there that she meets the biology teacher Mr. Boynton (Rockwell), whom she becomes enamored with who largely is oblivious to her romantic pursuits of him.  Meanwhile, Connie is asked to tutor Gary Nolan (Adams), the son of the richest man in town Lawrence Nolan (Porter), who also takes a shine to Connie.  A side plot involves Connie's boss Mr. Conklin (Gordon) trying to run for school superintendent, in hopes of gaining more power over his situation.  These two worlds collide when Connie becomes his campaign manager after Conklin promises Boynton a promotion...and a salary that would grant her an engagement ring.  In the end, while Conklin doesn't get that job (he quits after he realizes it won't pay well enough), Connie still gets her man (even if her engagement ring is stolen by a chimpanzee at the zoo).

We're used to the concept of big-screen continuations of television series today, with shows like Sex and the City and The Simpsons pulling their universe onto the big-screen and using that as a new launchpad for the future of the show, but that's not really what Our Miss Brooks is.  While much of the original show's cast (including Arden, Gordon, Rockwell, Morgan, & Crenna) were brought in for this, it was a reboot.  After all, the original series (which had gone off of the air in 1956, when this was released) had ended with Connie marrying Mr. Boynton as well, so this was duplicative of the show, and basically started it from the beginning again.

As a result, the movie, while charming, plays as a stretched out episode of a sitcom more than a film, and doesn't quite work.  It's easy to see why this was a successful sitcom through this lens, of course-Arden is funny, making every lusty side eye from Connie pull off beautifully, and she & Gordon are quite fun together as adversaries turned reluctant partners.  But the movie repeats itself & the comedic bits feel too sitcom-y to work in the confines of a larger movie...it isn't really adapted for the big screen in this sense.  I liked it for what it was, but the seams are showing.  As a result, I leave a bit mixed on the idea of this, but like that Arden had success, and get why this was the role that would win her an Emmy Award.

My Final Oscar Predictions

All right, we are just days away from the end of Oscar season.  I will admit at this point that I am not looking forward to the Oscars on Sunday.  The Academy has sucked almost all of the life out of the ceremony, shamefully cutting eight categories from the show, making it almost impossible for me to properly enjoy it (if you don't think those eight categories won't leak in advance, you're an idiot, and thus you either have to stay off social media or just accept that a third of the categories will be spoiled), and picking a presenter list that looks more like the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards than the Academy Awards.  I considered not watching, quite frankly, out of protest, but I had already had plans to watch it with my family & that was more important to me this year, so I'll be watching & seething as the artists in those eight categories don't get the respect that they deserve.

That being said, we're going to do a (weirdly rare for this site) final Oscar predictions article today.  Several categories have been up-in-the-air for me, but it's time to put my money where my mouth is.  I'm not going to retype all of the nominees here, just quickly share the winners (I'm aware that we're a bit behind in any new articles this week, but I'm having a tough week personally & I'm allowing myself a chance to breathe that in rather than put up pretenses-being more authentic with my feelings being something I'm trying to do in 2022), though if you want context all of the nominees are housed here.  Enough introduction-here are my predictions for Oscar night.

Picture: There's a lot of hemming-and-hawing on Film Twitter about this race, and how Coda has come through late in the game to win the PGA/WGA/SAG triumvirate after Power of the Dog took the Globes/BAFTA/CCA.  Coda has a lot going against it-it's not cited for directing or editing, it only got three nominations to Power's twelve...but Coda is a warm & friendly film to Power's cooler one (even if it's not technically on the same level). I have seen a lot of people use stats to deny that Coda is going to be the victor, but this season has been a lot about gut instinct, and I think the stretched season will cost Power its (deserved) win.  Coda therefore gets my tentative guess for the win.

Director: A much easier contest.  With Coda out, there's really no stopping Jane Campion, though I think Steven Spielberg's clear reverence will help him later this year when The Fabelmans comes out (potentially getting him his long-awaited third Best Director trophy).

Actor: Will Smith has dominated the entire season.  Oscar loves nothing more than honoring a movie star with a lead trophy, and King Richard is decidedly Smith's True Grit.

