In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
February 1, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Even if you are a fan of The King’s Speech - and believe me, I know many people are - what fun is there in watching an awards show where you can announce, in the comfort of your own home, the presumed winner before a presenter opens the envelope and repeats what you just said? Some people may be excited at the prospect of James Franco and Anne Hathaway being this year’s co-hosts, but as much as Daniel Desario hosting an awards show a decade after Freaks and Geeks seems appealing, I don’t know why I should assume they’ll be any better than Ellen DeGeneres a few years back. If you’re not into the host - and even if they’re a photogenic pair, who is genuinely excited to watch these two attempt to host? - and the awards are almost a guaranteed foregone conclusion, what fun is there?
As always, there is the possibility that The King’s Speech, or Natalie Portman, or Aaron Sorkin (who may end up being the most prestigious award winner for The Social Network), or any of the other frequently feted winners won’t actually get an Oscar on February 27th. Nothing is a lock until it’s already happened. Still, with each passing day, the idea that The Social Network was ever going to dominate seems silly. Yes, it won all of the critics’ awards, but as I mentioned and as many other skeptics pointed out, the critics don’t vote for the Oscars. The fans don’t; if they did, who knows? Toy Story 3 or Inception might be winning on Oscar night. There’s no question that many people are enjoying The King’s Speech, but with the advent of the preferential ballot system, you have to wonder if a sheer lack of strong feelings is pushing The King’s Speech to the top.
Who hates The King’s Speech? Even I don’t; I thought it was pleasant and diverting and nice. Very few people would say they hated the movie. That is the key. Some people really didn’t like Black Swan. Some people really didn’t like Inception. Movies like The King’s Speech and True Grit, both entertaining and crowd-pleasing, will do well in the preferential ballot, simply by being placed higher overall as opposed to being number one on select top ten lists. Voters like safe material sometimes, and whatever else you can say about The King’s Speech, you can call it safe and unchallenging. It’s been said elsewhere online recently that The King’s Speech is a movie that could have been made and nominated for Oscars pretty much any time after the events of the film took place. We’ve seen this kind of material on HBO, and in plenty of Merchant-Ivory costume dramas. Why not another Oscar for royalty?
What genuine fun there is in this year’s ceremony is the hope of a surprise. Even categories such as Best Supporting Actress seem less and less potentially shocking, with Melissa Leo once again winning for her role in The Fighter at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Leo, Christian Bale, Portman, and Colin Firth: these are your likely Oscar winners in the acting categories. Frankly, most of the categories are bygone conclusions. Sorkin’s script, Tom Hooper and The King’s Speech for Best Director and Picture, Toy Story 3 for Best Animated Feature, Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography. When it takes getting to the below-the-line categories like Best Sound Mixing to wonder about what film could surprise everyone, there’s little excitement to go around. It’s years like these where I have to wonder what ever excited me about the Oscars.
There was a time when the Oscars were a yearly treasure. When I was a kid - really - I got intensely excited for the Oscars, one of the few times in the year where I could stay up until midnight. I didn’t often know much about the movies - when Babe improbably got nominated for Best Picture in 1995, I was so thrilled to have finally seen one of the Best Picture nominees - but the glitz and glamour being had in the name of great filmmaking excited me so much. Nowadays, with the onslaught of film blogs and prognosticators throwing back the curtains to show us what goes on behind the scenes, it’s genuinely disillusioning, until I back up and remember that I’m not winning any awards, so I really shouldn’t care.
Does it break my heart that Christopher Nolan wasn’t nominated for Best Director this year? Of course. Having said that, even if Nolan had been nominated, I wasn’t expecting him to win. One year, that might happen, but Nolan’s award would have been a nomination from a branch of voters who are apparently always going to be frosty towards him. After my initial anger at this snub, I remembered that Toy Story 3, a truly moving and entertaining piece of cinema, got five Oscar nominations including a well-deserved Best Picture nomination. It won’t win, of course, but being honored is always gratifying. I still wait for the day when Hollywood realizes how much work goes into animating a single minute of film, and they start honoring animation in other notable categories, but this is a step in the right direction.
At the end of the day, what matters is what films we cherish. I may deride the existence of the People’s Choice Awards, but let’s remember that each of us is going to disagree about any awards. You may think The King’s Speech is the best film of the year whether or not you’ve seen the other nominees. You may think that Natalie Portman deserves her Oscar, but that Mila Kunis should have been nominated for her work in Black Swan. Differences of opinion are fine, as long as we hold the art that touches us dear. The Oscars will not be that exciting for this year, and one day soon, I may just stop caring about the lengthy awards season. What will never be anything less than exciting is the jolt I get when I watch Woody and Buzz say good-bye to Andy, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt fight in zero gravity, or Natalie Portman achieve perfection in Swan Lake. Let it be the same for all of you.