OSCAR 2011: If I Chose the Nominees

I've been fuming ever since the Oscar Nominations were announced just yesterday. I think we all have been, as we knew we'd be disappointed, but we had no idea exactly how disappointed we eventually would be. That's been the tone of the entire season, with very few things truly certain about the eventual endgame of the Oscars, the ceremony included. It is currently looking to be a dull and absolutely unmotivating affair, so why care? The films we loved all still exist, so why not celebrate them as they still lay. I had arrayed this list as my dream ballot for release before the nominations announcement, but it is just as appropriate now as it was then. So here are my nominations for 2011.

BEST PICTURE

• "Certified Copy"
• "Drive"
• "Martha Marcy May Marlene"
• "Meek's Cutoff"
• "A Separation"
• "Shame"
• "Sleeping Beauty"
• "Tomboy"
• "Weekend"
• "We Need to Talk About Kevin" 

Second Tier: "The Artist", "Cold Weather", "Melancholia", "Midnight in Paris", "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol", "The Muppets", "Rango","Senna", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Tyrannosaur"

Further Thoughts: I dispatched with the Foreign Language Film and Animated Feature races for two reasons. One is that there aren't enough good toons out there this past year to warrant the latter, and secondly because there are three films that could be deemed Foreign Language in my Best Picture list. There is no way in hell any of my ten were going to be reciprocated by the Academy. "Martha Marcy May Marlene", "Meek's Cutoff", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Weekend" all skew too low key. "Shame", "Drive", and "We Need to Talk About Kevin" are all too hard edge for them. They'll constantly make excuses for why they don't belong, but none of them really hold up.

BEST DIRECTOR

• Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive")
• Kelly Reichardt ("Meek's Cutoff")
• Steve McQueen ("Shame")
• Julia Leigh ("Sleeping Beauty")
• Lynne Ramsay ("We Need to Talk About Kevin")

Second Tier: Abbas Kiarostami ("Certified Copy"), Sean Durkin ("Martha Marcy May Marlene"), Tomas Alfredson ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"), Celine Sciamma ("Tomboy"), Andrew Haigh ("Weekend")

Further Thoughts: Quite obviously, I can't just go verbatim from my top five films of 2011. It was a year for strong directorial intent and intervention. Nicolas Winding Refn would quite clearly take the title for his extreme and all-encompassing expansion of the universe of "Drive". Steve McQueen continues to prove himself a virtuoso talent at grounding the audience in the real conditions of his characters' lives and minds. Julia Leigh managed perhaps the strongest debut of the year, with shivery intent and precision in her deliberation. Lynne Ramsay put blood, sweat, and tears into getting "We Need to Talk About Kevin" made, and it pays off in the drugged delirium we are put in. Kelly Reichardt is the closest behind Refn, putting fantastic specificity in the most dire of circumstances.

BEST ACTOR

• Ryan Gosling ("Drive")
• Michael Fassbender ("Shame")
• Gary Oldman ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy")
• Tom Cullen ("Weekend")
• Chris New ("Weekend")

Second Tier: Jean Dujardin ("The Artist"), Brendan Gleeson ("The Guard"), Michael Fassbender ("Jane Eyre"), Owen Wilson ("Midnight in Paris"), Tom Hardy ("Warrior")

Further Thoughts: It's a piece of irony that the least likely performance to make the cut of the Academy is the one that was most likely to make it. Thanks to some rigorous awards attention, Michael Fassbender's equally rigorous and humanity-effacing performance in "Shame" is likely to get the nod he so greatly deserves. Such can't be said for his competitors, including an extremely internalized and damn-near-heartbreaking performance from Ryan Gosling in "Drive", as well as an elusive, slippery, yet finely teethed turn from Gary Oldman in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" which DID make it in. The real gems of the race, and subsequently the least likely to be recognized, are two astonishingly affectionate and fine-tuned performances from Chris New and Tom Cullen for "Weekend".