Actress: What once was one of the most up-in-the-air races of the season (remember when Lady Gaga looked like she might win & then wasn't even nominated?) has turned into seemingly another coronation.  Unless Penelope Cruz pulls a The Father, Jessica Chastain is about to get her Oscar.

Supporting Actor: If Coda is going to take Best Picture, there's no way in hell it's not going to take Troy Kotsur with it.  His biggest competition (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is too young for Oscar, and the second Kotsur took the SAG this became an easy victory lap for him.

Supporting Actress: If I had more faith in The Power of the Dog I might consider an upset for Kirsten Dunst here.  Only two Best Picture winners have gotten 4+ acting nominations and not won an acting prize (Tom Jones and Rocky), and Dunst is the kind of actor who two decades ago would've gotten in here.  But with it waning in Best Picture, it's not going to carry Dunst past juggernaut Ariana DeBose.

Adapted Screenplay: Another contest between Power and Coda, but here I'm finding it easier.  Campion has an easy win for directing, and even if she prevails in Best Picture I think the logic will be that Coda will deserve some love elsewhere, so Sian Heder is getting a statue regardless of the top prize.

Original Screenplay: Yes, the WGA went with Don't Look Up and yes, BAFTA went with Licorice Pizza, either of which could spoil here.  But I have felt all season that Kenneth Branagh would finally get a trophy in this category if Belfast showed up well with AMPAS, and in terms of sheer nominations, it did.  As a result, I'm sticking to my guns that it wins even if this is at-this-point an underdog's tail.

Animated Feature Film: In a world where the Academy wanted to send Disney a message about its political choices (or ABC a message about how much they hate that they cut the categories), a great way of doing so would be to best Encanto here with Flee...but Oscar has rarely been able to pull off such coordination, so I think the Mouse House safely gets another trophy.

Documentary Feature Film: I saw only one of these (Flee), and as a result am just going to go with the consensus pick of Summer of Soul because that's what everyone else is doing (sometimes it's best to just disregard your feelings when going with Oscar & feeling where the buzz is at).

International Feature Film: Three of these films show up in other categories, which would normally make this harder than it is, but Drive My Car's Best Picture citation makes this something of a gimme.

Animated Short Film: In a year where most of the nominees were quite shocking and R-rated, pundits are going with the cute (if overly long) Robin Robin, which plays in some ways like a feature film.  But cutesy only works if it's Disney (or seems like it's Disney, which Robin Robin is not), and so I'm going with the one pretty much everyone who sees it says is their favorite, the provocative Bestia.

Live Action Short Film: A race between the movie star (Riz Ahmed's The Long Goodbye) and the upstart Please Hold...this category oscillates quite often between movies with major stars winning & movies where that's a distraction...I'm going to guess that this is a big star year and pick The Long Goodbye even if it's supposedly more narratively challenging than Please Hold.

Documentary Short Film: I didn't watch these (last category I'm playing that card, I swear), but Queen of Basketball has dominated all season & who am I to disrupt the paradigm?

Original Score: Despite decades in the film industry, Hans Zimmer only has one Oscar for The Lion King, and though you could make a serious argument that it's time to give a trophy to Jonny Greenwood (Power of the Dog, like Mank last year, is in first place one place & my second in a lot, so I don't think it'll pull a Giant even if that's what I'm predicting as Mank also ended up with two statues), I think that Dune gets him his long-awaited second statue.

Original Song: I am generally not one of those people who are like "let's do a few 'no guts, no glory' predictions" because I generally think picking safer selections bodes well (this is also why I do well with March Madness brackets, because usually leaning into the chaos bodes poorly for your chances).  But I'm doing it here.  All season Billie Eilish's "No Time to Die" has been the clear frontrunner, but Bond won the last two Oscars, Eilish is so young (and not in-step with the older Academy), and Lin-Manuel Miranda is such an obvious eventual EGOT that I think the Academy will want to make it official.  Therefore I'm predicting the upset of "Dos Oruguitas" winning (but really, this is for "Bruno").

Sound: One of the bigger questions around Dune is how many trophies it can win without being cited for Best Director-usually tech sweepers (Titanic, The Fellowship of the Ring, Titanic), get a Best Director citation.  But even against something like West Side Story (this is probably its best shot at a second trophy) I don't foresee a scenario where the space epic loses here.

