A friend is boycotting the Academy Awards because his favourite film of 2015, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, didn’t make the Oscar’s Best Picture list.
The awards, he says, aren’t relevant because they ignore genre movies and in this particular case, have snubbed the most financially successful film of the year. In fact, the old canard that the Academy doesn’t honour genre movies with Best Picture nods has been shot down this year with nominations for The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road.
The Oscar folks also gave The Force Awakens five nominations and in recent years Inception, Avatar, District 9, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Django Unchained have all earned top nods with LOTR taking home the gold.
Genre movies do just fine with the Academy. No need for C-3PO to cry little metal tears. To the Academy’s credit, not recognizing the year’s box office behemoth while giving Room, a modestly grossing movie, Best Picture, Actress, Directing and Adapted Screenplay nods, actually suggests the Academy will not be wowed by wheelbarrows of cash.
Perhaps the truth is that the Oscars, and awards shows in general, are only as relevant as you want them to be. Are they as important as the Republican debates? It’s all just show biz, so maybe. Ultimately, unless you’re an actor, a director or a shareholder in a nominated film the Oscars are probably not extremely significant to your life. I pay attention to them as a function of my job, and I enjoy them, but this year I’m on board with my friend but for different reasons.
I’m disappointed in Oscar’s failure to acknowledge diversity. For the second year in a row all 20 acting nominations went to white actors. To be clear I’m not implying the Academy is overtly racist. There are too many voters for there to be a conspiracy to keep actors of colour out of the headline categories. Have you ever gone to a restaurant with more than 10 people and tried to get everyone to agree on an appetizer for the table? It’s nearly impossible. Now imagine trying to arrange collusion between 6,000 members of the Academy. Totally hopeless.
So if it’s not a conspiracy why were stellar performances from Creed’s Michael B. Jordan, The Hateful Eight’s Samuel L. Jackson, Sicario’s Benicio Del Toro, Beasts of No Nation’s Idris Elba or any of Straight Outta Compton’s top line cast not nominated? I think it’s a combination of studio decision makers, who tend to be white, male and older coupled with the same demographic of voters at the Academy.
It’s a systemic issue being addressed by Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ effort to mould the Academy’s membership to be more in line with the population.
Until the Oscars represent the full width and breadth of the best in Hollywood, regardless of race or gender, they will continue to slide toward irrelevancy. My guess is that the most interesting part of this year’s ceremony won’t be who wins Best Actor but host Chris Rock’s opening monologue, which, if the movie gods prevail, will address the situation in no uncertain terms. It’s a speech I’m predicting will be just as entertaining and provocative as any of the nominees, Star Wars: The Force Awakens included.
We’re celebrating everyone’s favourite award show in true Drake style. Put on your best threads + play our Oscar pool while snacking on free popcorn from the Drake kitchen. Did we mention the evening is hosted by cinema king Richard Crouse? Meet us here + challenge your friends in a match of cinematic trivia. There’s great prizes to be won + even a special bubbly menu to choose from, while cheering on your picks from the silver screen.
Add a touch of futuristic Christmas kitschy to you house with the “Argo” poster for the movie Ben Affleck didn’t make! The sic fi poster from Mondo artist Kilian Eng is available through ebay!
From the website: Mondo’s ARGO print by Kilian Eng
released on the night of the Academy Awards and sold out immediately.
24″ x 36″ screen print, hand-numbered from an edition of just 325.
Print is in perfect condition!
I will package this print with care to ensure it arrives to you safely, sent in a sturdy tube.
Shipping in the US will be USPS Priority Mail; international orders will be USPS First Class.
How did director J.C. Chandor convince screen legend Robert Redford to drop everything and star in a one man movie?
“He has a good ego on him, so he loved it,” says Chandor. “Just kidding. Actually he does have an ego, but he knows it, which is partially what makes him great.”
In All is Lost Redford plays a character called “our man,” a sailor on a solo yacht trip on the Indian Ocean. When his thirty-foot boat collides with an abandoned shipping container he must use all his resources to survive.
The actor is alone on camera for the entire film, battling the elements and facing his fate.
“I think he realized it was a wonderful time in his life to get rid of all the distractions,” says Chandor. “He has an unbelievably complicated and interesting life with Sundance, the Sundance Institute, his non profit work and directing.
“His life is a bit of a race but he came to Mexico for two-and-a-half months [to shoot the film]. His personal secretary was the only one who knew how to get in touch with him so all that other stuff faded away and for a two-and-a-half month period we went on this very intense journey.
“By the end of it we had gone someplace together, as a crew, an actor and a director. He really loved exposing himself both emotionally and as a performer more than he ever had.”
Critical reaction has been strong and Redford’s name is being tossed around as a shoo in for a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
“He was able to do these very complex emotional transitions but you don’t just see the shift [as a viewer] you actually feel like you’ve been on a little bit of the journey with him.”
It is a raw, emotional performance unlike anything Redford has done before on screen. In his virtually wordless performance the actor becomes a blank canvas that viewers may project their own notions of the meaning of life death and everything in between.
“If the film is working for you you’ll see the man go, ‘Don’t freak out, pull yourself together,’” Says Chandor. “[Redford] and I talked a lot about that. We are not people that have that kind of dialogue out loud so we internalized it. Our hope was that by internalizing it we would create a far more open book for the audience to bring their own hopes and fears to it. What you’re dealing with is one person coming to grips with death, alone.”
If Meryl Streep earns an Academy Award for her performance as the formidable Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a nun who confronts a priest after suspecting him of abusing an African American student in Doubt, she will join a short but prestigious list of actresses who have won gold playing nuns.
The first to win an Oscar for portraying a sister was Jennifer Jones in 1943’s The Song of Bernadette; next, Susan Sarandon won for playing Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking.
Nuns have a long cinematic history and everyone from Ingrid Bergman to Mary Tyler Moore to Eric Idle has donned a habit for dramatic effect. Nuns have flown, sung and even been shipwrecked with Robert Mitchum on a Pacific Island, but my favorite big screen nun is Sister Assumpta in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
The title sounds ripped from the headlines, but is actually taken from a 1994 novel by Chris Fuhrman.
Set in the early 1970s, the film revolves around a group of teenage boys obsessed with comic books. Their ringleader, Tim, played by Kieran Culkin, is a prankster who schemes to get revenge on Sister Assumpta, a joyless, strict nun with a prosthetic leg played by Jodie Foster.
Learning most of what they know of the world from the superhero adventures written by Stan Lee, they believe there are only two types of people — heroes and villains. Sister Assumpta falls into the latter category and becomes the subject of a “blasphemous” comic book drawn by the boys featuring the evil motorcycle-driving Nunzilla.
The guys imagine themselves as the heroes who do battle with Nunzilla’s sisterly minions. Once the comic book is discovered the boys are expelled from school, assured by Sister Assumpta that not only are they not welcome at school anymore, they likely won’t be welcome in Heaven either.
Foster’s Sister Assumpta spits hellfire in every sentence. She plays the sister as a strict disciplinarian who truly believes she is doing the best to save her students from damnation. Her peg leg is just a physical manifestation of her rigid personality. It’s something different for Foster, who pulls it off with aplomb.
For more adventurous viewers, there are nunsploitation movies. Sometimes called Convent Erotica, these movies are not for the easily offended and have titles like Killer Nun and Behind the Convent Walls. Watch them, but don’t forget to say ten Hail Marys afterwards.
