Day: January 13, 2016

This is Scott Feinberg‘s current prediction about whom the Academy will nominate for Best Actor tomorrow — Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant (locked), Bryan Cranston for Trumbo (a solid-state performance that is 20% Cranston, 20% moustache, 20% cigarettes, 20% moral lecturing mixed with fatigued disdain and 20% bathtub), Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl (simultaneously the most open-hearted and the most one-note performance of all the would-be nominees), Matt Damon for The Martian and….Jacob Tremblay for Room? .

Translation: Feinberg cannot support or even be comme ci comme ca about Michael Fassbender‘s performance in Steve Jobs. No matter what happens on Thursday he wants it known that Fassbender was too unlikable, too hammering, didn’t have that schwing.

And shame on Feinberg and all the others who refused to stand by Paul Dano‘s Love & Mercy performance as a Best Supporting Actor-worthy thing. Shame! And please, please listen to my special request that Bridge of Spies‘ Mark Rylance must be gently and respectfully denied the Oscar in this category. He didn’t deliver three or even two big moments, he erred on the side of subtlety, he was good but nowhere close to great. Choose Mr. Dano or Creed‘s Sylvester Stallone. Or 99 Homes/Freeheld Michael Shannon. Or Sicario‘s Benicio del Toro. Or even The Big Short‘s Christian Bale. But no Rylance. Please.

The 13 Hours embargo doesn’t lift until 9 pm Pacific, but I can at least pass along what plenty of folks have been saying on Twitter. It’s an exceptional “American guys get the shit kicked out of them” combat flick in the tradition of Lone Survivor and Black Hawk Down. When it’s doing the pure visceral battle thing it’s awesome, super-crafty, riveting. It’s definitely “political” in that it’s a pro-American, hooray-for-our-side salute of military heroism in the face of Islamic wacko attacks, but Hillary Clinton takes no hits whatsoever. And yet there’s a CIA desk chief character (played by David Costabile) who comes off as a timid procedural asshole between 75% and 80% of the time. 13 Hours is Michael Bay‘s best (i.e., least irritating) and sturdiest film in his entire career, and is weakened only by his attempts to “sell” the Benghazi attack as something more than it might have been at the end of the day with what struck me as needlessly manipulative music cues and sentimental digressions about families back home. The attack is portrayed as a deliberate, organized attack in what is now considered a failed state that has become an ISIS stronghold. 13 Hours looks and feels like a hit — expert enough to rock action fans and almost certain to strike a chord with conservative rural audiences. It’s fast, hard and throttling — the parts that work (roughly 85% of the whole) really work.

A brief Twitter debate broke out this morning between myself, Mark Harris and Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan over the “due” narrative that has all but ensured Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Best Actor nomination for his Revenant performance. Harris complained that said narrative had been “reinforced by press way before the film was seen, [and] was a punditry low.” I asked both if they’ve ever been pleased when a favorite of theirs won an Oscar because he/she was due, and asserted that despite Harris’s distaste Leo “is due…23 years of slamming it plus his Wolf of Wall Street triumph plus suffering during long Alberta shoot plus bison liver tartare…like it or lump it.”

This led me to a 2.20.15 Christopher Borelli Chicago Tribune piece that lamented how actors often win Oscars for the wrong roles, and that the reason is that (a) they’re due or (b) they’ve waited long enough or (c) they need to be given a make-up for either a relatively recent snub or a long string of them over a decade or two.

Due: Julianne Moore’s 2015 Oscar for a good performance in the dreadful Still Alice. Due: Jeff Bridges wins Best Actor for playing a jowly, boozy, over-the-hill singer in Crazy Heart after having been snubbbed for many fine performances (including his legendary turn in 1997’s The Big Lebowski). Delayed/make-up: Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman Oscar after being nominated and passed up for both Godfather movies, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, et. al. Delayed/make-up: Denzel Washington winning an Oscar for Training Day after his nominated performances in Malcolm X and The Hurricane fell short on votes.

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It’s also one of the finest trailers for a mainstream comedy since…you tell me. I especially love the fact that it says to all the Kevin Hart fans, “This is so not for you and your coarse, pig-trough ilk…sorry but this film just hasn’t been made for people with fast-food sensibilities.” Okay, that’s not fair. People of all stations and creeds like what they like or…you know, get what they wanna get when they’re in a receptive mood. But you know what I mean. Some (most) comedies are made for the lowest common denominator; others aim a little higher.