Cinematography: I do, however, see a scenario where it might lose here.  This race is between Dune and Power of the Dog, and logic points toward a Dune victory.  If Netflix had any sense with their campaign, they'd have been able to point out that Power winning would've been the first time a woman won this category, and probably could've won based on that strength (and the film being the worthiest).  But they didn't, and so I've officially talked myself out of a Power victory-Dune takes it.

Costume Design: I am not predicting Dune here again.  Frequently "most = winner" in this category, but thankfully for us it also equals "best" in this case-Cruella was a magnificent costuming showcase, and I think it's a slam-dunk for its sole trophy here.

Film Editing: Like Cinematography, this one feels super tight, with Dune the tentative frontrunner, but King Richard and Don't Look Up both potential options with the former's showy tennis scenes and the latter's...lack of an ability to win somewhere else without it being embarrassing.  I've got at least one more Dune left to predict, so since I shifted on Cinematography I'm going to give this one to King Richard, as I kind of buy this being a way to double-down on their love of the movie without it costing any (deserved) movie its sole trophy.

Makeup & Hairstyling: It wouldn't have been my guess on nominations morning, but you need to go with the campaign, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye has emerged as a frontrunner in both Best Actress & here-the two wins are so intertwined I don't see a way that they don't both get statues.

Production Design: Dune could certainly takes this one (as could West Side Story), but Nightmare Alley's surprisingly strong showing in other categories makes me think that it will take at least one trophy, and this is the easiest answer to that (the Oscars are much more "spread the wealth" in the 21st Century than they were in the late 20th Century).

Visual Effects: I feel like the random smear campaign of scenes from Spider-Man: No Way Home's overuse of CGI in the past few weeks on social media have been overkill and a bit unkind (I agree it's too much, but also there are scenes that work quite well in the movie that they're ignoring), but it underlines why even a gigantic box office is not going to be able to take down Dune in the night's easiest win.

OVP: Supporting Actress (2017)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound

Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread

Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

My Thoughts: Best Supporting Actress of 2017 is the rare lineup that actually features five supporting performances.  Usually when I judge the supporting categories I will dock a star off of my ratings if a performance is clearly lead just to level the playing field, and in the 2010's this has become as common as "slow news day" jokes on Twitter, but 2017 blessedly gives us five performances from true character actors (well, four character actors and a hip-hop icon) and all of them are judged solely on their merits, not having to adjust the grading scale.

We'll start with Octavia Spencer, the only one of these women who had been nominated prior to 2017.  Spencer has adopted the guise of a modern-day Thelma Ritter, frequently getting cast as some version of the same role (though Ma and Luce show that she's stretching & indulging her acting muscles with this newfound celebrity).  This works so well in The Shape of Water.  She takes what could be a trope (the Black best friend to the white protagonist), and fleshes it out, giving the role a warmth and depth that honestly no other supporting character in the movie has, and to Spencer's credit, isn't entirely in the script.  A true actress who understands her director's vision, but also knows how to lift it when it's slacking.

Allison Janney costarred with Spencer in her Oscar-winning role in The Help, and is another actress who has spent much of the past twenty years elevating everything she's in (though Janney's work has been more so in television).  Janney is a blast in I, Tonya, totally owning every inch of this movie, and it's hard to begrudge an actress this good (who based on every interview she or her coworker's have ever done, seems to be a genuinely nice person offscreen) a win.  I will quibble, though, in saying that most of her work is surface-level.  Splendid surface-level, but up against a couple of her co-nominees who are doing more work, it's hard not to think Janney should've done more.  Particularly from an actress as good as she is, this is a bit like giving Maggie Smith her Oscar for Best Exotic Marigold Hotel instead of Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

One of those nominees is another sitcom veteran, Laurie Metcalf.  Metcalf has not had the lead work in TV that Janney has, but has been synonymous with a certain kind of frazzled aunt/mom/coworker for most of her career.  But Metcalf is a brilliant actress, and she owns this role as a mom stuck as both the breadwinner & the one with the most foresight in her household.  There's so much depth-of-feeling in the way that she clearly adores children & being a mom, even if Lady Bird drives her into consternation (look at the way she gets over-excited about every baby in the film, perhaps the only time she seems to genuinely lighten her metaphorical burden).  Metcalf makes an easy part complicated & real.

