Archive for Making wrongs right

Welcome to the second annual Ethel Awards

Posted in Event, Movies with tags , , , , , on February 22, 2012 by Sarah

Last year I introduced the Ethel Awards (so called because “Oscar” sounds like a grumpy old man and “Ethel” a grumpy old lady), in which we revisit Oscars past to correct the Academy’s many errors in giving out the little gold man. There are only two rules: 1) At least five years must have lapsed before the ceremony is eligible for revision, and 2) as much as possible, I try to make the corrections from the available pool of nominees, but if the oversight was so egregious that the deserving film wasn’t even nominated, I reserve the right to award non-nominated films. Last year, I revisited the 1999 Academy Awards and this year we’re taking a look at the 73rd Academy Awards, honoring movies released in 2000, or, The Year of Gladiator. As before, we’re redoing all the categories except the shorts, song and documentary. Please note that 2000 was before Best Animated Feature was introduced as a category. That happened one year later for 2001 films.

Best Visual Effects

Oscar: Gladiator

Ethel: The Perfect Storm

I’m going to say this right off the top—I really, really like Gladiator. I really super liked it in 2000, and I still super like it today. Do I think it was the best movie made that year? No. But I still pull it out and watch it, because it’s really fucking cool. That said, the VFX Oscar should have gone to Wolfgang Peterson’s The Perfect Storm. Why? Because even though the CGI is over a decade old, and thus, totally out of date, it’s still some of the best-looking fake water on film. If you’re a regular reader, you should know that my least favorite VFX are CG water and fire. Water always looks heavy and oily, yet in The Perfect Storm it blends quite seamlessly with the real water footage. This is in large part to the pioneering use of digital processing and projection techniques Peterson and his VFX team used. Also, Gladiator’s main use of VFX came in the early battle scenes, which only one year later would be put to shame by Lord of the Rings and the introduction of Weta’s Massive program, which forever changed how crowd shots are staged. In hindsight, Gladiator is not as impressive.

Best Art Direction

Oscar: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ethel: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

This award stands. Have you seen Crouching Tiger lately? Somehow, it looks better now than it did in 2000. The art direction is gorgeous.

Best Costume Design

Oscar: Gladiator

Ethel: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Gladiator’s costumes were solid, but I don’t really remember them. Like, I couldn’t describe one beyond “leather skirts”. Meanwhile, the un-nominated O Brother flawlessly recreated 1930’s fashion. But the real reason it deserves this award is for including sartorial references to classic films like Cool Hand Luke, which is from a different era, and still looking 1930’s authentic.

Best Makeup

Oscar: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Ethel: Shadow of the Vampire

Jim Carrey in a lime green fur suit was nice, sure. But the prosthetics on his face limited his range of expressions and he never looked wholly comfortable in the body suit. Meanwhile, Ann Buchanan and Amber Sibley transformed Willem Dafoe into Max Schreck, the creepy star of FW Murnau’s silent classic, Nosferatu. It’s a major makeup job that is still subtle and organic. Way more deserving than the knee-jerk pick of “guy in fur suit with prosthetic face”. Let’s put it this way: The Cat in the Hat movie used the same makeup process on Mike Meyers and won no Oscars.

Best Film Editing

Oscar: Traffic

Ethel: Traffic

The editing in Traffic was so good that people actually noticed Steven Soderbergh’s use of a multi-color palette. Also, that was a long, complicated story that got told in a facile way without having to keep reiterating where we were and who was doing was what. Ace editing from Stephen Mirrione.

Best Cinematography

Oscar: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ethel: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I don’t know how O Brother, Where Are Thou? got so overlooked come Oscar time in 2001, but it did. Roger Deakins’ cinematography is always good, and in O Brother he brought a fantastical element to his usual lyrical style. It’s a really lovely movie to look at, and there are a handful of images that have stuck with me for over a decade. Crouching Tiger is beautiful, too, but it’s more the sum total of all its parts than the cinematography at work, where for O Brother, cinematography is one of the selling points.

Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing

Oscar: U-571 (Editing), Gladiator (Mixing)

Ethel: Gladiator (both)

These categories really need to be combined into one and called Sound Design. I’ll just keep repeating that until it happens. Somehow, Gladiator didn’t even get an Editing nod, which is bullshit, since the sound was—and is—awesome.

Best Score

Oscar: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ethel: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

This one stands. Tan Dun’s score is lovely.

Best Foreign Language Film

Oscar: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ethel: Amores Perros

Here’s my central problem with the Foreign Language Oscar: It’s kind of a cop out. It gives the Academy a place to drop those pesky sub-titled movies instead of dealing with them as equal to English-language films. I mean, explain to me how something can win Best Foreign Language Film and yet be nominated for, and lose, Best Picture? Besides the language barrier, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? Ditto all of this for Best Animated Feature.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Oscar: Traffic

Ethel: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Joel & Ethan Coen adapted Homer’s Odyssey into a Depression-era prison break buddy comedy. AND IT WORKED ON EVERY LEVEL.

Best Original Screenplay

Oscar: Almost Famous

Ethel: You Can Count on Me

Let’s call this for what it is—Cameron Crowe’s make-up Oscar for Say Anything. Compared to that, and his 1996 nomination for Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous is an also-ran. I can hear you yelling at me already, but this movie does not hold up as well as Crowe’s earlier work. Meanwhile, Kenneth Lonergan crafted a deeply moving story about all the ways siblings can hurt and disappoint one another. Lonergan is a desperately under-recognized writer.

Best Supporting Actor

Oscar: Benicio del Toro, Traffic

Ethel: Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire

This one is mostly just personal preference. I’m perfectly happy to let del Toro keep his Oscar, except in this scenario where I get to go back in time and take it away and give it to someone else. That someone else being Dafoe, who was sublimely creepy as silent film star Max Schreck. But Traffic was a big hit that year and no one saw Dafoe in Shadow, so del Toro got the popular vote.

Best Supporting Actress

Oscar: Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock

Ethel: Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock

Pollock is another one that kind of baffles me—how did it get so overlooked? It’s a great movie. This was the right call—Harden is great as Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock’s wife/manager, and an outstanding artist in her own right who was overshadowed by her dramatic, drunk husband. What I remember most about Harden’s performance was how pinched and worried she looked throughout the film, and then her final scene, after Pollock’s death, how free and beautiful she was as she painted in his studio.

Best Actor

Oscar: Russell Crowe, Gladiator

Ethel: George Clooney, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I know, I know—you’re sick of Clooney. But remember, we’re talking about the Clooney of 2000, not 2012. He wasn’t even nominated for this—gross oversight—but O Brother remains his best performance to date. The Descendants gets close, but doesn’t quite top this one. Don’t you remember how shocked you were at how good he was? I’d give him this Oscar over giving him one this year for The Descandants.

Best Actress

Oscar: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich

Ethel: Joan Allen, The Contender

HAHAHAHAHAHA OMG this looks like such a joke, eleven years later. Don’t get me wrong, Roberts is really good—at her best, even—as Brockovich. I’m just saying that Julia Roberts at her best is not better than Joan Allen, Ellen Burstyn, who was up for Requiem for a Dream, Laura Linney, for You Can Count on Me, and Juliette Binoche in Chocolat. You could make a case for Binoche vs. Roberts, but Allen, Burstyn and Linney trounce all over her. My pick for a replacement win is Allen, who balanced a frosty, brittle exterior with a deep well of conviction and strength as a political candidate in The Contender, but I’ll entertain arguments on behalf of Burstyn’s drug-addled mother in Requiem, too. Either way, Roberts didn’t deserve this Oscar.

Best Director


Oscar: Steven Soderbergh, Traffic

Ethel: Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

These Oscars was a year where the Director and Picture awards were split. That doesn’t happen a lot. Traffic was good, but it wasn’t Soderbergh’s best directorial effort (still, to this day, that’s Out of Sight). It’s long and kind of draggy, and I think he was mostly being awarded for widening his scope. Which, recognize it, sure, but Lee created a masterpiece with Crouching Tiger. Is Traffic a masterpiece? No.

