2016 Oscars Preview
Who will win, who should win, who really should win...and more!
In a year when the greasy nuts and bolts of the Academy voting system has never been more transparent, it’s difficult to get that excited about the Oscars. And yet: To see an overblown, post-apocalyptic silent film masquerading as an action blockbuster make the list—and more than that, to dominate so many categories—feels progressive. To see a transgender indie star be nominated for Original Song feels like someone is trying to do something. And then to see Stallone nominated over Michael B. Jordan feels like a sobering reminder that as much as we want to fool ourselves into thinking things are changing, who knows where we’ll end up next year.
And so, with this year representing, we hope, the last truly traditional year of the Oscars, Paste brings you, as always, our picks for who we know will win, who we think (among the nominees) should win, who we think (among all film released this year) really should win…and then, new to this race, nominees for whom individual writers are willing to make a strong case, should their opinions differ greatly from the overall Paste staff consensus. (Unlike the Academy, we want to give every voice a fighting chance.)
Tune in this Sunday to see how we did.
Animated Feature Film
Nominated:
Anomalisa: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson and Rosa Tran
Boy and the World: Alê Abreu
Inside Out: Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera
Shaun the Sheep Movie: Mark Burton and Richard Starzak
When Marnie Was There: Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Yoshiaki Nishimura
Who Will Win: Inside Out
Who Should Win: Inside Out
Making the Case for: Boy and the World
Here’s the thing about this year’s Best Animated Feature Film category: You can’t go wrong. There isn’t a single film on the slate that does not deserve its nomination, or that is unworthy of taking home the prize. Inside Out is great. Anomalisa is great, if niche. Shaun the Sheep is an absolute and unexpected delight. When Marnie Was There is great. And so too is Son of São Paulo Alê Abreu’s Boy and the World great. Unlike its peers, though, Boy and the World doesn’t have too many people stumping for it, and it does not, for example, have the commercial and critical might of Pixar driving its awards push. It is a David against a small army of comparative Goliaths.
So, on behalf of that, let us give the film a stronger sling with which to totally ace its opponents. Boy and the World is close to pure cinema, a movie that is told through sound and sensation with only a smattering of muted, inconsequential dialogue to usher the story along. As you may guess from the title, Boy and the World is about a boy from a remote village (in the heart of his country), and it is about the world. Here, “the world” is represented by a screen surrogate for Brazil, and, as envisioned by Abreu, it is a hideous place rendered in brush strokes of stark beauty. The film feels like Abreu’s statement piece about the impact industrialization and corporate greed have had upon his nation, and among modern animation—though perhaps not among Abreu’s fellow nominees—it feels unique in its austerity, made all the more beautiful by the colorful, unhinged joyousness of the Boy’s home. —Andy Crump
Adapted Screenplay
Nominated:
The Big Short: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
Brooklyn: Nick Hornby
Carol: Phyllis Nagy
The Martian: Drew Goddard
Room: Emma Donoghue
Who Will Win: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay for The Big Short
Who Should Win: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay for The Big Short
Who Really Should Win: Spike Lee and Kevin Wilmott for Chi-Raq
Making the Case for: Aaron Sorkin for Steve Jobs
Like most of the human race, I run both hot and cold when it comes to Aaron Sorkin. Whereas Sports Night and The West Wing stand as two unshakeable classics in the history of TV, The Newsroom and Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip proved to be a near laughable exercises in melodramatic over-writing. As of late, Sorkin’s talents have lent themselves better to the feature film medium, as evidenced by The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War and, now, Steve Jobs. Inventive in both form and execution, the Steve Jobs script sprints out of the gates like a bat out of hell, cycling through various verbal sparrings, rat-tat-tat walk-and-talks and impassioned monologuing—only rarely taking time throughout its two-plus hours to stop and catch its breath. In other words, the film is pure, uncut Sorkinism at its finest, and a quick perusal of the shooting script reveals several cut lines that would have been highlight passages in lesser screenplays. Despite the baffling lack of a screenplay nomination, Sorkin’s work will likely only grow in stature as the years go by. —Mark Rozeman
Original Screenplay
Nominated:
Bridge of Spies: Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Ex Machina: Alex Garland
Inside Out: Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
Spotlight: Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy
Straight Outta Compton: Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; Story by S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff
Who Will Win: Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy for Spotlight
Who Should Win: Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy for Spotlight
Making the Case for: Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight
