The 86th Annual Academy Awards

[Greg Cox]

I watched Gravity last night, and all I can say is that Sandra deserves the Oscar, should she get it.

But she won't ,and didn't because the Academy voters really don't care about SF&F (unless a nominated movie becomes too big to ignore, as this one was.

Yep. I told my mom the same thing. She wanted Sandra to win, but then I explained to her the history of sci-fi movies and the Oscars.

Well, Fredric March won for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde back in thirties, and Ruth Gordon won for Rosemary's Baby,, and Heath Ledger won for The Dark Knight--a comic book movie, no less--so it's not completely beyond the pale, but, yeah, it's probably harder to win for genre flicks.

 

[Harvey]

Bullock's performance wasn't Oscar worthy in my view. She handled the physical scenes well, but anytime she had to open up emotionally everything fell flat. Partly, this can be blamed on the script's shallow characterization, but I am not disappointed she didn't win.

And that's not to say I disliked the movie. It was a terrific thrill ride.

 

[doubleohfive]

This year, as previously mentioned, Jonathan Winters was forgotten, but at least one unknown second-unit director made the cut.

I might be mis-reading this part of your post (and if I am, I apologize) but are you intending it to come off as though Sarah Jones should not have been recognized on the basis that Jonathan Winters was omitted?

Again, I don't think that's what you're trying to say, and again, I am admittedly a little close to the Sarah Jones brouhaha out here, knowing and having worked with a couple dozen people who knew her, so I might just be overly sensitive to to what tone I'm perceiving. Just trying to clarify what you're saying.

 

[Greg Cox]

There was an article in the NY Post last week about the politics and decision-making behind each year's Memoriam reel. Sounds like a pretty thankless job, really. You have only four minutes and maybe a hundred possible candidates every year. And, yes, friends and family members will lobby to have their loved ones included--and can react badly if they're omitted. (And, yes, you do hear about it afterwards.)

Caesar vs. Winters is a judgment call to be sure, but given that they included Peter O'Toole, Shirley Temple, Roger Ebert, Ray Harryhausen, Harold Ramis, Richard Matheson, Elmore Leonard, Joan Fontaine, Esther Williams, and even Annette Funicello, I can't really complain about the choices this year.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Bullock's performance wasn't Oscar worthy in my view. She handled the physical scenes well, but anytime she had to open up emotionally everything fell flat. Partly, this can be blamed on the script's shallow characterization, but I am not disappointed she didn't win.

This. Bullock didn't really deserve to win. It's not because it's Science Fiction, but there's not a great performance there. She's done much better work.

And I agree, it's a very very shallowly written character. The whole history of the character was meh. Didn't believe it. Someone with that emotional background and problems, NASA wouldn't send up. Not a chance. It took me out of the story.

But, she's not really meant to be a character. She's meant to be someone going through the act of survival.

So, as much as it makes us genre fans feel better, she didn't lose because it was a genre film. She lost because it wasn't better than the rest of the nominees.

And that's not to say I disliked the movie. It was a terrific thrill ride.

I also agree with this. And a movie best seen in the theater.

 

[Skywalker]

And that's not to say I disliked the movie. It was a terrific thrill ride.

I also agree with this. And a movie best seen in the theater.

Don't remind me. I finally saw the movie a few days ago and while I loved it, I really regret not finding time to see it in theaters. What an experience that must have been.

 

[Amaris]

Yep. I ended up watching it on my 19" TV, and it still felt spectacular.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There was an article in the NY Post last week about the politics and decision-making behind each year's Memoriam reel. Sounds like a pretty thankless job, really. You have only four minutes and maybe a hundred possible candidates every year. And, yes, friends and family members will lobby to have their loved ones included--and can react badly if they're omitted. (And, yes, you do hear about it afterwards.)

Caesar vs. Winters is a judgment call to be sure, but given that they included Peter O'Toole, Shirley Temple, Roger Ebert, Ray Harryhausen, Harold Ramis, Richard Matheson, Elmore Leonard, Joan Fontaine, Esther Williams, and even Annette Funicello, I can't really complain about the choices this year.

Except that they left out Alain Resnais, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Bullock's performance in Gravity was exactly right for the movie. But it wasn't the kind of transcendent performance that elevates a film, and Blanchett's was.

 

[Professor Zoom]

There was an article in the NY Post last week about the politics and decision-making behind each year's Memoriam reel. Sounds like a pretty thankless job, really. You have only four minutes and maybe a hundred possible candidates every year. And, yes, friends and family members will lobby to have their loved ones included--and can react badly if they're omitted. (And, yes, you do hear about it afterwards.)

Caesar vs. Winters is a judgment call to be sure, but given that they included Peter O'Toole, Shirley Temple, Roger Ebert, Ray Harryhausen, Harold Ramis, Richard Matheson, Elmore Leonard, Joan Fontaine, Esther Williams, and even Annette Funicello, I can't really complain about the choices this year.

Except that they left out Alain Resnais, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Bullock's performance in Gravity was exactly right for the movie. But it wasn't the kind of transcendent performance that elevates a film, and Blanchett's was.

Yeah, the transcendent performance of Gravity was done by a bunch of computers and the animators.

