Amir here, welcoming you to the first ever Team Experience Awards.
Before going any further, let me assure you that the Film Bitch Awards that we all know and love so much aren’t going anywhere. Nathaniel will be posting them as usual and everything will be intact. But we thought it’d be a good idea to experiment with something new and add to the site’s annual roundup. With so many regional critics’ group adding their opinions to the conversation, there’s no reason our eclectic Team Experience should hold back.
The Holy Motors Experience?
What you see here is the result of compiling the imaginary Oscar ballots of all contributors at the website (except Nathaniel.) Twenty films won citations as winners or runners-up, though an astonishing 163 films were mentioned in one category or another during the voting.
The winner of our best picture prize was… *drum roll* … Leos’ Carax’s Holy Motors. It was a tight race all the way and the runners-up finally tied, both falling short of the French enigma by just a few points. The Master was the biggest favorite across the board, finishing in the top three in almost every category it was eligible for. Another favourite was Benh Zeitlin’s vibrant bayou-set drama, Beasts of the Southern Wild, though it doesn’t show up in any of the main categories here. Consensus titles naturally take over most of the awards, though you’d be surprised to know there was strong support for less expected films like The Kid with a Bike and Take This Waltz.
Full list of our winners and curiously popular vote-getters click to continue
BEST PICTURE
Holy Motors (dir. Carax) Runners-up TIE: Lincoln (dir. Spielberg) and The Master (dir. P.T. Anderson)
BEST DIRECTOR
Leos Carax (Holy Motors) Runner-up: Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)
BEST ACTRESS
Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea) Runner-up: Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
BEST ACTOR
Joaquin Phoenix (The Master) Runner-up: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams (The Master) Runner-up: Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike) Runner-up: Samuel L. Jackson (Django Unchained)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Moonrise Kingdom (Roman Coppola, Wes Anderson) Runner-up: Damsels in Distress (Whit Stilman)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Lincoln (Tony Kushner) Runner-up: Beasts of the Southern Wild (Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Master Runner-up: Skyfall
BEST FILM EDITING
Beasts of the Southern Wild Runner-up: The Master
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Master Runner-up: Moonrise Kingdom
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Anna Karenina Runner-up: Moonrise Kingdom
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Life of Pi Runner-up: Looper
BEST MAKE-UP AND HAIRSTYLING
Holy Motors Runner-up: Lincoln
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Master Runner-up: Beasts of the Southern Wild
BEST SOUND DESIGN
Zero Dark Thirty Runner-up: Beasts of the Southern Wild
BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM
Queen of Versailles Runner-up: How to Survive a Plague
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Brave Runner-up: Paranorman
The Kid With a Bike was a pleasant surprise
A Few Notes
• The Kid with a Bike was only a few points short of overcoming our runners-up in the best picture category, which surprised me a great deal. I personally considered the film a 2011 release and didn’t vote for it here but the Dardenne brothers clearly have a lot of fans around these parts. It’s definitely interesting to have voters from all around the globe, but certain films are hurt in the process because of release date discrepancies. Judging by my own ballot, apart from the aforementioned Belgian film, Oslo, August 31st, This Is Not a Film, Tabu, Zero Dark Thirty and The Turin Horse certainly got the short end of that stick.
• In the editing category there was absolutely no consensus. 33 different films had at least one vote – more than any other below-the-line category – ranging all the way from The Raid to Haywire to Barbara. So scattered and equal was the passion for all these films that the eventual winner was only slightly more popular than the film ranked 19th.
"What you've described is a playboy, or operator"• Our supporting actress winner and runner up are both major Oscar hopefuls. Trailing Hathaway by just one point was Sally Field. But guess who came fourth by a very small margin? Megalyn Echikunwoke from Damsels in Distress. I could have sworn, when I submitted my own ballot, that I’d be alone in my support but I’m glad I was proven wrong.
• If Team Experience voted on the Oscars, Les Misérables, Argo and Silver Linings Playbook would not be the beasts they are now. Anne Hathaway was the sole savior for the musical film and the latter two failed to make any sort of impact. Jennifer Lawrence was fifth in the actress race but there was little sign of Cooper, De Niro, Russell, or the editor and production designers of Argo.
• I’m working on a post about some of the things I’ve learned about my annual gripes with awards season in the process of crunching these numbers. While you wait for that, however, let me show you the problematic nature of using the word “snub” so often with an example. In our best original screenplay category Moonrise Kingdom beat the runner-up Damsels in Distress by a single vote (25/24). In the adapted race, Lincoln beat Beasts of the Southern Wild by a margin of 36 votes (52/16). It just goes to show how wrong I am in labeling every non-nomination a snub. Sure, the word is extremely handy, but it stands to reason that people do miss out on Oscar nominations and wins with very small margins.