They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?
Handicapping the “Below the Line” Races – Part One
By J. Don Birnam
February 3, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In fact, you may think you know who is winning Best Picture, but you don’t stand a chance to win your Oscar pool unless you do some serious diving into the bulk of the so-called “below the line” categories.
A caveat about analyzing the technical categories at this stage: most crafts-oriented guilds have not given out their individual awards yet. Like the producers, directors, and actors, the cinematographers, editors, costume designers, sound editors, etc., are people too, and have their own guilds and awards to give out. Although it may seem a bit premature to prognosticate the temperature of these races before the guilds speak, it is not necessarily so. While only experts in each fields vote for the guild awards, the entire Academy votes for the technical Oscar races, which leads to mismatches. Sometimes the more overall beloved (but not necessarily better lit/designed/sounded) movie wins at the Oscars, while the more meritorious work takes the guild prize. Thus, the predictive value of the guilds races can be limited. In any event, we will update these predictions before Oscar night once all the guilds have spoken.
In trying to predict the winners of technical Oscars, it helps to take the temperature of the overall Best Picture race. A year in which one single movie is beloved can lead to a “sweep” in which the front-runner takes most of the prizes regardless of merit - most recently Slumdog Millionaire and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King before that. This year, despite Gravity’s strength in the technical races, I do not see it running away with every prize necessarily, given the stiff Best Picture race. I expect the three-way race will result in close contests where a few votes can swing races either way, and that most voters will take harder looks at some categories - to spread the wealth if you will. Indeed, in recent years, the Academy has not hesitated to go for one-off awards to movies like Alice in Wonderland, Marie Antoinette, or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, to name a few, despite the presence of Best Picture nominees in their respective categories, where the eventual winner was not universally beloved.
Therein lies what I (and probably no one else) think of as a fascinating tension between the overall Best Picture race and the other Oscar categories. Each branch of the Academy is responsible for nominating the movies in their branch, so, for example, only movie editors nominate for Best Film Editing, etc. But people are people and, as we have discussed, Oscar voters like to vote for what they like.
The result of this is that you see eyebrow raising choices sometimes insofar as branches want to nominate a movie simply because they like it. Also, people like to vote for what’s popular, and they want to place their stamp of approval on the Best Picture frontrunners. A “meme” of sort develops, and you see questionable choices like Dallas Buyers Club receiving a Best Editing nomination, or American Hustle a costumes nod over the much more showy and intricate Catching Fire.
This is unfortunate. The work, research, and effort that some of these technicians put into their projects is astounding and jaw-dropping. They should not be punished because the story of their movie is not serious enough to be a Best Picture contender. The branch most guilty of this, arguably, is the Editing branch.
Best Film Editing is widely considered to be the “Best Picture” of the technical races, and for good reason. A film’s editor puts together the movie and delivers a finished product once all the elements (sound, effects, etc.) have been superimposed on the takes. Indeed, many argue that a Best Film Editing win early on during Oscar night for any of the contenders can augur good things to come for that movie. I don’t buy it, by the way--in the last sixteen ceremonies Best Film Editing has gone on to win Best Picture only seven times.
Indeed, the Academy has not hesitated to give the award to what is the best edited movie over a Best Picture frontrunner, like when The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Bourne Ultimatum triumphed over The Artist and No Country for Old Men, respectively. But none of this has stopped the Editing branch from considering themselves the cool man at the technical awards party, and their penchant for trying to predict the Best Picture/Director line up can result in frustrating choices, like Dallas Buyers Club this year.
The saving grace is that each branch does tend to reserve a slot and maybe two for well-crafted movies regardless of their broader Best Picture appeal, and it is always refreshing to see these works recognized, like Prisoners showing up in the Cinematography race, All is Lost in Sound, and The Great Gatsby in Production Design.
With all the preliminaries aside, let’s dive in to some of the easier races today, reserving the closer calls for the next installment of the column.
Best Cinematography
Let’s start with an award that was in the news this weekend - Best Cinematography. On Saturday, the American Society of Cinematographers guild gave their top prize to Gravity’s Emmanuel Lubezki, and I predict that the Mexican cinematographer will emerge victorious on Oscar night.
From the other nominees in this category, one can likely and safely eliminate The Grandmaster, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Nebraska. The first movie, The Grandmaster was neither well reviewed nor widely seen. The nomination is well-deserved, as the photography for the movie including overseeing the shooting of single scenes which took over three full weeks to film - with eerie smoke and opaque lightning. It is the kind of lightning that brought Oscars to Road to Perdition and Inception’s cinematographers, but those movies were highly respected.
Nebraska is also a deserved nominee - I understand it is singularly difficult to film a movie in black and white and still give some vibrancy to the ultimate effect and carefully distinguishing between tones of gray. But, ultimately, black and white may seem too “simplistic” to the lay Academy member to vote for this film, and despite some nominations for black and white films since Schindler’s List took home the prize, none has emerged victorious on Oscar night.
Inside Llewyn Davis also shows some gumption from the cinematographers’ branch - they must have admired, like I did, the faded color palette that gave a stale, near black and white aesthetic to the movie. Indeed, its nomination shows that at least a small group of the Academy respects that movie and, I suspect, is deeply passionate about it. But its weaker-than-expected showing across the other branches likely dooms its chances here.
