The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Alvin I. Dacanay
On Monday (Manila time), film buffs will finally learn who will bring home the American entertainment industry’s most coveted trophies when the 88th Annual Academy Awards reveals its winners in a star-studded ceremony at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater.
This year’s climax to the movie-awards season, which started last December, was again hit by controversy when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its list of nominations in January. Except for The Revenant’s Mexican director/co-producer Alejandro G. Iñárittu, all of the nominees in the top six categories are white for the second straight year—a development that came after several non-white actors earned Oscars in the last decade.
This again highlighted not only the lack of diversity and inclusion in the elite academy, but also the lack of opportunities that non-white and female filmmakers constantly face in the industry. As a result, the academy leadership, led by President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, unveiled initiatives to make the organization, among others, more diverse and inclusive by 2020.
Comedian Chris Rock, this year’s ceremony host, and some of the presenters are expected to address this issue in some way, which would lend a serious touch to an otherwise celebratory event that aims to honor 2015’s best achievements in film. And by many accounts, last year was another pretty good year for movies, and not just because the latest Star Wars film was released.
How good? Well, just look at the Oscars’ most prominent categories below. Try not to agree. I’ll also share my thoughts on who and what film will, and should, win.
Adapted screenplay
Nominees: The Big Short, by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay; Brooklyn, by Nick Hornby; Carol, by Phyllis Nagy; The Martian, by Drew Goddard; and Room, by Emma Donoghue.
Will win: The Big Short. A screenplay that has Hollywood stars Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain explaining complex financial ideas in everyday language to ordinary folk deserves a prize. Plus, it earlier won in this category at this month’s Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) awards.
Should win: The Big Short. Adapting Michael Lewis’s best-selling non-fiction book about the 2007–2008 financial crisis and turning it into a blistering comedy was no mean feat.
Original screenplay
Nominees: Bridge of Spies, by Mark Charman and Ethan Coel & Joel Coen; Ex Machina, by Alex Garland; Inside Out, by Pete Docter, Meg Lefauve, Josh Cooley and Ronnie del Carmen; Spotlight, by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy; and Straight Outta Compton, by Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, Leigh Savidge and Alan Wenkus.
Will win: Much as it would thrill Filipinos if Inside Out’s Filipino-American co-director Ronnie del Carmen and his collaborators win here, there’s virtually no way that would happen. Spotlight, which chronicles The Boston Globe newspaper’s Spotlight investigative team’s 2001 probe into the Boston archdiocese’s efforts to cover up the widespread clerical sex abuse in the city, has this in the proverbial bag—which also contains the awards it already clinched from the Critics’ Choice Awards, the WGA and the Baftas.
Should win: Spotlight. Of all the Oscars it’s nominated for, it’s most likely to win this one, and it will be very well-deserved.
Supporting actress
Nominees: Jennifer Jason Leigh, in The Hateful Eight; Rooney Mara, in Carol; Rachel McAdams, in Spotlight; Alicia Vikander, in The Danish Girl; and Kate Winslet, in Steve Jobs.
Will win: As far as this category is concerned, two women have ruled the movie-awards season: Swedish performer Vikander, who won at the Critics’ Choice and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards; and talented Brit Winslet, who triumphed at the Golden Globes and the Baftas. I’ll go with Vikander. Her category is the only one that her lauded film—about Danish painter Einar Wegener, or Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, which was a very risky procedure in 1930s Europe—has the best chance of winning in.
Should win: Vikander. She should be rewarded not only for her terrific performance as Wegener’s anguished artist-wife, but also for her work in a few other films, including Ex Machina.
Supporting actor
Nominees: Christian Bale, in The Big Short; Tom Hardy, in The Revenant; Mark Ruffalo, in Spotlight; Mark Rylance, in Bridge of Spies; and Sylvester Stallone, in Creed.
