Illustration by Jillian Tamaki
On Sunday, February 27, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences will honour Hollywood’s top talent with its
77th annual Oscar presentation. Before the stars dance into
the night — or, more specifically, along the red-carpet
walk from their limousines to Vanity Fair’s ultra-luxe
after-party — our critics discuss the presentation’s most
prominent prizes. From now through the end of the week,
get up on what’s going down with Oscar’s best actor, actress,
directing and picture awards.
Contributors
Tara Ariano co-created and co-edits Hissyfit.com, Fametracker.com and TelevisionWithoutPity.com. She is the author of Untitled: A Bad Teen Novel.
Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.
Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
February 25, 2004
Best Picture
The nominees: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray and SidewaysFrom: Tara Ariano
To: Stephen Cole, Katrina Onstad
Subject: Best PictureSo we arrive at the end. The ultimate prize. The award that puts you in such illustrious company as Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind and Driving Miss Daisy. In case you can’t tell in the printed word that I am being sarcastic and do not regard those as especially illustrious titles... well, I am, and I don’t.
Every nominee wants to win Best Picture, even though the year’s actual Best Picture seldom wins and often isn’t even nominated. This year, I could have subbed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Incredibles for any one of the nominated movies; hell, In Good Company was a better movie than Finding Neverland.
Some years, there’s a Best Picture front-runner, and its eventual win at the (generally bitter) end of the evening is neither exciting nor surprising; remember how dull it was to watch the Oscars the years that Titanic, Schindler’s List and the third Lord of the Rings movie were nominated. This year, there’s at least a tiny amount of drama in the fact that the pre-Oscar awards have been spread about pretty liberally, so there’s no obvious Best Picture winner. The critics love Sideways, the actors love Million Dollar Baby, the audience loved Ray enough to keep it in the box-office top 20 for three months.
No one loves Finding Neverland, though. How did it even get into this category? Shut up, Miramax.
Anyway, The Aviator has the most nominations overall, and of the nominated movies is the most epic-ish: it covers a pretty broad expanse of time, most of it in The Olden Days, so the sets and costumes were big and expensive, and we’re supposed to be impressed by that. In the absence of any other really spectacular alternatives, the Academy probably will be impressed enough to give it the Oscar.
From: Stephen Cole
To: Tara Ariano, Katrina Onstad
Subject: Best PictureCould be, Tara. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that the Best Picture Oscar serves the same role for Hollywood that the Governor General does for Canada: it is that industry’s goodwill ambassador. Which is why, way back when, How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane; and why, in subsequent years, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Ghandi, Rocky and Chariots of Fire took the Big Prize, while Raging Bull, The Pianist, Pulp Fiction, Lost in Translation and Mystic River didn’t.
Having said that, how do you measure Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator? The first ends with — SPOILER AHEAD! SPOILER AHEAD! — an assisted suicide, while the second comes to a halt with the mad gleam in Howard Hughes’s eye having grown to the size of a lighthouse beacon.
Of the two, Million Dollar Baby is probably the more inspirational picture. And Hilary Swank delivered a more moving performance than Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s why I’m betting on MDB.
But don’t count out Sideways. I think that people who “get” the movie are unwavering in their support, while The Aviator and MDB constituencies are less sure of themselves. Perhaps the favoured two split the undecided vote and Sideways sneaks in and wins.
From: Katrina Onstad
To: Tara Ariano, Stephen Cole
Subject: Best PictureI’m going to be uncharacteristically positive for a moment and remind you, Tara, that Best Picture also puts the winner in the company of Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter and The Godfather. And I think this is why we all go through this painful exercise every year: We know that justice has been served before, and we cling to the faint possibility that it will be served again. We know there are still great films, great performances and great scripts out there, and we dig down for that small grain of optimism that believes that greatness will be recognized. Then again: Forrest Gump. You’re right; I hate the world.
So it can’t go to a comedy, and especially not a comedy with a lead character who steals from his mother, so farewell Sideways. And good question, Tara: what was with Finding Neverland? I know smart people who loved this film, but to me it was vomitously whimsical, and my God, so boring. And it had a creepy anti-woman bent, suggesting that a wife who wants some respect and time from her husband must be smothering his dreams to continue sucking as a playwright — while the ideal woman prepares picnics and applauds his little creations from afar, though never contributes anything of her own. Ick.
I’ll leave Ray to Stephen.
