Winning the final battle

Look I can't complain about One Battle After Another winning best picture.

It was technically only my third highest ranked best picture nominee at #18 for the year, behind Sinners and Train Dreams. But you also know that I struggled with not having it ranked higher, even watching it a second time to see if I could push it up further. I couldn't, but what are the chances, ten years from now, that I'll think those other two films are better?

I won't know for ten years. For now, though, I know that I've just seen one of the really good Oscars in the past few years, where most of the humor landed, most of the speeches were good, and some really good films won some big awards. 

I only started watching around 9, so I need to go to bed, but let me just include my live thoughts as I jotted them down, as I always do on this blog, sometimes with context, some without:

- The opening Weapons bit was funny. Truly inspired, and who doesn't love a good use of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage?"

- Beautiful stage!

- Ryan Coogler said "Damn."

- The best achievement song was the perfect length, unlike last year's "I Won't Waste Time."

- Amy Madigan's narrative arc is pretty miraculous. She basically went from having essentially no career for the past couple decades to winning an Oscar. Not half bad. Also, I had no idea she was married to Ed Harris. Since 1983!

- Conan is merciless on Trump. Merciless! 

- Great use of Jane Lynch! 

- Surprised about K-Pop Demon Hunters. I'm officially 0-2 on my guesses. (I had Teyana Taylor winning best supporting actress.) Nice to see the one filmmaker encourage her collaborator not to be bullied by the play-off music.

- Great recreation of the best scene in Sinners, just for a nominated song performance! Loved the appearance of Jack O'Connell and the other two actors as well. Miles Caton! 

- Did I mention how great the stage looks?

- The Ventura Crossroads bit, making movies smaller and taller, made me LOL.

- The Frankenstein costume win leaves me 0-4. (I guessed Sinners.) Haven't even gotten to bust out my highlighter yet.

- And the same movie's makeup win makes me 0-5. 

- I was already a bit suss on the casting Oscar. The amount of time they're spending on it makes me more so. But at least I've finally picked a winner correctly. 

- Kumail Nanjiani's bit about turning famous movies into their abbreviated titles is something I wish I'd written. (Remember, I'm the guy who does the movie portmanteaus every year.)

- I'm with you, The Singers winner. I didn't know a tie was a thing either. (And to continue my terrible predictions, I didn't guess either winner.)

- So Sean Penn is a three-time Oscar winner. He's managed to piss me off each time. The first was when he beat out Bill Murray for Lost in Translation. The second was when he beat out Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. And now it's for not showing up. 

- Oh and just as a reminder, I've only gotten one guess correct so far. 

- It's ironic that Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans gave out the best screenwriting awards because their banter was not well written. (But at least I got both of those right.)

- GOAT Oscar host Billy Crystal shows up to remember Rob Reiner. Pretty great. I was just thinking what a terrible 2025 it was for Crystal. At the start of the year, the house he'd been living in for some 45 years in Pacific Palisades burned to the ground. At the end of the year, his best friend was murdered. Yet he's still here. Brings a tear to your eye. 

- Diane Keaton gets a special segment from Rachel McAdams too. 

- And then finishing with Redford. Duvall probably would have had a good claim too. 

- Speaking of past Oscars hosts ... here's Jimmy Kimmel! 

- As a sign of the increasing obscurity of the documentary feature in the cinematic landscape, I had only even heard of one of the nominees, which I also saw (The Perfect Neighbor). Well, I did guess the one that won, even though I didn't see it. 

- Happy to see the Bridesmaids crew. They are in good form. 

- So glad that her loss for The Substance last year didn't mean Demi Moore's last appearance at the Oscars.

- Autumn Arkapaw's win is a landmark one, but it does make me wonder about Rachel Morrison, who she name-checked and who shot Creed and Black Panther. Wither Rachel? Wait a minute -- she only shot Black Panther. Maryse Alberti shot Creed. What is it with Coogler and the female DPs? Good on him. 

- Lionel Richie looks great for 76.

- Boo on playing off the poor Korean guy who won best song. 

- Okay the PTA win sets up OBAA for best picture. 

- I knew the odds had shifted for Michael B. Jordan, having paid enough attention to hear that buzz in the last few days. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Richly deserved for my second favorite film of the year, which has probably just gotten its last Oscar. (Also, though I am only vaguely aware of Timothee Chalamet's relentless Oscars campaign, I'm glad whatever the try-hard things he was up to did not get rewarded.)

- Happy for Jessie Buckley, even though I did not like Hamnet. 

- A little Ewan and Nicole for a 25th anniversary for Moulin Rouge! And even better news, Nicole Kidman looks normal. 

- And it was right at this time that the 7+ app on my TV said I had been idle too long and I had to exit the app and re-enter. Fortunately, it let me do that while still being able to resume in the exact spot I left off. But what bad timing! 

- As expected, One Battler After Another -- the consensus film of the year, despite Sinners' record 16 nominations -- wins the top prize. And yes I did guess that one right. I didn't really know PTA's persona before now, and I thought he came off great. 

- And one last bit with Conan! All his choices worked. 

Really good show! 

On to the next one. 

Tuning back in to the Oscars frequency

My wife had to remind me that the Oscars were on today.

This from the person who basically hasn't watched them since we moved to Australia 13 years ago.

So yeah, it's been pretty far from my mind. I have not been keeping up with the horse race at all. I had my fantasy baseball draft yesterday. That's the sort of thing that occupies my thoughts these days in the first half of March and before. 

Of course, I do actually plan to watch them for the, I don't know, 40th year in a row. It'll just be on a delay. The last couple years, the Oscars had the decency to align with our Labour Day here in Australia, but that was last Monday. So I'll have to do the normal social media ban that I always do during my workday, which should be fine as there will be enough baseball news to consume. 

It is probably just about 40 years now. Earlier this month I mentioned that Rain Man was the first best picture winner I'd already seen at the time it was named best picture, but I was following the Oscars a few years before that. I have a distinct memory of being on my paper route the morning after the Oscars and reading in the paper about the victory of The Last Emperor, which I probably would not have known about it because I would have gone to sleep before the ceremony finished. (And what time was the Boston Globe's final deadline of the night, anyway?) I think I remember the wins of Platoon and Out of Africa as well, as things I cared about at the time they happened. I even think there was some awareness all the way back to 1981, when I would have been only seven, about Chariots of Fire, but this is becoming a bit more speculative, and I certainly wouldn't have been watching the ceremony at that point. 

As you know, in the past ten years if not a little bit more than that, I've shifted my interest to which films get nominated, not which films win. While others are deciding whether the Screen Actors Guild awards and things like that are a bellweather for a film's Oscar chances, I am barely registering that these things occurred.

But today I do plan to print out a nominations list (better do that right after I post this), make my choices, and go through with either a highlighter or a red pen to mark the ones I got right or wrong as I watch the ceremony sometime after 9 p.m. local time, after my son's basketball game and our dinner. And then hopefully post my usual reactions post at some point not too late in the early morning.

The Oscars will always remain in my blood, but sometimes I do have to force myself to tune back in. 

Lucky #26

When I said that was it for Oscars talk, I meant it ... but then after going to bed I thought of a couple things that I hadn't fit into my hurried reactions post. (Plus, it's not like I've been talking your ear off about the Oscars. In fact, they barely got a mention on this blog after I initially reacted to the nominations.)

Whichever film finishes 2025 as my 26th favorite movie of the year, they should feel happy, because it means they've got a good shot at winning best picture.

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Anora was my #26 of 2024 ... but so too was Oppenheimer my #26 of 2023.

It's a recent phenomenon for sure. If I glance over the other best picture winners since I started ranking my movies in 1996, they fall into three categories: much higher than #26 (I've had three #1s win best picture, which are Titanic, Birdman and Parasite), much lower than #26 (Nomadland was #82, Green Book was #69), or not seen at all by the time of the awards (12 Years a Slave and CODA, both of which I could not see in time to rank them). 

Number 26 is an interesting middle ground. It acknowledges that I think the film is good, maybe even very good, but there are usually at least a handful of best picture nominees I like better. This year, there were seven, as I had a whopping six in my top ten. Only A Complete Unknown did I dislike more, if you want to put it in the negative rather than the positive sense. (I still haven't seen I'm Still Here.)

But there's also a kind of message to it, whether intentional or not, and I appear to have been sending that message to both Oppenheimer and Anora. The top 25 makes an interesting cutoff, or at least, I think of it that way because my friend who does the ranking exercise with me used to highlight his top 25 before sending his whole list. He's scaled that back to his top 20 now, but the line of demarcation between #25 and #26 still feels like it means something. And to the extent that I apply intentionality to anything I do with my bigger list, making a movie #26 says to me "I get this movie is respected, and I liked it quite a lot too, but I have problems with it."