The same can be said for Lesley Manville in Phantom Thread.  In a perfect world this would be Manville's second Oscar nomination (she was unreal in Another Year seven years prior, and got my silver medal in this category that year), and it's worlds apart from her work with Mike Leigh.  The way that she has to deal with her egotistical, ridiculous brother, manipulating him to always get his way, frequently without him realizing how she's in charge, is breathtaking.  Think of the scene where they're having breakfast and he tries to "handle" her before she breaks the facade, wanting to let him know exactly how much she will not be taken for granted...it's specific, delicate character work that adds dimensions to the movie's best performance.

Our final nominee is Mary J. Blige, which is the one performance in this lineup that I didn't get.  Blige's character work might've worked in a better movie.  Playing a Black woman who is forced to take care of another woman's children even though she doesn't want to...there's a lot there.  But Blige doesn't flesh out her character, and though this is an angle that might work (as written, her Florence isn't a woman that would ever let her guard down), it hurts the story, which is so reliant on Florence being something more than just the sturdy backbone of her family.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes favored Janney, besting Metcalf, Blige, Spencer, & Hong Chau (Downsizing), while SAG went the most against Oscar's type by picking Janney, but only keeping Metcalf & Blige for Oscar, adding in Chau & Holly Hunter (The Big Sick).  BAFTA added Manville to the mix, with she, Metcalf, Spencer, & Kristin Scott Thomas (Darkest Hour) all losing to Allison Janney (I'll say this in probably all four acting write-ups, but the lockstep races for all of the acting prizes made 2017's ceremony one of the dullest in a while).  In terms of sixth place, I predicted both Chau & Hunter at the time (I assumed Blige's limited screentime & the at-the-time new advent of Netflix in the Oscar race wouldn't sell, and no one saw the Phantom Thread love-in coming this far out).  Either of these women (or honestly, Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip) would make sense, but I'm going to guess it was Hunter that was in sixth place given The Big Sick got in for writing while Downsizing missed everywhere.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I for sure would've included Hunter.  Holly Hunter is one of our best screen actors, always good, but that doesn't mean we should ignore when she takes a prickly character, fleshes her out, and manages to in the process give us one of the 2010's best rom-com's, an increasingly tough genre to navigate.

Oscar’s Choice: It was an easy call for Janney, who dominated all season & who always felt like the kind of actress who would eventually win an Oscar.

My Choice: I will go with Metcalf over Manville, as she has the tougher part to land & has more dimension (both will be showing up next week when we get to whom I would've picked for the nominees, though).  Following them is Spencer, Janney, & Blige.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you joining me with Team Lady Bird or are you still enamored with Janney & that bird?  Where do you think Octavia Spencer's long run with AMPAS will end (can she come close to Thelma Ritter's unparalleled six nominations)?  And was it Chau, Haddish, or Hunter in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2017: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: Supporting Actor (2017)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water

Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World

Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

My Thoughts: We are hitting the final stretch of the 2017 races over the next week-and-a-half, doing our supporting races in the next three days, and then the final four (plus our ballot!) all of next week.  We'll start that out as always with Best Supporting Actor, a field that included a lot of names but that I (looking back on my predictions) got exactly right.  Part of that was correctly calling out an actor who was only in this category accidentally, the late Christopher Plummer.  Plummer had one of the biggest late-staged comebacks in Oscar history, getting three nominations over the age of eighty, an unrivaled situation that no one else will likely ever match.  We'll commence our writeup thus with Plummer as our entry point.

