Once Upon A Time in Hollywood… Ain’t that the truth.

Oscar Winners 2020

The Best Picture upset (most had it as a serious contender, but a long shot as a winner due to the dual nomination with Best International Feature and that one being in the bag) can only be a good thing for the ceremony, a further strike against predictability (whether or not it was a response to Green Book and the ongoing campaigning over representation among nominees). While some are grumbling about dual Best Picture category wins, anyone familiar with the BAFTAs is more than used to that sort of thing. Most of the rest of the biggies, director aside (although, not unexpected), were widely expected, so it also means that, in an era where the race is scrutinised to death, that it hasn’t exhausted itself long before the ceremony.

And the ceremony? I only caught the highlights, very fortunately by the look of some of those musical numbers. Some decent Chris Rock gags (“Jeff Bezos is so rich, he got divorced and he’s still the richest man in the world"; “Marty, I gotta tell you, I loved the first season of The Irishman”). Bring back the MC, though. Don’t act like you don’t want one. Be honest that no one has the cojones to brave the Twitter storm; picking the right one can mean ratings, apart from anything else.

I picked 14 of the winners this time, fairly par for my slack course since I started recording my guesswork in 2013 (they go: 11, 16, 16, 15, 14, 16, 15).

Best Picture

Winner: Parasite (Kwak Sin-ae and Bong Joon-ho)

I guessed: 1917

“We never imagined this to ever happen.” Nor did 90% of the Oscar pundits. I’m relieved it wasn’t 1917, which represents Hollywood at its most unremarkable and self-satisfied (technical achievements aside).

Best Director

Winner: Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)

I guessed: Sam Mendes (1917)

Result! It also underlines that there was enough solidarity behind the Best Picture that it wasn’t merely a flukey result of the preferential vote (I also think Bong’s a much better director than he is a writer, but that’s true of 99% of directors who are directors first).

Best Actor

Winner: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

I guessed: Joaquin Phoenix

What kind of medications is Joaquin on? Not ones you want to take just before you go up on stage. You certainly wouldn’t want to get into a staring match with him. That said, I can’t fault most of what he had to say.

Best Actress

Winner: Renee Zellweger (Judy)

I guessed: Renee Zellweger

Was Renee bored of all the awards by this point? She seemed to be forgetting her speech as she delivered it. One of those acting wins (others include Jeremy Irons, Jessica Lange, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges) for a film no one bothered seeing.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

I guessed: Brad Pitt

Inevitable. Brad’s speechwriters deserve an award for their work this season.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

I guessed: Laura Dern

Gushing with the best of them (“Some say never meet your heroes, but I say, if you’re really blessed, you get them as your parents”), but mentioning Bruce in an acceptance speech is always a positive.

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Parasite ((Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won)

I guessed: Parasite

There’s discussion one whether Bong’s tally should count as equalling Walt’s (since International Feature goes to a country). I think it should. I mean, who’s taking the thing home?

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi)

I guessed: Little Women

I had the winner as my interesting choice, because Taika threw out the book, rather than because it’s a good screenplay (it stinks). So Waititi’s officially part of the establishment now. He didn’t even take the piss in his speech.

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Toy Story 4

I guessed: Klaus

Outrageous that this merely decent fourquel won when at least two others were far superior. I guessed a Pixar win, only in the wrong category.

Best Cinematography

Winner: 1917 (Roger Deakins)

I guessed: 1917

I don’t know, you go an eternity of nominations without a sniff of a win, and then the statuettes won’t stop coming.

Best Production Design

Winner: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh)

I guessed: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

So Quentin’s film takes home two Oscars. Two more than Marty’s.

Best Costume Design

Winner: Little Women (Jacqueline Durran)

I guessed: Little Women

Greta has to make do with a win in the frocks department. Very gender-stereotyped, that.

Best Make Up and Hairstyling

Winner: Bombshell (Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker)

I guessed: Bombshell

Let’s be clear: this was not for the work done on Nicole Kidman.

Best Film Editing

Winner: Ford v Ferrari (Andrew Buckland and Michael McCusker)

I guessed: Parasite

Can’t argue with that.

Best Sound Editing

Winner: Ford v Ferrari (Donald Sylvester)

I guessed: Ford v Ferrari

See above.

Best Sound Mixing

Winner: 1917 (Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson)

I guessed: Ford v Ferrari

I had the 1917 sound award in the wrong category.

Best Visual Effects

Winner: 1917 (Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler and Dominic Tuohy)

I guessed: 1917

James Corden. James Corden. James Corden. Will that banish him?

Best Original Score

Winner: Joker (Hildur Guõnadóttir)

I guessed: Joker

All women are superheroes? Yeah, lap that nonsense up. Hildur had sure been prepped too.

Best Original Song

Winner: Rocketman (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, Elton John

I guessed: Rocketman

Elton’s second Oscar.

Best International Feature

Winner: Parasite (South Korea)

I guessed: Parasite

Wouldn’t it have been funny if hadn’t won this but still won Best Picture? No? Okay, then.

