Oscar Nominations Reaction 2020

88/109
Not bad! In fact, one of my better years.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood got 10 nods, meaning it'll escape the backlash for being most nominated film. Sorry, Joker! Definitely should have seen coming the Joker over-performance this morning, which I had only pegged at 6 nominations. Instead, it got 11. Wow.
Surprises? Not many: Lopez missing Supp Actress, Once missing Editing, Apollo 11 missing Doc Feature, Egerton missing Actor and Rocketman generally under-performing.


Best Picture

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. The Irishman
3. 1917
4. Parasite
5. Jojo Rabbit
6. Joker
7. Marriage Story
8. Little Women
9. Ford vs Ferrari
9/9

Director

1. Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Sam Mendes, 1917
3. Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
4. Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
7. Todd Phillips, Joker

4/5

Actress

1. Renee Zellweger, Judy
2. Charlize Theron, Bombshell
3. Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
4. Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
7. Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
4/5

Actor
 
1. Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
2. Adam Driver, Marriage Story
4. Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
5. Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
10. Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
4/5

Supporting Actress

1. Laura Dern, Marriage Story
2. Margot Robbie, Bombshell
3. Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
5. Florence Pugh, Little Women
7. Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
4/5

Supporting Actor

1. Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Al Pacino, The Irishman
3. Joe Pesci, The Irishman
4. Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
5. Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes

5/5

Original Screenplay

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Marriage Story
3. Parasite
4. Knives Out
6. 1917
4/5

Adapted Screenplay

1. The Irishman
2. Jojo Rabbit
3. Little Women
4. The Two Popes
5. Joker
5/5

Editing

2. The Irishman
3. Ford vs Ferrari
4. Parasite
7. Joker
8. Jojo Rabbit
3/5

Cinematography

1. 1917
2. The Irishman
3. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
4. The Lighthouse
5. Joker
5/5

Production Design

1. The Irishman
2. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
3. 1917
5. Jojo Rabbit
6. Parasite
4/5

Costume Design

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Little Women
5. The Irishman
7. Jojo Rabbit
8. Joker
3/5

Makeup and Hairstyling

1. Bombshell
3. Joker
4. Judy
6. 1917
8. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
3/5


Original Score

1. Joker
2. 1917
3. Little Women
5. Marriage Story
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
4/5

Original Song

1. "I'm Gonna Love Me Again", Rocketman
2. "Into the Unknown", Frozen II
3. "Stand Up", Harriet
8. "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away", Toy Story 4
9. "I'm Standing With You", Breakthrough
3/5

Sound Mixing

1. 1917
2. Ford vs Ferrari
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
7. Joker
8. Ad Astra
3/5

Sound Editing

1. 1917
2. Ford vs Ferrari
3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
7. Joker
4/5

Visual Effects

1. Avengers: Endgame
2. The Lion King
3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
4. The Irishman
5. 1917
5/5

Animated Feature

1. Toy Story 4
3. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
4. Missing Link
5. I Lost My Body
7. Klaus
4/5


International Feature

1. Parasite (South Korea)
2. Pain and Glory (Spain)
3. Les Misérables (France)
5. Honeyland (North Macedonia)
8. Corpus Christi (Poland)
4/5

Documentary Feature

2. American Factory
3. Honeyland
4. For Sama
5. The Cave
9. The Edge of Democracy
4/5

Tallies


Joker11
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood 10
The Irishman 10
1917 10
Little Women 6
Jojo Rabbit 6
Marriage Story 6
Parasite 6
Ford vs Ferrari 4 
Bombshell 3 
Star Wars 3
Judy 2
Pain and Glory 2
Two Popes3
Honeyland 2
Harriet 2
Toy Story 4 2
Avengers1
Knives Out1
Rocketman 1 
Frozen II 1
The Lion King1
The Lighthouse 1
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World 1
Missing Link 1
Les Misérables 1
I Lost My Body 1
American Factory 1
For Sama 1
The Cave 1