Will win: Among the acting categories, this one is the toughest to predict. Any of them can actually win. But based on the pre-Oscar trophies he won—from the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice and the National Board of Review—and the industry goodwill he has earned throughout his career, I’m giving it to Stallone. Such a triumph is almost irresistible. Imagine him winning for the iconic role he created—and that won him his first acting nod—almost 40 years ago.
Should win: Rylance. The acclaimed British theater actor is arguably the best thing in Steven Spielberg’s very good Cold War drama. An Oscar could encourage him to make more movies.
Actress
Nominees: Cate Blanchett, in Carol; Brie Larson, in Room; Jennifer Lawrence, in Joy; Charlotte Rampling, in 45 Years; and Saoirse Ronan, in Brooklyn.
Will win: Larson. Ever since the awards season began, she has been collecting a slew of best-actress prizes—the Golden Globe, the SAG and the Bafta, among others—for her riveting portrayal a young and fiercely protective mother imprisoned in a room with her five-year-old son. Compelling role that offers a wide range, and great critical and industry support—how can she not lose?
Shound win: As impressive as Larson is, so is Ronan. She fulfilled the immense promise she showed in the 2007 film Atonement—for which she received a best supporting actress nod—with a totally realized performance as a young 1950s immigrant torn between her old life in Ireland and her new one in New York.
Actor
Nominees: Bryan Cranston, in Trumbo; Matt Damon, in The Martian; Leonardo DiCaprio, in The Revenant; Michael Fassbender, in Steve Jobs; and Eddie Redmayne, in The Danish Girl.
Will win: DiCaprio. No leading actor suffered more for his art—or his chances of finally winning an Academy Award—last year than the former Titanic heartthrob. As 19th-century American frontiersman Hugh Glass, he gets mauled by a (computer-generated) grizzly bear (and survives), copes with numbing wintry conditions and, most famously, eats a bison’s liver. Talk about immersing oneself in a very demanding role.
Should win: DiCaprio. It’s his year. Anyone else would be a huge upset.
Director
Nominees: Lenny Abrahamson, for Room; Alejandro G. Iñárittu, for The Revenant; Tom McCarthy, for Spotlight; Adam McKay, for The Big Short; and George Miller, for Mad Max: Fury Road.
Will win: Iñárritu. Thanks to victories at the Golden Globes, the Baftas and, most important, the Directors Guild of America awards—often a reliable indicator of who would win in this category—the Mexican filmmaker, who won last year for Birdman: Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, is poised to become the third filmmaker to win back-to-back directing Oscars (John Ford for 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath and 1941’s How Green Was My Valley and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for 1949’s A Letter to Three Wives and 1950’s All About Eve).
Should win: Miller. Much as I admire what Iñárritu has accomplished in The Revenant (the script not being one of them), giving him another best director Oscar seems way too soon. Enter Miller, whose helming of the latest installment of the dystopic Mad Max franchise is so memorable and so miraculous, he must’ve had help from God.
Picture
Nominees: The Big Short; Bridge of Spies; Brooklyn; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Martian; The Revenant; Room; and Spotlight.
Will win: The Revenant. If the rule that says the film with the most Oscar nominations gets the top prize still applies, then Iñárritu’s intense survival drama—which has 12, and which won at the Golden Globes and the Baftas—is expected to score, despite two of its competitors getting key pre-Academy Award honors—The Big Short, which was named 2015’s best film by the Producers Guild of America, and Spotlight, which nabbed the best picture award from the Critics’ Choice and other major critics’ groups.
Should win: Very tough call, but I pick Spotlight. It may not be as technically impressive as The Revenant or Mad Max: Fury Road, or as clever and unconventional as The Big Short, but I found it to be the most satisfying among the nominees. It’s conventional filmmaking at its best.
The 88th Annual Academy Awards will be broadcast live on HBO Asia (SKYCable channels 54 and 166; Cignal TV channels 71 and 104; Destiny Cable channels 39, 54 and 166; and Dream Satellite channel 19) beginning at 8 a.m. on Feb. 29 (Manila time).