My Annual Oscar Post – 2014 Edition

All right, y’all know the deal by now – I have only a passing interest in movies anymore, and the Oscars are nearly unwatchable. Blah, blah, blah, cranky old lady, get off my lawn! So I decided rather than ranting, I’d tell you about my favorite Oscar tradition. The one I always carry out whether I get to watch the Oscars, or whether my three-year-old is screaming at the top of her lungs to please, please, please let her watch anything else at all. Honestly, I had to agree with her. We settled on YouTube videos of Simon’s Cat.

So instead of an Oscar recap, I bring you pizza! I’ve been making my own pizza on Oscar night since I was a teenager, and as time has gone on, the pizza recipe has only improved. Our latest, most favorite incarnation is a recipe from Cook’s Country. Nothing out there compares. It takes advance planning, because the dough is required to rise in the refrigerator for 24 hours, but it’s worth it. It also makes a complete and total mess of the kitchen, but again, it’s worth it.

We divide the dough into three balls so we each get our own pizza.

The beginnings of sauce

The endings of sauce. No stove top required.

Dough rolled out and placed on pizza paddle.

Pizza decorated and ready to go into the oven.

Pizza going into the oven.

Pizza on the pizza stone.

The piece de resistance.

I hope you enjoyed your Oscar night as much as I enjoyed my pizza.

A Rooting Interest

It’s that time again – time for the annual Oscar post! (Be still your hearts.) If you’re going to take away anything from this possibly rambling, probably pointless post, let it be this: See The King’s Speech. You won’t be sorry.

I have lamented in earlier posts that movies just aren’t what they used to be. I think I went for most of the year without seeing a single thing I liked. But things took a turn for the better over the last couple of months, when many of this year’s nominees came out in theaters. I have seen 7 of the 10 best picture nominees (same as last year) and I loved two of them (The King’s Speech, True Grit), liked one of them (Toy Story 3), found three of them acceptable though nothing I would watch again (The Kids are All Right, The Social Network, Winter’s Bone) and I didn’t like Inception. I found certain things about Inception interesting, but overall it was a big, long, convoluted mess. I’m looking forward to seeing Black Swan, starring my doppelgänger and probable best actress winner Natalie Portman, and 127 Hours with crazy man James Franco, but I’ll probably skip The Fighter. I’ve seen this movie before, I’m sure of it.

I’ve decided I like the idea of 10 best picture nominees. I’m sure the Oscars did it for the ratings boost (more fun to watch when you have a rooting interest or have at least seen some of the things nominated) but I think it provides a better overall picture of the year in…well…pictures. Each year there are plenty of articles on entertainment sites about past Oscar winners, and many of them are people giving their opinions on which were the worst films to ever win an Oscar. (Titanic!) That will still happen, only now the authors will have a long list to pick from of what movies were better and also nominated that year. Honestly though, it can also be tough to predict what will hold up over time, so when the Academy inevitably gets it wrong, there’s a longer and more reflective list of what else was good that year.

 I usually have a rooting interest in the writing categories and this year I don’t. Last year I think I wanted 500 Days of Summer to win (and was disappointed.) It was a great little film which was insightful and realistic and cleverly written and structured. This year, The King’s Speech is nominated for original screenplay, and that would be my pick, but I wouldn’t call it a writer’s story. I imagine that it would actually be a very hard story to convey on paper, without shoe-in best actor winner Colin Firth bringing that stammer to cringe-inducing life. There is an awful lot of storytelling that goes on in the silences, as we wait and cringe and hope and pray for the words to form. It’s also a very subtle story that does not focus on the historical astonishments and soap opera-ness of the British monarchy like other period films do. This is a film about the dynamics of a friendship and the universal truth that everyone  struggles with something, regardless of position in society.    

I have one other rooting interest (besides Best Picture) this year and that’s in the Best Original Song category. I really know better than to invest in this category in any way, because very year the Academy predictably picks the absolute worst song in the history of songwriting as the winner. But perennial Oscar nominee and my personal favorite Randy Newman is nominated this year for the song We Belong Together from Toy Story 3, and it’s such a good song. It’d be nice to see him win. He’s only won once (nominated 19 times), for Monster’s Inc, and during his acceptance speech, when the clock was running out, he told the musicians in the orchestra that if they played him off, they’d never work for him again. And not a peep was heard until he was finished. Truly one of the great moments in Oscar history that nobody remembers and only I love.

Finally, I am predicting The King’s Speech to win the big award and I am quite sure if it does, no one will regret it five or ten years down the line. It will stand the test of time because the story is timeless and universal, and that’s really what you want out of your Best Picture winner.

A Follow Up

In case you’re curious, I did win my office Oscar pool…sort of. I guessed 17 of 24 categories correctly. (I missed, among other smaller categories, the writing categories (which I never miss) and of course, Best Picture.) And I’m sure you can imagine my delight Monday morning when it was announced at work that the winner had guessed 17 categories correctly, and the runners-up 16 categories. I’m equally sure you can imagine my irritation when, just as I was poised to leap out my seat and accept my award, the name called was not mine .

