Burning Questions: Undelivered Speeches?

Michael C. here. I would never back the idea of awarding an Oscar based on anything other than quality of the work. No award for being a beloved old-timer overdue for a win, or because your film sends an admirable message, and definitely no trophy to make up for a past lost that everyone agrees was a blunder. I think most people agree with me that once you start down the road the whole enterprise of presenting awards for artistic achievement – which is shaky enough to begin with – falls apart.

Having said that, there is one criterion beyond merit which I will guiltily admit often plays a big part in who it is I root for on the big night: the possible entertainment value of the winners.  And hey, voters so often make their choices based on questionable reasoning, why shouldn’t the promise of a lively and memorable show enter into it? 

OK, maybe I don’t really mean it. I wouldn't begrudge The Coen brothers any of their Oscars even if they deliver acceptance speeches like someone has a gun to their back.  But it is still an interesting question to ponder:  If you could go back and hear the Oscar speech that someone never got to give whose would it be? Here are three of the possible speeches I would be most eager to hear if I could borrow Futurama’s What-If Machine for an hour:

Spike Lee - Best Original Screenplay (1989) – The big controversy of the 1990 Oscar’ was the lack of nods for Lee’s Do the Right Thing in picture and director while the much more conventional race relations drama Driving Miss Daisy grabbed most of the night’s big prizes. Lee did manage to grab a well-deserved nod in screenplay only to lose to the schmaltz of Dead Poet’s Society (cue sad trombone). Kim Basinger is still remembered for the moment she went off script and called out the snubbing, so I have little doubt presenting Spike with a microphone and a worldwide audience would have been one of the most discussed moments in recent Oscar history.

Mickey Rourke rises again and he is my brother."
-Sean Penn during his Oscar speech for Milk.

Bill Murray and Mickey Rourke – Best Actor 2003 & 2008 – I lump these two guys together because they were both unlikely Best Actor contenders who had a great chance of winning only to be beaten out by Sean Penn. I recall Penn giving heartfelt speeches, especially for Milk, but Murray and Rourke both brought the house down at the Globes and subsequent awards shows and their Oscar wins would have made for much more special and thrilling scenes.

Akira Kurosawa – Best Director 1985 – When it comes to memorable moments there are those that involve unpredictable stars acting out, like Brando sending an actress dressed as a Native American to accept his Oscar for The Godfather, and then there are those rare perfect moments when a legend receives a lifetime’s worth of acclaim all at once - think Chaplin’s lifetime achievement award. The Academy missed such a moment when they awarded Sydney Pollack best director for Out of Africa over Kurosawa’s work on Ran. Pollack himself lead a campaign to see Kurosawa nominated in director after he was shamefully excluded from the foreign category, so I suspect he would have been one of those cheering loudest if the living legend had been given a chance to take his bow.

I just noticed I have picked only people I think deserved to win their categories. I guess even in hypotheticals I can’t get away from the idea of merit winning the day.

So if you could go all Sliding Doors on Oscar and witness an amazing moment that never happened which would it be? I'm curious to hear your answers and the reasoning for them in the comments. 

You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film. Previous Burning Questions...

Burning Questions: Are Franchises Hogging All The Talent?

Michael C. here. 

I'm feeling left out because I couldn't share in the excitement over the Avengers teaser which played during the Super Bowl Sunday night. In fact, if I’m being honest, it bummed me out. I never want to be that guy yelling, “Sell out!” when the performer I love hits the big time, but seeing the likes of Downey, Ruffalo, and Renner headlining the comics franchise to top all comics franchises, it’s hard to get pumped about how kick-ass it’s all going to be when all I can think about are the more interesting films these guys passed over to shoot this one.

Now I have no intention of dismissing a movie before it’s released, or to turn up my nose at big budget blockbusters. A franchise with Joss Whedon at the helm is a great bet to have the intelligence and wit the genre so often lacks. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to ask:

Are franchise films monopolizing the talent?

Take the case of Mr. Renner. It feels like no sooner had we been given a taste of just what he was capable of then he was carted off to shoulder no less than three major franchises – Mission Impossible, Avengers and Bourne. On top of which, he dropped out of his most promising project, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. I don’t deny that all those films have the potential to be good or even great entertainments, but let’s be honest here. It is a rare role in such a mass appeal product that is not broadly simplified with any rough edges sanded off. We are going to be waiting a long time before we get to see Renner tackle another role as riveting as Sgt. William James. 

When will Renner ever do a non-franchise drama again?

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

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Burning Questions: What Explains the Extremely Loud Nomination?

Michael C. here to take a shot at one of the curious questions that came out of the Oscar nominations. 

