Post Predictions Oscar Jitters

Do you think Oscar wishes he had more of a bubble butt?

Have you voted on our Oscar charts? It's your last day to vote for your PICTURE, DIRECTOR, ACTOR, ACTRESS, SUPPORTING ACTRESS, SUPPORTING ACTOR, and SCREENPLAY preferences. I'll announce the Reader's Choice winners tomorrow.

If you found my "final predictions post" here yesterday a bit baffling in its haphazhard order -- I'm always a mess on Oscar weekend -- I'd suggest reading my far more organized final take at Towleroad which reiterates all the arguments I've been making the past month but in a more \readable fashion. If you read this blog every day you already know what I'm expecting but naturally I'm having "I'll be so wrong!" jitters. I like being wrong, don't get me wrong (super predictable set in stone years are dull) but I don't like being too wrong. It's a fine distinction but an important one!

My Great Fear is that Grand Budapest loses two prizes I predicted it for (Makeup and Costumes) to inferior work (i.e. all of its competitors in those categories).

My Great Dream is that Michael Keaton surprises and takes Best Actor against the odds because it has been forever since we've had an "all fictional characters winning" years. 1997 to be exact when As Good As it Gets, LA Confidential, and Good Will Hunting provided a brief reprieve from the exhausting dominance of biopic mimicry. 

Everyone was applauding Shirley Booth in the 1952/1953 seasonMy Great Confusion is shared with all. No matter how I weigh it, I can't figure out the Birdman vs Boyhood situation. No matter what your feelings about either, you have to admit that they'd be atypical winners. Birdman is quite cerebral and weird and funny (none of which generally describe Oscar winners) and Boyhood is quite "small" and indie-feeling despite its epic 12 years in the making slant. So I remind myself that I love both of them and either will make a great Best Picture so let the chips fall where they may.

But in terms of the Academy both seem "soft" if you will. If people love Birdman so much why isn't Keaton the Best Actor frontrunner and if people love Boyhood so much why does Birdman keep winning guild prizes? I keep coming up with scenarios wherein the Best Picture wins only one other Oscar and that has not happened since The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). And never before that until you go back to the 1940 and earlier when they had far less categories than they have now. Only 2 Oscars for the Best Picture winner seems highly unlikely but then 1952 might be a magic coincidence film year since that was also the last year a woman in her fifties won Best Actress.

Year in Review: The Best LGBT Characters

Over at my weekly (okay, bi-weekly) column at Towleroad, I put up my annual review of the best queer characters of the film year. The year's most acclaimed gay narrative feature was obviously Keep the Lights On but since I didn't personally respond to that one I had to look elsewhere for my favorite gay characters. Likewise, many will wish for more love for that dandy Cloud Atlas couple of Sixsmith and Forbrisher.

But I made room for films as diverse as On the Road, ParaNorman, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The most controversial bit of the top ten will probably be the section I like to call "The 'Are They Or Aren't They?' Box Set" which begins like so..

With the ever increasing number of gay-identified characters it's less of a parlor game to imagine the characters who might well be queer than it used to be but it's still fun: Tomboy does not always equal lesbian but regardless of her orientation  "Princess Merida" in Brave really shakes up the heteronormative Disney fairytale world merely by being utterly uninterested and even opposed to that Someday When Her Prince Might Come; The chorus of townsfolk who continually sound off on "Bernie" in Bernie argue about whether he's cruising for men on the sly or sleeping with rich widow Shirley Maclaine but both sound pretty gay to me...

...READ THE REST @ TOWLEROAD

Previously on 'Year in Review' 
James Bond Mania -Bond Girl Reader Ranking. (+ Silva)
The Year in of Snow White the apple muching fairest of them all was everywhere
Overrated Amy Adams, superheroes, film critics, and more
Worst of 2012 Cloud Atlas, The Amazing Spider-Man, and more
Summer Crushes Pt. 1 and Summer Crushes Pt. 2

Best of the Blog from...
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November

Good Laughs in "Gayby"

Because of time constraints and interview availability I ended up having to watch the new comedy Gayby, which opened this weekend in NYC, alone a week or so ago. Though comedies are much funnier with crowds, I still laughed out loud. So it was a joy to interview the writer/director Jonathan Lisecki for Towleroad. He also co-stars in the movie as one of the central couple's best friends, "Nelson". He was smart enough to keep some of the best lines for himself.

Here's two bits about his actors that I couldn't fit into the published interview. 

NATHANIEL R: I noticed you're cross-pollinating with HBO's Girls with your casting. 

JONATHAN LISECKI: Some people ask if I cast Alex Karpovsky and Adam Driver because they’re both in Girls – there was no Girls last year. I love Lena. She’s awesome. My short played with Tiny Furniture on the festival circuit. Once upon a time when we were out to lunch she said 'You should be in your own movie you’re so funny.' I was like 'Well, I’m going to take your advice Lena Dunham!'  

She was shooting Girls the same time I was shooting the movie.

NR: I just saw Jenn Harris, your lead, in Silence! the Musical Off Broadway as Clarice Starling.

JL: Oh god she' s amazing in that, isn’t she?

Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling in "Silence! The Musical" and Jenn Harris as Jenn in "Gayby"

NR: Just hilarious. She wasn't just spoofing the movie and Jodie. I swear to god she was also totally sending up actors who are tired of being in the shows they're in. 