Oscar Nominations Predictions 2020

I'm predicting that Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood will lead the pack with 12 nods, followed by The Irishman with 10 and 1917 with 9. Other major players will be Little Women, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Marriage Story and Parasite. In my tallies at the bottom I'm counting my top ten Picture nominees, but I think it will stop at 8 this year. Sorry, Ford vs Ferrari and Knives Out. This year can be made notable by the fact that there still really isn't a frontrunner, although I suspect that Tarantino will finally get his Director and/or Picture Oscar. 1917 has made a huge surge in recent weeks, and I'm also feeling one for Rocketman, although I don't think it will break into Picture. Despite Disney's campaigning for Avengers: Endgame, I don't think it will pan out. Gee, shucks. Honeyland looks to surprise with being nominated for both International and Documentary features. Neat!

Best Picture

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. The Irishman
3. 1917
4. Parasite
5. Jojo Rabbit
6. Joker
7. Marriage Story
8. Little Women
9. Ford vs Ferrari
10. Knives Out
11. The Two Popes
12. The Farewell
13. Bombshell
14. Uncut Gems
15. Rocketman
16. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
17. Dolemite is My Name
18. Us
19. Pain and Glory
20. Avengers: Endgame

Director

1. Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Sam Mendes, 1917
3. Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
4. Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
5. Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
6. Greta Gerwig, Little Women
7. Todd Phillips, Joker
8. Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
9. Pedro Almodovar, Pain and Glory
10. Lulu Wang, The Farewell

Actress

1. Renee Zellweger, Judy
2. Charlize Theron, Bombshell
3. Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
4. Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
5. Awkwfina, The Farewell
6. Luputa Nyong'o, Us
7. Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
8. Alfre Woodard, Clemency
9. Helen Mirran, The Good Liar
10. Julianne Moore, Gloria Bell

Actor
Maybe the most stacked I've ever seen this category, I can see arguments for all ten of these actors, and even more: Roman Griffin Davis in Jojo Rabbit, George Mackay in 1917...
1. Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
2. Adam Driver, Marriage Story
3. Taron Egerton, Rocketman
4. Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
5. Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
6. Christian Bale, Ford vs Ferrari
7. Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems
8. Robert DeNiro, The Irishman
9. Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name
10. Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes

Supporting Actress

1. Laura Dern, Marriage Story
2. Margot Robbie, Bombshell
3. Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
4. Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
5. Florence Pugh, Little Women
6. Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell
7. Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
8. Annette Bening, The Report
9. Nicole Kidman, Bombshell
10. Margot Robbie, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Supporting Actor

1. Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Al Pacino, The Irishman
3. Joe Pesci, The Irishman
4. Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
5. Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
6. Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse
7. Jamie Foxx, Just Mercy
8. Song Kang Ho, Parasite
9. Alan Alda, Marriage Story
10. Sterling K Brown, Waves

Original Screenplay

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Marriage Story
3. Parasite
4. Knives Out
5. The Farewell
6. 1917
7. Pain and Glory
8. Booksmart
9. Bombshell
10. Us

Adapted Screenplay

1. The Irishman
2. Jojo Rabbit
3. Little Women
4. The Two Popes
5. Joker
6. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
7. Just Mercy
8. Hustlers
9. Toy Story 4
10. The Laundromat

Editing

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. The Irishman
3. Ford vs Ferrari
4. Parasite
5. 1917
6. Marriage Story
7. Joker
8. Jojo Rabbit
9. Uncut Gems
10. Knives Out

Cinematography

1. 1917
2. The Irishman
3. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
4. The Lighthouse
5. Joker
6. Ford vs Ferrari
7. Parasite
8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
9. Ad Astra
10. A Hidden Life

Production Design

1. The Irishman
2. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
3. 1917
4. Little Women
5. Jojo Rabbit
6. Parasite
7. Joker
8. Ad Astra
9. Downton Abbey
10. Ford vs Ferrari

Costume Design

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Little Women
3. Dolemite is My Name
4. Rocketman
5. The Irishman
6. Downton Abbey
7. Jojo Rabbit
8. Joker
9. Judy
10. Knives Out

