Oscars 2013 Recap!

Now, I wouldn’t say Seth MacFarlane outright bombed in his gig as Oscar host last night, but he sure came close with so many of his jokes being cringe-inducing duds and his song and dance routines being show-stoppers in the worst way.

That he didn’t lapse into his Family Guy character voices like he did in his Saturday Night Live monologue last year is one of the few things I can commend about his performance, but it says a lot that one of the only funny bits he was involved in was a sock puppet production of FLIGHT. 

Other attempts at comedy, like MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” (a mock tribute to actresses who’ve done nudity) with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir, and an ending number with Kristin Chenoweth dedicated to the losers of the evening, fell horribly flat.

I tweeted that Daniel Day-Lewis joking that he was up for the part of Maggie Thatcher in THE IRON LADY while his Oscar presenter Meryl Streep was up for LINCOLN in his acceptance speech for winning Best Actor was funnier than anything MacFarlane said all night, and I wasn’t kidding.

There were a few genuine highlights - Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” for the 50th anniversary tribute to James Bond being one - but it was a largely forgettable show. The rare tie in one category (ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing) will probably be as forgotten as the other five times it happened in the Academy’s history. 



A surprise appearance by Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch as part of the IN MEMORIUM segment brought some much needed gravitas to the proceedings. Points to MacFarlane for not making some rude comment later about it.


But now on to how I did with my predictions that I posted last Friday.

Although up until the broadcast I’ve been referring to the 2013 Oscars as the most unpredictable race in recent memory, I got more of the categories right than I have in over half a decade -18 out of 24. That’s better than the 15 I got right last year, and much better than the 13 I got the previous two years before that.

Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor for DJANGO UNCHAINED, and Ang Lee for Best Director of LIFE OF PI were the big surprises last night. I figured Waltz had won, also for a Tarantino picture, not that long ago so I counted him out.



Spielberg seemed like the safe bet for his direction of LINCOLN, but, despite having picked LIFE OF PI for Score, Cinematography, and Visual Effects I really didn’t think it would win Lee the big Best Director award, and from the other predictions I’ve seen, not many others did either.

Here’s what else I got wrong:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: I predicted LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson), but LINCOLN (Rick Carter, Jim Erickson) got the gold.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern) I’ll just chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t see any of the Documentary Shorts, was just guessing, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll have to seek out the winner - Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s INOCENTE – sometime soon.

MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane). I should’ve known THE HOBBIT wouldn’t win anything. It seems obvious in retrospect that Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell would get it for LES MISÉRABLES, but then a lot of things do.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner) I thought playwright Kushner was a shoo-in, but since I’m more of a fan of Chris Terrio’s screenplay for ARGO I wasn’t disappointed to get this one wrong.

I was happy to be right about ARGO winning Best Picture - Affleck got snubbed for a Best Director nomination, but now that's just a future trivia question.



AMOUR's Best Foreign Picture win and LIFE OF PI's mini sweep with four wins were also nice to see. With hope, those moments will linger longer in memory than MacFarlane's lame material.

More later…

Hey Kids - Funtime Oscar Picks 2013!

As I’ve said before, the 85th Academy Awards, airing Sunday night on ABC, is looking like one of the most unpredictable Oscars ever. So I bet I get more wrong this time than usual. But it's all in fun so what the Hell!

Here are my picks:

1. BEST PICTURE: ARGO 

Yep, I'm going with the theory that the Academy will make up for not nominating Ben Affleck for Best Director and give him the gold for his film, which I think deserves to win. LINCOLN looks pretty possible too, and I could see SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK being an upset, but I'm still going with ARGO.

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg for LINCOLN

3. BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis for LINCOLN



4. BEST ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK


5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert De Niro for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway for LES MISÉRABLES

And the rest:

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson)

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: LIFE OF PI (Claudio Miranda)

9. COSTUME DESIGN: ANNA KARENINA (Jacqueline Durran)

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern)

12. FILM EDITING: ARGO (William Goldenberg)

13. MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane)

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: LIFE OF PI (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik De Boer, Donald Elliott)

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: LIFE OF PI (Mychael Danna)

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “Skyfall” (Adele, Paul Epworth)

17. ANIMATED SHORT: PAPERMAN (John Kahrs)

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: CURFEW (Shawn Christensen)

19. SOUND EDITING: ZERO DARK THIRTY (Paul N.J. Ottosson)

20. SOUND MIXING: LES MISÉRABLES (Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Simon Hayes)

21. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino)

22. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner)

23. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: BRAVE (Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman) What I want to win: WRECK-IT RALPH.