JL: I saw it two weeks ago and she really was! [Laughter] She’s so funny. She's such a gifted comedic actor. Especially on stage. One of the reasons why I wanted her to be the lead of the movie is that I’ve been onstage with her and she's one of the few people in the world who has ever made me crack up onstage and lose character. She'll do anything in the moment. Comedy is important to her and it’s an art. She'll go that extra mile which not everyone will do and she's willing to look goofy to get a laugh.

Read the Full Interview @ Towleroad

P.S. I'd love to send you to see "Silence! the Musical" but Jenn recently left the show after a long run so I can't vouch for the new cast members. But I can send you to see 'Gayby'! It's in NYC now and Los Angeles in a couple of weeks. 

Links, Fences, Songs, Brainnnnns

Free Unqualified... The Artist = Anchorman ?
SuperPunch for your next horror movie party with friends, zombie chocolates with cherry brainnnnns! 
Carpetbagger talks to Stuart Craig on the challenges of art directing Hogwarts over eight Harry Potter films 
Antagony & Ecstacy offers up a great top ten list: ten best Oscar slates ever from 2009's animated feature to 1939's best actresses and everywhere inbetween.
Senses of Cinema looks at the question of identity in Splendor in the Grass (1961) 

Flavorwire Disney Princess tattoos. Why the hell not?
Movie|Line on Clint Eastwood vs the ever-nuttier GOP after his Superbowl commercial
Towleroad  No song performances at this year's Oscars? Christ, AMPAS really needs to call me. They could've had such a watercooler live tv moment with "Man or Muppet". I explain how.

Complex the '25 Hottest Women on Horror TV shows'. Fun list with shoutouts to two of the best TV shows of all time Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks 
World of Wonder three things
Empire clears up that silly rumor that Harrison Ford was going to be in the Blade Runner sequel that nobody should be making to begin with shame on you Ridley Scott do you really want to turn into George Lucas I'm just saying... 

Today's Must Read
Grantland Mark Harris writes a fabulous column on Viola Davis's extraordinary gift, the Best Actress race and Hollywood's race relations.

Faced with the peril of that archetype, Davis did the hardest job of anyone in the Best Actress category: She made the movie better — much better — without playing against it. Much of The Help is bright, candy-colored, and loud: It’s full of silly wigs and garish costumes, sitcom slapstick and shit pies, wicked old dears like Sissy Spacek, finger-snappin’ Designing Women tell-offs, and the kind of steroidal pivots from comedy to poignancy to melodrama that would shame an episode of Glee. What Davis gives the film is humanity. Aibileen is a gentle but wary woman — she’s lived long enough to know that in her world, you survive by bending, not breaking, by keeping your thoughts to yourself, by seeing and hearing everything while appearing to register very little, and by trying to apply your own sense of decency and kindness to a badly needed paying job in an often indecent and unkind world. When she’s on-screen, the hummingbird shrieks of the movie’s other characters are hushed; you’re reminded that the human toll of daily, casual racism doesn’t really get addressed by making Bryce Dallas Howard eat poo. Because Davis is a physically gifted actress who can incorporate the exhaustion and strain of being Aibileen into every motion and muscle, and also the rare performer — even in this year ofThe Artist and Max von Sydow — whose silences draw you even closer, she seems to correct The Help’s excesses without ever standing self-protectively outside it. At every turn, she un-simplifies the movie.

Nick and I keep wondering when Hollywood is going to make August Wilson's Fences (for which Viola won a Tony opposite Denzel Washington) into a movie and everyone I know who is into theater keeps wondering why this hasn't happened for Fences or really any of August Wilson's plays. So it's nice to see that subject is revived again here. Seriously what time like the present Hollywood? Get on that. How many times do we have to ask?

Thoughts On "Shame"

This time of year I am inundated with awards screeners. Studios send them out to awards voters hoping their films will be considered "Best". The disc for SHAME, a haunting NYC-set sexual addiction drama which opened yesterday in select theaters came in a minimalist pure white sleeve with only the title and a barely visible "for your consideration" adorning it. It's as naked as Michael Fassbender's star turn. Though I'd seen the film just two months ago, I popped it in the player hoping to let its riveting images and mesmerizing rhythms wash over me as I wrote a review. Instead the screen stayed black. The depressing message "Skipping Over Damaged Area" was all my DVD player would show me.

If one were to skip past the damaged, in a figurative sense, one would have to skip the entire film...

READ THE REST @ TOWLEROAD

Other things to read about "Shame" today...

Aint it Cool has a review which spends one whole paragraph on the "magnificence" of Fassbender's cock (from a straight man -lol) and contains a funny smackdown of the MPAA.
MUBI Ignatiy doesn't much care fo Shame's vagueness about the details.
In Contention lets us know that it won't be eligible for the WGA Screenplay prizes.
Next Movie, in honor of Fassy, looks at the best penis moments in movies. 

P.S. I've written so piecemeal about Shame -- see past posts -- that it's amounted to all of these brief bits without one big substantial review. I'm realizing that this is my habit in general, the dangers of blogging daily with ADD I suppose. I feel I need to build Frankenstein monster parts of all my brief impressions of any given movie into a series of hulking reanimated pieces. Now to wait for the right stormy opportunity and the bolt of inspirational lightning. 

P.P.S. Here's the French poster, airbrushing and shining up one of the film's most haunting images. It's like a motion capture animated version of Shame. Imagine it. Hee.

Are you seeing Shame this weekend? If you've already see it, what did you make of it?