Minimum Oscars prep

As has been my custom for about ten years, I kind of tuned out on the Oscars once I learned the nominees six weeks ago. I used to be obsessed over these awards when I was younger, but when I see a friend of mine repeatedly post on Facebook about joining his Oscar pool, I kind of just scoff. Part of it is that I don't really care, but another part is that I feel like you can just take your predictions from a number of reliable sources online and you'll get 75% of them right, with only a few surprises eluding you. What fun is a pool where half the entrants have basically the same picks?

But I do feel a bit of an obligation, which is actually coupled with genuine desire, to do a little Oscars prep, so this weekend, I watched the only remaining best picture nominee I hadn't seen, and my second-favorite of the nominees. (My favorite, Drive My Car, may have been available, but I can't just casually throw on a three-hour movie.)

Friday night it was Nightmare Alley, which I had planned to watch on the projector in our garage, until I realized, moments beforehand, that I had that problem last year trying to play iTunes rentals through our projector. It's incompatible for some reason. So I just watched that one in the living room.

On Saturday night I got my technical specs worked out correctly and remembered to rent Dune through Amazon instead, where I could play it through the Amazon Prime website rather than my iTunes software, hence allowing a projector setup in my garage. (There may have been a way to do this with an Apple equivalent streaming site, but I didn't bother to figure it out.) 

I liked Nightmare Alley a lot better at the start, before Cate Blanchett's character came into it. No offense to Blanchett, but the direction the story took after this point just didn't do it for me, nor particularly did her performance if I'm being honest. (Okay, so, some offense.) I was set to give it 3.5 stars on Letterboxd by the end, but ultimately caved and went with four just because of how great the first hour is and how much I liked the production design, the camerawork, and the overall effort that went into creating this 1930s circus. I think I am a sucker for old circuses (aren't we all). Also, I remain an old softie when it comes to star ratings. I just can't help myself.

As for Dune, I did not expect my enjoyment of it to diminish on a second viewing, and indeed it did not. I said above I could not casually throw on a three-hour movie, but I guess a 2:35 movie wasn't as much of a hurdle for me. But Dune moves more quickly for me than a movie that length usually does, and besides, I had already decided I was going to allow myself a certain luxury when watching it: Namely, if I started to fall asleep, so be it. The tricky thing about watching on my projector is that I don't have a way to remotely stop the movie from playing, so I have to get up out of my bean bag and press stop if I want to close my eyes for a minute. In a movie I've already seen, though, I decided I could just let sleep overtake me for a few minutes, knowing a loud sound would snap me back to attention periodically (especially with Hans Zimmer doing the score). And if I missed a few minutes, it would be stuff I already knew was going to happen anyway. Besides, the first half of the movie, where I was less likely to fall asleep, is the best part anyway. It was pretty freeing to make this decision, and indeed, I probably did miss a combined ten minutes of the film's final half-hour.

I've got one more night, Sunday night, before the ceremony airs on Monday my time, so am I going to watch the best costume nominees I haven't seen and jam in as many of the live action shorts as possible?

Nope. Talk to 2002 me if you want to see that sort of thing.

I will, however, be avoiding spoilers during the day on Monday, and will gladly watch the ceremony, as I always do, on Monday night once the kids are squared away for the evening.

I haven't missed an Oscars since the mid-1980s, and none since I started watching them regularly. Some things will never change.

Dismissing Bradley Cooper

It's been a couple years since I've seen Bradley Cooper in anything. In fact, if I had thought of him at all in the past few years, which I haven't, I might have said "Hey, what happened to that guy?" His last movie prior to the last few weeks was in 2019, but he wasn't on screen, as that was just voice work in Avengers: Endgame. Before that it was A Star is Born in 2018, which feels like ages ago. 

It turns out it was just one of those weird issues of COVID timing, as it's now been a Bradley Cooper December. He's in both Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley, neither of which I've seen yet. 

So why am I writing about Bradley Cooper today, you ask?

While scrolling through Facebook on my phone the other day, I came across an article that asked if it was finally time for an "overdue Oscar" for Cooper. 

