... FOR "HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT" (aka "OSCARS 2014") - UPDATED!

UPDATED: Well, that's it. Another Oscar show, another 365 days at the movies come and gone. While last night's telecast had its surprises (12 Years A Slave for Best Picture? Did anyone but the politically correct-minded see that one coming?) as well as its foregone conclusions (Frozen for Best Animated Feature and Best Song, plus Alfonso Cuarón nabbing Best Director honors for Gravity), Oscar 2014 will likely go down as the most social media-centric ceremony in the history of ever, with host Ellen DeGeneres' star-studded "selfie" breaking records as Twitter's most retweeted photo of all time. (My favorites: Kevin Spacey and resident sour-puss Angelina Jolie joining in on the fun, or Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch photobombing Best Actor hopeful Chiwetel Ejiofor mere seconds later.)

From what I watched, the show was every bit as random and rambling as it has been in previous years, with pompous tributes (how, exactly, did The Wizard Of Oz earn a special remembrance for its 75th anniversary, while other classics like Gone With The Wind and Stagecoach did not?) and pointless attempts at grandiosity dominating the night (dedicating the ceremony to "heroes" in film, animated and otherwise, only to show endless clip montages populated mostly by men? Dudes, your women must be so proud!). All this, plus John Travolta hilariously mispronouncing Idina Menzel's name during her otherwise top-notch rendition of "Let It Go"? Oh, the humanity!

Winners have been bolded (with an asterisk) at the end of this post. For anyone who stuck through to the end, what are your thoughts, reminisces, complaints? Did any acceptance speech or musical performance rub you the wrong way? What winner took you most by surprise/had you rolling your eyes? Is anyone else fully on board the McConaissance like I am? Please post your responses below!

 
Oscar, Oscar, what could you possibly be thinking? 

Each year, we're subjected to our share of cop-outs and controversies surrounding the Academy Awards. Often, these range from the obsessively petty (How did that person even get nominated?) to the borderline offensive (celebs who mistake their time at the podium as an opportunity for political grandstanding). Other times, Oscar seems to have an agenda all its own (the 69th Annual Academy Awards, for example, for which The English Patient took home the coveted prize for Best Picture, might have been dubbed The Year of The Independent Film; in 2004, Oscar was all about The Lord of The Rings: The Return Of The King, winning every award for which it was nominated; two years ago, I argued that the nominees for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards were steeped in nostalgia for times gone by).

While we usually have to wait until Oscar night for these controversies to rear their ugly heads, this year's list of nominations has already caused a stir among certain circles. The Academy's decision to revoke Alone Yet Not Alone's Best Song nomination, for instance, because its composer, former Academy Governor Bruce Broughton, supposedly used his position to garner votes. Or recent (re)allegations by Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan that the Blue Jasmine director molested her as a child, which could taint his chances for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. And let's not forget the requisite Oscar snubs, always fun for conversation, which this year include some curious omissions from the ballot. (Robert Redford, ignored for his career-redefining one-man performance in All Is Lost? Tom Hanks, passed over for Captain Phillips AND Saving Mr. Banks? Lee Daniels' The Butler, shut out of the Oscar race completely? Say it isn't so!)

More than ever, though, the Oscars, to me, have become a celebration of all things mediocre in American film. That's not to say every movie released to theaters last year is somehow unworthy of our attention. It's just that, in tone and subject matter at least, we've experienced so many of them in some form before.

Take this year's nominees for Best Picture. Nebraska, directed by indie auteur Alexander Payne? Told in the same ramshackle/lackadaisical style as his previous efforts, About Schmidt, Sideways and The Descendents, about perpetually-flawed characters who must come to grips with their own humanity. Her, the story of a man who falls head- over-heels in love with a computer program? That's been done before, too, as a Twilight Zone episode, a Kate Bush song, and a murder/mystery video game. Even the year's most audaciously-made motion picture, Gravity, is formulaic at its core - the story of a Woman With A Tragic Past, who Defies All Odds to Make It Safely Home. And what of American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Philomena, 12 Years A Slave, The Wolf Of Wall Street? Why, they're practically part of their own genre: The Incredible True Story Of People You Never Knew Existed (But You Probably Should). (American Hustle and Wolf Of Wall Street take the familiarity factor even one step further: Hustle because it copies the style of Martin Scorsese's early crime dramas, and Wolf because it's virtually the same, structure-wise, as Scorsese's own GoodFellas, except that it swaps out bloodlust and gangsters for Quaaludes and crooked stockbrokers.)

You could argue, of course, that movies have never been 100% original. One need only look at the 1940 Academy Awards, for instance (a banner year as far as anyone's concerned), to see that eight of the ten Best Picture nominees - Dark Victory, Gone With The Wind, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice And Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard Of Oz, and Wuthering Heights (Love Affair and Ninotchka being the only exceptions) - were based on novels, short stories or plays. Regardless, it's the scope of those films, the way they were funded and photographed, that make them so remarkable to this day. (Come to think of it, has there ever been a movie better suited for Oscar glory than Gone With The Wind? With its massive sets, endless extras, and larger-than-life soap opera dialogue, delivered with gusto by its seasoned cast, GWTW gave audiences and Academy voters a reason to shout. Few, if any, Best Picture winners of the past decade have matched it for size and spectacle; in fact, I'd say only The Return Of The King comes closest.)