Plummer plays his J. Paul Getty less as a feeble old miser and more as someone who has lost his grip on reality decades earlier, having unlimited wealth in a way no man can have without it warping his mind.  Plummer's performance here is good, particularly his chaotic one-on-one scenes with both Mark Wahlberg & Michelle Williams, where he unfolds what it's like to be a man no one says no to in real time.  The performance feels a little bit half-baked, as Plummer famously only had a few weeks before the movie's release date to replace Kevin Spacey after Spacey became unemployable, and there's a whiff of the industry acknowledging Plummer for doing them a favor by stepping in at the last minute to this nomination...you get the sense that even if he was terrible he'd have gotten this citation as a "thank you."  He's not, he's good, but it's a pity he hadn't been cast at the beginning since I think some more time to parcel through this role might've made this his worthiest of nominations.

Richard Jenkins was cast from the beginning, but I can't help but feeling he also should've been recast in The Shape of Water.  It's refreshing to have an average-looking man play a gay character onscreen (too often we see aging gay men only when they're about to die in the movies), but I couldn't help but feeling there's something authentic lacking here.  Quite frankly Jenkins, who is straight in real life, is not convincing as a gay man, never understanding the tragedy of his sad character and other than one late scene, feeling simply to exist as a "sassy gay friend" for our more fully-drawn main character of Eliza.  The script doesn't care about him, and Jenkins doesn't define the role enough to rise above that castoff.

Willem Dafoe has been on fire in recent years, getting a well-deserved career renaissance that spurred from The Florida Project.  His work as a motel manager, left to deal with people living week-to-week, paycheck-to-paycheck is so well-done because his motives remain unclear.  Whom does he care about other than himself as the movie progresses...how much did he actually help the patrons who are clearly about to have their lives thrown away if they can't stay in this motel (it's literally the only place keeping them out of shelters or the streets)...Dafoe keeps this vested inside, but lets enough out to finally get you to understand his character in the movie's final moments.  It's a master class of understatement from an actor not necessarily known for such restraint.

Our final two nominees are both from Three Billboards, the first time there was a double supporting actor nominee from the same film since 1991's Bugsy.  Of the two, Woody Harrelson is my favorite.  I loved the way that his world-weary cop unfolds against the plot.  Harrelson, like Dafoe, is not known for understatement in his professional work, but here he finds it as a man who is in a new marriage, someone who understands the plight of our main character of Mildred, but also knows the parameters of what the law will allow him to do-he is the center of this film, keeping it tethered to reality, and also bears the weight of all of the unsolved cases that have come before him.  It's a great, small piece of acting in a film that loses its grounding when he disappears from the story.

Which leads us to Sam Rockwell.  Rockwell is not one of my favorite actors...in fact, I've always struggled with him as an onscreen performer, frequently feeling too flashy, too scenery-chewing...in some ways my reaction to him is similar to some of that of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the early Aughts, an actor who could be great but oftentimes gave into his theatrical roots when the character doesn't call for it.  It doesn't help Rockwell that the script doesn't have a clue how to handle his racist cop, but you shouldn't be forgiven & given an Oscar if you get saddled with a bad screenplay and don't make it worse.  Throw in a borderline case of category fraud, and I'm still baffled as to why this was the performance that finally won the long-neglected Rockwell over to the Academy.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Sam Rockwell as their victor against Plummer, Jenkins, Dafoe, & Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name), while SAG chose Rockwell atop Jenkins, Harrelson, Dafoe, & Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes).  BAFTA completed the set for Rockwell, beating Plummer, Dafoe, Harrelson, & Hugh Grant (Paddington 2), the latter of whom wasn't eligible for Oscar until the following year due to release date timing (he didn't get nominated for the Oscar, but I nominated him in 2018 for My Ballot as he's excellent in this movie).  In terms of sixth place, I called this entire lineup right (as I said above), mostly because I figured that the two actors from Call Me By Your Name (Hammer & Michael Stuhlbarg) would split the vote enough that neither would make it.  My gut says that Stuhlbarg, who has the aura of a "character actor who gets his one Oscar nomination at some point" was in sixth since he was also in Best Picture nominees The Shape of Water and The Post, but Hammer in 2017 had also been itching around an Oscar nomination for a while & that would've been a possible place for him (at this point, of course, Hammer, like the aforementioned Kevin Spacey, is unemployable, but coming off of The Social Network and J. Edgar a nomination felt inevitable).

