Best Picture Oscar 2019

I only voted for Green Book cause it won the PGA award and they have a history of predicting the BP winner quite well.

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Letterboxd

What the heck. I might switch my pick one last time to GREEN BOOK, then. I want my score to be 20+ this year. Every year, I end up with a score of 15-17.

Of course, if it was my choice for Best Picture, I'd stick with A STAR IS BORN because I just loved that movie. GREEN BOOK was amazing, too, but it didn't have a killer soundtrack like A STAR IS BORN did

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

That Piano piece at the end of GREEN BOOK was pretty 'killer' to me..

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Entertainment Log
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Vice is winning it clearly this year.

The Producers Guild of America Award isn't as big a lock as the Directors Guild of America's big prize when it comes to correlating with the Oscar, but it is good. Or at least has been, historically. The PGA only started handing out their award in 1989 when Driving Miss Daisy won both the PGA and the Best Picture Oscar. They have matched twenty out of twenty-nine since. 68% is pretty good, though obviously not automatic. The nine splits thus far were...


But do notice that run at the begnning of the 21st century when they were different four out of six years including three in a row, and they have been wrong two of the last three years (though they did match last year with The Shape of Water).

We'll know on Sunday.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Back when the Best Picture nominees topped out at five, there was never a year where all five had great shots of winning. It was rare when even three of them seemed to be competing. Now that there are eight to ten that means there are five or seven every year that are nominated but have no realistic chance of hearing their name called.

The Oscars had gotten criticism for years, growing louder especially in the 21st century, that the Best Picture nominees and winners were more and more films that weren’t roundly “popular”. They may have critical acclaim or some arthouse clout, but the blockbusters weren’t being represented, while the true arthouse set are usually no more pleased by the Oscar’s choices than the mainstreamers. To me this line of complaint has always been much ado about nothing. A good movie is a good movie, no matter its profile, pedigree, or box office. Part of the reasoning for expanding to up to ten nominees is it might let some of those blockbusters in the gate, but that hasn’t happened much. That brought about the quickly rescinded announcement that there would be some sort of popular film category.



But the Academy membership seems to have course corrected a bit by themselves. The highest grossing film of the year, Marvel’s Black Panther, became the first superhero movie to get a nomination for Best Picture. It didn’t happen with The Dark Knight or The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy or Logan or Superman: The Movie back in the day. But the chants of Wakanda forever broke through. Since 2010 when the Best Picture expanded from a max of five nominees this is the fourth time the highest grossing U.S. release got a nomination. The others were Avatar, Toy Story 3, and American Sniper, none of which won. Avatar was famously beaten by The Hurt Locker, which to date is the lowest grossing winner ever.

Bohemian Rhapsody was a bit of a surprise hit. Despite some seriously mixed reviews and word of mouth it we-will-we-will rocked its way to nearly $215-million in domestic box office, $860-million worldwide. A troubled production just about all the way through, including director Bryan Singer leaving the project ahead of a sex abuse scandal, the story and music of Queen triumphed anyway, culminating in five Academy nominations including Rami Malik as the overwhelming favorite for Best Actor and making the final cut for Picture.



Neither Black Panther nor Bohemian Rhapsody will win, and for those who think the Oscars need movies like that not to just be nominated but to win for television ratings to increase or make them somehow more relevant, the nominations themselves won’t be enough. But hopefully it stalls any further ideas of creating a new category just so a blockbuster will be sure to win some kind of “big” Oscar every year.

And for those hoping that somehow Black Panther will win and want to pin hopes on it having won the SAG Award for Best Cast, there isn’t really much correlation between that award and Best Picture. The Screen Actors Guild started giving out their award in 1995, and right out of the gate the first three years they gave Best Cast to Apollo 13, The Birdcage, and The Full Monty, none of which won Best Picture (Braveheart, The English Patient, and Titanic did). In the 23 years of the SAGs it has only matched with Best Picture 11 times. 48% as an awards predictor is very weak. The last two years the SAG Award for Best Cast went to Three Billboards and Hidden Figures, neither of which won of course (The Shape of Water and Moonlight did). A SAG Cast win when not coupled with other major awards means pretty much nothing.



Vice is more typical of the kind of movie that garners a Best Picture nomination. A political biopic starring former Oscar winners made by the guy whose previous film was up for big Oscars. With a $47-million domestic take it made a small fraction of what Black Panther did. Critically and financially it did not do as well as The Big Short, and it has just about zero chance of winning. But McKay’s transformation from comedy magnate to an Oscar caliber filmmaker is the real news. His next project is going to star Jennifer Lawrence and the non-fiction material is the kind of stuff the Academy eats up, so he should be back.