BEST ACTRESS

• Juliette Binoche ("Certified Copy")
• Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene")
• Michelle Williams ("Meek's Cutoff")
• Zoe Heran ("Tomboy")
• Tilda Swinton ("We Need to Talk About Kevin")

Further Thoughts: Alas, there just isn't enough room for even the most hard-edge and truly revelatory performance from Rooney Mara to make the cut for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". It's not for no reason, as all her successor's had just as clear reasons to be where they were. Tilda Swinton usually sense of mousy trepidation comes in pitch-perfect for Lynne Ramsay's most mainstream of endeavors. Michelle Williams gave a far sturdier, keenly woven, and dryly humorous performance in "Meek's Cutoff" than her silly and impersonatory performance for "My Week with Marilyn". Kristen Wiig frankly blew me away entirely, with the second-most (unexpectedly) psychologically complex performance this year in "Bridesmaids", right behind Elizabeth Olsen's careful and inquisitive breakthrough in "Martha Marcy May Marlene". One made it in; the other sorely missed. I couldn't stomach leaving out newcomer Zoe Heran's soul churning and honest performance in "Tomboy". And yet all fall second to Juliette Binoche's astonishingly meticulous, and yet passionately complex performance in "Certified Copy". There were simply too many amazing leading ladies this year, and too few that will be recognized, and I didn't even get the time for Olivia Colman brilliant fearfulness in "Tyrannosaur"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Peter Carroll ("Sleeping Beauty")
• Albert Brooks ("Drive")
• Jared Harris ("Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows")
• Tom Hardy ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy")
• Ezra Miller ("We Need to Talk About Kevin")

Further Thoughts: I must say that it was a year of strong surprises in this particular race, which the list of nominations scarcely shows at all. I'm still shocked by the omission of Albert Brook's surprise revelation as the intimidating and ravenous villain of "Drive", but what else is not being noticed? They're clearly seeing Ezra Miller's performance as an easy depiction of pure evil, and not the frightening and devastat(ing/ed) shadow of his screen counterpart. Of the immense and all deserving ensemble of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", Tom Hardy won over the best with the most honest intentioned of characters on display, and consequently the most manipulated, and yet he really digs and relishes in any charisma in the role. Also accounting for a very short portion of the film it resides in is Peter Carroll in "Sleeping Beauty". The most he gets is a monologue, but it is the most meaningful and verbally shattering thing in the film. But I'm going to be truly pissed in any case when Jared Harris is inevitably overlooked for his reserved and emphatic performance as the calculated sociopath of "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows".

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Treiste Kelly Dunn ("Cold Weather")
• Sarah Paulson ("Martha Marcy May Marlene")
• Allison Pill ("Midnight in Paris")
• Carey Mulligan ("Shame")
• Jessica Chastain ("Take Shelter")

Further Thoughts: Very likely the loosest performance category to put together, I was almost scrambling to put together a proper list of candidates here. Alison Pill and Treiste Kelly Dunn may sound like odd fits in this category, but both use frigidness and fragility to their advantage, be it in vastly different ways. Sarah Paulson proved herself up to the task of sharing the ring with the burgeoning Olsen, and found many ways to be fastidious and nervous. Chastain could very well get the award for unblinking passion with her sadly-to-be-overlooked soul-leveling performance in "Take Shelter". And the fact that Carey Mulligan is able to rise above, or rather augment, her usual character mold to become even more fascinating and edge-treading than before shows that we haven't even started to drill this well of talent.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• "Certified Copy"
• "Martha Marcy May Marlene" 
• "A Separation"
• "Sleeping Beauty"
• "Weekend"

Further Thoughts: This was a year of immensely strong original stories to be told, and the adapted screenplays didn't really hold much of a candle. Think of the dutiful in-script work Sean Durkin must have done in the formatting of events unfolding, which isn't something to be sorting out afterwards in editing. Think of the steady line Kiarostami walked to make "Certified Copy" as clean and steady a work as possible. Think of extreme emotion of "A Separation", or conversely the tucked emotionality of "Sleeping Beauty" or "Meek's Cutoff". Probably most astounding of all is still "Weekend", which does have these characters go off on tangents of inquisitive dialogue, but it's all true to character and serving of a true and honest purpose.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• "Drive"
• "Moneyball"
• "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"
• "Tyrannosaur"
• "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Further Thoughts: Like I said earlier, this was not an extremely strong year for adaptations, at least from where I'm standing. I wasn't a huge fan of "Moneyball", but it was a nicely constructed adaptation, even if the dialogue came off as terribly overt. "Tyrannosaur", which I didn't even know was adapted, was very tender in its dialogue choices, whereas "Drive" was quite economical and only let out what absolutely needed to be said, and I respect that immensely. Of course the main two that needed to be here were "We Need to Talk About Kevin", which did take many situations out of the book, but put them where they were most necessary, and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" which was the tightest and most spot-on screenplay put together this year. Where "Weekend" got points for passion, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" got its point for sheer skill.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