Apparently, that is the type of movie that wins best picture.

Since we own Anora, my wife is going to watch it this weekend when I'm out of town. So we'll see what she thinks.

A Complete shutout

Only two best picture nominees did not pick up a single Oscar: Nickel Boys, my #10, which wasn't nominated in enough categories to have a real chance, and A Complete Unknown, which received eight nominations ... and won not a one of them.

Sweet, sweet justice.

You may remember that I did not care for A Complete Unknown. It was my 128th ranked movie of the year, out of 177. Granted, it was also the last movie I ranked. But I don't know if my opinion would have improved significantly if I'd been given more time to think about it. Maybe 119th. 

So like what happened a couple years ago when The Fabelmans, which I also did not like, didn't win anything, I'm feeling like a necessary correction occurred here. I was bracing for Timothee Chalamet to win the best actor statue, and although I tend to prefer when the wealth is shared for Oscars, meaning I would have supported that win, I'd much rather have the (better) work by Adrien Brody recognized, even if means his second turn in that spotlight.

Then there were three nominations for ACU, other than best picture, that I thought were completely unwarranted: best supporting actress for Monica Barbaro, best supporting actor for Edward Norton, and best director for James Mangold. All of those were long shots and none of them happened.

Anyway, as I said, justice prevailed against a very overrated movie.

My personal scorecard

Although, as usual, I didn't pay much attention to the pre-Oscars discourse on likely winners (though I did pay some), and, as usual, I made my selections just before the show (actually after it had already ended, but I had seen no results), I did quite well on my picks this year, picking 15 of the 23 categories correctly. And that's even without guessing any of the random ones (the shorts) correctly to help boost my score. So it was 15 out of 20 on any categories I had a reasonable chance of getting correct, which is better than I've done in a long, long time.

My only really big miss: best actress. And this one stings a bit. I felt like I really had a dog in that race this year, and Demi Moore losing to someone like Mikey Madison, who is like 23 years old, just seems a bit of a travesty of the normal rules of Oscar fairness. Moore will never get another shot. I feel a bit how I felt when Bill Murray and Mickey Rourke, who were both nominated as best actor for my #1 movie that year, both lost Oscars to Sean Penn ... speaking of two-time winners. 

Anora honored

When I first heard all the buzz about Anora, I thought, "Wow. Well, Sean Baker has been making good films for a long time now." (A few exceptions aside. *ahem* Red Rocket *ahem*)

Then I saw it, and though I liked it (my #26 of last year), it did not really seem like best picture material. Not in filmmaking quality, but in subject matter. 

Oscar voters thought differently, and Anora cleaned up. Even Mikey Madison won. In fact, only Yura Borisov missed. Anora won in every other category where it was nominated. 

Interestingly, I own this film, as I had to buy it in order to fit it into the best available viewing slot between Christmas and New Year's. So, whenever I want, I can watch it again to see what I (sort of) missed. 

Now, on to my thoughts, recorded in real time as I was watching, which is maybe not the best way to do it. (But makes it easier to remember and to publish more quickly.)

This post is not going to receive any Oscars for best editing as I am leaving in all the thoughts I wrote down while watching the show, even though they are boring. Enjoy! 

 - My 11-year-old is starting out on the couch with me, which is nice -- and which makes me feel bad that I couldn't start watching until 20 minutes after I got home from playing tennis.

- I thought my son might be nonplussed by Cynthia Erivo's bald appearance, but he did not mention it. Glad I'm raising a good one. 

- I liked Wicked as much as the next guy -- it was my #2 of the year -- but the opening was a bit long. 

- The orchestra is in the sky! Interesting. I dig it. (Rather literally defying gravity.)

- Conan coming out of Demi. Good one. 

- Missed a joke from Conan because my son is asking me questions. Worth it. 

- The thing at the back of the stage looks like a Marvel superhero's breast plate.

- Yes, my son was still sitting there for Conan's orgasm joke. Just one of the reasons the opening monologue could have been 40% shorter. 

- Okay, I am officially dying now. We're 22 minutes in and there has not been an award announced yet.

- 24:50 - "Without further delay, let's get started." Well, nope. The time-wasting song is the last nail in my coffin. 

- Edward Norton's wrinkles have wrinkles.

- "Going long disorder" is apparently contagious. Robert Downey Jr. and Kieran Culkin have contracted it. 

- Andrew Garfield fawning over Goldie Hawn continues the feeling of excess. I don't know if I can continue mentioning all these things. 

- Is Nick Offerman the Oscars announcer?

- The woman who won the best animated short is adorable. But why is her co-director reading the thing she's already said? There really are no controls on the length of this show.

- I like the idea of giving extensive praise to people like the costume designers, but not the reality of it. 

- (I just dared look it up while potentially risking exposing myself to the spoilers. Yes it's Nick Offerman.)

- (And another lengthy bit with Conan has made this abundantly clear.)

- Until now I did not know what Sean Baker looked like. Thanks, Sean, for giving a professional speech and trying to bring this unwieldy beast back on track.

- The June Squibb Bill Skarsgard bit was funny.

- Well my #1 of 2024 gets at least one Oscar. Indeed, my viewing on Friday confirmed for me how good the makeup was in The Substance. And, I guess, the hair, or sometimes, lack thereof. 

- Halle Berry is not 60 years old. She is not. (It's true. She's only 58.) But is now really the time for a random Bond tribute? And what does Margaret Qualley have to do with it?

- Oh no, the Bond tribute is going into its second song. I really should not have waited 20 minutes after getting home from tennis to start watching. 

- If Baker also wins as director, that'll be some kind of record. Different tone from his first speech but still under budget (quick and funny). 

- Da'Vine Joy is giving Robert Downey a lesson on how this should have been done.

- Glad Emilia Perez (my #4) did not get shut out. Saldana was great in it and I loved her heartfelt acceptance speech.

- Ben Stiller, star of past Oscar bits (remember when he was dressed as a Na'vi?), pulls off a good one here. 

- Mick Jagger is more alive than I thought he'd be. 

- "El Mal" wins. Take that, everyone who thought the music in Emilia Perez was bad. (And nice shoutout to the presenter in their acceptance speech. Probably thought of that on the way up to the stage.)

- My stream of the Oscars, which crapped out during one of the ad breaks, is starting to skip the ads for some reason. Thank goodness for small miracles.

- Now that the show has picked up its pace, I don't mind the musical sand worm as much as I did the first time.

- Nice to get the best of both Palestine and Israel in one acceptance speech. Samuel L. loved it when the Israeli delivered a broadside to the Trump administration.

- Good bit with the firefighters. Worked. Is this show saving itself? Just a little?

- The third sound winner ate nothing but orchestra. Thanks for the number about wasting time, Conan.

- Is Gal Gadot really tall or is Rachel Zeigler really short?

- The late announcement of these technical awards makes it seem like Dune is gathering momentum. It is not. (Scarier realization: It's not actually that late in the show.)

- What is "Ovation Hollywood"?

- Ana de Armas pronounced "robot" like "robutt," which is how Dr. Zoidberg says it on Futurama. (Also, this means I was officially shut out on the "random guess" categories of live action short, documentary short and animated short.)

- Best conceived "in memoriam" in a while. 

- Does Lol Crowley get sick of people asking him if he's laughing out loud?

- Okay, Conan's zing of Trump via Anora finally has me on his side.

- I had started to hear that Timothee Chalamet was going to win best actor, but went against that and picked Adrien Brody. And that happened. And while I never really thought of Brody as someone who would win two Oscars, he deserved it. Great thoughtful speech, too -- a bit long. So winning twice earns you extra time?

- Christopher Nolan CBF to show up and present best director.

- Yep, this post is getting a picture of Sean Baker. I certainly know what he looks like now. 

- Oh no. Demi didn't win. Biggest upset of the evening so far?

- Nice to see Billy Crystal on stage after he lost his house in Pacific Palisades, the one where he had lived since the 1970s. And Meg Ryan looked better than I feared.

- As was obvious by this point, Anora wins.

Well that's it everybody. It's after 1 a.m. even though the show finished around 3 p.m. my time. And now I must sleep.

The streaming culprit has been identified

The only "Oscars homework" I did over the weekend was for pleasure. 

No, I didn't put in a last-minute viewing of any movies I might not have seen, in order to better make predictions about tonight's Oscars, or to feel myself more engaged in them.

Instead, I rewatched my favorite best picture nominee with my wife, which happened to be my #1 movie of last year.

And it looked great.

