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?

Intimate Apparel (2022) (Off-Broadway)

I've never been to the theater downstairs at Lincoln Center Theater. It's very small, 75% in the round; with a turntable for a stage, every seat in full view and we were in the second row. This co-production with the Metropolitan Opera of Intimate Apparel is an operatic adaptation of Lynn Nottage's play. The score is sparse, just two pianos, elevated on both sides of the stage. The music is not particularly memorable. It was a bit too contemporary for me, lacking in melody and harmony. George maybe gets a bit of melody but not much. The music meanders, going nowhere, as opera often does. The plot recalls Cyrano de Bergerac, in which love letters are ghostwritten by someone else. The plot sort of skips over how George comes to know Esther. In 1905, you don't exactly have catfishing through the psot, but that's kind of the idea. It's a sumptuous production nonetheless for such a small theater. The period costumes are really great.

We Are Who We Are (2021)

Man these kids are annoying as hell, but I guess that's sort of the point. The first handful of episodes get filed under the kids-behaving-badly Euphoria genre. But Luca Guadagnino's style is such that it's filmed in an interesting and loving way. He recreated his own military base set to film on; there is definitely a message in there about Donald Trump and race and the military abroad. There was way more gratuitous nudity than I was expecting. And one episode verges on child porn. But getting past those episodes, the last two are excellent. There was a lot of Bologna nostalgia in the last episode. They filmed on location, and I recognized all the places. I love that they call San Luca the most beautiful place in the world, cause it's extraordinary and picturesque. I love that Guadagnino filmed mundane everyday places that I recognize too, like Piazza 8 Agosto, Bologna Centrale, that little window with the canal, etc. Take me back!

Hawkeye (2021)

Jeremy Renner finally gets his due. Is a 300 minute miniseries more prestigious than a feature film nowadays? Maybe. I think he probably got a longer end of the stick than Scarjo did with Black Widow. In the grand scheme of the Marvel Universe, this is probably not that important, but I think that's what's so refreshing about it compared to the complex Loki. They can go small. What they created is a Christmas movie, or an extended Christmas episode. It's designed just to make you smile and it does the trick. Christmas in New York is magical, isn't it? Hailee Steinfeld is fabulous as Kate Bishop, the rare Hawkeye fan who was inspired to pick up archery and becomes something of a hero in her own right. There is a deaf played by Alaqua Cox. Following the success of The Sound of Metal and CODA, it was a pleasant surprise to see a deaf character thriving in the hearing world, and multiple hearing characters signing to her, entering her world, handicapping themselves for her benefit. There is also a pretty good gag (prediction?) about a Marvel musical. Maybe they forgot about the Spiderman musical. The song and choreography are painfully accurate; I can see it transitioning to Broadway for real and succeeding.

Little Shop of Horrors (Off-Broadway) (2022)

Aglaia and Rachel both won lottery tickets to the same performance of Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theater Upstairs. Did not realize until we got there that both Seymour and Audrey were being played by understudies in their Off-Broadway debuts. I guess that's why they both won. Josh Daniel stepped in for Conrad Ricamora and did admirably. Chelsea Turbin was a little weaker for Tammy Blanchard. She usually plays the puppet, which is not a singing role, so this is a pretty major step up. Her accent for Audrey is very thick, which Aglaia said was typical for Audrey. Christian Borle plays multiple roles (Orin and others), and he is very funny and versatile. He's probably the biggest name in the cast, even when Ricamora is there, so I was surprised it wasn't the lead. 

The puppet is scary as hell. In the medium Audrey II puppet, you can see the legs in the vines, but only one pair. In the program, there are three names for the puppet, including Turbin. At the bows, only two people came out of the large puppet. So maybe the third person is optional? Or maybe the two of them need to operate with more limbs. The plot is way out there. I didn't really know what to expect, but man-eating plant is wild. And the ending is very bleak. 

Maybe we were sitting too close to the stage, or too close to the wall (second row, far right) or underneath the speaker but I had a hard time understanding most of the actors, with the notable exception of Christian Borle who enunciates clearly. Was it the way they were mic-ed?  So I felt like I was missing jokes. Even though the rest of the audience was laughing really hard. I like the Motown sound Alan Menken was going for. Skid Row is pretty great, but the rest of the music is just ok.

Flying Over Sunset (Broadway) (2022)

We had tickets to see Flying Over Sunset last year but it was canceled for Covid. They did reopen this year, though maybe they shouldn't have; sadly they are ending their limited run two weeks early. I don't know how this concept even got greenlit; it's way out there. It's an LSD trip taken by Aldous Huxley, Carey Grant and Clare Booth Luce. Though they are all on the record as having taken LSD, there is no historical evidence that they did so together, let alone even knew each other. So it's entirely made up, and what an odd thing to make up. Who in this day and age are interested in these three random historical figures? With a concept like LSD, they could've gone way further with either absurdist comedy. In that way, the problem is that it's not funny enough. They almost get there with the reference to Blue Origin (actually predating Blue Origin). But on the whole, they should've swung wilder.

Tony Yazbeck plays Carey Grant. He actually kind of resembles him a bit. He sings and tap dances atop a desk. Harry Hadden-Paton for me is always going to be Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady. He has the accent and the quintessential British-ness. He plays Aldous Huxley similarly. Carmen Cusack plays Clare Booth Luce, who was at one time Ambassador to Italy, and also a playwright and magazine editor. The actors are all actually fine but the material is not that interesting. The first act, with the three separate trips is kind of boring. The second act is a little better when the trip together. But it's not really coherent and there isn't really a point to it. And the music is mostly unmemorable.

By far the best part of the show is the set design by Beowulf Boritt. The set is lush and wondrous. The back wall curves and shows projections (including clips from Houseboat during a hallucinatory dance with Sophia Loren)  and moves back and forth and swivels real fast. The drug store in act I transports us straight to the 50s. The choreography is also kind of interesting. Aside from the explicit tap dancing, there is a lot of syncopated walking. That can't be easy getting the rhythm right.

The Deuce (2017-19)

Not as groundbreaking as the Wire, but every bit as astute, insightful and well made. David Simon remains our greatest chronicler of the American city, this time New York in the 70s and 80s around 42nd Street. The epilogue shows what it has transformed into now, a tourist trap, a far cry from the Taxi Driver-era. Simon is interested in the how; what are the socioeconomic and political drivers that cause a city to change? Ed Koch looms over the show though he is never shown on screen. The third season's coverage of the AIDS epidemic is especially poignant. In parallel, it's also about the pornography industry, in that window it enjoyed mainstream success. For that the story expands out to California. I'd say the third theme is the mafia, showing the audience how organized crime makes money in as much detail as The Sopranos. Simon treats his characters equally and with dignity, whether they are government officials, policemen, reporters, mobsters, pimps, prostitutes or pornographers.  They all have rich, thoughtful characterization with satisfying arcs. The stars are James Franco, who plays twins, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays a prostitute turned porn-director turned art house filmmaker. The rest of the cast is full of David Simon regulars who appear in his other works. He continues to cast them because they're good. Simple as that.