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

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Marriage Story (2019)
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Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
I’ve seen comments suggesting that John Sturges’ thriller hasn’t aged well, which I find rather mystifying. Sure, some of the characterisations border on the cardboard, but the director imbues the story with a taut, economical backbone.

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Django Unchained (2012)
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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
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Communion (1989)
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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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