Best Picture

Oscar: Gladiator

Ethel: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Did you know that Chocolat was nominated for Best Picture? I liked Chocolat and everything, but really? Over O Brother, Where Art Thou? REALLY? Anyway, this should have gone to Crouching Tiger, which had all the same ferocious action as Gladiator and twice the plot. Also, it was better. Again, I liked Gladiator. But can you look me in the electrical face and tell me that it was THE BEST MOVIE of 2000? I stand by its nomination but the win belongs to Crouching Tiger.

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The First Annual Ethel Awards

Posted in Event, Movies with tags , , , , , on February 24, 2011 by Sarah

Do you ever feel like the Academy gets caught up on one or two movies each year and it (or they) end up winning all the awards come Oscar time, but then even a year later you can’t remember who won what, or even who was nominated? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. While the Oscars can be fun and/or entertaining while they’re happening—or a dead bore, depending on your tolerance for masturbatory exercises in self-congratulation—increasingly the winners are less and less memorable. I don’t think it’s because “bad” movies or the “wrong” movies are winning, I just think it’s because everyone gets hung up on one thing and the real gem(s) of the year slip through the cracks, only to re-emerge later, when the fuss has died down.

Our goal here at Ethel HQ is to right some of the wrongs committed by the Academy, especially those “carried away” follies when the popular choice of the day starts to look really, grossly wrong several years down the line. For instance, does it make any sense that Nicolas Cage won a Best Actor Oscar (Leaving Las Vegas) over Sean Penn (Dead Man Walking)? I mean, does that really make any sense? It didn’t make a ton of sense in 1996 and it makes zero sense today.

For the first ever Ethel Awards, we’re revisiting the 71st Academy Awards, held in March 1999 to honor movies released in 1998. That’s the year Shakespeare in Love was the big winner though Saving Private Ryan was the favorite. Two very fine films were grossly overlooked and the acting awards almost look like a series of pranks today. We’re revising all the categories except the shorts, song and documentaries. And the Ethel goes to…

Best Visual Effects

Oscar: What Dreams May Come

Ethel: What Dreams May Come

Visual effects is all this movie had going for it, but even ten-plus years later, I remember how, well, dreamy What Dreams May Come was. And the visual look of the film holds up a lot better than fellow nominee Armageddon, which is starting to look cheesy these days.

Best Art Direction/Costume Design/Makeup

Oscar: Shakespeare in Love (Art Direction/Costume Design), Elizabeth (Makeup)

Ethel: Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine was only nominated in the Costume Design category and that’s a tragedy. As lush as the Elizabethan Age looked in Shakespeare in Love, as dirty and splendid as Elizabeth made it, Velvet Goldmine not only captured the 1970’s London underground scene perfectly—the worlds of glam rock and burgeoning punk colliding—but also the look of the New Wave 1980’s and pre-grunge New York. All the actors aged over the course of a decade and the makeup was never less than flawless. Christian Bale’s apple-cheeked youth contrasted sharply with his more beige, hollow adulthood. And Curt Wild (Ewan Macgregor) was a Kurt Cobain dead-ringer in his final proto-grunge reinvention. The Elizabethan movies were lavish, sure, but Velvet Goldmine is profoundly, utterly realistic.

Best Film Editing

Oscar: Saving Private Ryan

Ethel: The Thin Red Line

Look, I’m not saying Saving Private Ryan is a bad movie. It’s not. It’s just not great, either. Here’s my challenge—watch it again, and this time, skip the first twenty minutes. Watch it without the D-Day scene. Without that opener, Saving Private Ryan is meh. It was not the best World War II movie that year. No, that title goes to The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick’s meditative take on the Battle of Guadalcanal. As with all Malick films, editing is absolutely key to the final product as Malick’s process is to “dig” through the footage he shot and “find” his movie.

Best Cinematography

Oscar: Saving Private Ryan

Ethel: The Thin Red Line

John Toll’s cinematography in The Thin Red Line is museum-quality artwork. Poignant, haunting, lyrical—Toll should have won this. I dare you to find me a more beautiful war movie. Seriously. I dare you.

Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing

Oscar: Saving Private Ryan

Ethel: The Thin Red Line

First, I really think these need to be combined into one category. I really don’t get how you can nominate one and not the other. The Thin Red Line only got a Mixing nomination but I’m giving it both sound Ethels. The combination of silence and explosiveness, the way the score is worked in and out of scenes, the cuts combining nature shots and dialogue—sound in The Thin Red Line is used in surprising ways, ways that it wasn’t used in the more stock Saving Private Ryan.

Best Score (Musical/Comedy and Drama)

Oscar: Shakespeare in Love (Musical/Comedy), Life is Beautiful (Drama)

Ethel: Shakespeare in Love (Musical/Comedy), The Thin Red Line (Drama)

Here’s a category I’m glad they combined. Splitting the score category in two lead to Patch Adams getting an Oscar nomination. I can live with Shakespeare in Love’s win here, but guess what? THE THIN RED LINE SHOULD HAVE WON, TOO.

Best Foreign-Language Film

Oscar: Life is Beautiful

Ethel: Central Station

This is a travesty. Have you seen Life is Beautiful lately? It’s cute and all, but it’s not great. Meanwhile, Central Station is still Walter Salles’ best film to date. It’s a deep, deep movie. My appreciation for it grows with every viewing. The difference between Life is Beautiful and Central Station is the difference between bungee jumping and sky diving.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Oscar: Gods and Monsters

Ethel: Gods and Monsters

I’m actually leaving this one alone even though The Thin Red Line was nominated. It’s just that I’m not sure how much the actual script has to do with the final result in a Terrence Malick film, whereas Gods and Monsters was all about Bill Condon’s script (and Ian McKellen).

Best Original Screenplay

Oscar: Shakespeare in Love

Ethel: The Truman Show

Another travesty. I liked Shakespeare in Love a lot—still do—but its script is in no way superior to Andrew Niccol’s for The Truman Show. How prescient does that story seem today, by the way? Back in 1998 it was such a fantasy—a man living in a reality television show with no clue. But today, you could totally see that happening right? The Truman Show, like The Thin Red Line, was grossly overlooked on Oscar night in 1999.

Best Supporting Actor

Oscar: James Coburn, Affliction

Ethel: Ed Harris, The Truman Show

A lot of people thought Jim Carrey was robbed by not being nominated for The Truman Show, and while it is still his best performance ever, he got totally upstaged by Harris and Laura Linney.

Best Supporting Actress

Oscar: Judi Dench, Shakespeare in Love

Ethel: Brenda Blethyn, Little Voice

Have you seen Little Voice? If not, DO. And be prepared to fall for Ewan Macgregor’s character. Dench’s win here was a makeup for not winning Best Actress the year before (Mrs. Brown). This is the problem with makeup Oscars: they deny a more deserving performance the win. Blethyn was terrific in Little Voice—still my favorite performance of hers. Dench’s eight minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love winning over Blethyn’s domineering and jealous mother in Little Voice is still one of the Academy’s biggest blunders.

Best Actor

Oscar: Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful

Ethel: Ian McKellen, Gods and Monsters

Roberto Benigni was adorable on Oscar night. Really, very memorably adorable. But this is a straight up hi-jacking. McKellen killed it in Gods and Monsters. His performance is still great today. Meanwhile, Benigni followed up his win with the repulsive Pinocchio of 2002.

Best Actress

Oscar: Gywneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love

Ethel: Fernanda Montenegro, Central Station

Watch Shakespeare in Love. Then watch Central Station. Bitch, please. No contest.

Best Director

Oscar: Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan

Ethel: Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line is superior to Saving Private Ryan. In. Every. Way.

Best Picture

Oscar: Shakespeare in Love

Ethel: The Thin Red Line

DUH. By now you should be getting that I think The Thin Red Line is a classic and a war movie unlike any other war movie and while choosing Saving Private Ryan over it is like saying, “I prefer linear plots to visual metaphors”, choosing Shakespeare in Love over The Thin Red Line is like saying, “I didn’t actually watch any movies this year, but that Gwyneth Paltrow sure is pretty.” This was a gross, dumbass error on the Academy’s part. But they’ll make up for it in 2012 when Malick wins everything for Tree of Life.

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