Best Documentary Feature

Winner: American Factory (Steve Bognar, Julia and Jeff Reichert)

I guessed: Honeyland

Everyone was saying American Factory, but I just wasn’t having it. Netflix got two Oscars, then.

Best Animated Short

Winner: Hair Love (Matthew A Cherry & Karen Rupert Toliver)

I guessed: Kitbull

The mistake of thinking, because you didn’t think much of something, it surely won’t win (Jojo Rabbit syndrome). Still, a flawlessly on-message speech, that one.

Best Documentary Short

Winner: Learning to Skate in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) (Carol Dysinger and Elena Andreicheva)

I guessed: St. Louis Superman

I should have gone with the received wisdom there too.

Best Live Action Short

Winner: The Neighbors’ Window (Marshall Curry)

I guessed: Nefta Football Club

I wouldn’t call anything in this category an upset, but I don’t think The Neighbor’s Window was generally predicted.

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

Comments

Believe me, Mr Bond, I could shoot you from Stuttgart und still create ze proper effect.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
(SPOILERS) Some of the reactions to Spectre would have you believe it undoes all the “good” work cementing Daniel Craig’s incarnation of Bond in Skyfall. If you didn’t see that picture as the second coming of the franchise (I didn’t) your response to the latest may not be so harsh, despite its less successful choices (Blofeld among them). And it isn’t as if one step, forward two steps back are anything new in perceptions of the series (or indeed hugely divisive views on what even constitutes a decent Bond movie). After the raves greeting Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan suffered a decidedly tepid response to his second outing, Tomorrow Never Dies, albeit it was less eviscerated than Craig’s sophomore Quantum of Solace. Tomorrow’s reputation disguises many strong points, although it has to be admitted that a Moore-era style finale and a floundering attempt to package in a halcyon villain aren’t among them.

The Bond series’ flirtations with contemporary relevance have a…

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

I still think it’s a terrible play, but it makes a wonderful rehearsal.

Room Service (1938)
(SPOILERS) The Marx Brothers step away from MGM for a solitary RKO outing, and a scarcely disguised adaption of a play to boot. Room Service lacks the requisite sense of anarchy and inventiveness of their better (earlier) pictures – even Groucho’s name, Gordon Miller, is disappointingly everyday – but it’s nevertheless an inoffensive time passer.

This better not be some 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea shit, man.

Underwater (2020)
(SPOILERS) There’s no shame in a quality B-movie, or in an Alien rip-off done well. But it’s nevertheless going to need that something extra to make it truly memorable in its own right. Underwater, despite being scuppered at the box office, is an entirely respectable entry in both those arenas from director William Eubank, but like the recent Life (which, in fairness, had an ending that very nearly elevated it to the truly memorable), it can’t quite go that extra mile, or summon that much needed sliver of inspiration to set it apart.

Time wounds all heels.

Go West (1940)
(SPOILERS) Comedy westerns were nothing new when the Marx Brothers succumbed – Buster Keaton had made one with the same title fifteen years earlier – but theirs served to underline how variable the results could be. For every Bob Hope (Son of Paleface) there’s a Seth McFarlane (A Million Ways to Die in the West). In theory, the brothers riding roughshod over such genre conventions ought to have been uproarious, but they’d rather run out of gas by this point, and the results are, for the most part, sadly pedestrian. Even Go West's big train-chase climax fails to elicit the once accustomed anarchy that was their stock in trade.

Shall we bind the deal with a kiss? Or, five dollars in cash? You lose either way.

The Big Store (1941)
(SPOILERS) Three go mad in a department store. The results are undoubtedly more diverting than low point Go West, but it feels as if there is even more flotsam to wade through to get to the good stuff in The Big Store, which is almost exclusively delivered by Groucho as private detective and bodyguard Wolf J Flywheel. Perhaps surprisingly, however, the climax is one of the better ones, an extended chase sequence through the store that is frequently quite inventive.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

Goodbye, Mr Chimps.

At the Circus (1939)
(SPOILERS) This is where the brothers sink into their stretch of middling MGM movies, now absent the presence of their major supporter Irving Thalberg; it’s probably for the best this wasn’t called A Day at the Circus, as it would instantly have drawn unflattering comparisons with the earlier MGM pair that gave them their biggest hits. Nevertheless, there’s enough decent material to keep At the Circus fairly sprightly (rather than “fairly ponderous”, as Pauline Kael put it).

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Never compare me to the mayor in Jaws! Never!

Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

Along which lines, I’d lay no claims to the 1984 movie being some kind of auteurist gem, but it does make some capital from the polarising forces of Aykroyd’s ultra-geekiness on the subject of spooks and Murray’s “I’m just here for the asides” irreverence. In contrast, Feig’s picture is all about treating the subject as he does any other genre, be it cop, or spy, or romcom. There’s no great affection, merely a reliably professional approach, one minded to ensure that a generous quota of gags (on-topic not required) can be pumped out via abundant improv sessions.

So there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ghostbusters, but aside from …

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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