It turned out that the answer key the graders used was wrong. After a mandatory recount, first place was a tie between me and one other person who also correctly guessed 17 categories. The false Academy prophet dropped to a runner-up with just 16 categories correct. Because this is a good-natured company, all three of us got movie tickets. However, there was evidently a trophy as well (I didn’t know I was competing for a trophy!) and the tie-breaker was the best picture category. And, once again, I think we all know how this story goes.

My remorse over incorrectly predicting the wrong best picture (as a colleague at company #2 put it, I didn’t trust the Academy) is a bit, shall we say, ridiculous. If only I’d trusted the Academy, if only I hadn’t hedged my bets on the sound categories…  This is why I don’t gamble. The Academy Awards are not like math, they don’t have right answers, and yet I spent the better part of Monday wishing I’d studied a bit harder… Anyway, I’ve now amassed three pairs of movie passes (the Oscar win, credit card points redeemed, and a gift certificate) so if my husband and I can ever agree on a movie to see, we might actually leave the house.

Speaking of movies we watched together… I did, as I said I would, watch both District 9 and Inglourious Basterds  last weekend. The surprising thing was that Shaun watched both with me. Actually, that’s less surprising than the fact that we BOTH liked both of them! District 9 I thought was okay…for a science fiction movie. It wasn’t exactly revolutionary but it was entertaining. The real treat was Inglourious Basterds, which I’m so glad I watched as it is one I could have easily passed by. Since it’s Quentin Tarantino, the violence was overly graphic, but the story was excellent. The way he weaved together the different characters and storylines was brilliant, and every scene kept me engaged and interested. Though it’s described as a “revenge fantasy” because nothing like it happened during the real World War II, this is not a movie that claims to be a historical document, and I never thought of it as anything but fiction. Very, very good fiction. I read an interview with Tarantino in which he said he had a hard time casting Hans Landa (played by Academy Award winner Kristof Waltz) because there’s a poetry to his dialogue that a lot of the other actors were missing. It sounded somewhat conceited when I read it but now I get it. Quentin is a wordy guy and I like wordy films and delivery of those words, as I know full well from trying to do my own voiceovers, is integral.

I’m even more surprised this film didn’t win for screenplay, because The Hurt Locker, while incredibly tense, isn’t much in the dialogue department. The tension in that film was created by editing and directing and cinematography choices. Though I’ve not seen the film twice, I imagine it’s not easy to repeat the tense-ness of it when you already know what’s going to happen. I could (and might!) watch Inglourious Basterds (or A Serious Man, for that matter) several times before I feel I’ve gotten everything out of the dialogue.

I have to say that of the seven nominated films I’ve seen, it wasn’t a bad year for movies. I just hope the free movies, whatever they turn out to be, don’t leave me demanding my money back.

Standing on Ceremony

The Oscars are this weekend and it does only seem right that I make a few comments, as much of this blog is dedicated to my own personal delusions that I might actually influence someone else’s moviegoing experience.

Yes, yes, the Oscars are by and large silly. But they’re a silliness that I’ve loved since I was a child. (I bet you like silly things, too, don’t you? Go on, admit it! I won’t judge.) I don’t really know why, except that I’ve always been invested in entertainment. I’ve always had opinions on the types of movies I like and the actors and actresses I like, and I liked seeing these people outside of their characters, as well as rooting for the pictures I liked best.

Of course, when I was younger, I thought the awards meant something…That the best picture of the year was actually the BEST PICTURE of the year. Then came the year Titanic was nominated for Best Picture. That was the first (and last) year I’d seen all five best picture nominees before the ceremony. Four good films were nominated: As Good as it Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting and L.A. Confidential.  I really liked all four of those films. Titanic, on the other hand, was and will always be, pardon my French, a steaming pile of merde. I was rooting for L.A. Confidential that year, but any of the others that weren’t Titanic would have been fine by me. I think we all know how the rest of this story goes.

So I don’t care anymore who wins, but I like to watch and root for my films anyway. This year I have an extra and divisive rooting interest: The office Oscar pool. I entered one of these once before, but at a small company where only four people total entered. (We all lost to the organizer, who correctly called the Crash best picture upset over Brokeback Mountain.) This year I don’t know how many people I’m competing against, but it’s way more than four. The thing about entering the Oscar pool is you can’t vote for who you WANT to win, you have to vote for who you THINK will win. So come Sunday night, I’ll find myself rooting partly for those nominees that will win me the free movie tickets, and partly for those that I actually want to win. Since I follow entertainment news, I’ve voted for all the “sure thing” acting categories, such as Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. I went to a great site called “In Contention” and followed their advice on all the smaller categories. I don’t know how accurate the picks are, but at least the person giving their opinion had seen all the nominees in each category, which is way more than I can say for myself and the “Short Film: Live Action” category.

