If you honk, I’ll spew.

Oscar Winners 2019

Not having a host this year meant it was much more difficult to find a decent quote line. I considered using an excerpt from Regina King’s acceptance speech, but quoting it ironically probably wouldn’t travel. So Mike Myers gets it by default, since it sums up the ceremony quite nicely (he and Dana Carvey really should have resisted dredging up Wayne and Garth under any circumstances, though, since their schtick had dated badly approximately six months after the release of the first film).

It felt like I got a fair few right this year at first glance, but I ended up picking a resolutely average fifteen correctly, down one on last time and pretty much my range most years. I should have stuck to my instincts and gone for more for Bohemian Rhapsody (I initially had it down for editing and both sounds) and stuck with Free Solo over RBG, but otherwise I was pretty clueless about the ones I missed.

Unlike the very vocal naysayers, I consider Green Book’s victory very healthy; the Oscars may yet have some kind of staying power if they can still manage to whip up a semblance of a controversy, rather than settling into middling, consensus, anodyne results no one can really object to. Did the best picture win? No, but a truly worthy best picture contender wasn’t even nominated this year, so that isn’t very surprising.

Best Picture

Winner: Green Book (Jim Burke, Charles B Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga))

I guessed: Green Book

Immediately came the cries that this was as travesty as great – if not more so – than Crash winning in 2006. How could the Academy be so tone deaf as to reward a slick crowd pleaser (as Justin Chang’s LA Times article called it, amid eviscerating the decision)? It’s entirely feasible they did it just to piss off Spike Lee. And it worked!

Best Director

Winner: Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)

I guessed: Alfonso Cuarón

Yawn.

Best Actor

Winner: Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)

I guessed: Rami Malek

All that schmoozing got Rami what he most wanted. And then he fell off the stage. He was under pressure, though.

Best Actress

Winner: Olivia Coleman (The Favourite)

I guessed: Glenn Close (The Wife)

Glenn goes home empty-handed and Olivia gets the Anthony Hopkins award for a lead performance barely in the movie itself. She made a big splash in it, though, and was humorously down-to-earth in accepting her statuette, so I guess that’s what counts.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Mahershala Ali (Green Book)

I guessed: Mahershala Ali

A slightly boring choice, Ali sailing dangerously close to over-exposure in not that many roles really since Moonlight. I’d have paid good money to see Richard E Grant giving it a good gush.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)

I guessed: Regina King

A shoe-in, but then, so was Glenn. Regina had plenty of time to hone that nauseating acceptance speech, and it showed.

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Green Book (Nick Vellelonga, Brian Currie & Peter Farrelly)

I guessed: Green Book

Definitely the best of the nominations in this category, although one might argue it’s the screenplay itself, rather than the overall picture, that has caused all the ructions. Spike should have got out of his seat for this one, really.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: BlackKklansman (Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee

I guessed: BlackKklansman

Spike gets his Oscar, and still he isn’t happy. Credit where it’s due, though; “…every time somebody’s driving somebody, I lose” is a great quip. This one seemed fairly certain, so it’s a shame it isn’t a very good screenplay.

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)

I guessed: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Much deserved, and the second time a Marvel movie has won a Best Picture. Will the charm be with live action?

Best Cinematography

Winner: Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)

I guessed: Roma

Snooze.

Best Production Design

Winner: Hannah Beachler & Jay Hart (Black Panther)

I guessed: Black Panther

I suggested Panther would come away with (this) one, but it bagged a decisive three; imagine if not justmediocre (live-action) Marvel movies met with those kinds of rewards. Disney’s pulse would be racing.

Best Costume Design

Winner: Ruth E Carter (Black Panther)

I guessed: The Favourite

I’m not entirely convinced of the merit of this win, but neither am I of the regularly rewarded genius that purportedly goes with replicating period cossies year in year out. Did Sandy Powell cancel herself out?

Best Make Up and Hairstyling

Winner: Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia Dehaney (Vice)

I guessed: Vice

Fat bald Bale. You’d have thought he could manage that unassisted.

Best Film Editing

Winner: John Ottman (Bohemian Rhapsody)

I guessed: The Favourite

Ottmans’s editing made the back end of Rhapsody – and as a result the entire movie – work, so I think he deserved this. Not as flashy as several of the options, but that’s to its credit, not theirs.

Best Sound Editing

Winner: John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone (Bohemian Rhapsody)

I guessed: First Man

Sound editing in a musical biopic? Wouldn’t that be a medley?

Best Sound Mixing

Winner: Paul Massey Tim Cavagin and John Casali (Bohemian Rhapsody)

I guessed: Bohemian Rhapsody

It’s certainly got a lot of sound in it, that Bohemian Rhapsody, and some of it is certainly mixed (probably voters took notice of the publicity surrounding the blending of three voices for Freddie singing and took that as sufficient evidence of expertise).

Best Visual Effects

Winner: Paul Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles and JD Schwalm (First Man)

I guessed: Avengers: Infinity War

I was rooting for First Man, but didn’t think it had a chance. Nice to see a picture with – to an extent – old school effects get rewarded.

Best Original Score

Winner: Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther)

I guessed: Mary Poppins Returns

I can’t really sneeze at this; it’s one of the better Marvel scores (not a high bar, I know) and Göransson, imminently in great demand, will doubtless be glad not to have to add another Death Wish to his resumé.

Best Original Song

Winner: Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando and Andrew Wyatt for Shallow (A Star is Born)

I guessed: Shallow

It’s a good song, well sung. You can’t ask much better than that of a category often filled with barely adequate dross. That said, the win should be revoked for Gaga’s entirely phoney tearful acceptance speech.

Best Foreign Language Feature

Winner: Roma

I guessed: Roma

Probably the deadest cert of all the season’s dead certs. Some quality, unexpected ‘r’ rolling in announcing it wasn’t anticipated, however.

Best Documentary Feature

Winner: Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi, Jimy Chin, Evan Hayes and Shannon Dill)

I guessed: RBG

The popular pick got picked, the Academy opting to ease off on the politics, perversely, when it came to the generally more cerebral world of docs.

Best Animated Short

Winner: Bao (Domee Shi and Becky Neimann-Cobb)

I guessed: Bao

Pixar wins again. They do nothing but compete.

Best Documentary Short

Winner: Period. End of Sentence (Raya Zehtabchi and Melissa Berton)

I guessed: Black Sheep

The title’s clever, I’ll give it that.

Best Live Action Short

Winner: Skin (Guy Nattiv and Jaime Ray Newman)

I guessed: Marguerite

Next stop: the full-length feature version.

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

Comments

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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