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Hammer is undoubtedly the lead in his movie, and while I'll try to base that category solely on the performance (so he's a probable nominee for me even with his personal life being a horror show), this is not the place for him.  Stuhlbarg, on the other hand, with his fantastic final monologue...Oscar has no excuse for skipping.

Oscar’s Choice: The Globes had a choice between honoring the long-neglected Rockwell or the long-neglected Dafoe, and they chose the former...to which every other awards body followed suit in the most lock-step acting award season in recent memory.

My Choice: Easily it's Dafoe-this is the performance of his career, and deserved the Oscar, particularly against an otherwise average lineup.  I'd follow with Harrelson, Plummer, Jenkins, & Rockwell in the back.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you go with the entire awards season & the work of Sam Rockwell, or do you want to come over and sun with Willem Dafoe & I in The Florida Project?  Why do you think it's so rare to have double nominees from the same film in supporting categories today (it used to be far more common)?  And which of the Call Me By Your Name men was in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2017: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 

Ranking the Judges on Chopped

I suspect that we all have picked up at least one hobby during the past two years that we either didn't indulge before the pandemic or that we wouldn't have dreamt we were into before this.  Some of us have started quilting or cooking bread or have a stack of completed adult coloring books, but for me...it's watching the Food Network.  I spent almost a year entirely by myself, and one of the adaptations I needed to make was to have the TV on, in the background, not necessarily watching it fully but just appreciating that it's there.  And there is no better option for me to "kind of be watching" than the onslaught of repeats on Food Network.

I watched the Food Network before this, as I have a fascination with cooking, & it's a skill I continually try to hone.  But it took on its own life during the pandemic, mostly because while before I was just watching the Saturday morning set (you know, the Ree's, Giada's, & Ina's), now I'm indiscriminately catching pretty much anything on the channel.  And like any good person expanding their Food Network credentials, I have opinions on all of the chefs that make up the channel's personalities.  Food Network has its own crew of judges who circle in and out of virtually every show, a crew of about 30-40 people that are Grade-A celebrities to those of us who partake in the channel...and virtually unknown to everyone else (if you only know Bobby Flay & Guy Fieri, you're definitely a newbie).

So since this blog is about my passions, we're going to take a quick detour this week & next week into the world of Food Network.  I have a pair of articles planned focusing on the network, and today we'll be starting with a ranking of the Chopped judges.  Chopped is the OG Food Network show, a compelling, three-round competition that pits chefs against each other, but more so against a panel of super picky judges (and an ambivalent Ted Allen).  Who you like of these judges kind of shows your own personality, so I invite you to join me in the comments if you disagree with these selections, but I have ranked my own personal preference of the ten regulars on the panel.  Enjoy!

10. Geoffrey Zakarian

Every major fan of Chopped has at least one judge on the panel they cannot stand, and are just praying isn't part of the lineup.  For me, it's Geoffrey.  He is impossible to please, he doesn't add much other than doom-and-gloom to the panel, and his chemistry with the rest of the judges is middling at best (there's no personality or flare to what he's bringing here).  He's also not fun when it comes to the judges' competitions.  Virtually any other judge on the panel I'd have something nice to say, but here I'm coming up empty-handed (he's also my least favorite person on The Kitchen).

9. Marc Murphy

I am a fan of a judge that will take down a cocky chef on the show (there's always one person in every episode you don't want to win), but Marc doesn't really have the finesse to know which chefs the audience is rooting for and which ones they aren't.  He's not the meanest judge (in the sense that there are definitely judges on this list that you would be more scared of if they were coming after you for an undercooked potato), but he's also the one who seems most likely to go after one of the judges who you are hoping slides through because they have great technique but, well, undercooked the potato.  I personally think he's far more fun on Guy's Grocery Games.

8. Tiffani Faison

I will admit straight up that while I watch a disproportionately large amount of Food Network (seriously-it's become an addiction that is going to be genuinely hard to kick when I attempt to resume my life post-vaccine), I don't watch many cooking shows on other networks (including Netflix, and I know the one I'm supposed to).  As a result, I don't have the strong feelings that many people do when it comes to one of the newest judges on Chopped, Tiffani, because I've never watched Top Chef.  For me, I'm still trying to figure out Tiffani, cause on a show where we don't like breaking up the formula, she's still new to the game (but I'm not opposed to what I've seen so far).

