You know, I almost didn't do a recap this year. Work has been busy this week, and Monday night I just didn't feel like writing anything. However, I have more energy tonight, I have thoughts to share on the event capping one of my favorite years of movies, and I didn't do that 24 hour Best Picture marathon for nothing, damnit*.
Basically, the ceremony was pretty typical. Comedian host does a serviceable, if unmemorable job. A bunch of crappy montages of movies are played. They include condescending looks at the ceremony for the technical awards (The Geek Oscars) and the honorary awards (because we want to see weird montages with vague themes, instead of having a chance to celebrate Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury). Pink sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, while the rest of the classic movie year of 1939 was not even mentioned. And John Travolta made Adele Dazeem a star.
Instead of boring you with countless words of narrative, I'm going straight to the good stuff. I'll go through each award and say who won and who I thought should have won.
Best Foreign Language Film
Best Documentary Feature
Best Documentary Short Subject
Best Live Action Short Film
Best Animated Short Film
These five categories are being skipped, as I only saw one of the films nominated in these categories (Get a Horse for Best Animated Short Film). To speculate or offer an opinion on these categories is pretty pointless. Looks like I have room to grow for next year.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Who Won: Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews, Dallas Buyers Club
Who Should have Won: Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa
I'm not saying the technical effort to make the characters in Dallas Buyers Club look like they were from the 80s and dying of AIDS wasn't impressive. I'm just saying one movie this year had to make Johnny Knoxville look convincing as a man in his 80s, and succeeded pretty well. Nevertheless, it's pretty cool the film even got nominated.
Best Costume Design
Who Won: Catherine Martin, The Great Gatsby
Who Should Have Won: The Great Gatsby
Yeah, I'm a bit miffed that the flawed The Great Gatsby won more awards than Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Captain Phillips combined. However, this one is deserved. American Hustle and Twelve Years a Slave, the other two films in contention that I saw, had fine costumes, but this is typically an award that goes to the flashiest peacock of the bunch.
Best Visual Effects
Who Won: Gravity
Who Should Have Won: Gravity
Yep, this one is well deserved. Of all the nominees, the one I would have picked second was actually The Lone Ranger.
Best Film Editing
Who Won: Alfonso Cuaron and Mark Sanger, Gravity
Who should have won: Gravity
All the movies up for this award seemed to be pretty well edited. American Hustle only seemed to be longer than it was, which wasn't the fault of the editing.
Best Production Design
Who Won: Catherine Martin and Beverly Dunn, The Great Gatsby
Who Should Have Won: K.K. Barrett and Gene Serdena, Her
Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Great Gatsby had a wonderful design. It made the "Gatsby" feel of everything come to life. There were plenty of problems with the film, but its look wasn't one of them.
However, as flashy and dead-on as the production design was, it wasn't as good as Her. The film uses the similar, yet markedly different, look of the environment to say that this is set in the future. I don't know, perhaps it was too subtle. Frankly, had Her won the Costume award (it wasn't even nominated), I would have thought it deserving as well.
Best Sound Mixing
Who Won: Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, and Chris Munro, Gravity
Who should have won: Gravity
I was tempted to say Inside Llewyn Davis, because that movie deserves so much more recognition than it seems to be getting. However, the sound work on Gravity, like all the technical awards the movie took home, was superb.
Best Sound Editing
Who Won: Glenn Freemantle, Gravity
Who Should Have Won: Gravity
If, in the future, you get a chance to watch this on the big screen, do it. And not just for the visuals. The use of sound (or in many cases, absence of sound) is wonderful.
Best Cinematography
Who Won: Emmanuel Lubzeki, Gravity
Who Should Have Won: Gravity
I wouldn't have been sad to see Roger Deakins win here, as his work on Prisoners was the best thing about that movie. Apparently Lubzeki had a long dry streak with the Oscars as well, and Gravity was just a better film than Prisoners. It would have been kind of darkly funny (almost Coenesque) if Inside Llewyn Davis had won, considering Deakins has often collaborated with them.**
Best Animated Feature
Who Won: Frozen
Who Should Have Won: Frozen
I probably should have put this up with the other categories I skipped, because I've only seen two of the films on the nominee list. However, I'm pretty certain I'd still pick Frozen, even though I've heard good things about The Croods and The Wind Rises is a Miyazaki film.
