I knew I would screw this show up, I really did. I promise I’ll never come back.

Oscar Winners 2017

So, after an almighty faux-pas in the final furlong, is there anything much to say about the actual winners? Mostly, they illustrate the wrestling match between the salve of political/social conscience and self-congratulation I was droning on about in my predictions piece, something Harvey Scissorhands also recognised when it came to discussing how Shakespeare in Love trumped Saving Private Ryan (besides the former being the better film, that is); Hollywood can – usually – be relied upon to upvote their own artistic validation. But not this year.

La La Land had to make do with the most wins (six), in an evening when the Academy was otherwise choosing to emphasise how alert and awake to serious matters it was, such is its tumult over Trumpton. Never let it be said they’re content to sit back and fiddle while their cosy idyll burns. Why, they recognised African Americans several times (Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay), so they can forget about having been made to feel guilty again for at least a couple more years (Phew!) They recognised crises abroad (Best Documentary Short) and at home (Best Documentary Feature) and protested the Presidential travel ban (Best Foreign Language Film). And, just to show they’re forgiving, in the Polanski/Allen move of the evening, they gave Mel’s movie two technical statuettes. Boy, will they all have slept soundly last night!

Jimmy Kimmel? He seems to have gone down okay, coasting on his late-night talk show routine. Since he bigged up Letterman’s berated Oscars turn a few days back, Im reluctant to be too hard on him. As for my all-important track record: 14 out of 24, so I’m maintaining my rigorously mediocre standards.

Best Picture

Winner: Moonlight (Dede Gardner, Adele Romanski, Jeremy Keiner)

I guessed: La La Land

Did the best picture win? Does it ever? I’ll wisely reserve judgement until I’ve caught the lot, but right now, Manchester by the Sea leads out of the five I’ve seen, and that’s even with me not much liking Casey Affleck. Moonlight’s win, besides the gnawing feeling among voters that they should possibly, maybe, be seen to stand for something, may also be a symptom of an increasingly prevalent condition, as blanket coverage becomes ever more suffocating and fatigue with the hot favourite sets in. The old backlash problem. One might see that in Spotlight’s prize last year. Oscar, being the last and most prestigious of the awards ceremonies, is also damned by being the resultantly least surprising, oft times. That’s what they need mix-ups to spice things up. Of course, Moonlight could also simply just be the Best Picture.

Best Director

Winner: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

I guessed: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

So Chazelle, like his characters, got the big success he strived for. But at what price, Damien?

Best Actor

Winner: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

I guessed: Denzel Washington (Fences)

There’s no doubt Affleck’s performance in Manchester by the Sea is Oscar-worthy; I can say that as one who has never been particularly won over by the guy. Although, I do greatly admire his beard. Not as top drawer as Dev Patel’s but something to be proud of nonetheless. Affleck had been the one to bet on, of course, before Denzel’s SAG win. Casey’s skeletons in the closet failed to dent his chances, so he can probably look forward to them resurfacing again in a few years, more resoundingly. Then he’ll fall from grace, then be redeemed by voters once more.

Best Actress

Winner: Emma Stone (La La Land)

I guessed: Emma Stone (La La Land)

She also won Best Picture.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

I guessed: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

I suspect Ali wouldn’t have bagged it if he’d been up against Sunny Pawar rather than Dev Patel, but Moonlight’s trio of statuettes puts in good company with last year’s victor (an even more modest two).

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Viola Davis (Fences)

I guessed: Viola Davis (Fences)

The most predictable win of the evening? I don’t think anyone had even a glimmer of a doubt on this one.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight)

I guessed: Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight)

Another that was mostly probable. The win highlights that Hidden Figures left the awards empty-handed, which like Lion, was looking not unlikely.

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)

I guessed: La La Land

Is this that Titanic thing, slightly, of the emotional ride disguising that the actual writing isn’t that amazing? Not that I want to denigrate La La Land by comparing it to Titanic, although I just did. I rooted for Lonergan on this, and for someone who languished in limbo for about a decade, it must be extra gratifying to have a comeback so well received.

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Zootopia (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Clark Spencer)

I guessed: Zootopia (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Clark Spencer)

A shame Kubo and the Two Strings didn’t get any joy on the night, but Zootopia’s a great movie.

Best Documentary Feature

Winner: O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow)

I guessed: O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow)

100% on Rotten Tomatoes can’t be wrong.