Makeup and Hairstyling

1. Bombshell
2. Rocketman
3. Joker
4. Judy
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
6. 1917
7. Dolemite is My Name
8. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
9. Downton Abbey
10. Little Women


Original Score

1. Joker
2. 1917
3. Little Women
4. Jojo Rabbit
5. Marriage Story
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
7. Us
8. Pain and Glory
9. The Farewell
10. Avengers: Endgame

Original Song

1. "I'm Gonna Love Me Again", Rocketman
2. "Into the Unknown", Frozen II
3. "Stand Up", Harriet
4. "Spirit", The Lion King
5. "Glasgow", Wild Rose
6. "A Glass of Soju", Parasite
7. "Speechless", Aladdin
8. "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away", Toy Story 4
9. "I'm Standing With You", Breakthrough
10. "Catchy Song", The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

Sound Mixing
I have a hunch that Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood will make it in both sound categories. I've been right before about The King's Speech and Roma with these hunches, so let's see!

1. 1917
2. Ford vs Ferrari
3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
4. Rocketman
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Joker
8. Ad Astra
9. The Irishman
10. Parasite

Sound Editing

1. 1917
2. Ford vs Ferrari
3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
4. Avengers: Endgame
5. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
6. Ad Astra
7. Joker
8. Rocketman
9. The Irishman
10. Parasite

Visual Effects

1. Avengers: Endgame
2. The Lion King
3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
4. The Irishman
5. 1917
6. Alita: Battle Angel
7. Gemini Man
8. Captain Marvel
9. Terminator: Dark Fate
10. Cats

Animated Feature

1. Toy Story 4
2. Frozen II
3. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
4. Missing Link
5. I Lost My Body
6. Abominable
7. Klaus
8. Weathering With You
9. The Addams Family
10. The Lion King (Despite it not being submitted, I believe)


International Feature

1. Parasite (South Korea)
2. Pain and Glory (Spain)
3. Les Misérables (France)
4. Atlantics (Senegal)
5. Honeyland (North Macedonia)
6. Beanpole (Russia)
7. The Painted Bird (Czechia)
8. Corpus Christi (Poland)

Documentary Feature

1. Apollo 11
2. American Factory
3. Honeyland
4. For Sama
5. The Cave
6. One Child Nation
7. Knock Down the House
8. The Biggest Little Farm
9. The Edge of Democracy
10. Maiden

Tallies


Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood 12
The Irishman 10
1917 9
Little Women 7
Jojo Rabbit 6
Joker 6
Marriage Story 6
Parasite 5
Rocketman 5
Ford vs Ferrari 4 
Bombshell 3 
Star Wars 3
Avengers 2
Knives Out 2
Judy 2
Pain and Glory 2
The Farewell 2
Two Popes 2
Frozen II 2
The Lion King 2
Honeyland 2
Hustlers 1
The Lighthouse 1
Dolemite is My Name 1
Harriet 1
Wild Rose 1
Toy Story 1
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World 1
Missing Link 1
Les Misérables 1
Atlantics 1
I Lost My Body 1
Apollo 11 1
American Factory 1
For Sama 1
The Cave 1

Review: "Cats"

I saw two movies today at the Cartlon Cinema for cheap Tuesday matinees. The first film I saw was Robert Eggers' rather weird and horrific The Lighthouse. The second was also weird and horrific.

It was Cats! The hot mess of an acid trip of a movie!

The near-universal pans have been focusing on the practically non-existent plot and the CGI disaster that are the cats themselves. But there is a strange dichotomy with Hopper's Cats that one must grapple with when trying to review the film. You have the musical upon which the film is based, and you have the cinematic adaptation. Do you tear the film apart because the musical itself is bad? Or is it the filmmaking decisions that make this movie so terrible, so infamously horrible, so quickly?

As I often say -- why not both?

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is easy to dismiss as not exactly great theatre, but that's because so many people expect a conventional narrative-driven piece. Cats has no intention of being a plot-driven musical. Instead, it is widely noted for being a song sequence of cats introducing themselves, all while the patriarch cat tries to decide who will be sacrificed-- uh, I mean, who will be chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer, a cat version of heaven. Much dancing and singing ensues. Think of it as a sort of middle-brow pseudo-surrealism, a tripped-out musical fantasia of song and dance that has the dream logic of stream-of-consciousness writing.

