Oscar Umbrage 2015!

Well it’s that time of year again. Time for me to ramble off my random knee-jerk reactions to the Oscar nominations! Of the eight Best Picture nominees I have only see three, but that is not going to stop me from being able to go “full umbrage” here. As it stands I’ve seen 74 eligible films. Sure a lot of them were either fluff and/or downright bad, but there was also a LOT of good films that went either completely or significantly unheralded. It’s very early in the day and I might miss a few observations here and there. I’ll probably edit this piece as the day goes on to include them and make me look like I was a genius all along. Well enough with all of this intro business, here we go…

Best Picture

-American Sniper? I’m aware that Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the be-all and end-all but that film is currently sitting at 73%. That’s 6% lower than fellow nominee The Theory of Everything (which I did unexpectedly like). And even before the usual whisper campaigns of Awards Season had a chance to begin, people were digging into this film's accuracy and questionable quality.

-Though I haven’t seen Whiplash it is HIGH on my to-see list and I’m glad that a film that small can still make it to the big game without a huge machine behind it.

Best Director

-Ava DuVernay where are you? We saw this coming with the snub from the DGA earlier this week, but still… 

-I love me some Bennett Miller and with three great films under his belt I see him as a, “director to watch”, but with Foxcatcher’s lack of a Best Picture nomination I see him as merely taking up space. Space perhaps that could have gone to a woman. Perhaps a woman of color. Perhaps a woman of color who directed a historical EPIC with relevance to modern day social issues. Just sayin…

Best Actress
-No Amy Adams?

Best Actor
-No Raph Fiennes?
-No Jake Gyllenhaal?

Best Supporting Actress

- I get that they campaigned Arquette as Supporting Actress and I’m really glad to see her here, but I am decidedly on the side of the LA Film Critics Association in thinking that she was at least the co-LEAD in Boyhood. Ellar Coltrane was the male lead, and she was the female lead. Had the film been released with its original title of 12 Years (scrapped due to its similarity to 12 Years a Slave) this would have been a whole different conversation.

-Of course Meryl Streep, because why not?

Best Supporting Actor

-Oh yeah there was a movie called The Judge this year…

Best Adapted Screenplay

-Yay Inherent Vice!

-Glad to see that The Academy’s weird decision to classify Whiplash as an adaptation (since 15 pages of the EXACT SAME SCREENPLAY had been made into a short film last year in order to get investors interested in supporting the feature-legth verion) didn’t derail it from getting recognition.

Best Original Screenplay

-Yay Nightcrawler!
-Where's Obvious Child?

Best Documentary Feature

-No love for Teenage. I guess a lot of it was re-creations so it’s in a weird in between category. Still worth seeking out. Currently streaming on Netflix.

-But where is Life Itself? There is absolutely nothing that should have or could have excluded this moving portrait of a man who was and is so tied to the industry giving out these awards.

Best Animated Feature

-No Lego Movie?

Best Song

-Lego Movie! Spaceship! EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

-But seriously we all know this is going to "Glory", right?

Best Original Score

-No love for Under the Skin. Of course.

-Did love the EPIC organ use in Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score.

Best Cinematography

-Gonna spit if the film that finally wins Roger Deakins an Oscar is Unbreakable rather than any film in the decades of amazing work that preceded it.

-Ida is pretty gorgeous

-How is this the first time Robert Yeoman has ever been nominated?

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

-Guardians of the Galaxy's entire cast! Vs. Steve Carell’s nose and Channing Tatum’s ears! Vs. Old Tilda Swinton! – IN A BATTLE TO THE DEATH!!!!!

Best Animated Short

-Feast is ADORABLE!