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)

I guessed: The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)

A second Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Farhadi.

Best Cinematography

Winner: Linus Sandgren (La La Land)

I guessed: Linus Sandgren (La La Land)

Yeah, it looked jolly nice. I preferred Arrival, mind.

Best Costume Design

Winner: Colleen Atwood (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)

I guessed: La La Land

Empire wuz right. Always bet on Atwood.

Best Documentary Short

Winner: The White Helmets (Orlando von Einsiedel, Joanna Natasegara)

I guessed: Joe’s Violin

A deserved win about neutral, unarmed volunteers, or a PR piece in support of a group with ties to terrorism?

Best Film Editing

Winner: John Gilbert (Hacksaw Ridge)

I guessed: La La Land

Mel truly comes in from the cold. Hopefully he didn’t have a drink to celebrate.

Best Make-up and Hairstyling

Winner: Giorgio Gregorini (Suicide Squad)

I guessed: Star Trek Beyond

I mean, what? I guess it takes a true artiste to design intentionally bad-looking hair and make-up.

Best Original Score

Winner: Justin Hurwitz (La La Land)

I guessed: Justin Hurwitz (La La Land)

A fait accompli.

Best Original Song

Winner: City of Stars (La La Land)

I guessed: City of Stars (La La Land)

Yeah, tis a good wee ditty.

Production Design

Winner: David Wasco (La La Land)

I guessed: David Wasco (La La Land)

Hail, Caesar! was robbed!

Best Animated Short

Winner: Piper (Alan Barillaro, Marco Sondheimer)

I guessed: Piper (Alan Barillaro, Marco Sondheimer)

Well done, Pixar! You were desperately short of Best Animated Short Oscars, after all.

Best Live Action Short

Winner: Sing (Kristof Deak, Anna Udvardy)

I guessed: Silent Nights

No relation to the animation.

Best Sound Editing

Winner: Sylvian Bellemare (Arrival)

I guessed: La La Land

Nice for Arrival to win something.

Best Sound Mixing

Winner: Kevin O'Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace (Hacksaw Ridge)

I guessed: La La Land

Mel! Even more indirectly loved!

Visual Effects

Winner: Robert Legato, Dan Lemmon, Adam Valdez, Andrew R Jones (The Jungle Book)

I guessed: The Jungle Book

Great effects, so-so movie.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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The Verdict (1982)
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And it could easily have been otherwise. The Verdict went through several line-ups of writer, director and lead, before reverting to Mamet’s original screenplay. There was Arthur Hiller, who didn’t like the script. Robert Redford, who didn’t like the subsequent Jay Presson Allen script and brought in James Bridges (Redford didn’t like that either). Finally, the producers got the hump with the luxuriantly golden-haired star for meetin…

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Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

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Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
(SPOILERS) The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was "comparatively minor and light-hitting" and "lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries". Far from deficits, for my money these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and the Wasp; it understands exactly the zone its operating in, yielding greater dividends than the three most recent prior Marvel entries the review cites in its efforts at point scoring.

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The Avengers 5.12: The Superlative Seven
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I freely chose my response to this absurd world. If given the opportunity, I would have been more vigorous.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
(SPOILERS) I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ‘70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the case, but I ended up wondering if it might not be ideal fodder for retelling as a miniseries.

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Along with Pain & Gain and The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street might be viewed as the completion of a loose 2013 trilogy on the subject of success and excess; the American Dream gone awry. It’s the superior picture to its fellows, by turns enthralling, absurd, outrageous and hilarious. This is the fieriest, most deliriously vibrant picture from the director since the millennium turned. Nevertheless, stood in the company of Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese film from which The Wolf of Wall Street consciously takes many of its cues, it is found wanting.

I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
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Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

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The Avengers 5.11: Epic
Epic has something of a Marmite reputation, and even as someone who rather likes it, I can quite see its flaws. A budget-conscious Brian Clemens was inspired to utilise readily-available Elstree sets, props and costumes, the results both pushing the show’s ever burgeoning self-reflexive agenda and providing a much more effective (and amusing) "Avengers girl ensnared by villains attempting to do for her" plot than The House That Jack Built, Don't Look Behind You and the subsequent The Joker. Where it falters is in being little more than a succession of skits and outfit changes for Peter Wyngarde. While that's very nearly enough, it needs that something extra to reach true greatness. Or epic-ness.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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