Yes, yet another post about The Substance on this blog, but I will probably retire the topic for a while now. I don't expect to talk about it much in the next piece, my annual "Oscar thoughts" piece, which will come many hours after the ceremony ends. Which is because for the first time in three years, the Oscars do not coincide with Labor Day here in Australia. That means I'm working today, and even after I finish work, I have two different sporting events to attend, one in which I'm just a spectator and one in which I'm participating. My 14-year-old has a basketball game at 6:05, and about a half-hour after that ends, I'll be playing tennis with my tennis partner. Then, sometime after 9 p.m. local time, I will finally watch the show.

Anyway, The Substance will come up in that post I'm sure, but possibly only in the context of Demi Moore winning, which I predict will happen. (And was reminded why she should win when I watched the film again.) After that, I'll probably put it in my personal penalty box for a while -- a term used by the hosts of Filmspotting when they've been talking about a particular movie too much. (This is my sixth post on The Audient to have gotten "the substance" as a content label.)

Before getting sidetracked, I said a few paragraphs ago that Coralie Fargeat's film looked great, and that's what I want to come back around to explain now.

A couple times in the past few weeks I have made mention of The Substance's pending arrival on my Australian streaming service Stan, and how I wasn't sure if I could watch it because the stream on Stan looked so shit. Of course, proper scientific testing ruled out Stan as the culprit, and seemed to rule in another culprit, Fetch, which is a sort of AppleTV-like product through which you play other streaming apps, such as Stan.

Wrong again.

On Thursday night I decided to do some further testing, as I really didn't want to have to hook up somebody's laptop to the TV through an HDMI cable in order to watch The Substance with my wife on Friday night. She had agreed to the viewing -- even to starting it just after 8 o'clock due to the length of the movie -- and this was my chance to get it right and make the experience involve as little pain as possible. Other than, that is, the pain, both physical and emotional, we would be seeing on screen.

So I took another stroll through my TV's various settings, both the TV itself and Fetch, and I just could not get a better idea of what to do. My 11-year-old was on the couch with me, and he put in his two cents as well. But not even the advanced technical knowledge of today's youngest generation could figure out the issue. 

Then I finally got the brainstorm that cracked the case: I needed to connect Fetch to a different HDMI port on my TV. HDMI 3 was available, as we only ever use it when the kids connect their Nintendo Switch to the TV, which they do less and less these days, as they are generally happy to just hold it in their hands. 

And suddenly, all of it -- Stan, Fetch and The Substance -- looked great. 

I do not, as of now, know why HDMI 2 looks so terrible and HDMI 1 and 3 look so great, but I also do not care. I just switched it to another port and voila, problem solved. That night I watched an old favorite, Shattered Glass, that was streaming on Stan, just to prove it was all better. And the movie looked good -- well, as good as a movie made in 2003, which was not particularly focused on looking good, could look.

I do know, now, that there is probably a setting I could tweak that relates to that HDMI port itself, a setting that is currently out of sync with the same setting on the other HDMI ports. But I have not bothered to figure that out yet.

The reason I know this is that HDMI 3 was once the red-headed stepchild of this TV's HDMI ports, because an incorrect setting in the aspect ratio was once cutting off some of the image on that port. For a long time I thought this was just a hardware error in the port, until one day I finally saw I could make an adjustment, and the port was back to performing at the same level as its brethren.

I know that HDMI 2 will someday be redeemed, but for now, it can just take a little break and sit in the corner to think about what it's done.

For a post posting on the actual day of the Oscars, I thought I should probably write a bit more about The Substance itself, so I will. However, as I was watching, I didn't know how I'd limit my thoughts to just a few. Things kept on popping up into my head, ways to name the piece, etc. I ultimately went with naming the piece after fixing the streaming issue, and I'll try to keep the rest of my thoughts fairly limited as well.

1) First, the rejected titles for this post, which I don't need to explicate at length, but you can probably imagine the things I might have said about the movie based on these titles. One was "The weirdest best picture nominee ever?" Which indeed, The Substance might be. It's crazy that a critical mass of people in the film community embraced this movie as a standard bearer for their brand. One was "A constant state of exhilaration," which was, indeed, the way I watched this movie. I think there was one other but I am forgetting it now.

2) On this viewing I particularly noticed some of the regular motifs that seem to be beyond the film's most obvious themes. One of my favorites was how Fargeat keeps going to insert shots of palm trees at night, which ends up being the final thing Elisabeth Sparkle lays her eyes on in this movie. They are at once an encapsulation of the glamor of a place like Los Angeles, and a sense of how it is distant, out of your reach. If you want to start spinning off into theories about this, it could be the idea that most of what's taking place in the film is a flashback, and the shots of the palm trees are what's occurring in Elisabeth's present tense as she confronts what happens to her at the end of the movie. This viewing convinced me that the movie is even more totally metaphor or totally fantasy even than I first thought.

3) If we are looking for more direct visual embodiments of the themes, I love the shot where Elisabeth sees the fly that landed in her former boss' glass of wine at their final dinner as colleagues. The fly is making strokes in the liquid at first, dutifully trying to escape from its watery death bed, until it inevitably consumes more sugary broth than it can handle and stops swimming. This is a world where you greedily drink in everything that is offered until it kills you, perhaps without even noticing that's about to happen.

4) The oppressive score stood out to me more on this viewing as well. The sort of harrowing metallic scratches that sound a bit like a biohazard alarm, those kind of sounds were the foundation of my now three-decade love affair with industrial music. (We're talking mostly Nine Inch Nails here, but I appreciate the imitators as well.)

5) Another rejected title for this post deserves its own separate entry. The title would have been something like "No problem with a big ending," because during the film, I realized that wild endings that don't work for everybody -- which is how my wife felt about this ending, despite saying she "really, really liked" the film -- don't seem to sidetrack me too much. I guess it depends on the circumstances, but I think both my #1 of 2018 and my #1 of 2020 -- First Reformed and I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- ended in ways that left some viewers perplexed, and may have ultimately turned them against the movie. For me, the ending of First Reformed is perfect, though I am a little less sold on both Ending Things and The Substance. With Charlie Kaufman's film, it's more "I love it despite the perplexing ending." With Fargeat's film, it's "I don't know if she needed to go that extra step" -- you'll know what I'm talking about if you've seen The Substance -- "but I'm glad she just decided to go all out." And this viewing made me sure I was glad. 

I actually think I had other things to say, but some of them have escaped my head. Besides, you know I love this movie. I thought it was important to let you know, though, that I may love it even more on the second viewing.

Because second viewings of favorite films do create some trepidation in us. What if it's not as good as I thought it was?

In the case of The Substance, it was as good as I thought it was -- in fact, it was better than I thought it was. All that time I spent slightly fretting about whether a better 2024 movie would come along was wasted fretting, because it should have been evident to me that this was my #1 from the moment I saw it. In fact, I'm now wondering if it has a serious leg up on other films from this decade -- something I think of now that we are closer to the end of the 2020s than the beginning. 

And fortunately, I had an excellent stream of it on Stan to help confirm that. 

Okay, now it's really time for The Substance to go in the penalty box. 

Finally, a proper Oscar nominations post

I never get to write a post exclusively about the Oscar nominations.

As you know, the day they are revealed is, in most years, the day I post my rankings of movies from the previous year. Two more wrap-up posts follow on consecutive days, plus an informal ode to my #1 on day 4. By that time, the nominations are no longer a new enough phenomenon for me to devote a whole post to them and still feel current. 

This year, due to the tragic circumstances of the LA fires, my rankings release and the nominations date became disentangled. (I could have continued watching 2024 movies until yesterday, but I think that might have killed me.) So here I am, able to create a full reaction post and still be within the first 12 hours of the world's knowledge of them.

First let me start by saying I have to officially learn how to pronounce Emilia Perez. Like many lazy Americans, I still put the emPHAsis on the wrong syllABle. (That old joke.) I still say "Perez" as "Puh-REZ," when of course we know it is much closer to "PAIR-ez." I'll get it one of these days.

Emilia Perez did lead all nominees with 13 Oscar nods, a ridiculous number that is higher than I can remember any film getting in quite some time. That number is of course boosted by three nominations in the music categories, for the score and two songs, but hey, 13 nominations is 13 nominations. No reason to undercut it. 

Especially since Emilia Perez was my #4 movie of 2024. Which is gratifying as hell to see. 

I have yet to see Emilia Perez on another critic's top ten list, though granted, I've only closely observed about eight of them. (Lost in this year's busy and travel-filled December and January was my usual perusal of top ten lists from prominent critics. I'm talking about seven top ten lists on two of my movie podcasts and one created by my friend Don.) 

There was a temptation to think of Emilia Perez as one of those movies the Golden Globes embraces but the Oscars do not embrace. (And yes, I do realize I'm following different pluralization rules for those two bodies, which strikes me as strange but which feels right.) And that means if you like that movie, there is something unsophisticated about you.

But no, Emilia Perez has gotten the full-throated support of the Academy, perhaps even more so than the Globes, It's been officially endorsed. It's okay for me to love it as much as I do.

