2012-13

It's a Wonderful Night for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar! Who Will Win?

After years of bland predictablility, we finally have an Oscar derby with an air of mystery around it. I'm bracing myself for a record low prediction accuracy this year, but at least many categories will actually be interesting to see unfold!

BEST PICTURE: ✅

Will win: Argo (could be Lincoln, Life of Pi, or Silver Linings Playbook)

Should win: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Should've been nominated: Moonrise Kingdom

BEST DIRECTOR: ✅

Will win: Ang Lee, Life of Pi (could be Spielberg or Russell)

Should win: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Should've been nominated: Ben Affleck, Argo

BEST ACTOR: ✅

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln (lock)

Should win: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Should've been nominated: John Hawkes, The Sessions

BEST ACTRESS: ✅

Will win: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook (could be Emmanuelle Riva)

Should win: Emmaneulle Riva, Amour

Should've been nominated: Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: ❌

Will win: Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook (could be ANY of them!)

Should win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Should've been nominated: Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

[Did win]: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: ✅

Will win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables (near lock, 1% chance of Sally Field)

Should win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Should've been nominated: Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: ✅

Will win: Argo (could be ANY of them!)

Should win: Lincoln

Should've been nominated: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: ✅

Will win: Django Unchained (could be Amour or Zero Dark Thirty)

Should win: Moonrise Kingdom

Should've been nominated: Looper

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: ✅

Will win: Brave (neck-and-neck with Wreck-It Ralph)

Should win: Wreck-It Ralph

Should've been nominated: The Secret World of Arrietty

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: ✅

Will win: Amour (odds-on favourite)

Should win: Amour

Should've been nominated: Rust and Bone

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: ✅

Will win: Searching for Sugar Man (odds-on favourite)

Should win: 5 Broken Cameras

Should've been nominated: The Queen of Versailles

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: ✅

Will win: Life of Pi (could be Skyfall)

Should win: Skyfall

Should've been nominated: The Master

BEST FILM EDITING: ✅

Will win: Argo (could be Zero Dark Thirty or Life of Pi)

Should win: Argo

Should've been nominated: Looper

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: ❌

Will win: Anna Karenina (could be Les Mis or Life of Pi)

Should win: Anna Karenina

Should've been nominated: Prometheus

[Did win]: Lincoln

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: ✅

Will win: Anna Karenina (could be Les Mis)

Should win: Anna Karenina

Should've been nominated: Moonrise Kingdom

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: ✅

Will win: Life of Pi (could be Argo or Lincoln)

Should win: Anna Karenina

Should've been nominated: The Dark Knight Rises

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: ✅

Will win: "Skyfall" from Skyfall (odds-on favourite)

Should win: "Skyfall" from Skyfall

Should've been nominated: "Into the Open Air" from Brave

BEST SOUND MIXING: ✅

Will win: Les Miserables (could be Life of Pi or Skyfall)

Should win: Les Miserables

Should've been nominated: Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST SOUND EDITING: ❌

Will win: Life of Pi (could be ANY of them!)

Should win: Django Unchained

Should've been nominated: The Impossible

[Did win]: Skyfall AND Zero Dark Thirty in a tie!

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: ✅

Will win: Life of Pi (lock)

Should win: Life of Pi

Should've been nominated: ParaNorman

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: ✅

Will win: Les Miserables (could be ANY of them!)

Should win: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Should've been nominated: Lincoln

BEST ANIMATED SHORT: ❌

Will win: Adam & Dog (could be Paperman or Head Over Heels)

Should win: Paperman

Should've been nominated: The Eagleman Stag

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT: ✅

Will win: Curfew (could be ANY of them!)

Should win: Curfew

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: ❌

Will win: Open Heart (could be Inocente or Monday's At Racine)

Should win: Inocente

Post-Oscars Analysis

Final score: 19/24, a decent if unremarkable final score to put a cap on what has been one of the most unusual awards seasons in recent memory. To no one's surprise, Ben Affleck's Argo was crowned the Best Picture of 2012, also taking expected prizes for Chris Terrio's  screenplay and William Goldenberg's editing.

