OSCARS 2017 PREDICTIONS

Oscars 2017 Predictions: Will Moonlight beat La La Land? Stats, trends and my personal picks

By Anna MM Vetticad

The Oscars are always political, but this year the function and the selections will no doubt be more so than ever. Already, the directors of the five nominated films in the Best Foreign Language category have issued a joint statement about rising xenophobia worldwide. Mentions of Donald Trump are expected to dominate winners’ speeches. And last year’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign is likely to be a major factor in the choices this year, which already has an unprecedented number of non-white nominees.

With just a day to go for the announcement, here are my predictions for the four most high-profile gongs of Oscars 2017:

BEST PICTURE:

Nominees:

Arrival

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

With 14 nominations and universal critical acclaim, La La Land is the odds-on favourite to pick up the most prestigious trophy of the night. The film shares the record for most noms ever with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997). The big question on the big day will be whether it will equal or beat the record for maximum wins, held by Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) each with 11 trophies to its credit.

Statistics by and large seem to favour La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s deliciously energetic yet contemplative musical has already scooped up Best Picture awards at the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes (in the musical or comedy category). It also won the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award, considered a strong indicator of who will bag the top Oscar. Since its inception in 1990, 19 out of 28 PGA winners have gone on to carry away the Best Picture Oscar.

If La La Land does not win, the film with the best chance of pulling off an upset is Moonlight, a poor black boy’s journey to adulthood under the crushing burden of a neglectful, drug-addicted mother, racial prejudice, homophobia and poverty. Already, Moonlight has taken home the Best Picture Golden Globe in the drama category.

Personally though, this is not my favourite of the nominated films. Moonlight was moving and thematically relevant but not, to my mind, as deeply satisfying as some of the other films in this category. Clearly, most critics across the world and in India disagree with me. So be it.

In a contest between La La Land and Moonlight, I would pick La La Land, a film of profound sadness despite its apparent liveliness. But my personal favourite from this shortlist is not even La La Land. My vote goes to the immensely inspiring and uplifting Hidden Figures. The true story of how black women overcame excruciating racial and gender discrimination to play a key role in America’s space programme is, to my mind, the most beautiful – and beautifully acted – film of the nine in contention. I am deriving hope from an award it won this season that, like PGA, is considered highly predictive

Hidden Figures walked off with the trophy for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the year’s Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. Since 2008, six winners of SAG’s best cast award have gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar. Could this year be the seventh?

Likely winner: La La Land

Possible spoiler, very close: Moonlight

My personal favourite: Hidden Figures

My second choice (and very close): La La Land

BEST DIRECTOR:

Nominees:

Barry Jenkins for Moonlight

Damien Chazelle for La La Land

Dennis Villeneuve for Arrival

Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea

Mel Gibson for Hacksaw Ridge

This one is as neck-and-neck as the Best Picture race. If La La Land wins the top honour this year, then it is possible that Academy members may choose to compensate Moonlight by electing Barry Jenkins as Best Director.

Still, this season’s trends favour Chazelle. He dominated the Golden Globes where he won Best Director and Best Screenplay trophies, picked up a BAFTA for Best Director and won the highly prophetic Directors Guild of America Award. That last one is a statistical clincher, since the DGA winner has gone on to get the equivalent Oscar all but seven times since 1948.

For the record, Chazelle should have received a Best Director nomination at the 2015 Oscars for his cracking music-themed film Whiplash. As things stand, this is his first Best Director Oscar nom.

Likely winner: Damien Chazelle

Likely spoiler (and very close): Barry Jenkins

My personal favourite: Damien Chazelle

Should have been nominated: Theodore Melfi for Hidden Figures

BEST ACTRESS:

Nominees:

Emma Stone for La La Land

Isabelle Huppert for Elle

Meryl Streep for Florence Foster Jenkins

Natalie Portman for Jackie

Ruth Negga for Loving

In a category filled with brilliant women all of whom delivered brilliant performances, Emma Stone is a frontrunner going by the season’s trends. Her turn as a young woman who defies socially prescribed choices to follow her dreams, took her out of her career comfort zone into a genre that required her to sing and dance in addition to act on screen. She did all three with equal aplomb.

