Original-Cin Alt-Oscars: What We'd Change About Sunday's Show
By Original-Cin Staff
You can’t please everybody, least of all us. So as Oscar night looms, we have several bones to pick with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Here’s what the Original-Cin gang would have had them do differently.
Liam Lacey
Dear Oscar guys: You have an awkward problem. You want to celebrate women filmmakers, but your voters keep nominating films with a distinctly manly musk -- Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Joker, The Irishman, Ford Vs Ferrari, 1917.
I have an easy solution. Women are currently equally represented only in the acting categories, which are conventionally separated by gender. Why not a Best Female director? The results may be eye-opening. Here are your 2019 nominees, Best Female Director: Greta Gerwig for Little Women. Lulu Wang for The Farewell, Lorene Scafaria for Hustlers, Marielle Heller for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and Olivia Wilde for Booksmart. And if the boys in the directors’ branch are open to stretching a little artistically, there’s Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, Alma Har'el’s Honey Boy, Claire Denis’ High Life, and two Cannes prize winners, Mati Diop’s Atlantics, and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. You are welcome.
Jim Slotek
It would be pretty “out there” not to concede that putting humans on the Moon – let alone eventually 12 of them – remains one of the greatest accomplishments in history.
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson losing their sanity in The Lighthouse
And on the 50th anniversary of that mind-boggling achievement, Todd Douglas Miller’s documentary Apollo 11 came out, with unearthed pristine 70 mm footage of pretty much everything around Cape Canaveral during those eight days. The copious film record was for a doc that was never made then, and was finessed into an astonishing experience best seen on an IMAX screen.
It’s not just the back-room nail-biting over the Sea of Tranquility landing that could just as easily have been a disaster. The casual scenes of crowds of onlookers are as vivid as a time machine, a scan of ordinary ‘60s folk dressed for the hot July Florida sun.
As a doc fan, I often part company with the Oscars. The nominees are worthy, and with China in the news on multiple fronts, American Factory is the favourite.
But to shut out Apollo 11 is just plain loony.
Linda Barnard
My write-in ballot privileges would not only see Greta Gerwig nominated for Best Director for her richly detailed, spirited version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women, she’d win.
With six nominations for the film, including Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay for Gerwig’s refreshing timeline-mixing screenplay, the lack of a Best Director nod for the film is a real head scratcher.
Gerwig’s deft storytelling expands the characters from their novelized beginnings into girls and young women (and a mother) questioning their traditional roles. She’s guided her cast (including Timothée Chalamet’s Laurie) to explore exuberance, regret, duty and sorrow in their characters, conveyed with all the passion, immediacy and realism of youthful emotion. Movement is everywhere. Characters seem to dance, passing through scenes with grace and speed. And when Saoirse Ronan’s Jo and Chalamet’s Laurie do dance, it’s joyous, in a sequence that also underscores class distinctions and the restrictions of 19th-century society.
Apollo 11: So they went to the moon. No big deal, apparently.
Ronan’s Jo is wonderfully, perfectly, exactly as she should be; bold and thrilling and indeed, her own woman, right down to her desire to have financial independence.
Greta Gerwig has earned what she failed to get: her second Best Director Oscar nomination (2017’s Lady Bird) for Little Women. It’s a snub to a multi-talented filmmaker that Hollywood didn’t acknowledge she deserves one of those five nominee slots.
Bonnie Laufer
A film that I would like to have seen get more love at this year’s Oscars is Uncut Gems.
Now, I am going to admit something upfront. I had the opportunity to see Uncut Gems when it first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival back in September.
I saw it closer to the end of the festival - and it might have been my fifth movie of the day - so I was not immediately enamoured. As a matter of fact, the frenetic pacing and Adam Sandler.’s performance gave me a massive migraine.
However, I couldn't stop thinking about the film and decided to give it another watch a few months later and I am really glad I did!
Adam Sandler was brilliant as a high strung New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score and hands down should have had a Best Actor nod for his performance. I’ve always said, comedians make the best dramatic actors!
Mame Bineta Sane in Mati Diop’s Atlantics.
Karen Gordon
Oscar didn't completely snub The Lighthouse. It is up for Cinematography, for Jarin Blakshke and deservedly so. But writer/director Robert Eggers’ fever dream of a movie deserved so much more.
The insanely unpredictable plot was a study in contained madness as the two main characters unraveled in a lighthouse. It's so layered with potential meanings that part of the fun is contemplating what the hell Eggers is saying. The film also boasts two of the year's best performances from Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, two actors you might not have imagined casting together. But oh what joy!!
Admittedly the film's unconventional nature probably made it too much in a year where there are so many great films. But I'd argue that’s even more reason for it to be on the Oscars’ radar. Fortunately, the film is up for five Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Director, Best Male Lead (Pattinson), Best Supporting Male (Dafoe), Best Cinematography and Editing.
Karen Gordon (again)
Terrence Malick isn't everyone's cup of tea. His movies are long, and they drift along, often defying conventional storytelling techniques and irritating those who prefer a clear beginning, middle and end. A Hidden Life, is, in its way, one of his more conventional films. It's based on the true story of Austrian farmer, husband, and father, Franz Jägerstätter, who stood by his principals, refused to work for the Nazis in any way and paid the ultimate price.
Yes, it's long and it has Malick's trademark scenes shot from low angles that drift. But what he achieves with this film is the most profound movie of the past few years., it also speaks to the ideal of integrity, and goodness, which speaks to our times without hammering at the point.
You don't watch this movie as much as you enter it. Malick has a way of reaching into your soul making this a unique kind of experience, and a movie of depth and beauty beyond the usual. It's superb on every level, from the acting, especially by the lead August Diehl, to the filmmaking, and the cinematography by Jörg Widmer is stunning. It's one of the most beautiful looking movies of the year. Oscar snubbed it..
Thom Ernst
The big omission at this year’s Oscars is a host. I crave the opening stand-up, sketch or musical montage that a host brings to the show. I revel at the snide observations and critiques thrown in after a passionate acceptance speech has gone awry, or a music cue has missed a beat. And I like the creative thinking that goes behind determining who rates high enough to entertain the nation’s top entertainers.
So, never one to raise an issue without proposing a solution…I offer the perfect host(s):
Johnny, Moira, David and Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek. Not the cast; the characters. Imagine Johnny Rose slyly exploiting the opportunity to regain credibility in the industry, Moira blissfully unaware that no one in the audience know who she is, David, neurotic and overthinking every moment, imagining snubs and dismissals from Oscar presenters and recipients, and Alexis… well, Alexis would be in her element, having had some kind of liaison with just about everyone in attendance.
But I doubt this is the kind of gripe my colleagues had in mind. So, I submit this blatant Oscar miscall. Harpoon not nominated for Best Foreign Film! Ridiculous! (Seriously, that movie is great.)
Kim Hughes
What Thom said.
Also — and this scribbles outside the lines of beefs with this year’s awards but anyway — maybe a return to five Best Picture nominees. Conceptually, I understand why having nine nominees instead of five allows the Academy to recognize a greater range of movies. But it makes the whole process feel meeker and less declarative, kind of like telling every kid on the soccer team they are great and going to be a star. It just ain’t so.