But hold on there, Emilia Perez is not my highest ranked best picture nominee. Not nearly. 

I figured my #2 Wicked would get a nomination, and it did. But only lately did I start thinking, to my general surprise, that my #1 The Substance would get a nomination. I started to get the idea it might be possible not from the Golden Globes nominating it for best musical or comedy, since that category has some allowances the drama category does not, but from Coralie Fargeat being nominated by the Globes as best director. And indeed, The Substance got that BP nomination, as well as another directing nod for Fargeat, a screenplay nod for Fargeat, and the richly deserved and much expected best actress nomination for Demi Moore. (And hair and makeup.)

Suddenly, a top ten list that I felt put me out of step with other cinephiles -- I was often counting no more than one title in common with their lists, though finally one of my podcasters named The Substance his #8 -- is a fully defensible, even mainstream, list. Three best picture nominees in my top five. 

In fact, too mainstream? Am I now a company man or something? Because actually there are three other movies in my top ten that got best picture nominations. Expectedly, The Brutalist (#9) got one, and I think may be the favorite to win. Unexpectedly, Nickel Boys (#10) got one, which I thought would be unlikely since I'd only heard its name called once or twice before that, though one was for RaMell Ross' screenplay, which always gives a movie a chance at the big prize. And even though its predecessor got a nomination, I thought it was no sure thing that Dune: Part Two (#8) would follow suit, because it sounds like some people are cooler on this than the first, and sequels generally are considered damaged goods. 

So, fully 60% of my top ten was nominated for best picture. I'm not sure I've ever had that sort of alignment with the Oscars. There was one recent year, in fact, where my highest ranked movie to get a best picture nomination was my #11, meaning I had zero in my top ten. And this is the first time my #1 has been nominated since Parasite won the big prize in 2019. 

That leaves four other movies, only three of which I've seen. I thought there would be one nominee I hadn't seen, but I was led by early prognosticators to think that might be Sing Sing. Instead it was I'm Still Here, a surprise nominee from Brazil -- a surprise not because I hadn't heard of it, as I did start getting the buzz about it later in the year, but because foreign language films struggle to find a spot here, though perhaps less so in recent years. (In fact, Emilia Perez is primarily a foreign language film, as it has some English despite mostly Spanish. Both films got nominated as best international feature, Perez representing director Jacques Audiard's home country of France.) 

My #14, Conclave, keeps my alignment with the Academy going. That makes seven nominees in my top 15. Astonishing, though with Conclave it was certainly expected. Even my eighth ranked best picture nominee, Anora, almost made my top 25, settling in at #26.

That's where it drops off.

Every time I heard A Complete Unknown's name called throughout the morning, having watched the nominations live at 12:30 a.m. my time as I always do, I shook my head. The movie was my #128 of the year, and I wanted to put it lower except I liked some of the recreation of the period and Timothee Chalamet's performance. Everything else about that film was, I thought, a dud. We'll get into some of my specific reservations as we go through the categories.

Which I think it is time to do now, limiting ourselves to "the big eight" for the purposes of close analysis, followed by some other scattered thoughts. In some cases I will award the highest ranked film on my list but in some cases I will not. I'm mercurial like that.

Best picture

Most deserving nominee: The Substance
Least deserving nominee: A Complete Unknown

Comments: As discussed. 

Best director

Nominees: Sean Baker, Anora; Brady Corbet, The Brutalist; Coralie Fargeat, The Substance; Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez; James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

Most deserving nominee: Corbet
Least deserving nominee: Mangold

Comments: I'm going to give this one to Corbet despite two other films appearing higher on my list. The Brutalist is the grandest vision in terms of old-fashioned auteurist directing, and I wouldn't mind seeing that rewarded. Of course I would also love to see one of the French take home the statue. And I think Mangold's direction may have actually been one of the worst aspects of ACU. 

Best actor

Nominees: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist; Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown; Colman Domingo, Sing Sing; Ralph Fiennes, Conclave; Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Most deserving nominee: Brody
Least deserving nominee: Chalamet

Comments: Although I said I liked Chalamet's performance, I don't like the movie and so I want its nomination count to go down, not up. Besides, this category contains two movies I haven't seen, and though I also want the nomination count to go down for a movie about Donald Trump -- he'll consider it some kind of ego boost that someone was nominated for an Oscar for playing him -- I can't call a nominee I haven't seen undeserving. Brody edges out Fiennes by having the more demanding role. 

Best actress

Nominees: Cynthia Erivo, Wicked; Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez; Mikey Madison, Anora; Demi Moore, The Substance; Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here

Most deserving nominee: Moore
Least deserving nominee: Madison

Comments: It's absolutely wonderful to see a trans performer nominated in the gender with which they associate. It seemed likely the Oscars would get this right, but we couldn't be sure until it happened. And though Gascon is utterly deserving (as is Erivo), I have to give it to my girl Demi, don't I? I haven't seen Torres' film so that leaves only Madison, who was great in and as Anora. What can I say, some categories are just jam-packed. 

Best supporting actor

Nominees: Yura Borisov, Anora; Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain; Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown; Guy Pearce, The Brutalist; Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Most deserving nominee: Pearce
Least deserving nominee: Norton

Comments: Another Complete Unknown nomination, another whiff. Norton is fine in this movie, but there isn't a lot of acting involved. This is what I said about the Seeger character in my review: "The portrayal of Seeger in this film is a discussion for another time ... he's largely ineffectual and eventually becomes something of a buffoon, despite seeming like a very nice guy." That is not Oscar material. Pearce edges out Borisov, but Culkin was quite good in a movie I didn't particularly care for. 

Best supporting actress

Nominees: Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown; Ariana Grande, Wicked; Felicity Jones, The Brutalist; Isabella Rosselini, Conclave; Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez

Most deserving nominee: Grande
Least deserving nominee: Barbaro

Comments: Even though I was a bit captivated by Barbaro, who I'd never seen before, come on, Joan Baez is a nothing role in that movie. Though it should be said, much as I love Conclave, Rosselini's role is a "barely anything" role. It's hard to compare the work of Saldana and Grande because it's so different, but I have to give the edge to Grande just because of how much she surprised me and how much her work contributed to why I loved Wicked.

Best original screenplay

Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Real Pain, September 5, The Substance

Most deserving nominee: The Substance
Least deserving nominee: A Real Pain

Comments: I think this is the only nomination for September 5, which I guess is what you get if you decide to release your movie so deep into awards season, with so little ability for people to see it except in screeners at their own houses. Since that leaves me only four choices for least deserving and three of them are in my top 26, the default choice is A Real Pain, which did, I think, have a pretty good script. The Substance wins, natch. 

Best adapted screenplay

Nominees: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys, Sing Sing

Most deserving nominee: Emilia Perez
Least deserving nominee: A Complete Unknown

Comments: I have to say I did not even know Perez was adapted from something else, though maybe it makes sense that Audiard did not just whip up such a crazy idea for a movie out of thin air. The script here is incredibly ambitious and somehow manages to land everything it's doing, including songs. And you won't be surprised to hear yet another jeer for ACU, whose script, I think, is among its worst elements. 

Other assorted thoughts:

1) I have not heard of a single of the documentary feature nominees. How far that category has fallen out of the mainstream. I blame the lines blurring so much with all these quickie, exploitative documentaries on Netflix. 

2) I would have liked to see Kirsten Dunst get a nomination for Civil War, which I thought seemed like a lock. I don't know who you'd kick out, though, since I haven't seen I'm Still Here.

3) There was a movie called Elton John: Never Too Late?

4) I only saw two of the best animated feature nominees. I was on the cusp of seeing the Wallace & Gromit movie while I was in America but was thrown by its 2025 release date on Netflix. I chose not to see Memoir of a Snail (incredibly depressing filmmaker) and Flow (I didn't think I could handle a whole movie without dialogue that late in the viewing season). My preference between Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot is clearly Inside Out 2, but it was only #60 on my list in what I thought was a bad year for animation. My highest ranked animated movie was one that never had a prayer of a nomination, Ultraman: Rising at #28.

5) Speaking of The Wild Robot, is it weird for an animated movie to get a sound nomination? I'm not sure if I've ever seen that. I feel like the thrust of this award is for sound that accompanies and complements a moving image, and animation is not a moving image in the same way. Or could it be that an animated movie has just never had as good sound as The Wild Robot? I doubt that. 

6) As Bowen Yang noted during the announcements, three of the visual effects nominees created monkeys as one of their primary effects. 

And even though six is a fairly random number of additional comments, I think I can/should release you now. 

The Oscar nominations moved, but I'm staying put

When you are driving toward your final movie watched of a given ranking year, mapping out what days you'll watch what movies for as long as ten days out from that deadline, you develop a certain mentality of finality, of how it's all ramping up to a finish. 