Best Picture usually goes to the longest film, and The Aviator is 170 minutes versus Million Dollar Baby’s 132 minutes. However, Baby has done a smart, slow-burn marketing campaign that’s put it in theatres more recently than any other nominee. I also thought it was a fantastic film, fearlessly old school, melodramatic and moving. I just don’t sense any goodwill towards The Aviator. If it does win, it will be because of pure sentimentality for ’70s-era Scorsese.
From: Tara Ariano
To: Stephen Cole, Katrina Onstad
Subject: Best PictureYeah, not to be contrarian, Katrina, but all of your examples of actually good Best Picture winners are from a looooooong time ago; lately, each successive winner is safer and blander than the last. The closest we’ve come to social commentary of the Deer Hunter school in the past decade is Lord of the Rings, and that only sneaked in because it was all a big allegory for... something.
Anyway, Stephen’s right — there does seem to be a groundswell of support for Million Dollar Baby, now that all the pre-Oscar awards have been distributed. Maybe voters will be moved by Chris Rock’s complaint about The Aviator — that rich people’s problems aren’t all that interesting — and instead back a classic underdog story from a grizzled old Hollywood veteran. I still think, though, that Baby is going to be too small for Academy voters’ tastes. Especially the ones who attended the premiere of Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels. In 1930.
From: Katrina Onstad
To: Tara Ariano, Stephen Cole
Subject: Best PictureI admire Stephen’s upbeat pro-Sideways hopes, but I think the movie is perceived as too small and too nasty. The Academy likes movies that are technically difficult — a showcase for the industry’s capabilites — and employ a lot of their friends. None of these people have heard of Thomas Haden Church; they might find it annoying that he got that part when, say, Mickey Rooney hasn’t worked in a while.
The most interesting thing about this year’s race is how uninteresting it is. As Tara pointed out, the pre-awards were divided, and the nominations don’t seem that inspired; there’s not even the truly appalling mockable entry we count on! (Though Finding Neverland fills that slot for me.)
I think Hollywood likes a movie about Hollywood, and while I found it hard to get into The Aviator — it’s just not that easy to root for the little guy when the little guy is TWA — I wonder if nostalgia for Kate and Ava and all things shimmery and Tinseltown-simple might propel it to (winged) victory.
On the other hand — I have several hands, by the way — Clint Eastwood’s beloved stature might operate the same way. I admit it: I am no soothsayer. Could go either way, but I’m thinking... Baby, baby!
From: Stephen Cole
To: Tara Ariano, Katrina Onstad
Subject: Best PictureKatrina is right on both counts. First, there isn’t a villain to root against: I still get mad thinking that Chicago won in 2002. Second, this isn’t a great horse race. I left both MDB and The Aviator at the bar, 20 minutes after I left the theatre. Never really thought about them much until this exercise. Whereas last year I was working as an unpaid publicist for Mystic River, Lost in Translation and even Master and Commander for months.
One last horse racing analogy: I think this year proves that starting position means a great deal in a close field. Ray showed up relatively early in the year and is already out on DVD. It kind of Howard Dean-ed out as a Best Picture contender in the fall. I’m not sure the same thing wouldn’t have happened to Million Dollar Baby had it been given an early release date. Similarly, Finding Neverland never would’ve lasted a year’s scrutiny. And Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which came out in March, surely would’ve captured more nomination attention as a Christmas release.
Sobering final thought: I checked Entertainment Weekly box office receipts and was shocked (but maybe not surprised) to learn that the top five Best Picture candidates this year earned $400 million US less than last year’s top five. Also, for the first time since 1985, none of the Best Picture nominees topped $100 million US.
At $270 million US, Meet the Fockers, a Christmas Day release, has generated almost as much box office as Oscar’s top five combined ($297 million US).
From: Katrina Onstad
To: Tara Ariano, Stephen Cole
Subject: Best Picture
I wonder what percentage of last year’s bigger top-five box office was due to those hobbits, though. When I think of that agonizing parade of New Zealand citizenry, this year’s wishy-washy line-up starts to look refreshing. At least there’s room for some kind of surprise, and here’s the big anti-climactic, non-surprise: no matter how predictable, bloated, self-obsessed and meaningless, we’ll be watching. Either we’re eternally hopeful, tragically stupid or quite possibly — and this doesn’t happen much where Oscars are concerned — it’s a tie, and we’re both.
