87th Academy Awards – Dream Ballot

Despite seeing nearly 300 features and shorts which I qualify as being 2014 releases, the Academy has much stricter rules.  Due to the evolving landscape of cinematic exhibition (and the proclivity of genre films being rushed to VOD) many of my favorite films of the year weren’t even given the chance at contending as a dark horse:  I have seen only 87 productions that Oscar™ deems eligible for the big award.  I don’t expect these percentages to get any better as it seems doubtful the Academy will seek to accommodate for films which circumvent the box office.

I was going to do my traditional “who will win”/”who should win” thing, but I don’t want my wife stealing all my picks in our pool so I’m doing something a little different.  Here are the nominations and wins if they were selected by me, but still holding to Academy rules (with one notable exception).  I saved this document on my hard-drive as “bizarro Oscars,” so please understand this format is weird, self-indulgent and that reader feedback is highly encouraged.

(For obvious reasons I have ignored the shorts categories.  I have no idea how a film becomes eligible in these categories and even less of an idea how they are effectively narrowed down such that an individual film makes an impact.  The short film has an incredible medium called the Internet, and the Academy’s failure to recognize this is a testament to their devotion to punctilio rather than innovative artistry.)

The envelopes, please:

ACTOR –in a Leading Role

I’m not being deliberately contrarian in opting for Tatum and Oyelowo in light of the Oscar nominations.  Tatum carries Foxcatcher in a role in which he shows more commitment than the kind of work Bradley Cooper has received numerous accolades for in American Sniper.  And in a category in which four of the five nominations go to actors depicting non-fictitious events, its marginalization of Oyelowo is wrongheaded.  Still, Phoenix is a revelation.  Apologies to Brendan Gleeson.

Joaquin Phoenix – Inherent Vice

Oscar Isaac – A Most Violent Year

Dan Stevens – The Guest

Channing Tatum - Foxcatcher

David Oyelowo – Selma

ACTRESS –in a Leading Role

Best  Actress nominations are always fairly agreeable and I think this speaks most to the lack of strong female roles.  Hats off to Julianne Moore who looks to take home her first, long-overdue trophy, but I’m not going to condescend to her because Still Alice is kinda terrible.  What’s worse, it’s for a role Julie Christie nailed—and was nominated for—just a few short years ago.  This would be like giving Benjamin Walker the Best Actor award for depicting Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Day-Lewis taking a back seat.

2014 was a strong year for Elisabeth Moss (I would be inclined to give her Best Supporting Actress for the tone-deaf Listen Up Philip, but I can’t figure out why this one is ineligible), #1-with-a-bullet among the elite Mad Men cast.  I felt Obvious Child was a little twee and underwritten, but Slate’s versatility (compare to any three seconds of Mona-Lisa Saperstein) steals the show.  And you didn’t think I was going to nominate Dan Stevens and not Rosamund Pike, did you?

Scarlett Johansson – Under the Skin

Elisabeth Moss – The One I Love

Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night

Jenny Slate – Obvious Child

Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl

ACTOR –in a Supporting Role

I’m doing some presumption, but I’m guessing the VOD rule which prohibits films exhibited on television from being Oscar eligible is why Cold In July is not listed as a considered production this year.  A shame, too, as Sam Shepard and Don Johnson would battle each other for my vote in this category.  I also, reluctantly, place Alfred Molina in this category due to decorum though I would have assumed he received more screentime than John Lithgow.  I really wanted to nominate Peter Dinklage for X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I didn't want to be that guy after already nominating Alan Pearson.   

J.K. Simmons - Whiplash

Mark Ruffalo - Foxcatcher

Alfred Molina – Love Is Strange

Alan Pearson – Under the Skin
Matthias Schoenaerts – The Drop

ACTRESS –in a Supporting Role

The same VOD rule presumably prevented the eligibility of two ace Sara Paxton performances (Cheap Thrills, Love & Air Sex), but the point is mostly moot: Jessica Chastain wins this nine times out of ten, but Hong Chau managed to steal every scene of Inherent Vice she was in with extremely limited screentime.  No small feat among the year's strongest ensemble cast. 