The songs, unfortunately, are mostly unremarkable, and go on far too long (how many times does one need to hear the phrase "Jellicle cats"?), but by all accounts, live stage versions of the musical have fantastic dancing and performances. Cats is more of a formalist musical: by forgoing narration, we should be focusing on the more formal aspects of the play: the songs, the music, the dancing, the design.

And this is where the film adaptation goes so massively wrong.

The songs are unmemorable, yes, and the dancing has mostly been chopped up in the editing room. But what about the design? Oh! The design. If we're supposed to marvel at the technological feat of turning the actors into cats, the filmmakers are sorely mistaken. These look like cheap CGI cats with human faces pasted on, a feline uncanny valley. It's not even particularly well-rendered CGI, either. Famously, the producers almost immediately shipped out an "improved" version of the film after early screenings had negative feedback. But I remember seeing the trailers for the film and cringe-laughing, heavily impacted by major schadenfreude. The cats, simply put, look terrible -- and the basic scaling of the actors to their surroundings seems off: aren't cats a bit bigger than this? It's most obvious in the Train Cat's song (I can't be bothered to remember his name, despite it being sung a thousand times), as they stroll along a railway. They look more like the size of squirrels. And speaking of rodents...

There are dancing mice and cockroaches introduced in the Jennyanydots number that re-appear throughout the film, and these babies are pure nightmare fuel. Even worse than the Busby Berkeley-esque showgirl cockroaches are the faces of children slapped on the CGI mice. These mice get thrown around rather violently, but at least they don't get eaten alive by the cats, unlike their insect friends. It's a doozy of a directorial decision.

But there are other decisions by Hooper that made me scratch my head. One annoying tendency in the film is the use of silent breaks for dramatic effect: there are simply too many of them, and they just don't work. If the songs seem to go on forever, the film's use of these moments of silence make it worse. I must also really question the sound mixing of the film, which is often sloppy, possibly because the vocals were supposedly recorded live. More than once I thought I was in Robert Altman territory, with voices overlapping one another in an unpleasant way.

The supposed show-stopping song Memory is slipping fast from mine. It's a snooze, other than cringing at Hudson's over-performance of it. Hooper must've thought that hey!-- sticking the camera in Anne Hathaway's leaking face won her an Oscar, maybe it'll work again. Spoiler: it doesn't. Jennifer Hudson has been accused of over-acting before, but here it's a very valid criticism. Her performance is wretched, and I think it's because of Hooper's direction: "Emote! More emotion! Cry! Warble your voice! Pause unnecessarily during your phrases!" It's awful, my friends, and she deserves better. She's a talented singer, but... oh boy. This sticking the camera in the faces of actors is a Hooperism that sometimes works (The King's Speech) but often doesn't (Les Misérables), and the camerawork in the film is often of the shaky-cam variety. It's old hat now, and never really worked in the first place. Hold your damn camera still!

There's also something else that must be addressed. I'm not sure if it's the fault of Webber or Hooper, but there's a rather unsettling eroticism to Cats. Writhing figures, heavy breathing, a practical cat orgy at the Jellicle Ball fuelled by cat-drugs. It's uncomfortable for what's trying to pass itself off as a family film. It's made worse by the Taylor Swift cat's breasts and her performance as sex kitten. There's also the rampant fat-shaming that's supposed to be comedic, but instead reads as just lazy, obvious humour. James Corden is clearly having a great time, but I must ask why he is when his entire character is just one big fat joke.

And what's up with Idris Elba's Macavity? What a bizarre plot device this is: he's the "Napoleon of Crime" that has magical powers to make the Heaviside Layer nominees disappear to a boat on the Thames. I think it's an idea to introduce some sort of narrative suspense into the film, but it comes off as silly and unnecessary.

Silly and unnecessary. Yup. That about sums up this hot mess.