Today's movies, by comparison, simply refuse to stack up. Where are the big-budget extravaganzas of yesteryear, the films that captured the hearts and wallets of moviegoers the world over? Nowadays, the only films that seem to light the box office on fire are superhero epics or movies with "Hunger Games" in their title, but you won't find any of those nominated for Best Picture. (In Oscar's eyes, sometimes blockbuster box office receipts are reward enough.)

Again, that's not to say all of Sunday's top contenders are completely without merit. Far from it. Each of them, at least, manages to expose some form of the human condition in ways that are enlightening, harrowing, and moving. But moments, big or small, do not necessarily a "Best Picture" make. When I think of the "best" films, I think of films that break all the rules, that do it better and bigger than anything before them, that encapsulate anything and everything the cinema is capable of.

If I had my druthers, then, I would vote Gravity as the year's Best Picture. Here is a movie that takes the most basic of narratives and places it front and center of a sweeping, astonishing, panic-inducing outer space adventure, the kind that would put even Stanley Kubrick to shame. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) spent the better part of three years developing the technology he needed to tell the tale, and the special effects work by UK-based company Framestore and cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki are literally breathtaking, like nothing you've seen before on a screen. (To fully appreciate the sheer filmmaking force of this thing, imagine those astonishing 3-to-7-minute tracking shots from Cuarón/Lubezki's Children Of Men padded out to 90 minutes.) Couple that with two of Hollywood's biggest stars (George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) at their most charismatic, and that's as close to perfection as we're likely to get.

__________

The 86th Annual Academy Awards air this Sunday, March 2, on ABC. Ellen DeGeneres hosts, after previously hosting the Awards in 2007.

And the nominees are:

BEST PICTURE

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Nebraska

Philomena

* 12 Years A Slave

The Wolf Of Wall Street

BEST DIRECTOR

* Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)

Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave)

Alexander Payne (Nebraska)

David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Martin Scorsese (The Wolf Of Wall Street)

BEST ACTOR

Christian Bale (American Hustle)

Bruce Dern (Nebraska)

Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf Of Wall Street)

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave)

* Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

BEST ACTRESS

Amy Adams (American Hustle)

* Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

Judi Dench (Philomena)

Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)

Michael Fassbender (12 Years A Slave)

Jonah Hill (The Wolf Of Wall Street)

* Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)

Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

* Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years A Slave)

Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)

June Squibb (Nebraska)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy,

   Ethan Hawke)

Captain Phillips (Billy Ray)

Philomena (Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope)

* 12 Years A Slave (John Ridley)

The Wolf Of Wall Street (Terence Winter)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

American Hustle (Eric Warren Singer, David O.

   Russell)

Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)

Dallas Buyers Club (Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack)

* Her (Spike Jonze)

Nebraska (Bob Nelson)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)

* The Great Beauty (Italy)

The Hunt (Denmark)

The Missing Picture (Cambodia)

Omar (Palestine)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Ernest & Celestine

* Frozen

The Wind Rises

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

The Act Of Killing

Cutie And The Boxer

Dirty Wars

The Square

* 20 Feet From Stardom

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Grandmaster (Philippe Le Sourd)

* Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)

Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel)

Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael)

Prisoners (Roger A. Deakins)

BEST FILM EDITING

American Hustle (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers,

   Alan Baumgarten)

Captain Phillips (Christopher Rouse)

Dallas Buyers Club (John Mac McMurphy, Martin

   Pensa)

* Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger)

12 Years A Slave (Joe Walker)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

American Hustle (Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler)

Gravity (Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, Joanne

   Woollard)

* The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin, Beverley
   Dunn)

Her (K.K. Barrett, Gene Serdena)

12 Years A Slave (Adam Stockhausen, Alice Baker)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson)

The Grandmaster (William Chang Suk Ping)

* The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin)

The Invisible Woman (Michael O'Connor)

12 Years A Slave (Patricia Norris)

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

* Dallas Buyers Club (Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews)

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Stephen Prouty)

The Lone Ranger (Joel Harlow, Gloria Pasqua-Casny)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The Book Thief (John Williams)

* Gravity (Steven Price)

Her (William Butler, Owen Pallett)

Philomena (Alexandre Desplat)

Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

"Happy" (Despicable Me 2)

* "Let It Go" (Frozen)

"The Moon Song" (Her)

"Ordinary Love" (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom)

BEST SOUND EDITING

All Is Lost (Steve Boeddeker, Richard Hymns)

Captain Phillips (Oliver Tarney)

* Gravity (Glenn Freemantle)

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (Brent Burge,

   Chris Ward)

Lone Survivor (Wylie Stateman)

BEST SOUND MIXING

Captain Phillips (Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike

   Prestwood Smith, Chris Munro)

* Gravity (Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher

   Benstead, Chris Munro)

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (Christopher

   Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick, Tony

   Johnson)

Inside Llewyn Davis (Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff,

   Peter F. Kurland)

Lone Survivor (Andy Koyama, Beau Borders, David

   Brownlow)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

* Gravity

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

Iron Man 3

The Lone Ranger

Star Trek Into Darkness

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Feral

Get A Horse!

* Mr. Hublot

Possessions

Room On The Broom

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Cavedigger

Facing Fear

Karama Has No Walls

* The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life

Prison Terminal: The Last Days Of Private Jack Hall

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn't Me)

Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing

   Everything)

* Helium

Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care

   Of Everything?)

The Voorman Problem