So when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences needs to move its announcement of this year's Oscar nominations six days forward due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles -- a more justified decision there never was -- it's hard, nay impossible, to shift forward with them.

Some people might say "Another six days of watching movies? Great! My 2024 list will now just be that much more complete."

Me? I'm saying "It's time to move on to something else."

And so after learning yesterday that the announcement of nominations was moved from the expected date of January 17th at 5:30 a.m. PST to the new date of January 23rd at 5:30 a.m. PST, I decided this did not change my own timeline, and I would still finish up tonight with my final movie of 2024, as first conceived when I learned of this year's nomination date several months ago. Tomorrow, I will post my list. 

Look, I'm tired. And (spoiler alert) I will already be setting a record number of movies ranked this year, even without bonus time.

This was not the only 11th hour change related to my movie rankings.

I had expected to see A Complete Unknown tonight as my final film. In fact, I already had a post written called "My final screening is an advanced screening," which will now sit forever in my drafts folder, since I never delete my unpublished drafts, leaving them as sort of a record of unfinished thoughts. 

See, A Complete Unknown does not come out in Australia until next Thursday, a fact I did not realize when I ignored the opportunity to see it in Los Angeles. I assumed it was one of the many high-profile Boxing Day releases in Australia, and that I'd have ample time to squeeze it in when my family returned from our trip to America. Then again, even if I had known about Unknown, there was very little chance I would have prioritized seeing a musician biopic over the movies I did see while I was there, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys.

So I expected the Bob Dylan biopic to go unseen by me prior to closing off my rankings, until I got invited to an advanced screening that was scheduled, lo and behold, for the 12-hour window before the Oscar nominations went live in a time zone 19 hours different from my own. I RSVP'd straight away.

Fortuitously, it would mean I finished my 2024 rankings in the same place I finished my 2015 rankings, at the glorious venue The Astor in St. Kilda, an old-fashioned movie house if ever there was one, complete with balcony. In 2016 (for the movies of 2015), that was where I saw the first of three movies that had only just been released on my final day of ranking, which was The Hateful Eight, intermission and all. I finished the epic day with Carol and The Big Short at venues increasingly closer to my house. Only Carol did not make my top 20 and The Hateful Eight made my top ten. I actually have not been back to The Astor since later that same year, when I saw a special screening of the beloved Australian film Malcolm, my wife having worked with its writer and director. 

I loved the idea of finishing at The Astor, but there was something nagging and incomplete with this plan. Despite RSVPing within a day of the invitation being sent, I had not heard back from the publicist confirming my spot. I followed up with her about five days later to be sure I was on the list, and again did not hear back. Yesterday at work I went so far as to print out the emailed invitation as well as my response to it, should my legitimacy as an invitee be questioned.

Only after getting home from work yesterday did I notice I finally had a response from her, which was to tell me that alas, the screening was at capacity, but she would add me to the waitlist.

That's lame. When you respond within 24 hours, you should be on the list, especially at a venue as large as The Astor. I was surprised it could be at capacity regardless, and I wonder if she intentionally didn't respond because she had other higher priority attendees she wanted to accommodate. After all, my site is still not one of the big players in Australian film coverage. Nonetheless, it would be hard for me to imagine that there are, oh, 500 ahead of me, though obviously a lot of those seats would be reserved for other VIPs/ticket winners etc. 

I don't expect my waitlist spot to materialize -- possibly especially after I responded stating (politely) my disappointment in the outcome -- so now I am pivoting, and it's actually to see a movie I am a lot more interested in than A Complete Unknown.

I had written off Sing Sing as a movie I had any chance of seeing before my deadline. In discussing it briefly with my friend who also ranks his movies, he told me he wouldn't be able to rank it because it had disappeared after a very brief Oscar-qualifying run. If it isn't generally available in the U.S., I figured it was one of those movies that wouldn't come out in Australia until March.

Lo and behold, it actually opened yesterday.

So I guess there is a net positive here. My wife still thinks I'm going to see A Complete Unknown tonight -- or at least to an advanced screening, since that's all I told her and she didn't ask for any clarifying details. So I'm going to use the preapproval for the time slot to go to Cinema Nova instead of The Astor, and if she asks what movie I saw, I'll just tell her the truth. After all, she didn't know this wasn't the movie I was seeing, and she does not keep track of release dates. 

And by finishing with Sing Sing at Cinema Nova, I'm finishing at the real place I concluded my viewings nine years ago, as this was the venue where I saw my final film of 2015, The Big Short. I believe only a single final film of a year has been in the theater since then, which would be Darkest Hour in 2017. 

I suppose there is still a chance the publicist comes back to me with apologies and an open-arms invitation to A Complete Unknown, and if that happens I would go, having been bent out of shape about it to her. Even though Sing Sing is now the center of my thoughts.

You'll know either way tomorrow, when I finally post my rankings of the films of 2024, all the way from best to worst. 

Oppenheimer wins, after all

Back in July, when I had no idea how this whole Barbenheimer phenomenon would play out, I went to see Oppenheimer on opening night for both films. 

The Sun in Yarraville was decked out in pink, as were the eager beavers coursing through its lobby, many of them carrying drinks or posing for photos in the life-sized Barbie packaging. 

Meanwhile, my screening of Oppenheimer in one of the Sun's smallest screening rooms was attended by three other men, all older than me.

There were a couple obvious explanations for this last. One was that it was far more popular to attend a 70 mm screening of Oppenheimer at the Sun on one of its largest screenings, though that showing was halfway through its running time, so I wouldn't have seen any of those excited attendees in the lobby or anywhere else.

But I thought I'd collected enough evidence about the relative merits of these two movies to write a post entitled "Barbie wins," which you can find here if you are so inclined. 

Nearly seven months later, in the competition that confers on a film its immortality, Oppenheimer has emerged as the ultimate winner, taking home the statue for best picture at the 96th Academy Awards.

It was only my seventh favorite of the best picture nominees at my ranking deadline, and would now fall to eighth behind The Zone of Interest. But it was still my 26th ranked film overall in 2023, so I'm happier about this win than I have been about many of the best picture wins in the past decade. 

And as I told you I would yesterday, I watched the ceremony live for the second year in a row -- an hour earlier, as you know, so the 10 a.m. start time basically meant it did not impede on the trajectory of our Labour Day one iota. 

Here is what would have been my "live tweets" if I were on Twitter and if it were still called Twitter.

- The Australian television network 7+ is really making me kiss the ring in order to stream the Oscars for free. They've required me to sit through seven ads, in increasing agitation, in order to start watching. Fortunately, the telecast did then play from the start.

- Back to extensively praising the acting nominees. It's going to be a long night.

- How did I never hear Da'Vine Joy Randolph's name pronounced correctly before now?

- Rita Moreno must be the most still-coherent person over 90 in Hollywood.

- Love that Paul Giamatti was seated next to Randolph and had a tear in his eye during her acceptance speech, which was very nice, even if she did not thank him (or anyone else in the film, for that matter).

- I got the animated short winner correct so my first miss of the night comes when The Boy and the Heron wins best animated feature. It was dumb to go against Hayao Miyazaki's last film, even if I didn't like it very much. (Then again my guess, Across the Spider-Verse, was not a personal favorite either. But I knew Elemental had no shot.)

- Okay I liked that adapted screenplay joke by Jimmy Kimmel, who is off to a fairly disappointing start otherwise.

- What are Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer talking about?

- I'm surprised that I correctly picked Anatomy of a Fall to win best original screenplay. I'm also surprised, though maybe I shouldn't be, that they played "P.I.M.P." as accompaniment to Justine Triet walking on stage. (Great, now it will be in my head again for the next three weeks.)

- The Oppenheimer sweep is officially off as it loses best adapted screenplay to American Fiction. (It didn't win for best supporting actress either but that was never going to happen.)

- Cord Jefferson is really likable. 

- Billie Eilish comes on stage and I continue to amuse myself by calling her "Billie Eyelash." But I don't know why we need 50 different shots of people reacting to her Barbie song. 

- Speaking of possible sweeps, Poor Things is going after all the art and design awards. (And I actually wrote this before it won for its costumes. Unfortunately, best costume was the only one of those things I picked correctly.)

- The John Cena bit was funny. "Costumes ..." (pause for laughter). Good stuff. 

- Okay, the reactions to the Killers of the Flower Moon song were many, so I guess this is a thing this year.

- Will Jonathan Glazer winning an Oscar cause him to want to make more movies? I hope so.

- The Gosling-Blunt Barbie-Oppenheimer rivalry bit was funny. When they introduced the montage on stunts, though, I wondered if they were finally giving out an Oscar for stunts and I just missed it on my ballot this year.