In a competitive year like this one, you knew that a lot of the wealth would be spread. Eight of the nine Best Picture nominees won Oscars. Sadly but foreseeably, the only one not to win just so happened to be the single best film of the year, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Life of Pi claimed the most trophies of the night, taking three craft categories and Ang Lee's second Best Director Oscar for a Best Picture losing film. Weird, but a hearty congratulations to Mr. Lee. Problematic though the adaptation may be, pulling off that movie from the directors chair was a feat.

The second place tally of three wins is shared between Argo and Les Miserables, which triumphed in Sound Mixing, Makeup, and slam dunk Supporting Actress contender Anne Hathaway.

Django Unchained reprised its pair of BAFTA wins and Globe wins in Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay, making both Christoph Waltz and Quentin Tarantino double Oscar winners. Bugged as I am by these wins, I did enjoy watching Quentin take the stage to deliver a typically loose but charmingly geeky acceptance speech. Good for him.

Lincoln was able to take home more than just the sure-thing Best Actor prize for Daniel Day Lewis -- whose acceptance speech was excellent, by the way. In one of the night's few true upsets, Rick Carter and Jim Erickson bested flashier and more ornate competition in Best Production Design. As much as it sucks that Anna Karenina's brilliant designers got shafted again (Greenwood and Spencer should have won for Sherlock Holmes already), I have to say that Lincoln is a very handsome, and very atypical, winner.

Another double winner, although not a Best Picture nominee, was Skyfall, taking Sound Editing and Song, becoming the most Oscar honoured Bond film of all time (the Academy has never truly embraced 007).

One-win wonders include Silver Linings Playbook's Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress, Amour for Best Foreign Language Film, and Anna Karenina for Best Costume Design (well deserved). Searching for Sugar Man completed its clean sweep of the season by winning Best Documentary, and my last minute instinct that Brave would pull out an upset over Wreck-It Ralph in Best Animated Feature proved to be true. I guess I'm glad I called it, but I'm also super bummed that the better film lost what might have  been one of the night's closest races.

But not a closer race than Best Sound Editing, which was such nail-biter this year that it produced what is unarguably the evening's single most surprising result. My jaw it the floor when Mark Whalberg announced a tie, which is incredibly rare given how many voters there are in the Academy. The award was split between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty, which managed to come out of a tough, controversial awards season with at least one Oscar to show for it. Both films had fantastic sound work.

And a personal highlight for me, was seeing Paperman claim Best Animated Short, the one win I wanted most out of the entire show. I superstitiously refused to predict it even though it made sense, so that was one of the five I got wrong. I think I did okay for myself on the predictions front though: 19 out of 24 is a nice bit of redemption after last year's dismal showing.

And that brings us to the show itself...

The telecast, as designed by musical-loving producers Craig Zadan and  Neil Meron was bloated, uneven, and overstuffed with arbitrary musical  performances...

And I loved almost every minute of it!

This is not going to be a majority opinion in most circles (and certainly not on the Internet which seems to detest musicals), but I'm defending -- nay, celebrating -- the flamboyant audacity,  confidence, and fun of the Zadan/Meron Oscars. It's no secret that this  pair is big on musicals, having produced Chicago, Hairspray, and most recently the TV series Smash. They were not coy about this year's show having a heavy musical slant, which incited preemptive dread from many a critic, but did not dissuade  them from their vision.

If you only plan to do produce the Oscars one time, then go big or go home. And go big they did. "Celebrating the movies through music" was the theme, and there were nearly a dozen or more musical numbers throughout the show putting smiles on my face. Everything from Seth  MacFarlane's cheeky "We Saw Your Boobs" song to a robust Les Mis medley by the film's cast to Barbara Streisand's moving performance of "The Way We Were" following the In Memoriam segment made me glad I was watching this.

Was this all needed? Were most viewers even tolerant of all this singing? Probably not, but I recall making a similar argument in defence of Les Mis a couple of months ago. It's better to make something that's love-it or hate-it than to try and pander to the lowest common  denominator. I suppose I'm just lucky that I fall into the love-it category this time around.

All in all, I had a great time watching this year's Oscars. It had a committed identity for the first time since the 2009 show, and it was an identity that, while far from perfect or popular, I was very happy to get on board with.

And how unlucky is that family guy? Reactions from entertainment writers to Seth MacFarlane's hosting have been mostly sour. Has nobody anything sweet to say about the show or its versatile emcee? I'm just searching for some sugar, man.