Hong Chau – Inherent Vice

Jessica Chastain – A Most Violent Year

Carmen Ejogo – Selma

Laura Dern – Wild

Tilda Swinton – Snowpiercer

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

The outcry over The LEGO Movie snub is a moot point since the real argument is whether it is better than How To Train Your Dragon 2 as the fifth best movie the Academy nominated.  I don’t see five worthy contenders this year, in part because Song of the Sea has yet to receive much release.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Big Hero 6

The Boxtrolls

CINEMATOGRAPHY

I can find no justification as to why A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is not considered an Oscar-eligible production and I would have it win this category were it among the 323 eligible productions.  I guess something’s gotta slip through the cracks.

Under the Skin

Inherent Vice

Only Lovers Left Alive

Blue Ruin

Gone Girl

Bunim/Murray Award for WORST CINEMATOGRAPHY presented by NOKIA

Top Five

COSTUME DESIGN

What is the Academy to do with such a severe lack of Victorian-era pictures this year?  I think the obvious answer is that they will further award Wes Anderson for the type of thing for which he needs no enabling. 

Inherent Vice

Only Lovers Left Alive

A Most Violent Year

God Help The Girl

Selma

DIRECTING

Maybe it’s more of a production design quality which I love about A Most Violent Year, but my other four nominations resemble unquestionable authorship.  What I look for most in this category is a film that I couldn’t picture being told through anyone else’s eyes.  Certainly this is true of Glazer, Anderson, Jarmusch and DuVernay. 

Under the Skin

Inherent Vice

Only Lovers Left Alive

Selma

A Most Violent Year

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Eligible documentary films are another secret-handshake club within the Academy which doesn’t play by the same rules as “Best Picture” nominees.  I have seen very few of the shortlist, but what I have seen was pretty good.  Citizenfour is not only important, but a remarkably tense thriller.  No documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture; that they are verboten on principle is nothing but industry self-importance and a short-sightedness of the authorship behind the genre.  Citizenfour would make my top ten.

Citizenfour

Last Days in Vietnam

Manakamana

20,000 Days on Earth

Life Itself

FILM EDITING

Here are five fantastic films with which editing set the tone without being self-congratulatory.  None of them took twelve years to complete.

A Most Violent Year

Under the Skin

The Guest

Whiplash

Gone Girl

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

You guys know how this thing works, right?  It’s stupid as hell.  Every country gets to elect which film will represent them for Oscar consideration.  This means that no two nominations can come from one country.  This means that no foreign country that makes an English language movie is eligible.  This means that no domestic movie made in a foreign language (this could have been a sneaky way for A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night to sneak in) is eligible.  This also means that very few of the movies within Oscar consideration are widely seen in the U.S., particularly before the ceremony.  As a staunch advocate of international cinema, it's always difficult to have anything but lackluster hopes for this category based on its format.

Force Majeure

Two Days, One Night

Ida

Winter Sleep

Norte, the End of History

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Judging from their track record, the Academy should really just change the name of this category to Best Prosthetic Nose.

Inherent Vice

Only Lovers Left Alive

Noah

MUSIC –Original Score

Sorry Hans Zimmer, but I want to notice a non-diagetic score like I want to notice gimmicky camerawork (I’m looking at you, Birdman).  Which is to say, very little. 

I also wouldn’t consider The Grand Budapest Hotel in this category is because music used to cut to the heart in a Wes Anderson movie, and I hate that he is only now getting universal acclaim after becoming a navel-gazing carbon copy of his former self.

Under the Skin

Only Lovers Left Alive

A Most Violent Year

The Guest

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

MUSIC –Original Song

I’ve always had beef with this category because it seems like a tall order for the Academy to select the best song in a medium completely different from the one they are most familiar with and still rarely get right.  I’d like to point out a relatively recent precedent in which “Falling Slowly” took home this award in 2007 despite breaking the Academy’s rules.  Rule 15:I:B states “an original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture.”  “Falling Slowly” was not technically original because it had been performed and recorded by Glen Hansard’s band before the release of Once.

The Academy ruled that it remained eligible because, as an independent feature, Once spent much more time in production than the usual picture and because the public exposure of Hansard’s work with The Frames was “minimal.” 

