94th Academy Awards (2022)

There is much to be outraged over this year's Oscars. The Academy seems to misunderstand who the Oscars are for. ABC may be partly to blame there. They're chasing ratings, and in their quest for the ever elusive audience, they cut 8 awards from the live ceremony, severely disrespecting the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the magic of movie making. Actually, this will make no difference to the general audience who won't tune in anyways. And it will make all the difference to the loyal cinephiles who await the Oscars like the Super Bowl. They somehow managed to find time to sing We Don't Talk About Bruno, which isn't even nominated, and do a tribute to The Godfather but can't present all the awards (and why isn't Van Morrison singing his nominated song from Belfast)? The truth of the matter is that we like the long, boring Oscars. We like the inside Hollywood-ness of it, ratings be damned. Expanding the Best Picture category was supposed to make room for "popular movies" but the good voters of the Academy justly rejected that notion and instead has gravitated toward more internationa smaller, quality fare (see: Parasite and Drive My Car). The Academy hit back by presenting a Twitter-voted award for popular movie; god only knows what will win that. Again, not that it matters. Americans have spoken with their wallets. They want to watch Marvel and Netflix. They're not interested in the quality cinema worthy of awards. They're not coming back. And we shouldn't pander to them. The Oscars aren't for them. The logo of MGM reads Ars gratia artis, Art for art's sake. The relevancy of awards is not about money or ratings, but the art of the craft.

Tyler's Top 10:

1. Spencer
2. C'mon C'mon
3. The Rescue
4. CODA
5. West Side Story
6. King Richard
   
7. Licorice Pizza
8. In the Heights
9. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
10. Drive My Car

Honorable mentions: Cruella, A Hero, tick, tick...Boom!, The Hand of God, Zola, The Green Knight, Parallel Mothers, Dune, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Worst Person in the World, In the Same Breath, I'm Your Man, The Harder They Fall

Best Picture (prediction):

1. CODA
2. Power of the Dog
3. Belfast
4. Drive My Car
5. Dune
6. West Side Story
7. King Richard
8. Licorice Pizza
9. Don't Look Up
10. Nightmare Alley

Best Director:
Will Win: Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Should Win: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Best Actress:
Will Win: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Should Win: Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Best Actor:
Will Win/Should Win: Will Smith, King Richard
Honorable Mention: Andrew Garfield, tick, tick...Boom!

Best Supporting Actress:
Will Win/Should Win: Ariana Debose, West Side Story
Honorable Mention: Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Will Win: CODA
Should Win: the infamously unadaptable Dune, or Drive My Car melding three short stories together

Best Original Screenplay:
Will Win: Belfast
Should Win: Licorice Pizza

Best Cinematography:
Will Win/Should Win: West Side Story

Best Costume Design:
Will Win/Should Win: Cruella

Best Film Editing:
Will Win: Dune
Should Win: tick, tick...Boom!

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Will Win: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Should Win: Dune

Best Production Design:
Will Win/Should Win: Dune

Best Score:
Will Win: Dune
Should Win: The Power of the Dog

Best Original Song:
Will Win: Dos Oruguitas, Encanto
Should Win: Be Alive, King Richard
Biggest Snub of the Night: We Don't Talk About Bruno, Encanto

Best Sound:
Will Win/Should Win: Dune

Best Visual Effects:
Will Win/Should Win: Dune

Best Animated Feature:
Will Win: Encanto
Should Win: The Mitchells vs the Machines

Best Documentary Feature:
Will Win/Should Win: Summer of Soul
Other Biggest Snub of the Night: The Rescue

Best International Film:
Will Win/Should Win: Drive My Car (Japan)

Best Animated Short:
Will Win: Robin Robin
Should Win: The Windshield Wiper

Best Documentary Short:
Will Win/Should Win: The Queen of Basketball

Best Live Action Short:
Will Win: The Long Goodbye
Should Win: Please Hold

Update: I scored 20/23. Not bad, but I lost our pool to Helena, who went 22/23, missing only the dreaded Animated Short category, the same one I missed in 2014. Of course, all anyone talked about was Will Smith and Chris Rock.It was a bad look for everybody. Definitely the most buzzed about Oscars of all time. That's what they were going for, right?

The Hate U Give (2018)

Don't judge the movie by its trailer. The trailer looks like a cheesy teen movie. It is so much better than that. The narration at times sounds a little forced, I'll admit that, with the cheesy street slang needed to be spelled out for the white folks in the audience.

So let me frame the movie for you the way it ought to be presented in a more just world. This is the story of Starr, an African American teenager of immense courage. The movie opens with a scene that is universal for black families in the US, the talk. Immediately the audience is thrust into a world in which young children must learn to remain composed in the face of the state. We are shown the incredible restraint this young woman must display everyday to those who know her best as she straddles two identities between two neighborhoods worlds apart. We see Starr display bravery as she enters hostile territory everyday at the fancy white private school she attends. At the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail called out those white moderates frustrating the cause of civil rights, and today those white moderates continue to feign utter blindness. And of course there's Starr's awful white friend Haley who doesn't help either.

The story is driven by a terrible, all-too-common case of police brutality. But it gets much deeper than that. It is about a black community terrorized by THUG LIFE, as so astutely put forth by 2pac decades ago. There is a secondary conflict between the drug lords that run Starr's neighborhood and her family that sort of dilutes that primary message about the death of Khalil. The fact that Khalil dealt drugs is irrelevant to his murder. Starr could have plausibly said presented her witness statement while making no comment on whether he dealt drugs, as she didn't even know firsthand. It is only when you take it in the wider context of a people systemically oppressed does its inclusion in the story make sense. It is perhaps this that makes the movie so much better than I had expected.

It is a very emotional movie, particularly a scene in which the children stand out in the yard and recite the Black Panther Ten Point Program. The ending is also really well done. Amandla Stenberg as Starr gives a starr-turning performance. Her father also has some very memorable lines, including showing the audience his tattoo of his reasons to live and die. The lists are the same. I think it gets at the source of emotion in the movie. It is not death, but life, survival, that evokes emotion.