Not that MacFarlane needs me or anyone else to defend him. He's no martyr. The style of frat-boy humour that so annoyed people at the Oscars is that upon which he's built for himself a small TV animation empire. Having gotten away with – and actually thrived on – far grosser comedy in Family Guy and American Dad for so many years makes the 39-year-old millionaire somewhat untouchable.

So why do I feel compelled to debate the vocal masses who have been quick to deem him public enemy #1? Again, it's not because I feel he needs to be defended. Nor is it because I think he did a particularly great job; His own self-deprecating meta review of himself, “Seth MacFarlane Proves to be Mediocre Oscar Host”, is pretty accurate in my opinion. So no, this editorial is not a defence of the man, and it is not a contrarian stand for the minority opinion. Rather, it is a plea for cooler heads and less conclusion-jumping, which are becoming increasingly rare in this digital age of hasty headlines and instant reactions.

Indeed, the hunt for measured or objective reviews of Mr. MacFarlane's hosting gig has proven a difficult one. Most critics either neglect or simply refuse to take the good with the bad, opting for the easier route of isolating his most offensive zingers as the entire basis for their assessment of not only his performance, but of his personal character as well, going so far as to libel him with allegations of misogyny, racism, and homophobia.

Forgive me for thinking that such accusations are thinly based and excessively harsh. Even the most cringe-inducing of MacFarlane's one-liners are no worse than Ricky Gervais' three consecutive years of mean-spirited roasting at the Golden Globes, a common comparison being made to MacFarlane's attempt. And even that comparison is not an entirely sound one, as Gervais only knew how to make crass and acidic jabs at the talent in the room, whereas MacFarlane's comedy ran the gamut – as it does in his animated TV shows – from dangerously provocative to subversively satirical to self-consciously dopey.

People seem to forget, or simply don't care, that the same guy who wrote that unnerving George-Clooney/Quvenzhane-Wallis innuendo is the same guy who thought to include that affectionately geeky Sound of Music reference (yes, that gag cracked me up). The same guy who rolled our eyes with the now infamous “We Saw Your Boobs” song was likely even more eager to croon the Fred & Ginger classic “The Way You Look Tonight”, classic swing music being one of his favourite larks. He who jested about the decidedly unfunny Chris-Brown/Rihanna drama also invented that clever Captain Kirk sketch, which not only served as an innovative framing device for raunchy asides and musical pastiche alike, but also rained a preemptive blow against the rough reviews that MacFarlane surely knew he would face ever since accepting the job four months ago.

Am I implying that we should unconditionally forgive MacFarlane his most tasteless bits? Not at all. A cruel joke is a cruel joke no matter which way you slice it (although I'd argue that most of his bad material falls under the category of 'immature' rather than 'cruel'). But what right has anyone to judge a large, variety-filled performance from nothing more than the relatively small sample of gags that crossed the line? How can a handful of ill-advised jokes encapsulate the efforts of an unarguably talented man who clearly worked his ass off to write, act, sing, and dance on a 3.5 hour live show?

That is selective reasoning. That is biased journalism. That is unfair.

Of course, MacFarlane was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. Even if all his material was clean as a sheet, he would probably have taken flack for being phony. He may even had felt the heat for the show's heavy musical slant. Not that it was even his doing, but the host always acts as a lightning rod for negativity toward the show, even if it's not their fault. William Shatner's subtle aside, “Are you sure you want to become the first Oscar host to get a bad review?” apparently went over the heads of the audience at the Dolby Theatre, who did not laugh on cue as I did.

If you're one of the many who hated this year's telecast because of the plethora of musical performances, then your beef is more with producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. As much as I enjoy song and dance, even I felt the frequent shout-outs to Chicago (which the pair executive produced ten years ago) wreaked of self-promotion. Not MacFarlane's fault, but again, he's the easiest target to identify for those who thought the show was an unbearable disaster.

I wouldn't weep for him. He'll land on his feet and continue to prosper doing what he does best. A press culture as quick to judge as the one we currently live in will undoubtedly move on to the next big controversy soon enough, but I'll continue to keep my eyes peeled for opinions that are a bit more considered, a bit more willing to see a bigger picture, and perhaps just a bit sweeter than the cry of the mob.

I'm just searching for some sugar, man.