Overdue? What are they talking about? This is a guy I only first became aware of 16 years ago in Wedding Crashers, and he's only 46. He might score an Oscar nomination every now and again, but that's usually because of the strength of the films he's been in, nothing front runner-y about the performances he's given.

Well, I got some clarification on that "every now and again" frequency of Cooper's Oscar nominations: He's been nominated EIGHT times.

What the hell?

I thought it was a misprint. But I have gone back and confirmed. And surely, any person who has been nominated eight times for his industry's most prestigious award could reasonably be described as overdue to receive it.

He doesn't feel overdue, though, and when going back and considering the roles that have earned these nominations, I think you'll agree with my assessment.

The first thing I discovered, though, was that they were not all roles. Three of the nominations were not acting nominations. That's cheating a bit, don't you think? Cooper was a producer on American Sniper, A Star is Born and Joker -- the latter of which being the only one that was not accompanied by a best actor nomination for the actor, who does not appear in it. As all three of these movies felt like underdogs to get a best picture nod, they were easy for me to forget -- had I even been considering producer credits when my eyes first jumped out of my head at the eight nominations.

Five acting nominations is still pretty impressive, so I had to dig further into that.

His first acting nomination came in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook, a film I had as my #3 of the year, but which I have not since rewatched. A friend had it has his #1 of the year. But he didn't include it in his best of the decade and I've never felt inclined to go back to it, so I suspect this one has not aged well. Cooper does give a pretty nuanced performance if I remember correctly, with a good mixture of comedy and the anger that highlights the character's mental health issues.

Next up was American Hustle the following year, where Cooper received his first and so-far only supporting actor nomination. It was a second straight nomination in a film directed by David O. Russell. This one didn't work for me nearly as much as Playbook, as I gave it only a marginal thumbs up. I don't remember Cooper either hurting or helping this film. All four of the leads got nominations so he may have just been swept up in the general furor of interest in the film (which, deservedly, did not win any of its ten nominations). 

It was three years in a row for Cooper with American Sniper in 2014. I didn't see the film at the time, but I always remembered that one of the hosts of the Slate Culture Gabfest went nuts for it, so I knew I should get to it at some point, and finally did in 2019. Clint Eastwood has made some good films in his dotage, but this is not one of them. I gave it 2.5 stars on Letterboxd.

Ha, I needed to read Wikipedia more closely before starting this. There were actually three separate nominations for Cooper in A Star is Born, one of which was an adapted screenplay nomination. So he actually only has four acting nominations, which is finally starting to sound more correct. This might be his most deserved acting nomination, though I find this film falls apart pretty significantly down the stretch after a powerhouse first hour, of which Cooper is a crucial part. Actually he's a crucial part in both the movie's initial ascent and eventual downfall.

Whether Cooper has eight nominations, or only half that number in terms of the nominations that really "count" (I've always found producer nominations a little suss, even though films obviously need a producer), is besides the point. The article was clearly misleading when it mentioned Cooper's eight nominations very prominently in the text. (And if I needed to read Wikipedia more closely, I probably needed to read the original article more closely as it likely would have saved me some trouble writing this whole post.) I think you can be "overdue" to win an acting award, but you can't be "overdue" as a producer, as your role there is less quantifiable and it's hard to know to what extent your fingerprints are on the final film. For example, do we consider Brad Pitt an essential voice on 12 Years a Slave? I don't think we do.

The point is that I have always dismissed Bradley Cooper a bit, and may continue to do so until he gives me a real reason not to.

I don't have anything against the man. I like him as a screen presence. 

But I think the smarmy asshole we first met in Wedding Crashers has never really gone away in my mind. There's always going to be a bit of the aggro, entitled frat boy in him. There's malice in that smile. There's a part of me that always wants to smack that malicious smile off his face.

Maybe that's key to his work though. Maybe it gives him something either to dive into more deeply, or to play off of. 

Well, I'll have the opportunity to reconsider Cooper as I see Licorice Pizza (probably within the next week or so) and Nightmare Alley (maybe not until later, as it doesn't open here until later in January). Given the different setting of the two films, which seem to ask very different things of him, maybe I'll finally appreciate the range that has gotten Cooper a still impressive four acting nominations.

He won't really seem "overdue," though, until those acting nominations reach eight.