24. BEST FOREIGN FILM: AMOUR (Dir. Michael Haneke)

Check back Monday morning to see how many I got wrong.

Also, I should again plug my appearance on postmodcast in which I discuss the Oscars with host Kevin Brewer.

More later...

LINCOLN: The Film Babble Blog Review

LINCOLN (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 2012)



At the beginning of Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN, based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 bestseller “Team of Rivals,” we meet the friendly, soft spoken Abraham Lincoln, played by Daniel Day Lewis in another Oscar caliber performance, as he’s conversing with soldiers, both black and white, in the Army of the Potomac’s camp.



When more than one of the infantryman starts reciting the Gettysburg Address with gusto to our 16th President,  I was thinking ‘what, is this written by Aaron Sorkin?’

I knew that it wasn’t - LINCOLN’s screenplay was penned by playwright Tom Kushner, best known for ANGELS IN AMERICA and Spielberg’s MUNICH - but the scene’s simultaneous attempt at gravitas and heartstring-tugging so reminded me of Sorkin’s style that the comparison was hard to shake. However, in this case, that’s not a bad thing.

Spielberg’s modest epic isn’t a life-spanning biopic; it concerns the pivotal last leg of Lincoln’s life, from January 1865 to his death several months later, in which he tirelessly fought to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and end the Civil War.

Although it begins on the battlefield, only briefly do we see combat (there’s nothing that compares to the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN’s lengthy opening Normandy invasion sequence), because the film is more interested in the back room deals, with the suspense coming from how close the vote over the 13th Amendment was in the House of Representatives.

Of course, we all know how it’s going to turn out, but that doesn’t harm the feeling of being a fly on the wall for some of the most crucial conversations in America’s storied past.

A cast of recognizable faces help bring history alive, including Tommy Lee Jones (once a scene stealer always a scene stealer, especially as he has the most humorous moments here) as Republican Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens, Sally Field as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln (Field’s one-on-ones with Day-Lewis are wonderful - two Academy Award winners reminding us what won them those awards in the first place), the always welcome Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a brief part as Honest Abe’s son Robert Todd Lincoln, and - thank the Heavens he’s still with us - Hal Holbrook, who once played Lincoln himself in a 1976 television project, as the wise, and very old political figure Francis Preston Blair.

Every other face seems to be somebody you may know too - James Spader, David Strathairn, Bruce McGill, Gulliver McGrath (last seen in DARK SHADOWS and HUGO), Jared Harris, Jackie Earle Haley, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Hawkes are all on hand.

Day-Lewis’s and Spielberg don’t offer us a larger than life Lincoln, they give us a humble man passionately driven to change the fate of human dignity (as he puts it), and it’s a portrayal to believe in. It’s made the more powerful because Spielberg refrains from CGI (an era-appropriate Washington D.C. could’ve been created with lavish special effects), and keeps his cameras (or more accurately cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s cameras) tight on these grand men (or in the case of Lee Pace’s character Democratic Congressman Fernando Wood, not-so-grand).

Spielberg’s long-time composer John Williams (this is their 26th film together) provides a suitably grandiose score, that gets cheesy at times, but overall effectively enhances the narrative turns, even if I’m having trouble remembering it right now.

For most of its almost 3 hour running time (of course, it’s long!) LINCOLN has the thrust of the best entertainment about political matters from the 1939 classic MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON to the acclaimed NBC drama The West Wing (Sorkin again!), but a few sections drag, and there were times that I thought it might’ve been better as HBO mini-series.

But that probably would’ve denied us the excellent work of Day-Lewis and other A-list cast members though.

There will be many folks that will be turned off by the notion of a long talky history lesson, but with the sheer strength of Day-Lewis’ incredible acting, and Spielberg’s subtle construction (and minimum of his trademark corny sentiment), LINCOLN ought to win over many more folks with the patience to take in what’s being said, how things were changed, and why, to this day, its title subject is considered to be the greatest American President of all time.

More later...