Aaron Picks The Oscars, Part One

It’s that time of year again. No, not Oscars nominations. That happened like an hour ago; nobody cares anymore. No, it’s time for everybody to wildly speculate on who’ll win the somewhat-coveted trophies while maintaining intellectual superiority by declaring “it’s all politics anyway. (do you think George Clooney is due?)”

I’m not going to fall into that trap. Oh, no. I’m not going to be ironically and hilariously smug while descending (eh? eh?) into the same idiotic fervor everybody else does. I’m going to maintain artistic integrity here. I’m not going to predict who wins. I’m going to write a blog post about who I THINK should win, based on the nominations, and my own spotty track record of having watched the nominated films and a healthy dose of my own personal biases. It’ll be exactly like the real Oscars, only I’m the out of touch, elitist Academy who’s shamelessly pandering to mainstream sensibilities.

Without further ado…

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

I’ve seen three of these, which is pretty damn good for what’s about to transpire. Also, I’m not sure why Midnight in Paris, The Artist, and Bridesmaids qualify for this category, since those are all clearly biographies and not original stories at all.

Margin Call is also pretty clearly an account of actual events, but they did stop short of calling the fictional investment firm the “Lame Men Brothers”, so they sneak in.

Still, A Separation, which I believe has something to do with divorce in Islamofascist Communist Iran (I haven’t seen it), clearly sets itself apart. There’s no way it isn’t a made up story because as I understand it, it portrays Iranian citizens as real people with complicated emotions and political beliefs, and at no point do any of the main characters attempt to build a bomb or declare ‘Death to America’ (again, I haven’t seen it…if the end of the movie twist is a suicide bombing, I take this back and give the win to Margin Call). This level of silly imagination shows great creativity, so A Separation is my winner (unless it sucks, b/c again, haven’t seen it).

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

Ah, the real Hollywood writing category. As we all know, Hollywood is generally incompetent except when they can rip somebody else off and not give them credit for it, so this is the real battle.

More typical of this awards season, I’ve only seen one of these movies, so it’s a particularly hard category to judge. Both The Ides of March and The Descendents prominently involve George Clooney, so they split my Clooney vote and knock themselves out of competition. Moneyball is about baseball, and I’ve heard it’s quite good, which means I know a lot of liars because nothing about baseball is good. It’s out for dishonesty.

That leaves Hugo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I loved Hugo, but I didn’t remember the writing being particularly good, plus a lot of it was in French, which meant I had to read it. While some might argue that gives it extra points for a writing category, this is America. And in America, we love the Brits (pip pip!). And TTSS combines four words that have no business going together into a cool sentence, which is all I know about the writing of the film. Good enough for me.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wins the day.

SOUND EDITING AND MIXING

Now begins my annual Wikipedia research session to relearn the difference between editing and mixing.

Still confused.

Let’s use the scientific method.

HYPOTHESIS: If there’s a difference, it will show up in the nominees. We can then use the what we know about the nominees to extrapolate what that difference is.

OBSERVATION: Since these are two entirely different skills, the lists of movies should differ greatly as well. Let’s see, for sound editing we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Drive. For sound mixing, we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Moneyball.

….

….

ANALYSIS: Clearly, the difference between sound mixing and editing is very precise. It also appears to have something to do with the difference between Drive and Moneyball. Having seen Drive, sound editing, therefore, seems to have something to do with cars and 80s throwback synth tracks. Moneyball has something to do with baseball, so I can only extrapolate from what I know about the film (not much) that Sound Mixing is predominately concerned with sports.

CONCLUSION: Well, Moneyball is clearly the most sports related movie on this list, so we’ll go ahead and award the Sound Mixing Oscar to them.

You might be tempted to say Drive is the most cars related film on the list, but Transformers has even cooler cars, and theirs transform into robots. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that if you put on Pink Floyd at the same time as Transformers and get really stoned, IT TOTALLY SYNCHS UP, so we’re going to give Transformers: Dark of the Moon the Sound Editing Oscar.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Another category where I’ve only seen 2 of 5. Unlike writing, this is a particular handicap, as I can’t get any clues from the titles. So instead, I’m going to go by a google images search.

Harry Potter 2: Ok, so I’ve seen this one. I don’t actually remember anything about the effects, so I’m going to yawn and move on. The poster is very blue, for what it’s worth.

Hugo: That’s a pretty cool clock. It also gets some extra props for landing a visual effects nomination for a film about a 9 year old clock maker in 1920s Paris. Oh yeah, and the 3D stuff is revolutionary. Interesting dark horse.

Real Steel: I liked this movie better when it was a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots commercial. None of these guys are taking Optimus Prime. Sorry.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The effects on those monkeys are so good they almost look like monkeys.

Transformers Dark of the Moon: If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have sound. Wait, this won sound. If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have…screw it, those robots are f’ing awesome, and nothing about this category says “writing”, “dialogue”, “acting”, “direction”, or “plausibility”. Transformers Dark of the Moon wins a stunning second Oscar (in the fake Benmark Academy). I was stunned.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

Wait, there’s only 2 contenders? Fuck it, I’m taking The Muppets.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Again, I’ve seen two of these, and I can’t really remember the music from either of them. So The Artist and Hugo: out by default. I can only assume Tintin and War Horse, two John Williams scores for Spielberg movies, are bad ass. But again, the Williams vote is split, leaving us with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Alberto Iglesias takes the trophy. I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of hybrid between a Colombia rebel and a pop icon.

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED AND LIVE ACTION)

I can’t believe they split the category literally nobody’s seen a contender from into two. Someone must have let them know that the Oscars don’t drag on long enough. I’m taking Wild Life as the least hipster sounding contender, and Time Freak as what I can only assume is a film about a time travelling cross dresser who likes to freak on unsuspecting club goers in different centuries, which SOUNDS AWESOME.

MAKE UP

Only three contenders, which means the Academy watched more than three times as many short films as films where they noticed the make up. Here we have the always wonderful wizards and magical creatures of Harry Potter, Meryl Streep transformed before our very eyes into a dignified old lady at the top of her profession, and…

….

….

Oh God.

OH GOD.

IS THAT GLENN CLOSE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU…YOU MONSTERS! I CAN’T UNSEE IT. HERE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING OSCAR, YOU HEATHENS.

The Oscar goes to Albert Nobbs.

(editor’s note (yes, I’m my own editor, what of it?): After googling Albert Nobbs, I googled Glenn Close to see what she looks like these days, and maybe it’s not quite as drastic a transformation as I first expected. Or they did such a good job making up her face, they froze it into a hideous, emotionless spectre for all eternity. I like the second theory better, and I’m going to stick with it).