- That is one hirsute Sam Rockwell.

- It's taken a long time but Oppenheimer finally has its first win of the night. Robert Downey Jr. seems like he should have won an Oscar before, but it's only his third nomination. Unsurprisingly snarky acceptance speech, but with enough heart.

- The Oppenheimer editor is adorable.

- Okay, as Oppenheimer has now appeared in each of my last three comments, the momentum for it is building as it wins for Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography.

- Of course Wes Anderson did not show up, even though it was expected he would win. 

- Wait, what is the movie Flamin' Hot again? (Checks IMDB.) Holy shit it's about Cheetos and Eva Longoria directed it! 

- John Mulaney made me laugh out loud with the second rip of Madame Web of the evening, but then I missed most of his bit about Field of Dreams because my wife and son came into the garage needing to get the beach tent. Okay, so much for having the day not impacted by the Oscars and vice versa.

- Picking Oppenheimer to win all the technical awards lets me down again. I should have figured that the sound in Zone of Interest was one of its best bets at an Oscar.

- I think it's funny that England has Mother's Day in March. The English-speaking countries need to get together and figure this stuff out. Australia and the U.S. both have it on the same Sunday in May, but they do deviate on Father's Day (which is in September here). I have no idea when British Father's Day is.

- Okay, Ryan Gosling is reminding me again of how awesome he was in Barbie. Remember when he went away for a few years? So glad he's back, and it looks like Fall Guy will be super fun. 

- Wait, Slash?

- Every Oscars needs a bring-the-house-down number. That was it. But thank you for playing, Cheetos movie song.

- When Kimmel continues to make references to his crush on Gosling, he's just saying what we're all thinking.

- Jeez Cynthia Erivo, take it down a notch with the facial jewelry.

- I just realized Mica Levi didn't get a nomination for her Zone of Interest score. And Robbie Robertson didn't get his posthumous Oscar, which seemed like an easy call. 

- Really, the other Barbie song wins? Come on Billie Eyelash. It feels like we have a future EGOT here.

- Tina Turner gets the last spot in the In Memoriam section. Not a fan that they never went full screen with it. Didn't learn of any deaths I didn't already know about except one: Lee Sun-kyun, who played the rich father/husband in Parasite. And now via Wikipedia I've just learned a lot of unsavory details about accusations and investigations of drug use that may have led to his suicide. I might have preferred not to know.

- I finally learned how Paul Giamatti did the eye thing in The Holdovers.

- Matthew McConaughey looks a bit like Spock looked after he fixed the radiation leak on the Enterprise in Star Trek II.

- Cillian Murphy wins in his first attempt. This should have been Giamatti's third if they didn't insanely forget to nominate him for Sideways.

- Nolan has eight nominations? That's crazy, considering that many of his films weren't really going for Oscars.

- Sally Field is still adorable.

- Emma Stone wins and Killers of the Flower Moon gets shut out. Seems like the biggest surprise of the night. She gives one of my favorite speeches of the night but I'm maybe a little surprised she's quite so emotional on her second win. 

- "Isn't it past your jail time?" NICE.

- For a second I thought they were introducing Robert De Niro to give out best picture, which would be a conflict of interest, but no, it's Al Pacino, looking his age. And acting his age, as he forgets to read the nominees again and gives a completely botched and confusing delivery of the winner's name. But yes indeed, it is Oppenheimer as we all thought it would be.

Past Lives and Flower Moon got shut out, which may be a tad disappointing, but so did Maestro, which was richly deserved. 

Just another quick thing I noticed ... the only non-best-picture-nominated features to win Oscars won them in categories where no best picture nominee was nominated. So Godzilla Minus One won for its visual effects, The Boy and the Heron for best animated feature, the documentary whose name I already don't remember for best documentary ... but in none of those categories was there a best picture nominee. Even the best international feature winner was, of course, a best picture nominee.

And so that puts an official final wrap on my Oscars coverage and on 2023 in general. Catch me again this time next year when Madame Web takes home its statue for best picture.

Labour Day Oscars, second year running

Last year in this post, I discussed the fact that it took ten years of my family being in Australia for the Oscars telecast to line up with Labour Day, a day off from work that I believe always falls on the second Monday of March.

Well, it took only one year for it to happen again.

I doubt the Academy is specifically consulting the Australian bank holidays, but by landing on some sense of consistency with its telecast date, it has allowed the two to align for the second year in a row -- which means only my second chance to watch the Oscars live since I've lived in this country.

And this year, I don't even have to take my kids out for breakfast as a trade with my wife, to buy myself the good will to take three hours off in the middle of the day to watch TV.

I hadn't remembered that that was the case last year, but reading the previously linked post reminded me of it.

Another improvement from last year: I'm writing the post you are currently reading on Sunday, rather than Monday, meaning that I can write my Oscars recap post as the ceremony is occurring, and post it straight afterward. (Some necessary background information: I never post more than one post in the same day. If it looks like I have ever done this in the past, it's only because changing time zones to Australia may have retroactively placed two posts in the same day that were once in two different days.)

I did my final bit of Oscars homework this past week, watching American Fiction on Tuesday night. It's the only best picture nominee I hadn't seen and really the only film of note that received any nominations that I hadn't seen. The only other film I haven't seen with a nomination in any of the major categories -- excluding categories like documentaries or international features, where there is not an expectation that I would have seen them -- is The Color Purple with its best supporting actress nomination for Danielle Brooks. (I don't know why they even bothered to name any other nominees in that category as Da'Vine Joy Randolph is going to win, and rightly so.)

My initial reaction to American Fiction was a bit more tepid than I wanted it to be. You can read my review here. Then yesterday I was listening to a podcast in which the three hosts discussed the movie, and though they had some of the same reservations I had, they pointed out that the bait-and-switch Cord Jefferson is doing here is similar to the sort of stunt Monk Ellison is trying to pull off in the story. And that gives some of my concerns with the film a sort of intentionality that makes me value those choices more. It still likely comes in ninth out of the ten nominees for me, miles ahead of Maestro, but at least trailing the others by less than I would have originally thought.

As proof that it is almost Oscars time, I am also early this year in printing my ballot -- or would have been, if I'd actually clicked print on Vanity Fair's printable Oscar ballot just now. But the printer is in close enough proximity to where my wife is currently sleeping that I held off. 

Don't want to give her an excuse to make me take my kids out to breakfast again. 

Everything Everywhere All the Awards

If I wanted a night where my highest rated best picture nominee had a formal coronation as a modern classic, tonight was a good night to be watching the Oscars.

It was also a night to be reminded that my critical tastes are not as out of sync with other people's as I sometimes think.

You see, not only did my #4 film of the year, Everything Everywhere All at Once, take home a stunning seven Oscars -- the most for any film since Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 -- but the third most Oscars were won by my #1 film of the year, The Whale, which picked up a surprise best makeup Oscar in addition to the expected best actor win for Brendan Fraser. 

The second most? All Quiet on the Western Front with four. I ranked that only 67th for the year, but that could hardly detract from my overall satisfaction with how things played out.

And that included the ceremony itself. With Jimmy Kimmel casting a comfortable calm over the proceedings after "the incident" last year, this was a competent, enjoyable, and totally unremarkable Academy Awards.

Unremarkable, I suppose, except for the absolute dominance of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which almost made us sick of seeing the charming Daniels on stage. By collecting statue after statue over the course of the evening, EEAAO conspired with AQOTWF to entirely shut out five best picture nominees, a full half of the field: The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, The Fabelmans, Tar and Triangle of Sadness. Of the remaining best picture nominees, one Oscar each was picked up by Avatar: The Way of Water (visual effects), Top Gun: Maverick (sound) and Women Talking (adapted screenplay).

Since Elvis and The Banshees of Inisherin were also in my top ten, I was a little disappointed to see them come away empty handed -- except again, see the whole "nine combined Oscars to films in my top four of 2022" and know that "disappointed" could never be the right word.

And hey, my #2 movie of the year, Don't Worry Darling, even got a mention when Kimmel asked Malala, of all people, whether Harry Styles actually spit on Chris Pine. I couldn't hear what her response was, but those who did, including Kimmel, seemed to think it was funny and/or appropriate.

I could look up what Malala said, but I'm here to give you the same sort of instant impressions I've always given you in the past, free from the reading of ten Oscar recap stories -- as though I were, in fact, writing it in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, like I usually do, rather than mid-afternoon on Monday. That's right, if you read yesterday's post, you know that I saw the Oscars live this year for the first time since moving to Australia, due being off work for the Labour Day holiday. I have enough of my own observations that I don't need to steal anyone else's, inadvertently or otherwise.