• "The Adventures of Tintin"
• "Kung Fu Panda 2" 
• "Rango"
• "Rio"
• "Winnie the Pooh"

Further Thoughts: Hard to consider this a strong year for animation, so much so that I have a certain disbelief of there being five nominations. Filling beyond three slots is a difficulty, and "Rio"'s nuttiness and "Winnie the Pooh"'s simplicity just made it in by that extension. The other three slot were easy to fill, with "Rango"'s utter abandon pushing it forward, "The Adventures of Tintin"'s boundless creativity putting it in my good graces, and the heartfelt juvenile energy of "Kung Fu Panda 2" still qualifying as a guilty pleasure pick of mine.

BEST ART DIRECTION

• "The Artist"
• "Immortals"
• "Melancholia"
• "Sleeping Beauty"
• "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Further Thoughts: This year in particular emphasized less of a need towards size, scale, and flamboyance, and more of a formalist revolution. That's not to say that the extravagant didn't have their say, with "Immortals" being by far the most grand scale and insane of cinematic achievements in this category. I must admit that I fell a bit for the gleefully simple work in "The Artist", and if it was quite minimal, it was nonetheless strong. "Melancholia" has a single great set-piece that it spends most of the film within, but the intricacy in that, as well as the amazing art of its more operatic sequences more than merits inclusion. And as far as densely created environments and universes go, "Sleeping Beauty" and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" covered the board.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

• "Drive"
• "Hanna"
• "Meek's Cutoff"
• "Shame"
• "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Further Thoughts: What a very pretty year it was. The eerie work of "Martha Marcy May Marlene", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", and "Sleeping Beauty" deserve just as much inclusion as the rest here. "Drive" made easy its step-in, owing much of its iconography to Nic Winding Refn, and filling the frame with color. I'd almost forgot about the emotions that "Hanna" raised in me through its pristine lensing, and it'd feel cruel to not include it. "Meek's Cutoff" was so strongly built by the surroundings and how it painted them. "Shame" wouldn't have been the same sense of delirium if it hadn't been for Sean Bobbitt's dizzying lensing, and the same could and should be said for "We Need to Talk About Kevin".

 BEST COSTUME DESIGN

• "Drive"
• "Jane Eyre"
• "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
• "Immortals"
• "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Further Thoughts: I wish the Academy didn't need to gun for something pretty in the costumes category. The only real overlap between my picks and their picks is "Jane Eyre", because while they look at it from strictly a perspective of what looks pretty, I look at them as carefully concepted costumes for their characters. The same can so dutifully be said of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", which was so strong not only in clothing, but also apparel, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", with all the stocky shells they created to envelop these cold people, and "Drive", which beyond Ryan Gosling's jacket deserves notice for Bryan Cranston's scrappy look shirts and Carey Mulligan's sexualized mom-fits. And as for "Immortals", it was just kinky, ridiculous, unbelievable, but definitely cool.

BEST FILM EDITING

• "Drive"
• "Martha Marcy May Marlene"
• "Shame"
• "Sleeping Beauty"
• "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Further Thoughts: How did they go so absolutely wrong in choosing their editing nominations? True, many of my picks are known for smoother cutting than bravado and obvious specificity, but that's mostly a statement of how well done the work was. Between splicing together disparate events as done with "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and "Shame", calculated precision in "Sleeping Beauty", the aggressively cool work on "Drive", or the rocked-and-controlled-by-delirium work on "We Need to Talk About Kevin", it was a very strong year for such work.