BlacKkKlansman is Spike Lee’s long overdue avenue to Best Picture. Based on a fascinating true story, infused with politics and humor, daring the viewer to think about race while enjoying a police procedural and history lesson. You know, a Spike Lee movie. I think Do the Right Thing should have not only been nominated at the 1990 ceremony, but it should have won. It felt ignored managing nominations only for Best Original Screenplay and Danny Aiello for Best Supporting Actor (when Denzel won for Glory). The five Best Picture nominees that year were Dead Poets Society, Born on the Fourth of July, My Left Foot, Field of Dreams and the winner Driving Miss Daisy. That a searing, challenging, and entertaining look at contemporary race relations in America was ignored while a gentle, pat fantasy that had nothing to say about our contemporary times triumphed kind of summed up Spike and the Academy until now. But while the nomination is well deserved, there Is no way he is winning this year, and if Green Book wins here it is much the same kind of divide between Do the Right Thing and Driving Miss Daisy to the Piggly Wiggly.





Green Book is a much easier look at race in America than BlacKkKlansman. Even Black Panther has some lines that are more revolutionary and interesting regarding race in America than Green Book. But it is wrapped in a familiar road movie package, a mismatched pair who learn to appreciate the other’s point of view, with some humor and a happy ending. Driving Miss Daisy + Rain Man = Green Book is the formula they are hoping adds up to a Best Picture win. It may. From the surprise triumph of Moonlight two years ago this feels like a big, safe, boring step backwards. Doesn’t mean it won’t win Best Picture, and if it does it would hardly be the worst winner in Oscar history, nor the blandest. But surer than sh!t ain’t nobody gonna call it the best or most dynamic winner ever, either.

The Favourite is dark and mean and funny, and it subverts the royal setting that usually produces movies like last year’s Mary Queen of Scots. The Academy often grooves to those kinds of lush movies about courts of power and opulence of an era long gone, maybe a forbidden love affair thrown in for good measure. Or at least they used to. Nominees like The Private Life of Henry VIII, Becket, The Lion in Winter, Anne of the Thousand Days, Nicholas & Alexandra and Best Picture winner A Man for All Seasons. These kinds of movies used to be a popular genre in the industry and at the Oscars. But they fell out of favor. The Favourite uses the same backdrop but is more concerned with watching depraved characters wallow in their palatial perversions, schemes, and cruelty. It remains darkly funny throughout, but is a dark, witty, nasty look at royalty the way the Oscar votes are going to go? As much as they may admire it, naming it Best Picture is another step.



A Star is Born is certainly a well-trodden story, not only in its archetypes and beats but because this is the third remake of the same basic material. Bradley Cooper and company do an excellent job of contemporizing it and tweaking those characters to perfectly fit Cooper and Gaga. And the music is great. And for those who are still conscious of rewarding a more “popular” film, A Star is Born made a stirring $200-million domestically, $420-million worldwide. Sitting at 90% with the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 80% with audiences; well liked and successful and familiar. But it may have peaked a bit early, Oscar wise. It will win Best Song easily, but unless Gaga can get past Glenn Close for Actress or it surges in the voting to win here, that Original Song may be the only Academy hardware A Star is Born picks up.



Because Alfonso Cuarón is the presumed winner of Best Director, many seem to think Roma has an inside track for Best Picture. It may well win, but I hardly think it is a big favorite. It has a lot of precedence to overcome if it is going to win. A foreign language film has never won Best Picture. Roma is only the twelfth nomination, and those previous eleven include Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, which is a third in English, and Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, which obviously was made by an American director. The other nine are Renoir’s Grand Illusion, Costa-Gavras’ Z, Jan Troell’s The Emigrants, Bergman’s Cries & Whispers, Radford & Troisi’s Il Postino, Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Michael Haneke’s Amour. Is Roma a moving enough experience that the Academy is going to make it the very first foreign language winner? Maybe as a fu*k you to the MAGA crowd? Perhaps.

It is also in black and white. The only two* B&W movies to win Best Picture since The Apartment in 1960 are Schindler’s List and The Artist. Not Raging Bull or Dr. Strangelove or The Last Picture Show or The Elephant Man. But Roma will almost certainly win Best Cinematography, so maybe that aesthetic part of the equation isn’t as big a deal here?