Best Original Score
Who Won: Steven Price, Gravity
Who Should Have Won: Gravity
Of the films nominated, Gravity probably deserved this the most. Saving Mr. Banks was entertaining, but a lot of the heavy lifting for Newman's score was done by the Sherman Brothers when they wrote the music for Mary Poppins
Best Original Song
Who Won: Kristin Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez, "Let It Go", Frozen
Who Should Have Won: Adele Dazeem, "Ltp Up Tg", Farznip
"The Moon Song" is cute but slight, the U2 song was boring, and I didn't hear the Pharrell Williams song (and don't remember it when I saw the movie, so it couldn't have been too catchy). Even if that wasn't the case, "Let It Go" was my favorite, and I'm glad to see it win. Besides, any time somebody picks up an EGOT is great. Yes, Wonder Pets counts for winning EGOTs, you old fart purists.
Best Original Screenplay
Who Won: Spike Jonze, Her
Who Should Have Won: Her
I would have been happy had Bob Nelson won for Nebraska as well, but I do have to believe a slight nod to Jonze is deserved here. I'm guessing this salvaged his night after the loss for Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Who Won: John Ridley, Twelve Years a Slave
Who Should Have Won: The Wolf of Wall Street
Although I preferred The Wolf of Wall Street's script a bit more than Twelve Years a Slave, I can't find too much fault with this win. Unlike the Original Screenplay category, I don't find any I would have rooted against in the list.
Best Supporting Actor
Who Won: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Who Should Have Won: Michael Fassbender, Twelve Years a Slave
Leto's performance as the transgender Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club is the kind of performance that tends to get awarded at the Oscars. However, probably only Bradley Cooper would have been a lower pick for me. It isn't that his performance was bad, as it is actually pretty good. And yeah, he gets some credit taken away for the fact that his performance was kind of problematic in some respects***. However, I just preferred the other performances. Although I almost wanted to put Jonah Hill up there because his character was the most fun to watch, Fassbender clearly had the toughest line to walk as a somewhat pathetic, often drunk, and thoroughly disgusting slave owner.
Best Supporting Actress
Who Won: Lupita Nyong'o, Twelve Years a Slave
Who Should Have Won: Lupita Nyong'o
The only person on this list that I would have had an issue with winning would have been Julia Roberts, as there is no way the dreadful looking August, Osage County is worth anything. I would have been pleased to see June Squibb win for Nebraska, but there is no doubt Nyong'o deserved this win. Sometimes you just get stuck in a tough category, while in other years it can be pretty weak. Honestly, I think all four acting categories were pretty stacked, even though the winners were pretty predictable.
Best Actor
Who Won: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Who Should Have Won: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Speaking of solid acting, the Best Supporting Actor category was the deepest of the four. You could have made a nominee list of five actors left out (Redford, Issac, Jordan, Hanks, Phoenix), and it would have been as good as the actual one, possibly better. There were three people on the list that I would have been really happy to see win (DiCaprio, Ejiofor, and Dern). Unfortunately, the Oscars chose to make this year's award be a "Comeback Actor of the Year" award instead of "Best Performance" award. McConaughey's work was alright, but it was typical McConaughey. The other three (and to a lesser extent) Bale brought much more to their characters. Dern was my sentimental pick, but there is no doubt DiCaprio was the best of the bunch.
Best Actress
Who Won: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Who Should Have Won: Cate Blanchett
Put aside the latest mess involving Woody Allen, as it has nothing to do with Blanchett. She gave a great performance as a character you felt sorry for and kind of rooted for, even though she was an awful piece of crap who brought much of her misery on herself. It was a sad performance in a downer of a film. I would not have complained if the other three actresses in the films I saw (Adams, Bullock, and Dench) had somehow scored an upset. I didn't see August, Osage County, so I can't speak to Streep's performance. It looks like there was plenty of scenery eaten on that set, however.
Best Director
Who Won: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Who Should Have Won: Alfonso Cuaron
This was another category where multiple winners would have been fine by me, provided they weren't named Russell. Although I'm he had won, it would have been a win for Scorsese as well.****
Best Picture
Who Won: Twelve Years a Slave
Who Should Have Won: Twelve Years a Slave
There were only two films on the nominee list I would have been angry to see win: Dallas Buyers Club and American Hustle. That isn't to say I didn't find enjoyable things about the two films, just that they were not worth being in consideration for best film of 2013. Of the rest, the one that did win was probably the most deserving to win. Why did I have seven films ahead of it on my year end list? Because that was my "favorite of" list, not "best of". Twelve Years a Slave is a wonderful film well worth seeing. It's also a painful film to watch.
* This will also be a post at some point.
** I will not stop being miffed at the snubs to this film.
*** I'm not entirely certain I would go so far as calling his character a transgender "Mammy", but it wasn't exactly the most nuanced portrayal.
****I also will never stop calling American Hustle derivative of Scorsese, and cannot agree with people who find it to be better than The Wolf of Wall Street
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