Oscar post-mortem: better late than James Franco

(Blogger’s note: this post should’ve been up Monday.  Unfortunately, I came down with a 36-hour something-or-other and was barely functioning.  But, to quote the not-dead-yet guy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m getting better.”  My apologies for the tardiness regardless.  And look on the bright side: at least I’m not going to be writing about Charlie Sheen …)

Well, I made my goal.

Going into the Academy Awards this year, I had my predictions ready (see here, here and here if you missed them earlier) and had a goal in mind.  I correctly picked 16 out of 24 two years ago, 17 out of 24 last year, so this year I was hoping for 18.  And I got it — 18 out of 24, right on the money.  Which is pretty good, I think.  Steve Pond of the show-business website The Wrap, who’s historically very good at this sort of thing, apparently only got 17 this year.  If that’s the case, wow — beating Steve Pond in Oscar predictions is like edging out Kobe Bryant for the NBA scoring title.

I’ll get to the picks themselves in a little bit — but for starters, let’s go into the highlights of the ceremony.  Or maybe the lack thereof.

Oscar predictions, part 3: the moments you’ve all been waiting for …

If you haven’t read Part 1 or Part 2 of my Oscar predictions, you might want to check them out first.  But now it’s time for the big, high-profile awards, the ones people think about when they say “so-and-so is an Oscar winner!”  Ready?  Then let’s go!

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees: Mike Leigh (Another Year), Silver/Tamasy/Johnson/Dorrington (The Fighter), Christopher Nolan (Inception), Lisa Cholodenko/Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right), David Seidler (The King’s Speech)

Rule of thumb: Well, it’s complicated …

Oscar Predictions, part 2: It’s Techie Time!

If you missed part one of my annual Academy Awards predictions, click here.  And now …

PART TWO: THE TECHNICAL CATEGORIES

Best Cinematography

Nominees: Black Swan, Inception, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, True Grit.

Rule of thumb: The best single shot or scene can sell the whole film.

And for the first time in the prognosticating process this year, there’s a wild card thrown into the mix.  And his name is Roger Deakins.

Traditionally, who the cinematographer is matters little in deciding the race.  There’s a good reason for this — his or her name isn’t listed on the Oscar ballot.  The acting nominations are the only one where the person’s name is actually included; in all other categories, they just list the films.  You don’t always realize who you’re voting for.  But there have been so many articles this year about how Deakins has just received his ninth nomination (for True Grit) but has never won.  Deakins is best known for his work with the Coen Brothers (he’s done every movie of theirs since Barton Fink in 1991, including Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men) and is very highly respected in the industry.  Plus, while ASC, the cinematographers’ guild, gave their award to Wally Pfister for Inception, it’s not always an indicator of who’ll win the Oscar (they agree less than half the time), and Deakins has already won the ASC award twice.  So I’m going to say he’s due.  The Oscar goes to: True Grit. (Possible upset: Inception.)

(One other possible factor in Deakins’ favor: True Grit is nominated in 10 categories, but isn’t a favorite in any except this one and maybe Costume.  It would be unusual for a film to go 0-for-10 …)

Oscar pre-predictions: is a little knowledge a dangerous thing?

Well, Sunday night is Oscar night, and WE’RE INVITED! So that’s pretty cool.

I definitely will be watching the Academy Awards broadcast and expect it to be a load of fun, especially with two honest-to-goodness funny people like James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosting.  (Anything’s better than Ricky Gervais at this point.)  But it’s more to me than just being the first time I’ll spend three straight hours watching TV since the World Series ended.  ‘Cause if you don’t know it, I like predicting the Oscar races.

In the past, I’ve done okay at it — I got 17 out of 24 right last year, 16 out of 24 the year before that, 14 the year before that.  This time I’m hoping to build on previous successes, aiming for 20 but with 18 probably being more realistic.  However, there’s been a change in my prediction preparation this year that might adversely affect my picks, and I’m a little worried about it.

You see … I’ve watched a lot more films this year.

“It’s an honor just to be nominated …”

A few random thoughts on this morning’s Academy Award nominations, from your 19th-favorite Oscar prognosticator:

* The nominations, with a few exceptions, were fairly predictable — so predictable, in fact, that in one case I actually predicted them.  No kidding.  Last Wednesday, I handed my son Sean’s occupational therapist (with whom I’ve had numerous movie-related discussions) a slip of paper with ten film titles on it and said, “here are next week’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture.”  Today, I checked and realized I’d gone 10-for-10, even nailing the two I’d admitted I wasn’t totally sure about (Winter’s Bone and The Kids Are All Right).  Sean’s next O/T appointment is tomorrow; can’t wait to get her reaction …

Periodick Pingback: The genius of the Inception Button

Once again, it’s time for Periodic Pingback, an act of creative laziness on my part introduction of something really neat I found on the Internet that I thought others might like as well.

