A great week for Y’s Men and Sunrise Rotary. It’s Oscar eve and Westporter Susan Granger came back to give both groups her take on who will win Sunday evening’s 87th Annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar Awards.
She is a widely respected and internationally syndicated movie and drama critic whose reviews appear locally on westportnow. Ms. Granger grew up in Hollywood in the movie business, was a child actress, and has family members in the business today.
The Academy was formed in 1927. It has about 6,000 members in its 23 guilds, or craft groups - actors, directors, costume designers - today. Membership is by invitation, or as a benefit of receiving an Oscar nomination.
Each guild chooses its award nominees and votes its winner - only directors choose Best Director - while the entire Academy votes for Best Picture.
Reminded by a couple Y’s Men that she batted a thousand last year, she said “This year is much tougher. Either I’m going to be very right, or very wrong” because this year there are “two primary contenders, and one will sweep the Oscars.”
“There has been a tremendous amount of controversy over the nominations.”
Ava DuVernay’s Selma grabbed the early lead, seemingly rivaling last year’s 12 Years a Slave. Unfortunately, it was released “a bit too late,” and the studio did not provide DVDs to Academy members soon enough to allow them to view it.
But “The real problem is that it just wasn’t that good,” citing the underuse of secondary characters and the “overwrought” march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And DuVernay’s LBJ opposed the Voting Rights law. Granger called this an inaccuracy, and countered by noting that Lincoln, too, contained historical inaccuracies.
“She was judged, not as a black woman, but as a director,” competing against “brilliant” work by many other directors. Richard Linklater was particularly innovative making Boyhood over a 12 year period, “an astounding, tenacious, logistic achievement.”
As was Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, a “highly sophisticated, yet whimsical farce” that tied with Birdman for the most Oscar nominations despite having been released in March, because “conventional wisdom tells us that films released early in the year are forgotten.”
The most imaginative concept was Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman, a “bizarre show business fantasy about an aging super hero movie star trying to make a comeback by appearing on Broadway.”
Birdman’s camera follows Michael Keaton around a Broadway theater as the story seems to unfold in a single continuous two hour shot. Instead, it is a number of long scenes seamlessly edited - though “oddly enough,” it did not get an editing nomination.
Why Birdman? It was the Producers’ Guild’s Best Picture, and over the last seven years, their winner took home the Oscar.
“I could be colossally wrong if Boyhood takes the Oscars.”
The dark horse is Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper - a “celebration of the gun culture” that has “already sold more tickets than the other seven Best Picture nominees combined.”
And “Don’t underestimate the Imitation Game. It’s the most conventional of all the contenders - it’s about how Alan Turing cracked the Enigma code.”
Most of all, “It has Harvey Weinstein campaigning for it, (and) no one is better at campaigning than Weinstein.” She still has hard memories of Shakespeare in Love, a thin romance backed by Weinstein’s “brilliant” campaigning in 1998 and beating Saving Private Ryan, which had been created and produced by her son, Don Granger.
“My prediction - Birdman.”
Stepping quickly through the other major awards, for Best Director “there may very well be a split.” She favors Iñárritu, but, “If it doesn’t go to Birdman, it will go to Boyhood.”
Best Actress is a “foregone conclusion,” Julianne Moore in Still Alice, about a 50 year old Linguistics professor dealing with early onset Alzheimers.
For Best Actor it’s Michael Keaton in Birdman against Eddy Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne won the coveted trophy from the Screen Actors Guild, the largest of the Academy’s guilds. “Redmayne should win for his remarkable portrayal of Steven Hawking.”
But, 63 year old Michael Keaton is a “sentimental favorite, and Oscar voters love comebacks, so this might be considered a life time achievement award.”
“I think it will be Michael Keaton. I would love to be wrong.”
For Best Supporting Actress, despite Meryl Streep receiving her 19th nomination, it will be Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. And for Best Supporting Actor, J. K. Simmons in Whiplash.
To see all her predictions - and read her reviews - go to: http://susangranger.com/?page_id=8098.
Top photo by Larry Untermeyer
Bottom photo by Hal Levy