 

[Kira's Mom]

I think Alain Resnais died just a day or two before the ceremony, so it was too late to add him. Maybe next year. Night and Fog was one of the earliest and best Holocaust documentaries. I saw it twice in high school, once for history, once for film literature.

 

[Runetouch]

Bullock's performance wasn't Oscar worthy in my view. She handled the physical scenes well, but anytime she had to open up emotionally everything fell flat. Partly, this can be blamed on the script's shallow characterization, but I am not disappointed she didn't win.

And that's not to say I disliked the movie. It was a terrific thrill ride.

This.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Just two weeks ago many pundits were claiming GRAVITY as a Best Picture shoo-in, and Steve McQueen for Best Director. That way at least, there'd be two firsts this year instead of ONE (Cuaron).

I didn't see any pundits saying that. The general thinking was that Cuaron was heavily favored to win Best Director (it almost always goes to the DGA winner), while Gravity and 12 Years a Slave were locked in a close race for Best Picture, with American Hustle potentially still in the hunt, albeit fading.

 

[Harvey]

Yeah, the transcendent performance of Gravity was done by a bunch of computers and the animators.

And yet, GRAVITY became the first science-fiction film to win for Best Direction....and I believe the third Best Director winner three years in a row not to win Best Picture. And the second in three years to win Best Direction for a 3-D production.

Cuaron is the first Best Director of Hispanic origin. I never really believed any film, GRAVITY included, would get a Best Picture win, given 2001 and ALIENS weren't even nominated for the category. Excluding RAIDERS and fantasy films, the only true sci-fi Best Picture nominees are arguably STAR WARS, AVATAR, HER and DISTRICT 9.

Just two weeks ago many pundits were claiming GRAVITY as a Best Picture shoo-in, and Steve McQueen for Best Director. That way at least, there'd be two firsts this year instead of ONE (Cuaron). Was anybody else here predicting the same?

Didn't A Clockwork Orange get nominated? And E.T.?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
Yes, they were both nominated. As was Inception. More science fiction films have been nominated for Best Picture in the last five years than were nominated in the first 81 years of the Academy Awards put together, although the expansion of the Best Picture category to include up to 10 nominees once again has helped facilitate that.

 

[gblews]

Was "Gravity" even science fiction? It was a movie about space travel and science with a fictional story, but was it really science fiction?

Was Apollo 13?

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, besides Cauron being the first of hispanic origin to win best director, McQueen was the first black producer to win Best Picture.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Was "Gravity" even science fiction? It was a movie about space travel and science with a fictional story, but was it really science fiction?

Cuaron certainly thinks it isn't.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Was "Gravity" even science fiction? It was a movie about space travel and science with a fictional story, but was it really science fiction?

Was Apollo 13?

The difference between those two is that Gravity is a fictional story made to feel believable within the constraints of its setting, so I would label it as Science-Fiction. Meanwhile, Apollo 13 was about an event that actually transpired, and I'd label that as a historical drama. They couldn't be any more different.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Plus Gravity postulates the fate of the ISS..

 

[Professor Zoom]

Yeah, the transcendent performance of Gravity was done by a bunch of computers and the animators.

And yet, GRAVITY became the first science-fiction film to win for Best Direction....and I believe the third Best Director winner three years in a row not to win Best Picture. And the second in three years to win Best Direction for a 3-D production.

And yet what? How does that contradict what I had to say? Cuaron's vision wouldn't have been at all successful without the technology available and the people at the keyboards doing the work.

You think he could've done this 20 years ago? 10?

He made have had the vision, which is important, but without the animators and the technicians, it wouldn't have been seamless and as realistic. It's why they they won so many of the technical awards.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I have, for many years, gone to great lengths to ignore the Oscars. Not quite the lengths to which I go to avoid any possibility of seeing a broadcast of a Rose Parade, or of the 1939 MGM version of The Wizard of Oz (which did not even remotely do the book justice), but I still go out of my way to ignore them. This time around, I think I was feverishly chewing through the middle third of No Time Like the Past, in an effort to finish the book by Tuesday evening (so that I'd be clear to once again read the entire KJV, including the Apocrypha, cover-to-cover, between Fat Tuesday evening, and getting up at 0-dark-thirty for Easter Vigil at St. Wilfrid's Episcopal (one of a growing number of things I either give up or take on for Lent). And I was wishing that Ann Elise Smoot's recital on the "Mighty Rosales/Glatter-Goetz" in Disney Hall had been that evening, rather than a week later.

Back in 1978, the first Star Wars film lost to a movie about Woody Allen and his girlfriend, written and directed by Woody Allen and his girlfriend, starring Woody Allen and his girlfriend as Woody Allen and his girlfriend. What a stretch that must have been for their acting talents!

I didn't mind the fact that Gandhi beat E.T., although I would characterize the former as more important than the latter, not better. But then, a year later, a film that told the story of how the Space Age began, portraying eight of the greatest heroes of the 20th century (i.e., Chuck Yeager and the Mercury Seven) in a decidedly unflattering light that only served to emphasize just how heroic they were, was beaten by a movie about a dysfunctional family.

The Oscars are a popularity contest. Not about popularity among the general public, but about popularity among people who have a vested interest in keeping both imaginative fiction (in all its genres, but especially science fiction) and conventional heroism from being taken seriously.