This brings it down to Roger Deakins’ nominated lightning and camera work in the thriller Prisoners, and the presumptive front-runner, Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on Gravity. Deakins is best known for his frequent collaborations with the Coen brothers and for being the loser-est member of the branch: this is his 11th nomination in this category, and he will likely walk away a runner-up for the 11th time. It is a shame, too, because the mostly drab and mood-setting lightning of Prisoners is a key element to obtaining the right tone for the movie. Deakins’ work is one of a kind.
But I sincerely doubt that the Academy will pass over Lubezki (who has had his own mini-rash of Oscar misfortune) for his highly advanced lightning of different phases of the Earth’s day in Gravity. Lubezki is, in fact, no stranger to surprise victors here. He was widely expected to win for what is now considered one of the most well-lit movies of all time, Children of Men (Lubezki’s last collaboration with Cuaron), but was passed over as a large groundswell of support for the deeply beloved Pan’s Labyrinth overtook him to the benefit of his Mexican compatriot, Guillermo Navarro. But don’t expect history to repeat itself this time around. When the envelope for Best Cinematography is opened and Lubezki’s name is called, it may signal the start of a very good night for Mexicans at the Oscars.
Best Original Song.
Another category that has been in the news of late is Best Original Song. The nominees here this year are “Let It Go,” from Frozen, “Happy,” from Despicable Me 2, “The Moon Song,” from Her, “Ordinary Love,” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and “Alone Yet Not Alone” from Alone Yet Not Alone.
By now you have probably heard of the mini-scandal of sorts that erupted on nominations morning when a song from an unknown, barely screened movie about a Christian family kidnapped by Native Americans was nominated. Eyebrows were raised given that it was composed by a former director of the song branch of the Academy. Two weeks later, the Academy announced that it was rescinding the nomination because the songwriters had directly e-mailed voters to ask them to watch the movie, in violation of Academy rules. One wonders whether such a drastic move was really necessary given that the song has no chance of winning and that the other four, with juggernaut studios campaigning for them, have likely committed a rules-breaking peccadillo here to there. But one fewer nominee at least increases a prognosticator’s chances of getting it right, so…
In any event, what should be one of the easiest calls of the night comes in this category - a category almost defunct as of three years ago when the branch determined songs made originally for motion pictures were so scarce and lacking in quality that it nominated only two. The category has since recovered from its near death experience and yielded a strong showing of original and memorable content by respected artists. Although “Ordinary Love” and “Happy” benefit from the star power of their composers, U2 and Pharrell Williams respectfully, the movies are not sufficiently high-profile to make a difference here. Nor would I put much stock in U2’s victory at the Golden Globes for their Mandela song: we know the Hollywood Foreign Press likes to generate star-wattage for their show.
The most well-known, respected, and, frankly, best of the bunch is “Let It Go,” by a married couple from Brooklyn that would join the revered “EGOT” Club should they win the Oscar, as I expect them to. Their other work has already netted them an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony for their work on Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon. The song accompanies the most popular movie in the bunch and also the most aggressively campaigned. Diva Idina Menzel will have much more to belt out about on Oscar night.
Best Visual Effects.
The good news about this category is that because prestigious Best Picture winners with showy effects are relatively uncommon, the branch has to really dive in and decide which movies were the best effected. The bad news is that if a Best Picture contender shows up in this category, it wins regardless of whether it deserves it or not. Every. Single. Time. It is a stunning statistic: it has never happened that a non-Best Picture contender has beaten out a Best Picture contender if one is nominated in this category. The Academy is too protective of its reputation and if it can avoid tagging a movie they do not respect as an Oscar winner (and, as we know, they do not respect effects-driven blockbusters), then it will avoid doing so.
Thus, perhaps the easiest call of the entire night is Gravity for Best Visual Effects. That is not to say, of course, that the movie does not deserve it. Indeed, over The Hobbit, The Lone Ranger, Iron Man 3, and Star Trek, it’s hard to begrudge them for picking a movie that is mostly effects driven and that provides a fresh perspective of space effects. My only nit with the branch is that they ignored the much more impressive effects of Pacific Rim in favor of the terrible Ranger, but that is neither here nor there in terms of the ultimate win. Gravity will win this award in a cake walk.
Best Make-up and Hairstyling.
Special rules for this category since its inception in 1982 keep the number of nominees at three, as the branch believes that movies worthy of recognition here are relatively few and far between. This year is no exception, and the three nominees are Dallas Buyers Club, Jackass: Bad Grandpa, and The Lone Ranger. Unlike Best Visual Effects, for whatever reason the Academy has not always picked a Best Picture contender over a non-contender in this category. So, for example, Men in Black famously beat Titanic here and prevented it from winning what would have been a record-setting 12th Oscar. However, you can bet that in this year the Academy will simply not be able to bring itself to award an Oscar to the two other duds that the branch served up in this category. You can take it to the bank that Dallas Buyers Club will win this category quite easily. *Note: I have not seen Jackass.
These four technical categories should be among the easiest to check off on Oscar night. Next time, we will delve into much harder categories, including Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, and (gasp) the Sound categories.