She has already won the year’s Golden Globe (in the comedy or musical category), SAG and BAFTA Awards. Her performance in La La Land has earned her accolades across platforms, from the popular to the hard-core arty and serious, including 2016’s Best Actress trophy at Venice, the world’s oldest film festival. Although Natalie Portman beat her at the Critics Choice Awards and Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Golden Globe in the drama category, Stone is seen as a shoo-in for an Oscar. A loss for her will be a big surprise.

Most likely winner: Emma Stone

Closest competitors: Isabelle Huppert and Natalie Portman 

My personal favourite (tough one): Emma Stone

Should have been nominated: Taraji P. Henson for Hidden Figures

BEST ACTOR:

Nominees:

Andrew Garfield for Hacksaw Ridge

Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Denzel Washington for Fences

Ryan Gosling for La La Land

Viggo Mortensen for Captain Fantastic

This category is harder to predict than the Best Actress this year because the awards season has not thrown up a clear frontrunner. Casey Affleck beat out Andrew Garfield, Denzel Washington and Viggo Mortensen to a Golden Globe in the drama category, while Ryan Gosling won a Globe in the musical or comedy category. Washington was not nominated for a BAFTA, the other four were; the prize went to Affleck. And all five gentlemen were in contention at the SAG Awards, where Washington emerged the winner.

Still, in a year when political correctness will be more at play than ever before, Academy voters may hesitate to vote for Affleck considering the cloud of sexual harassment charges he carries as baggage. Likewise, Washington may have an edge because of the manner in which the Academy has been shamed for its pro-white bias in recent years.

If Washington does win though, it would be a pity if the victory is attributed to anything but his stellar turn in Fences. As a householder who invites both sympathy and disgust (the latter is quite an achievement for a man with such a naturally likeable personality) he walked that fine line between being hard to love yet hard to hate on screen. Washington deserves to be named Best Actor at this year’s Oscars, not because of the colour of his skin, but because he did indeed deliver the year’s best performance by any male artiste in 2016.

Likely winner: Denzel Washington

Possible spoiler: Ryan Gosling 

My personal favourite: Denzel Washington

My second choice: Ryan Gosling

A version of this article has been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/oscars-2017-predictions-will-moonlight-beat-la-la-land-stats-trends-and-our-picks-3302190.html

Photographs courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_La_Land_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(2016_film)

REVIEW 260: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (3D)

Release date:	May 1, 2014
Director:	Marc Webb
Cast: Language:	Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Sally Field, Dane DeHaan, Paul Giamatti, Dennis Leary English

There’s a point in last year’s Man of Steel, when Clark Kent in his pre-Superman childhood days uses his superpowers to save another kid from an accident. Much to his confusion, instead of gratitude he evokes fear in that child. “People are scared of what they don’t understand,” his foster father played by Kevin Costner explains to him.

Sometimes, undeterred by that reaction, the object of fear goes on to become Superman, Spiderman or some other enemy of evil; sometimes that reaction combined with self-doubt brings out negativity, as it did with Lizard, the bad guy from the first instalment of this film series, and Electro from The Amazing Spider-man 2.

In a nation where a debate on Section 377 is raging; where politicians in election season are trying hard to net votes by invoking fear of the “other”; where efforts are on to demonise Muslims, secular Hindus, homosexuals, hijras, feminists and anyone whose ideology, personal choices or intrinsic characteristics can be used to paint them as aliens; in such a nation at this point in our history, Electro from The Amazing Spiderman 2 is a telling and poignant villain.

He doesn’t choose to become what he becomes. He is just a brilliant scientist going unnoticed by his colleagues until one day he is bitten by a tank-full of gigantic electric eels and mutates into a human generator of electricity. He didn’t seek out the power that came to him accidentally, nor is it his fault that he doesn’t at first know how to control it. “I just wanted people to see me,” he cries out helplessly when by-standers on the streets of New York react in horror as he himself first becomes aware of his own might as a mutant. But people’s fear compels him to protect himself, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.   