Yet somehow, in 2014, Stuart Murdoch’s work with God Help The Girl is ineligible despite adhering even more closely to the spirit of this ruling: the eponymous 2009 album consists of songs written specifically for the motion picture and even helped fund the motion picture.  Certainly Murdoch’s name carries more weight than Hansard’s but the album’s release wasn’t under the Belle & Sebastian name, and certainly “Come Monday Night,” “I’ll Have To Dance With Cassie,” “God Help the Girl” and “Down and Dusky Blonde” would be four easy nominations. 

This rule seems to have burned Murdoch as both ends for, when Belle & Sebastian tried scoring a traditional soundtrack with Todd Solondz’s 2002 mess Storytelling, despite producing “original music written specifically for the motion picture,” much of it went unused, breaking the “substantive” part of the rule.  Sorry, “Big John Shaft.”

I’ll round out my already fault-y top five with Charli XCX’s  “Boom, Clap” from The Fault In Our Stars. It is substantive at an important part of the film’s narrative and was the biggest soundtrack hit of the year.  However, because it was eventually released on her sophomore album some six months later, it is also ineligible.  Rules in this category seem arbitrary and conquerable, and I will break all of them.

God Help The Girl; God Help The Girl “Come Monday Night”

God Help The Girl; God Help The Girl “God Help The Girl”

God Help The Girl; God Help The Girl “Down and Dusky Blonde”

God Help The Girl; God Help The Girl “I’ll Have To Dance With Cassie”

The Fault in Our Stars; Charli XCX “Boom, Clap”

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Throwing Wes Anderson a bone here; production design is the only shadow left of his former game.  This would be a pretty tight race between Inherent Vice, A Most Violent Year and Only Lovers Left Alive.

Inherent Vice

A Most Violent Year

Only Lovers Left Alive

The Grand Budapest Hotel

John Wick

SOUND EDITING

I don’t have a lot to say here.  There are few things more iconic and gooseflesh-inducing than Godzilla’s roar.

Godzilla

American Sniper

Only Lovers Left Alive

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Edge of Tomorrow

SOUND MIXING

Yeah, I know this is a weird pick.

The Guest

Godzilla

Only Lovers Left Alive

Interstellar

The Raid 2

VISUAL EFFECTS

I feel like I’m cheating by not picking Under the Skin which has at least two visuals so haunting and imperative to the theme that they will stick with me forever.  Still, it’s remarkable how effortless the CG looks in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which easily transcends genre.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Under the Skin

Godzilla

Interstellar

Edge of Tomorrow

WRITING –Adapted Screenplay

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, like the recent adaptations of the Coen Brothers, is a flawless depiction of not just Thomas Pynchon’s written word, but of an historical era and a filmic genre.  I know this won’t win on Sunday night and the prize will likely go to a dumbed-down Imitation Game, but this award is Anderson’s through and through.

Inherent Vice

Under the Skin

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Gone Girl

Noah

WRITING –Original Screenplay

My nominations for best original screenplay show how great film writing is more action than dialogue.  Four of the nominees belong to tense dramas in which much is said in silence.  The fifth, Jim Jarmusch’s genre-defying vampire tale, evokes a universe so lush and rich in texture it rivals any sci-fi/fantasy universe.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Force Majeure

Foxcatcher

A Most Violent Year

Blue Ruin

BEST PICTURE

I saved this category for last because, despite my diverse “nominations,” it takes the suspense out of several minor categories.  2014 was an exceptionally strong year for film across the board and this is evidenced by a foreign language film, an animated film, a documentary and several genre pieces sitting among typical Oscar fare. 

Under the Skin

Inherent Vice

Only Lovers Left Alive

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Force Majeure

Citizenfour

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Blue Ruin

The Guest

A Most Violent Year

So at the end of bizzaro-Oscar™ night, Inherent Vice takes home six awards and Under the Skin walks away with five and the biggest prize of the night.  These two films will likely combine for zero awards on Oscar night which— in a perfect world— would be rectified by bizzaro-Oscar™ host, Kanye West storming the stage and demanding there are right and wrong answers in the liberal arts.  This is my answer key.