The absolute hardest thing to call is the best picture category. There are ten nominees this year, and if that weren’t change enough, the Academy has changed how the voting works. If it were just a simple majority vote, a film could conceivably win with just 11% of the vote. So now it’s a ranked choice system, where members must vote for what they think was the best picture, the second best picture, etc. If no one film gets at least 50% in the first tally, those secondary and third-idary choices get counted, but that’s about as best as I understand it. (Here’s a more detailed and correct version of the process.)

The race is a dead heat between two films: Avatar, the giant effects-laden film by self-proclaimed “King of the World” James Cameron, and The Hurt Locker, a small-grossing but incredibly engaging film about the Iraq war by Kathryn Bigelow (one of Cameron’s ex-wives.)  Most experts thought Avatar had the edge until The Hurt Locker started winning all sorts of other awards. Now these same experts say it has the edge, but only slightly.

I have not seen Avatar nor do I intend to. Cameron got 3 1/2 hours of my  life with Titanic, and that’s all he’s getting. I did see The Hurt Locker and it is a very good film indeed. Engaging and interesting and fascinating despite being a war film.

If I’m known for one thing, it’s probably my pessimism, so when I finally had to decide where to place my chips, I chose Avatar. Why? Well, if there’s one thing I know from watching dozens of Oscar ceremonies all the way through, it’s that members vote within their own categories, except for Best Picture, where all members are invited to vote. They do not have to attend special screenings or have any particular expertise at all to cast their vote. I watched Fran Drescher (yes, that Fran Drescher) on Larry King the year Titanic was nominated. He asked her who she voted for and she said Titanic because –  and here was the part that scarred me for life – it was the only film of those nominated that she had seen. So even though I think it’s nearly universally understood that Cameron invests 95% of his efforts into effects and only 5% in actual storytelling, I still think he will ultimately prevail.

And pessimist as I may be, I am not without hope. My ballot has Nick Hornby (An Education) selected to win for “Best Adapted Screenplay” even though everyone is saying it’ll be Jason Reitman (Up in the Air.) Sometimes you just have to believe a vote cast in an office Oscar pool will somehow count.

Incidentally, I had been agonizing so greatly over the Avatar/The Hurt Locker dead heat, it was not until I started writing this post that I thought about which film, out of the nominees I’ve seen, I would cast my vote for. I’ve seen five of the ten nominees: An Education, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air (though I’ll be watching two more – Inglourious Basterds and District 9 before Sunday.) Of those I’ve seen so far, with my regards to the achievement that is The Hurt Locker, and my apologies to Nick Hornby whose film is so very good but so obviously adapted from material that is not his own, I’d go for “A Serious Man.” The Coen brothers won two years ago for No Country for Old Men which I didn’t really like. Too violent and unintelligible. They have a large canon of films which I consider “hit and miss,” but A Serious Man is interesting and odd and memorable and delightfully screwy. It’s truly unique storytelling and the way the protagonist’s world unwinds around him is hilarious and ridiculous and rooted in universal truths. I highly recommend watching it, but not betting on it.

My Oscar Ballot

Adaptation

Today I did something unusual. Exceedingly rare, at least for me, though perhaps not for you. I went to a movie. In the theater. Alone.

I went to a movie by myself once before. I was in college. I suppose lots of people do this all the time, but the out-to-the-theater experience for me is usually one that’s shared. My husband and I rarely see eye to eye on the films we want to see so those outings are few and far between, and I’m too far removed from friends for a short notice outing like today’s.

Of course there was a reason for my impulsivity, and the reason was An Education. I have been champing at the bit to see this movie since I heard about it, for the first time, at the Nick Hornby reading I went to last October. Hornby wrote the screenplay of the memoir by Lynn Barber.  Of course, this is a small, independent film and such films rarely make it the 40 miles south of Seattle to a theater near me. And as I generally prefer watching movies in the comfort and silence of my own home, I just wait the couple of months for the DVD.

The Oscar nominations were recently announced, this year expanding the best picture category to include ten films. An Education made it into the list and also received nominations for Carey Mulligan for best actress, and Hornby for adapted screenplay. Buoyed by its new high profile, I noticed today that it was indeed, finally, playing at a theater near me. “I’m going,” I thought, “as soon as I get home.” I noticed moments later that the DVD release date was finally set for March, and I paused. Perhaps I should just wait? Nah. 

Films are usually a gamble, but I knew I’d like this one. I am, after all, Nick Hornby’s biggest fan. (Hopefully not in a scary, Kathy Bates, Misery kind of way, but I wouldn’t put it past me.) And I did. Like this film. It is devastating and funny in the way that only Nick Hornby can make things devastating and funny. It’s a period piece, set in the 1960s, so it’s not like one of Hornby’s own novels, but he’s unmistakably present in the film. I don’t know anyone else who could make me root for a character I didn’t want to root for.

I won’t say anything else about the film except see it, and my boy is going to win an Oscar!

What was the last film you saw on your own in the theater?