Burning Questions: Is '12 Years a Slave' Really Too Rough For Oscar?

Michael Cusumano here. Oscar balloting closed 24 hours ago and this final crunch before Oscar night has me pondering the gap between pre-Fall buzz and the reality heading into the big ceremony.

If the breathless predictions about 12 Years a Slave that sounded out of Toronto last September were to be believed there should have been zero suspense left in the Best Picture race long ago. Like The King’s Speech before it, McQueen’s film appeared to be such a direct hit to the Academy’s sweet spot that many called the race then and there. So what happened? 12 Years may still emerge victorious but why isn’t it rolling over the competition like a Sherman Tank? 

The popular theory is that 12 Years is turning off the more squeamish voters with its unsparing physical and emotional violence. These voters are supposedly fleeing to the comforts of Gravity, which is nerve-shredding but in the unthreatening context of an action-thriller. This seems logical enough but I wonder if it's too easy an answer.

Is 12 Years a Slave really too rough for awards voters? Or is something larger at play?

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The very brief history of slavery in cinema

Tim here. Barring the unexpected end of civilization between now and January, 12 Years a Slave is going to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and has the clearest shot of anything right now to taking the win altogether. Everyone reading this site knows that as sure as we know anything, which makes it a little shocking when you step back a bit and realise that, as of the day I write this, the film still hasn’t technically been released yet. So I guess we can add “general audiences thinking it sucks” to the list of reasons that it might crash and burn, though I think the end of humanity is at least as likely.

This will be the second time in two Oscar cycles that a film about slavery in the United States will be competing for the big prize. 2012 had Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent pastiche Django Unchained of course, and two more diametrically opposed films on the same topic can hardly be imagined: a white American making a hugely irreverent piss-take of the whole edifice vs. a black Brit with his excoriating historical drama. [more]

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Review: Fruitvale Station

This review was originally posted in my column at Towleroad

Fruitvale Station, the first legit* Oscar Best Picture contender of 2013, hit a few theaters last Friday after months of pre-release buzz.

The buzz was fueled by a double triumph at Sundance this past January where it took home both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. The feature debut of 27 year-old writer/director Ryan Coogler tells the true story of the death of a 22 year-old African American man named Oscar Grant, who was shot by police on New Year's Day in 2009 at the Fruitvale BART Station in San Francisco. Watching it last Friday it felt like a modest success, a solid specific slice-of-life drama if not a great or ambitious one. But context is a funny thing. The very next day it was feeling much bigger.
 

Nothing exists in a vacuum and that includes the movies. On Saturday George Zimmerman was found "Not Guilty" in the death of Trayvon Martin, another unarmed black man (this time he was only a teenager), whose life was snuffed out nonsensically. The Weinstein Company who distributed the movie couldn't possibly have had better (or sadder) timing. If Fruitvale Station were a fictional drama, it might have felt unnervingly prescient opening when it did but since it is also based in fact it arrives like a stinging reminder of a shameful national pattern.[more...]

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The Linkmaker

Vanity Fair looks at the Lincoln costumes of first time Oscar nominee Joanna Johnston from sketch to still
LetterBoxd are any of you trying this new cinephile site out? I am. 
A Blog Next Door film scores to write to? (Joe Reid was just talking about this habit in that Hours piece). I used to write to the score to Talk to Her but lately I've found music distracting.
MNPP "Who died worse: Fantine or Talia Al Ghul?"
Gold Derby's Tariq Khan thinks Emmanuelle Riva is going to win Best Actress. I wish I believed him!

Empire Lance Armstrong: The Movie?
Coming Soon Here's most uncharted territory for the movies: elderly gay romantic drama. Ira Sachs will follow up his critical hit Keep the Lights On with Love is Strange starring Alfred Molina and Michael Gambon as long time companions who decided to tie the knot. 
Tom Shone interviews Spielberg for The Sunday Times (subscription required for full article)

With every movie, some more than others, you have to make the audience your accomplice." 

Towleroad Ryan Gosling on his abs and pecs. LOL. Gosling does always give good quote. Speaking of...
Frisky ...remember this classic "Meet Ryan's Abs" infographic? (I can't find the full thing anymore)
i09 sci-fi authors have a sense of humor about the gender politics of genre book covers 
Hollywood Elsewhere Marilyn at the 1950 Oscars? This photo looks fake to me but I love it still. 

Finally... did you hear that those Django Unchained action figures are being pulled by the Weinstein Co over debates that they have commercialized and trivialized slavery. Oh god. People are so frustrating. If you accept that the movie is historical fantasy fiction, aren't the dolls also exempt from this kind of moral outrage? Or do the $35+ dolls somehow shamelessly commercialize it whilst the $150+ million grossing movies doesn't? At any rate, pulling the dolls is no biggie for the Weinstein Co since the first series is already sold out (and given how many characters were in that series, was there ever going to be a second series?) and selling for $760 to $7,000 online (asking prices). I get that purchasing a slave doll has more uncomfortable connotations than buying a ticket to a movie in which Quentin Tarantino plays with his live action dolls playing slaves but isn't it basically the same thing in the end: a commercial product which makes money off a communal desire to create fantasy corrective narratives about atrocities of the past?

Interview: Kerry Washington on "Django" & Diversity

Kerry Washington and I were both blindfolded if not gagged when we spoke about Django Unchained. Metaphorically, you'll understand. Neither of us had yet seen Quentin Tarantino's latest revisionist revenge flick when we found a window in her schedule to talk but talk we did.

Kerry Washington as "Broomhilda" in Django Unchained

Amusingly we had quite different feelings about not having yet seen it. I was desperate to attend a screening. Kerry was, apparently, not. When I asked her if she enjoyed watching her films she laughed with a "No!" and a shudder...

It's a process I force myself to endure. Usually not more than once.

For the rest of us the prospect of seeing one of the screen's most stunning actresses is a lot more enticing than 'something to endure'. Since Kerry's big screen roles have rarely been as sizeable as her talent, a key role from an A list auteur is something to treasure while we have it.

In Django Unchained, Kerry found herself in the unusual position of playing a relatively non-verbal part considering the dialogue heavy nature of Tarantino pictures. She plays Broomhilda von Shaft, the wife of freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx) who aims to rescue her from the sadistic plantation of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) where she currently resides.

Our conversation about Django, her TV work, and the politics of her screen career is after the jump.

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