What I think really hurts Roma’s chances of winning here, even if it wins several other major awards leading up to it, is this: Netflix and box office. For an industry so conscious of their penchant for giving the top prize to movies that practically nobody has seen that they were going to invent a new category for popular films, to think that they are going to give Best Picture to a movie that has almost zero box office is a stretch. The major theater chains in America have refused to play Netflix generated films. Which leaves a very small art house swath for truly limited runs of select features. Netflix has elected not to even share what their box office take was, but it was surely less than The Hurt Locker’s infamously low $17-million. How many people have watched Roma on Netflix only Netflix knows, but whatever it is it isn’t making Hollywood at large any money at all.

Streaming services are clearly the future of the industry in many ways, or at least our immediate future. But the big studios and conglomerates don’t seem ready to wave the white flag and admit Netflix has them beat. If Roma wins Best Picture that is exactly how many insiders and outsiders will see it. More than being in Spanish or being a slow drama or shot in black and white, that is what I think ultimately stops it from winning. One day a Netflix or Amazon or another non-studio film may well win Best Picture. With filmmakers like Scorsese, Woody Allen, The Coen Brothers, and Cuarón working with them and more being tempted every day, it is only a matter of time. But I don’t think Roma is the one.



I would think Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Vice are just plain out of it. Which leaves The Favourite, Green Book, A Star is Born, and Roma. Green Book and A Star is Born have history against them in that their directors were unnominated. Discounting the early days of the Academy Awards, since the Best Director formalized into five nominees there have only been TWO movies to win Best Picture without their directors being at least nominated: Driving Miss Daisy and Argo. So it isn’t totally unheard of, it is just very, very rare. The Favourite is so twisted, it seems unlikely to win. And Roma the whole Netflix/foreign language thing. Which is why there doesn’t seem to be that one or even two, clear, strong front runners this year.

I would love to see A Star is Born or The Favourite win and to me Green Book is easily the weakest of those four I have in the theoretical running, which means Green Book will probably win. Or maybe things are set up for an even bigger surprise? Most of the major awards leading up to Best Picture should be pretty cut and dried with the favorite doing what they are supposed to do. But the end of the night could be a shocker.

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*thanks, Usual Suspect!

1. A Star is Born

2. The Favourite

3. Green Book

4. BlackkKlansman

5. Roma

6. Vice

7. Bohemian Rhapsody

8. Black Panther


The voting block really dropped the ball this year. A Star is Born should be the winner, it's a musical(been awhile), passion project from a heavily awarded star (Cooper), and you can give an Oscar to an actress that will eff off (Lady Gaga)

Green Book.

The Academy seemed to be trending in a healthier direction the past couple years. Choosing The Shape of Water last year, such an odd mishmash of genres and what appears to be an interspecies love story all from a point of view of visionary cinema, that is an interesting and somewhat revolutionary choice, whether you personally liked the movie or not. The year before that, I love La La Land, still my favorite movie of the past decade, but Moonlight winning was interesting and unprecedented, on a couple levels. It was really the first contemporary story about African-Americans to win Best Picture. It wasn't a period piece about slavery (12 Years a Slave), it wasn't about the Jim Crowe era (Driving Miss Daisy), and maybe most crucially it was from a Black point of view, through and through.

In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture in 1968. Besides being a good mystery and police procedural, why it stands the test of time is the racial aspect of the story. But while Virgil Tibbs is a strong, proud, dynamic character it follows the familiar formula of the White racists who change their ways a bit thanks to the dignity and tenacity of the negro, and remember it was Rod Steiger who won Best Actor for his Mississippi Police Chief, not Poitier. Sidney wasn't even nominated (he won Best Actor a few years before for Lilies of the Field).

But Moonlight didn't follow that formula. Like at all. Also significantly, it was the first Best Picture winner to examine homosexuality not as an issue or a side aspect, but as a central fact of a moving love story.

Which is why Green Book's win is such a step backwards. It is from the white point of view, and as for Shirley's homosexuality it comes up as a plot twist moment that is never even addressed again after Tony Lip saves him. That segregation produced such a thing as a Negro Motorist Green Book pointing out supposedly safe(r) havens is an interesting starting point and footnote. That Black Americans were routinely being harassed, terrorized, repressed, and murdered is what is horrifying and inherently dramatic about that time period and situation. That Green Book doesn't have any real intention of examining any of that, and certainly not from the perspective of those that had to live through it, isn't really a sin. Making a relatively light entertainment that brushes up against the issues with two interesting characters in a road movie formula isn't a high degree of difficulty, but the result isn't evil. It's just safe. And uninteresting.