7. Scott Conant

I actually like some of Scott's criticism on the show.  He can be intriguing, and a compliment from him is genuinely something people should cherish as other than maybe Alex or Geoffrey, he's one of the rare judges that will let a bad dish just sit there, not building any suspense into the commercial break as to who is under the cloche.  But Scott is, when he wants to be, the judge that takes the dishes the most (too) personally.  This is in part due to his famous aversion to raw onions (the only judge who seems to genuinely project their aversion to a specific type of food into their critiques), but it's also the main reason we rarely see pasta dishes on the show, because everyone's afraid to give Scott pasta.  And I love pasta, so Scott on the panel means I'm not getting any.  I like when he hosts Chopped Sweets though.

6. Marcus Samuelsson

Marcus, similar to Marc Murphy, I generally like better on Guy's Grocery Games (which is weird because, all things being even Chopped is more up-my-alley).  I think it's because Samuelsson feels more fun on Guy's, and lets more of his personality show through.  He does generally have impeccable taste with his food choices, though, and is one of the best competitive chefs when he's on the other side of the judging table.  I also like to play along at home (trying to predict who will win), and he's one of the hardest judges to try & get inside...he's less forthcoming if he thinks that a chef is clearly in the lead or not.

5. Maneet Chauhan

Unlike Marc & Marcus, I think Maneet (another regular on Guy's) is better on Chopped.  The queen of Nashville cooking always feels a little too classy for Guy's rough-and-tumble universe, and feels more at-home with Chopped.  That said, she has this very strange ability to put in really backhanded compliments to the chefs by highlighting the most inconsequential aspect of the plate and saying it was her favorite part.  It always feels like she's instinctively trying to compliment the sauce or root vegetable that the chef spent two seconds on, rather than the central part of the dish.  This is a weird criticism, but next time you're stuck in a Chopped marathon, look for this as you will not be able to find many episodes where it doesn't happen at least once.

4. Chris Santos

Part of this high ranking is personal choice (I think Chris is kind of cute, the only one of the judges on the show that I will admit this about), but he's the curmudgeon that you learn to love.  He always seems to get the plate with an ingredient missing (it happens so often it has to be a running joke from the producers at this point), and he's constantly upset about something (he hates every piece of meat in front of him...you can tell he loves something when he says only one sentence).  This might say more about why I'm still single than most that I find a man with this attitude attractive, but it is what it is, and I love when Chris is on the panel.

3. Aaron Sanchez

Probably the classiest guy on the panel (the other guys seem to be bro-ing it up WAY too much for me...I almost change the channel if I see it's an all-male lineup), Sanchez is the best judge on the show in terms of making the contestants feel welcomed.  His compliments always feel heartfelt, his criticisms burn but he's aware that they're stinging.  I don't watch Chopped to necessarily see people eviscerated (though watching a cocky chef taken down is fun, which is why I like Chris & my #1 on this list), so Sanchez provides some feeling when you think a chef is being taken down too much for an honest mistake.

2. Amanda Freitag

I love Amanda.  Of all of the people on this list, she'd be the judge that I'd be the least scared to cook for not because she's not tough or discerning (she is), but because she genuinely seems to want what's best for the chefs.  You can tell this not just on Chopped, but on her YouTube cooking channel where she specializes in teaching you proper techniques (honestly, I have learned more from that channel than I have on Food Network in terms of making sure I am properly making meats, eggs, & vegetables, so check it out if you haven't).  Amanda is the only judge that genuinely complements every other combination of the remaining nine panelists.

1. Alex Guarnaschelli

Alex is hands down not just the best judge, but give or take Ina Garten, the best person on the Food Network period.  She is brutal in her assessments, but that just makes her compliments feel even stronger (if Alex loves a dessert, that person is going to win the show).  She also can cook better than anyone else-she always wins on virtually any show she's on, and seems to understand food better than anyone (like Amanda, she's a chef I learn from her cooking tutorials always because she approaches it in a way that experienced and novice chefs can both take something away from).  Impeccable taste, consistently funny, fierce competitor...Alex is an Iron Chef for a reason.