Do you find that sometimes your life seems dull?  That your daily activities lack a certain … drama?  Do you ever wish that your experiences had the panache and thrills of a favorite movie, complete with swells of striking, nerve-strumming music?  Well, you’re not alone — and I have just the thing for you: The Inception Button!

Taken from Hans Zimmer’s most-likely-to-be-Oscar-nominated score from the movie Inception (the best new release I saw this year, with the caveat that I missed watching The Social Network), this dramatic sting — summarized by noted film reviewer Dana Stevens of Slate.com as “BrAAAAAHMMMM” — is the perfect accompaniment for any dramatic or suspenseful statement or event.  About to give your kid a time-out?  Need to explain to your husband that the toilet’s plugged?  Want to highlight the sense of doom when your favorite team hires exactly the wrong person as head coach?  Just click the pictured red button to lend the situation just the right amount of gravitas and cinematic tension.  Best of all, it’s FREE!

The Inception Button. Use it early and often, and dramatize your life!

(Or just use it ironically, for a quick laugh … which is pretty much why I like it, and why I wrote this.  BrAAAAAHMMMM!)

Salman Rushdie on the value of the outsider

The following writing is not my own, except for the fact that I’m typing it into my computer.  But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read that describes who I am, what I’m about … and that I’m not alone in it, so I thought I’d share it here.

Even if you’ve never read anything by Salman Rushdie, you probably know his name.  He’s the poor bloke whom then-Iranian supreme voobaha Ruhollah Khomeini put out a contract on in 1988 because Khomeini and his band of scowling thugs thought that his book The Satanic Verses was a slam on Islam.  (He managed to outlive both the fatwa and Khomeini himself, which once again proves that living well is the best revenge.  Or something..)  When he’s not busy being the target of Muslim-extremist death threats, he’s one of the world’s great novelists, winning the Booker Prize (the UK equivalent of a National Book Award) in 1981 for Midnight’s Children.  I absolutely love his skill with the English language, and his ability to conjure up stories and worlds that are utterly fantastic while still ringing with the truth, the realism of human life.

So I hope he’ll forgive me for quoting over a page of his work.  The piece below (only slightly edited) is from his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a sprawling epic that starts with the legend of Orpheus; mixes it with alternative universes, tectonic shifts, two truly odd love triangles, and the history of rock & roll; then races it through postwar Bombay/Mumbai, 1960s England, 1970s New York City and what Joni Mitchell once called “the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.”  It’s never been made into a movie and never will be, because you can’t cram the thing into two-and-a-half hours or less, and even if you could the plot would still be so convoluted it would make Inception look like a nursery rhyme.  It’s an E-ticket thrill ride, and in the hands of a lesser writer it would fall to pieces.  That it doesn’t is testimony to Rushdie’s gift.

And my favorite part of it is a soliloquy by the book’s protagonist, an Indian-born American photographer nicknamed “Rai” (coincidence?) on the subject of being an outsider in society.  As you might guess from the name of my blog, that’s a subject near and dear to my heart.  Every so often, I revisit this passage just to remind myself that no, I’m not crazy, this is how God has made me — and because He’s done so, I must therefore be valuable and useful (even when other voices are dissenting).  Anyway, enough preamble; enjoy, and let me know what you think:

The generation gap, film version

(Blogger’s note: took me a while to figure out the details of how to do this — what can I say, it’s been busy and I’m getting old — but I’ve figured out how to use my Twitter account to notify you, my esteemed reader, of blog updates.  If you’re on Twitter, you can follow me here and be notified whenever I put up a new post.  If you’re not on Twitter, you can always sign up — why not, it’s free — then follow the steps above.  So there you go.)

Today was another in a long series of hectic days, so when I got a chance to take a break around 3:20 p.m., I took it.  I followed my usual pattern (lock self in office, goof off on Internet) for about forty minutes, and I felt better.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today.  What I’m writing about is that when I came out of the office to start working on dinner, I found my wife and kids watching Star Wars.

In the interest of full disclosure: I was never a big Star Wars fan.  I had a bunch of the action figures when I was a kid, but I mostly used them to make up my own stories (kind of like how I write fanfic now).  I saw the movies, but largely because my mom (who was a fan) dragged me along with her so she wouldn’t have to go alone.  I still haven’t seen Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith or even George Lucas in Love, and the only reason I own VHS copies of the original trilogy is that I inherited them when Mom died.  I didn’t hate them or anything — they were fun little space Westerns — but not a big deal for me.  Today was probably the first time I’ve seen more than a short clip of Episode IV in over a decade.

And I was shocked by it.  I was shocked by … heck, I’m no diplomat, might as well just say it … by how cheap it looked!