In a year that produced not only BlacKkKlansman and the lightly nominated If Beale Street Could Talk but also the unnominated Sorry to Bother You, The Hate U Give, and Blindspotting, that Green Book was named Best Picture is glaring. Even Marvel's Black Panther, which was a true phenomenon and most successful movie on the panet, yes it is a fantasy and genre story most plainly and obviously, but the Oakland roots Ryan Coogler and company added and those underlying social issues are contemporary and real and give this superhero flick a context and reality that almost all of the rest of them do not. There are good, entertaining, interesting, challenging films being made about race in America, at a time when race in America is at another critical juncture. And the Academy responds with Green Book. In a void with nothing else on the subject getting made to compare it to Green Book's win would be backwards. That it comes when there are so many filmmakers taking such bigger swings and succeeding is what is so glaring.



That charge of the Academy voters being out of touch seemed to be dissipating with Best Pictures Moonlight, The Shape of Water, and even Birdman. You could have favorites you wanted to win more or see nominated, but you couldn't really accuse them of playing it safe or being boring or pandering. Elevating Green Book is a pretty good exhibit A showing the voting body still has some bad habits and reflexes.


For Oscar oddity records, Green Book is now the third film to win Best Picture without its director even getting a nomination joining Argo and, appropriately enough, Driving Miss Daisy.

Why did Green Book win?

I said this earlier, but it bears repeating, because it's the core of the issue here: it's not whether you think the film pulls punches, or is bad, or is insufficiently progressive. The question is whether it's so insufficiently progressive so as to render Spike Lee's shoulder turn towards it reasonable. That's a much taller order.

I think the problem here is that people (and this is an omni-directional problem, politically and culturally) are too willing to forgive overreactions as long as the overreaction is in the right general direction. So, since Lee's snub is pointed in the direction of "it should have been more unflinching/woke/whatever," it gets defended, even if it's wildly out of proportion. It's basically saying to people that their general orientation to the world is the only thing that matters, and that it's not really possible to overreact as long as you're on the right side. Hey, you overshot the target by 500 miles, but you were pointed north, so I'll reflexively defend you.

Proportion matters. Degree matters. People's hysterical overreactions to things can't be defended by merely pointing out it was reasonable for them to have some reaction. Spike Lee's "cup of tea" reaction is in the neighborhood of a reasonable way to express his disapproval. The other stuff isn't.

This is the kind of stuff people mean when they talk about civility or decorum, BTW. They don't mean you have to be nice to people who are awful. They mean that you need to have standards of conduct and proportion that overarch most specific disagreements.

There's too much forgiving on their own side, while there's absolutely no forgiving towards the other side.

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Because enough people voted in favour of it.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Do I get to Fact-Check Holden??????

I think Lee's "snakebit" line and "cup of tea" reactions are both very funny and right on par with turning his back in a huff. Spike didn't charge the stage and pull a Kanye nor yell anything ala Joe Wilson. He turned his back. In the spectrum of protest and outrage, what a mild reaction. I only wish he would have taken a knee. THAT sh!t would have been funny.

Ha, abs-o-toot-lee! Good call. I guess in that moment I thought of it Silent first and B&W second. Anyway, Roma did not become the third since The Apartment to win.

Roma is definitely the only other B&W winner in cinematography since the category went back to covering both color and black-and-white productions. The Artist was nominated for Best Cinematography but lost to Robert Richardson and Hugo.

Oh hardy har har, why though? I feel like the majority of people thought that it would be between Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, and Roma

It was a fine movie, but not better than the other movies nominated

I think TUS point is that the question isn't specific enough to answer meaningfully. And there's no accounting for one random person's vague feeling about what most other people thought. That's way too many variables (all hazily defined) to mean anything. Vegas had it as the second-most-likely winner in a very split field, so literally any film you could have asked "why?" about.

Broadly, the Academy now uses, if I'm not mistaken, something called instant run-off, which means if there's not a clear favorite, a film moderately high on a lot of different ballots can win. That seems pretty likely to be what happened here. Green Book might not have been a lot of voters' #1 choice, but it was probably a #3 for a bunch of them, and in a really split field that'll do.

Yeah, I figure that is exactly what happened. Roma, The Favourite, and even something like Black Panther were probably very divisive, ranking either in the top two or the bottom two of a lot of ballots, while Green Book was third or fourth or fifth on most ballots, as it was middle of the road. Without a consensus favorite, the highs and lows eventually cancel each other out, leaving that middle ground standing.

"Thanks, Earl. For some reason earning your respect is something I'm interested in."

My favorite part of that is the racist caricature guy.