A little over a year ago I published a post in which I tried to determine just how bad could a film be and still make the big category. In an attempt to squeeze popular opinion into chart form I subjected the last decade of nominees to an extremely unscientific examination wherein I averaged their Metacritic rating with their Rotten Tomatoes rating to come up with a rough measurement of a film’s critical reception. You can read the full post here but one of the main conclusions I reached was that the Best Picture minimum was set right about the 60% mark. This was the average Blind Side and The Reader, the two worst reviewed nominees, had received. It was a result that jibed pretty well with intuition. It’s tough to think of a nominee that received a resoundingly negative reception. 

But this then begs the question: How exactly did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close manage a Best Picture nomination? I know critics don't get a vote but rarely, if ever, has the gap between the two been this glaring.

more after the jump

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Burning Questions: Can Biopics Help But Glorify Their Subjects?

Michael C. here, just returned from witnessing Meryl Streep in all her awards bait glory.

When controversy arrives in Phyllida Lloyd’s Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, it comes in the standard form of news footage montages depicting seas of angry protesters clashing with policemen. The actual substance of the issues - massive union strikes, war in the Falkland Islands – is not discussed so much as reframed in the most generic possible terms. Every issue boils down to the same dynamic: Thatcher’s opponents are invariably lily-livered scaredy cats pushing for compromise if not outright surrender, while The Iron Lady holds firm to strength, courage, and principle over popularity. The filmmakers would no doubt say that they are focusing on character over unimportant detail, but it has the direct effect of letting Thatcher off the hook for her positions. Conservatives are free to mentally fill in their ideology and cheer her resolve, while the rest are encouraged to ignore partisanship and admire her gumption.

To be fair to the filmmakers, if Iron Lady had taken the opposite tack and really dug into the thought process of why Thatcher did what she did it would no doubt serve to amplify charges that the movie was aggrandizing its subject. It appears to be a case of damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. The very act of storytelling itself invites the audience to understand the protagonist’s motives and actions. It begs the question: Can biopics help but glorify their subjects? 

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Burning Questions: What Are the Future Cult Films of 2011?

Hey folks. Michael C here to ponder how future movie buffs will view 2011.

When a film is riding high through awards season, racking up the honors and soaking up the prestige, it must feel to its makers like its title is being etched into the face of cinematic history with a hammer and chisel. Yet we know that even the biggest box office champs and awards winners can make that cruel slide into obscurity the same as the cheapest B movie. Likewise, films that managed to slip in and out of theaters without kicking up too much fuss can find popularity and redemption on their way to the dustbin. Looking through the records of cinema years past is a lot like glancing through a high school yearbook. Why, oh why, was I so love with her, who I now see clearly to be pretty but painfully shallow, and what possessed me ignore that knockout, even if she was a little quirky.

So the question I want to find an answer to this week is which under-the-radar 2011 films are most likely headed for large and loyal cult fanbases? I am going to skip the obvious choices of Attack the Block and Warrior, both of which had their cult status secured the instant they failed to catch fire at the box office, and name three still underseen titles which are likely to hold up better than their initial releases would suggest: 

SUBMARINE – Box Office: $467, 602

The initial reaction of much of the film critic community at Richard Ayoad smart, often brutal tale of teenage love and heartbreak was to make brief mention of its impressive visuals, then to simply take roll call of all the other coming-of-age tales it superficially resembled (especially Rushmore). My hunch is that time is going to be very kind to Submarine. It may share themes with other stories of precocious teens in love (how could it not?) yet few such stories ring as true in every harsh, painful and often hilarious detail. And few films of any stripe have such a visually striking creation of time and place. 

THE GUARD – Box Office: $5,338,115

The atmosphere of the modern multiplex is not friendly to the low-key character study. The films where you spend more time smiling quietly than guffawing out loud tend to do better with the low-pressure home video environment when the whole night and half a week’s paycheck isn’t on the line. This will certainly be the case for John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard. The movie's shaggy crime story never comes to much, but as a showcase for Brendan Gleesons rumpled charm and flawless comic timing in the title role it will satisfy many a viewer. 

BELLFLOWER  - Box Office: $168,226

I was not the biggest fan of Evan Glodell’s tale of heartarche, male rage, and Road Warrior obsession. But I can’t deny that it touched a nerve somewhere in the whole mess of flamethrowers, cricket eating, and apocalyptic revenge fantasy. I further can’t deny that there were several stand alone images as memorable as any from 2011 and a mood of pervasive unease that marks Glodell as one to watch. I suspect the home video crowd will be more willing to look past the film’s questionable message, and amateurish lapses to appreciate the raw filmmaking talent contained within. And if Glodell should deliver on his promise in his future projects, forget it. Expect the common refrain among film buffs to be that they were on board with Bellflower before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

Have another candidate for future cult glory? Let me know in the comments. You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film

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