So with all the deserved kudos to Everything -- which failed to win an award in only three categories where it was nominated, those being original song, original score and costume design (with Stephanie Hsu failing to win best supporting actress but her co-star Jamie Lee Curtis winning instead) -- let's move on to the page of notes I scribbled as I was watching the ceremony on my projector in my darkened garage.

- Kimmel parachuting in. Nice memorable entrance and a unique nod to "the film that saved Hollywood," Top Gun: Maverick.

- Kimmel mentions that Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser appeared in Encino Man, making this a bad night for Pauly Shore. It would be even worse when both won the Oscars for which they were nominated.

- Five Irish actors nominated for Oscars? That's a lot.

- Kimmel's Will Smith jokes are good. It came later, but I'll mention it now: When the documentary feature was about to be presented, that being the category where Smith slapped Chris Rock last year, Kimmel quipped that he hoped it "would go off without a hitch, and without Hitch." Good line. I didn't end up posting much during the ceremony -- the notable exception coming in just a moment -- but I at least thought about posting "Will Smith is currently trying to schedule a time when he can slap Jimmy Kimmel." But then I just decided not to delve into that particular controversy. (Hey, Smith has tried to repent. I'm aware of that.)

- He had a good opening monologue but I did think it went on a little long. Having the RRR dancers dance him off the stage was a nice touch.

- Dwayne Johnson is looking older than I've ever seen him look.

- It was interesting to see Ariana DeBose choke up when she read Ke Huy Quan's name. I'm not usually in favor of when presenters let their preference be known, but this was clearly unpremeditated. (Who knows, maybe the enormity of the moment would have made her choke up over any name that was in that envelope.)

- Here was my one post on Facebook while the ceremony was airing: "Yes Ke Huy Quan just thanked Chunk." Chunk, of course, is a character in The Goonies, in which Quan also appeared, and he was played by Jeff Cohen. I recognized the name, though I assume not everyone would have.

- Before we move on from Quan, I'll say that only in the past year have I learned how his name is actually pronounced. When I first learned of him in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I always chose to pronounce his name as "Kay Hu Quan." At least I got the Quan part right. There were no pronunciation websites back then, nor do I expect most media who would have said his name at the time -- though I may not have heard any -- would have gone to great lengths to get it right. So he's always been "Kay Hu Quan" to me, but I will try to change it to "Key Way Quan" now, especially now that he's an Oscar winner and there's a good chance he is going to become instantly overexposed.

- Curtis wins best actress and delivers this good line: "I am hundreds of people." One of a number of choice lines about the collaborative medium that we would hear on this night.

- Nice touch giving David Byrne hot dog fingers in his song from EEAAO. That's a direct descendant of his famed big suit. Byrne was also the first celebrity whose age I looked up, and the first to guess exactly right before I looked it up. He's 70, and that's what I guessed he was.

- Why did the makeup winners for The Whale take so long to get up on stage?

- Samuel L. Jackson was the next age I guessed. I guessed he was 74. He is, indeed, 74. Wow I'm good at this.

- Ruth Carter wins for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever costume design, repeating her feat for the original Black Panther (and becoming the first Black woman to win two Oscars, I now see looking online. My rules are, I'm allowed to verify facts, just not steal other people's observations). Her line about her mother becoming "an ancestor" this past week was touching. Then later we learn her mother was 101 when she died. So, I guess it wasn't a surprise.

- The RRR song brought the house down, in a typical example of Bollywood's commitment to spectacle. I almost wonder if some of the voting occurred during the ceremony, as I was not expecting "Naatu Naatu" to win best original song (nor its writer to sing his acceptance speech!). But I'm glad it did as the only other two songs that probably stood a chance, from divas Lady Gaga and Rhianna, were blandly inspirational tunes with no staying power.

- Also, why the extreme close-up during your song, Gaga? It looked like she had some kind of rash on her face that they didn't cover very well with makeup.

- Women Talking winning best adapted screenplay might have been a bit of a makeup call for Sarah Polley not getting a best director nom, which was fretted about quite a bit. Although you will recall that I did end up liking that film quite a bit, its dialogue is clunky in enough parts that I don't know if a writing category was the best place for it to be honored. I did like seeing Polley, a longtime favorite of mine, giving an acceptance speech.

- I'm not sure how Walter Mirisch, who I had to google, snuck in to steal the last spot in the "in memoriam" section, when they seemed to have it all cued up for Raquel Welch. He produced In the Heat of the Night, and good for him for doing that, but it wasn't a great way to reach a climax in this sentimental tradition.

- I guessed Mindy Kaling's age wrong, but not really. I guessed she was 47, but before I looked I thought "No, she's only 43." But for some reason I counted the original guess as 47. She's actually 43.

- The editor for EEAAO, Paul Rogers, didn't really win me over with his humble brag that this was only his second film. (Also I quibble with the accuracy of that, as he shows as the credited editor on both Daniel Scheinert's The Death of Dick Long and the documentary You Can't Kill David Arquette. I suppose he was only talking about fiction films.) I know he didn't mean to say "Wow, I'm such a prodigy, I won an Oscar in only my second film" and it was really probably more like "I really didn't expect this given the relative infancy of my career," but then he made it worse by talking about how working with the cast was "the honor of his career." Yes, a career that is only two narrative features long.

- Winning as an original screenwriter -- or was it as a director? -- Daniel Kwan gives another good line about the collaborative process: "Genius emerges from the collective."

- Really glad to see Fraser win. I hope this once and for all silences everyone who didn't like The Whale and thought I was crazy for picking it as my best of the year. I know it won't.

- Michelle Yeoh, you are certainly not past your prime.

- Loved seeing Quan stand to applaud Harrison Ford as he walked on stage to give out best picture, and was reminded again how funny Harrison Ford is. Whenever you think he'd rather be smoking pot on his ranch and is only involved in entertainment for cynical reasons, he starts appearing in every other TV show and movie and giving out the final Oscar of the night. You're an old estabalishment-embracing softie, Harrison, we all know it. You can't fool us. 

- Kimmel gets off a final good line about joining Good Morning America already in progress, and exits next to a sign that reads "Number of telecasts without incident: 001." 

- In the end I did finally guess one age definitively incorrectly. I thought Kimmel was 56, but it turns out he's only 55.

So that finally closes the book on 2022. Now what do I do with the rest of my day?

The novelty of watching the Oscars live

I'm not sure why it hasn't happened before, but this year, for the first time since I arrived in Australia, the Oscars telecast coincides with our Labour Day holiday.

The Oscars being a famously moving target is certainly one reason it hasn't yet happened. Let's review Oscar telecasts since my 2013 arrival to see how the stars have never aligned previously. (Oscar dates, like Labour Day dates, are all on Australian time, which means a Monday rather than a Sunday.)

2014 - Labour Day March 10th, Oscars March 3rd
2015 - Labour Day March 9th, Oscars February 23rd
2016 - Labour Day March 14th, Oscars February 29th
2017 - Labour Day March 13th, Oscars February 27th
2018 - Labour Day March 12th, Oscars March 5th
2019 - Labour Day March 11th, Oscars February 25th
2020 - Labour Day March 9th, Oscars February 10th 
2021 - Labour Day March 8th, Oscars April 26th
2022 - Labour Day March 14th, Oscars March 28th
2023 - Labour Day March 13th, Oscars March 13th

Ding ding ding ding! We finally have a winner!

Twice they had landed within a week of one another, but never closer until this year. 

Incidentally, what the hell happened in 2020 where the Oscars were almost in January?? I guess they lucked out, because if the show had been scheduled for a month later they'd have had to cancel. 

The alignment of these events is significant because it means that for the first time that I've been on Australian soil, I get to watch the Oscars live.

Instead of grinding through a Monday in the busy first term of the year -- I work for the department of education, so my busy times are the schools' busy times -- I'll be at home, enjoying the tail end of a three-day weekend. And enjoying an Oscar ceremony that I usually delay until after 9 p.m. Monday night, having dodged spoilers the best I could before then.

Adding to the novelty is that the U.S. has just had daylight savings but Australia hasn't yet, so the ceremony begins at 11 a.m. my time, meaning watching it won't even entirely destroy the day. (Though I've been asked to take my kids out to breakfast before then, to make up for my Oscar viewing, so we better be back in time.)

I don't know that I will make my own live comments on Facebook as the awards get doled out, but it'll be nice to know I don't have to stay off Facebook, and I'll have the option to chime in on other people's witty observations. 

Also, when I write my wrap-up post that's dictated by a main storyline, then becomes a long list of peculiar or noteworthy details, I'll have plenty of time to write it up in order to post it after the clock flips over to Tuesday my time. (See, I can't post it straight afterward due to my Audient rule never to post more than once in a day, and you are currently reading the Monday post.) Usually I'm cranking it out after midnight, probably closer to 1 a.m., just so I can get to bed as soon as possible, and just so I can get it online before I'm too late to the party for post-Oscars chatter.