This happens part-way through the film. The Amazing Spider-man 2 starts with a flashback to Peter Parker’s childhood and his parents’ murder. That being dealt with, we are back with Peter (Andrew Garfield) where we’d left him in The Amazing Spider-man: a youngster living with his Aunt May (Sally Field). Peter graduates with his girlfriend Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) and becomes a photographer whose calling card is that he has provided pictures of Spiderman to The Daily Bugle. Gwen becomes an intern at Oscorp, the company for which Peter’s dad had worked before his death. Remember Oscorp is where Lizard was born when the scientist Curt Connors injected himself with a serum containing genetically modified lizard DNA.

As Spidey continues to fight crime in New York, he’s also battling the worry that his work could some day put Gwen in danger. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan), son of Oscorp founder Norman Osborne, returns to New York and urgently needs to find Spiderman for his own personal reasons. He turns to Peter for help, not knowing the truth about Spidey. It’s also around this time that Electro (Jamie Foxx) is born.

Director Marc Webb efficiently negotiates the multiple strands in the screenplay without allowing it to appear convoluted at any point. American superhero films seem fixated on a powers-being-handed-from-father-to-son narrative, but Aunt May here is no silent spectator. For that matter, Gwen is no sidekick to Spidey either. She’s a feisty equal partner who fires him for daring to take a decision on her behalf in a bid to “protect” her. It is her scientific mind that provides Peter with a solution to combat Electro’s powers. And it is she who is the centre of many of the film’s most touching scenes. Through her we even discover that our Spidey is a feminist, that he’s not one of those guys who expects his girlfriend or wife to follow him across the world wherever his career may take him while she puts her dreams on hold.

Garfield and Stone are both lovely to look at and excellent actors. Their beauty, charm, charisma and undeniable chemistry might have sustained a much thinner screenplay. Here, with the backing of strong writing, they effectively convey to us the romance, companionship, sexual sparks, heartache and heartbreak involved in their relationship. 

The two leads are backed by a supporting cast of wonderful actors though it has to be said that Oscar winner Jamie Foxx is given short shrift. We see little of him in his pre-Electro avatar, and as Electro we can barely decipher his face. Still, that’s not as bad as the embarrassingly insignificant role played by Irrfan Khan in the last film. On another front, it’s sad that superhero films rarely get the attention of awards-givers. If it weren’t for past trends, I’d have put my money on Field getting a bunch of Best Supporting Actress noms by year-end. 

The screenplay of The Amazing Spiderman 2 has considerable depth, but it’s not without its flaws. First, it skims over the reason for Electro’s animosity towards Spiderman. Since we are not drawn into their enmity, that takes away much of the edge from their confrontations. Second, some of the satellite scenes needed to have been better written and directed, such as that awkwardly handled one in Aunt May’s hospital room when the lights come back on and she acts like a boss which in fact she is not, as is evident from an earlier conversation she had with Peter. Third, Garfield and Stone are so much more interesting than Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst who played Spidey and his girlfriend in Sam Raimi’s film series, yet this film like the first Amazing Spider-man, sorely lacks that one defining moment of burning romance akin to that electrifying upside-down kiss in the rain that has immortalised Maguire and Dunst.

TAS2’s special effects and action are top-notch though the music fails to stir. Overall, it is a high-adrenaline experience, zipping from one crest to the next to the next, leaving the viewer with little time to think or complain. In short, The Amazing Spiderman 2 is great fun.

Rating (out of five): ***1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	142 minutes PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi action/violence)
Release date in the US:	May 2, 2014

Poster and videos courtesy: Sony Pictures Entertainment

“Rise of Electro” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8qESpVVTfI

Final trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNp7N1eRt7k

Hindi trailer featuring Vivek Oberoi: http://youtu.be/bmrOwxOaV3M 

Hindi music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVT93bhOntk