BEST MAKEUP

• "The Artist"
• "Sleeping Beauty"
• "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Further Thoughts: Yes, a lot of this is amongst acts of making people look pretty, but they did pretty damn well with "The Artist". Soft and silly, it's done with a sense of purpose and acquiescing the story of the film. "Sleeping Beauty" and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" were to a purpose of draining life from their subjects, in the former to signify life or drain, and in the latter to signify almost lifelessness. And in any case, I can't ignore the fact that they made Gary Oldman into a carbon copy of my middle-aged father.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

• "Drive"
• "Hanna"
• "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
• "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"
• "Shame"

 Further Thoughts: It would take some sort of miracle to make me appreciate any works of John Williams these days, thus explaining how much yesterday's nominations irked me. And despite its ancestry in Williams, Alexandre Desplat's greater portions of "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" were undeniably brilliant, heart-stroking, and rose emotions that the film could not live up to. A great deal of the other works were just extremely cool. Clint Martinez's synth score for "Drive" continues to be the playlist for my contemplative afternoon, and easily acquiesces the contemplative actioner. The Chemical Brothers' "Hanna" seemed so tightly-wound upon releasing, that you just dread the point where it runs out of juice. Harry Escott had such the melancholic and devastating score of low strokes and blinding highs in "Shame". And "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" put together a wide variety of sounds to a wide variety of emotions that very much echo the film's messiness, but to a stronger degree.

BEST SONG (ORIGINAL)

• "Man or Muppet" ("The Muppets")
• "Me Party ("The Muppets")
• "Life's a Happy Song" ("The Muppets")
• "Shelter" ("Take Shelter")
• "The Star Spangled Man" ("Captain America: The First Avenger")

Further Thoughts: Somebody explain to me how they could only come up with two? The only explanation that holds is that they hated "Life's A Happy Song" and every single other song in contention, which is a damn shame. There are three absolutely ridiculous and fun songs from "The Muppets", each striking their own note of silliness, either controlled, passionate, or let joyfully loose. The other one just seems slightly lesser in comparison. I was probably alone in my passion for the end credits summation of "Take Shelter", which I felt was absolutely soulful and right to the passionate heart of the piece. And who can forget the odd musical interlude in the middle of "Captain America: The First Avenger", that was the perfect combination of the film's own silliness and misplaced sense of purpose.

BEST SOUND MIXING & EDITING

• "Drive"
• "Hanna"
• "Meek's Cutoff"
• "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"
• "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Further Thoughts: I'll be honest. I really can't quite tell the difference between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. Sound Mixing seems to be, to use the clinical terms, all the rage these days. I still think I landed rather more honestly on this one than the Academy, in all their knowledge, did. The functionality of "We Need to Talk About Kevin", "Hanna", and "Drive" seemed to require a stronger focus of sound emissions towards the audience. In the theater, they envelop the audience. "Meek's Cutoff" was... environmentally conscious in its construction. And "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" was just bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm on all cylinders.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

• "Immortals"
• "Melancholia"
• "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"
• "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
• "The Tree of Life"

Further Thoughts: Oddly enough, "The Tree of Life" was the one on the edge of my list. "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" barely made the cut to, but it seemed to belong there just a bit more than "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". They were either really pretty or really good in their respective techs. But they did not contain the tactfully beautiful restraint of "Melancholia", the specifity to-the-dot precision of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon", or the balls-to-the-wall powerhouse of "Immortals", which I actually believe would be the quite easy winner in my book. 

"Drive" - 10
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" - 8
"Shame" - 7
"Sleeping Beauty - 7
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" - 6 
"Martha Marcy May Marlene" - 5
"Meek's Cutoff" - 5
"Weekend" - 4
"Certified Copy" - 3
"Hanna" - 3
"Immortals" - 3 
"The Muppets" - 3
"The Artist" - 2 
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - 2
"Melancholia" - 2
"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" - 2
"A Separation" - 2
"Take Shelter" - 2 
"Tomboy" - 2

ONE HIT WONDERS: "Cold Weather", "Midnight in Paris", "Moneyball", "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", "Tyrannosaur", "Jane Eyre", "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2", "Captain America: The First Avenger"