Given how much it would seem I care about this based on what I've written in this post, it's been another lax Oscar season for me. I only watched one movie I hadn't seen by the time the nominations were announced, Sarah Polley's Women Talking last week, meaning at least I've seen all the best picture nominees before the ceremony. There were other titles I toyed with watching, but, for example, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is still at the premium rental price of $19.99. Actually check that, right now you can only purchase it for $19.99, until it becomes available for rental next week.

It's consistent with a steady downslide in my interest in the Oscars themselves, which I find a way to mention every year. I sill view it as a venerable institution, I still enjoy watching the ceremony, and I still use the date the nominations are unveiled to close off my list of the previous year's viewings and post my rankings. But I don't get involved in any of the hype leading up to the awards, I don't do very much if any homework to be better prepared for the ceremony, and there are years when the show actually creeps up on me and I only notice it's going to happen a few days ahead of time. This year, I did know it was happening this weekend, but only a few days ago did I make the connection that I'd actually be in a position to watch it as it was happening.

Which I will do, in about three hours.

In the meantime I have to print out an Oscars prediction bracket, like I always do, though I'm increasingly less likely to spend more than a few minutes on it. I have to take my kids out to a late Labour Day breakfast. And I've already got the projector set up in the garage, ready to connect up my laptop once I return with a belly full of pancakes.

Oscars 95, here I come, live and in stereo. 

Audient Bridesmaids: A new periodic series

A few years ago -- seven, actually, now that I look at it -- I did a series called Audient Auscars, in which I watched the remaining best picture winners I hadn't yet seen. There were 15 at the time, so the series actually ran into the following year.

Now, just a few days after watching the final of 2021's ten best picture nominees, I'm announcing another way to systematically gobble through some of the best movies of all time -- according to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, anyway.

That's right, watching Nightmare Alley caused me to contemplate how rarely I ever let even a best picture nominee go unseen -- to say nothing, obviously, of the winners. So now I'm going to go back and clean up all the ones I haven't seen yet. 

Starting with the most recent best picture nominee I haven't seen -- that would be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in 2011 (which is funny because I've actually read the book) -- I'm going to go back through history and watch all the others that slipped through the cracks, either because I didn't make time for them (a comparatively small number) or because I wasn't alive yet (a lot more).

And since this is a large number, there is going to be no set pattern of reoccurrence for these viewings. I'll just have a targeted list and work through it from now until I finish or until my death, whichever comes first.

Just how large a number?

I think I'll show you rather than tell you.

Here's that list in reverse chronological order:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)
Ray (2004)
The Prince of Tides (1991)
My Left Foot (1989)
Hope and Glory (1987)
A Room With a View (1986)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
A Soldier's Story (1984)
Places in the Heart (1984)
A Passage to India (1984)
Tender Mercies (1983)
The Right Stuff (1983)
The Dresser (1983)
Reds (1981)
Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
Norma Rae (1979)
An Unmarried Woman (1978)
Coming Home (1978)
The Turning Point (1977)
Julia (1977)
Bound for Glory (1976)
Lenny (1974)
A Touch of Class (1973)
Sounder (1972)
The Emigrants (1972)
Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Love Story (1970)
Hello Dolly! (1969)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Funny Girl (1968)
Rachel, Rachel (1968)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966)
A Thousand Clowns (1965)
Ship of Fools (1965)
Darling (1965)
Becket (1964)
How the West Was Won (1963)
America America (1963)
The Longest Day (1962)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
The Hustler (1961)
The Guns of Navarone (1961)
Fanny (1961)
The Sundowners (1960)
Elmer Gantry (1960)
Sons and Lovers (1960)
The Alamo (1960)
Room at the Top (1959)
The Nun's Story (1959)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Separate Tables (1958)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
Sayonara (1957)
Peyton Place (1957)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The King and I (1956)
Giant (1956)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
The Rose Tattoo (1955)
Picnic (1955)
Mister Roberts (1955)
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
The Country Girl (1954)
The Caine Mutiny (1954)

(At about this point I'm reconsidering the wisdom of typing these all out, but I'm already committed -- the fallacy of sunk costs I guess.)

The Robe (1953)
Julius Caesar (1953)
The Quiet Man (1952)
Moulin Rouge (1952)
Ivanhoe (1952)
Quo Vadis (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Decision Before Dawn (1951)
King Solomon's Mines (1950)
Father of the Bride (1950)
Born Yesterday (1950)
Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
The Heiress (1949)
Battleground (1949)
The Snake Pit (1948)
Johnny Belinda (1948)
Great Expectations (1947)
Crossfire (1947)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
The Yearling (1946)
The Razor's Edge (1946)
Spellbound (1945)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Wilson (1944)
Since You Went Away (1944)

(And here, a hundred titles in, we expand the field to ten nominees per year. Oy.)

Watch on the Rhine (1943)
The Song of Bernadette (1943)
The More the Merrier (1943)
Madame Curie (1943)
In Which We Serve (1943)
The Human Comedy (1943)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Wake Island (1942)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
Random Harvest (1942)
The Pied Piper (1942)
Kings Row (1942)
49th Parallel (1942)
Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
The Little Foxes (1941)
One Foot in Heaven (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Kitty Foyle (1940)
The Letter (1940)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Our Town (1940)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
Love Affair (1939)
Of Mice and Men (1939)
Alexander's Rag Time Band (1938)
Boys Town (1938)
The Citadel (1938)
Four Daughters (1938)
Pygmalion (1938)
Test Pilot (1938)

(Only about ten years left to go ... I'm dying at this point)

The Awful Truth (1937)
Captain Courageous (1937)
Dead End (1937)
The Good Earth (1937)
In Old Chicago (1937)
Lost Horizon (1937)
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)
Stage Door (1936)
Anthony Adverse (1936)
Dodsworth (1936)
Libeled Lady (1936)
Romeo and Juliet (1936)
San Francisco (1936)
The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)
A Tale of Two Cities (1936)
Three Smart Girls (1936)
Alice Adams (1935)
Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
Captain Blood (1935)
David Copperfield (1935)
The Informer (1935)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Les Miserables (1935)
Naughty Marietta (1935)
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Top Hat (1935)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Cleopatra (1934)
Flirtation Walk (1934)
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Here Comes the Navy (1934)
The House of Rothschild (1934)
Imitation of Life (1934)
One Night of Love (1934)
Viva Villa! (1934)
The White Parade (1934)
42nd Street (1933)
Lady for a Day (1933)
Little Women (1933)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
She Done Him Wrong (1933)
State Fair (1933)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Smilin' Through (1932)
One Hour With You (1932)
Shanghai Express (1932)

(Go away, I'm dead)

Arrowsmith (1931)
Bad Girl (1931)
The Champ (1931)
Five-Star Final (1931)
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)
East Lynne (1931)
Skippy (1931)
Trader Horn (1931)
The Big House (1930)
The Divorcee (1930)
Disraeli (1929)
The Love Parade (1929)
Alibi (1929)
Hollywood Revue (1929)
The Patriot (1928)
In Old Arizona (1928)
The Racket (1928)
7th Heaven (1927)

That's 201 goddamn movies. (At the very least, I shouldn't have bothered to go back through and italicize them.)

So yeah I'm not close. 

I can't tell you what percentage of these films I had literally never heard of before, but it might have been as high as half of them. Then there are others I know pretty well by reputation, but had absolutely no idea they were thought of well enough to have been nominated for best picture. 

Obviously there's a big difference between the time I was alive and a cinephile and the years before I was born. I've only missed two 21st century nominees, and you have to go back to 1984, when I was 11 (at the time the Oscars were announced anyway), to find a year where there's more than one nominee I haven't subsequently seen. Only 16 years earlier in 1968, though, 80 percent of the nominees have eluded me to this point.

Now, it's possible I will get to some of these for other reasons before I get to them as part of this series. That's okay. I'm thinking of doing a monthly series on classic musicals, maybe even as soon as next year, and if I do that, I will almost certainly watch some of these. Plus I've already said I should watch The Hustler before I watch The Color of Money for my Scorsese series. And to be honest, it's just as well, because I actually would like to finish this project before I die.

Quite a few of these, I bet, are so obscure that I won't even be able to figure out how to watch them. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I can't tell you how soon I'll get to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and to be honest, writing out this whole list, and reckoning with its gargantuan size, has dampened my enthusiasm for the whole thing. But since I generally like to strike while the iron's hot, I'll probably get started pretty soon. It's better when you announce something and then don't just let it die on the vine.

Unlike other series, I don't actually know if I'll write about each one of these, though I will probably try. I guess it depends on how much else I have going on on the blog at the time, and how tedious it all starts to feel. 

Taking early bets on when I will finish this series ... the over/under is currently the year 2046.