When considering films that have as much a chance of finding a nomination as Netflix has for winning an Oscar—trust me: the Academy would rather commit mass seppuku than ever consent to awarding anything from a streaming service, at least for now—I thought of Jon Watts’ and Christopher D. Ford’s writing for Cop Car, so seamlessly and lovingly were they able to fold completely believable prepubescent boy dialogue into an increasingly terrifying pulp flick. But one can’t forget Quentin Tarantino, a man whose every film begins with a novella. The real magnificence behind Tarantino’s script for The Hateful Eight is that, for once, Tarantino offers no hero, no way in, for the audience. There is the typical storytelling-heavy monologues, the words which seem to trip over each other as they tumble messily and gloriously from actors’ mouths, the unapologetic racism—but at its core it is an enraged piece of work, a script which uses each word uttered as a way to confound every one of the audience’s expectations about what is right, what is wrong, what is justified and what feels like all three. It’s an exceptionally tricky teleplay, a harrowing balancing act compared to the much more straightforward, even wonderfully procedural, scripts crafted by each of the nominees. —Dom Sinacola
Cinematography
Nominated:
Carol: Ed Lachman
The Hateful Eight: Robert Richardson
Mad Max: Fury Road: John Seale
The Revenant: Emmanuel Lubezki
Sicario: Roger Deakins
Who Will Win: Emmanuel Lubezki for The Revenant
Who Should Win: Emmanuel Lubezki for The Revenant
Making the Case for: Roger Deakins for Sicario
No doubt Chivo is a spectacular cinematographer, and The Revenant is a handsome, impressive film, all the moreso for being shot in natural light, but Roger Deakins is a legend who’s been nominated 13 godforsaken times without one win. The Academy lurves its record-breaking stories and its anecdotes, so undoubtedly Chivo will get his third win in a row, but, in all honesty, is it really that groundbreaking to take full advantage of the Golden Hour, Nature’s most photogenic time of day? Instead, Deakins’ work on Sicario made for some of the most gorgeous natural shots of the year: militaristic silhouettes against stark sunsets; unadorned desert homes breathing with menace; the dull gray of bureaucracy shot through with hopeless anger. If you can get over the mediocre blue-orange color correction every movie has nowadays, you’ll find something so much more subtly confident than the self-imposed strictures of Birdman’s clan. Mostly, though: How has the man who shot The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford not gotten an Oscar yet? —DS
Costume Design
Nominated
Carol: Sandy Powell
Cinderella: Sandy Powell
The Danish Girl: Paco Delgado
Mad Max: Fury Road: Jenny Beavan
The Revenant: Jacqueline West
Who Will Win: Jenny Beavan for Mad Max: Fury Road
Who Should Win: Jenny Beavan for Mad Max: Fury Road
No doubt Sandy Powell’s double-nomination is earned, joined by an expert cohort of designers who were able to make traditional clothing and period dress breathe with contemporary, even slyly subversive, magic. But Beavan’s work, while comparatively spare, is all speculation, all unabridged filth, the stuff of repurposed nightmares and carefully imagined ceremonies. Be it Immortan Joe’s armor or Nux’s tattoo-annihilated skin, Beavan, who shares a filmography of mannered traditionalism with her peers, used Mad Max to take that extra step, to prove that designing for a time not our own need not be a race away from insane anachronism. —DS
Documentary Feature
Nominated:
Amy: Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees
Cartel Land: Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin
The Look of Silence: Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen
What Happened, Miss Simone?: Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom: Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor
Who Will Win: Amy
Who Should Win: Cartel Land
Twenty minutes into Cartel Land, I leaned over to my filmmaker friend and whispered, “We have GOT to get the rights to turn this into a scripted feature.” Half an hour after that, I leaned over again: “Never mind.” She nodded, knowing exactly what I meant—a scripted feature would be superfluous after the incredible storytelling already present here, plus we’d never be able to find actors as compelling as these real life figures. Cartel Land is incredibly gripping from the very first scene, in which director Matthew Heineman interviews cartel members as they are cooking meth under cover of darkness. Believe it or not, the tension actually escalates from there: Heineman begins to follow two vigilante groups—one in Arizona, one in the south of Mexico—who are fighting a grassroots war against the cartels. The results are astounding. Cartel Land is staggering, stunning. The best documentary I’ve seen in a very long time. —Michael Dunaway
Making the Case for: The Look of Silence
I’m all for the Cartel Land win, as shaken to the core as anyone by the miserable truths it exposes and the amoral, interstitial desperation it plumbs, but The Look of Silence is as much a documentary about an important social issue as it is a documentary about what watching documentaries means. Whereas Cartel Land ends, as it should, on a feeling of utter helplessness and futility, The Look of Silence forces us, every member of the audience, to confront our individual feelings of action and agency. To watch is to take responsibility for what you are watching, Oppenheimer implies, whether you consent to that responsibility or not: A documentary should do more than offer you a glimpse into stories you might otherwise never know, it should be a call to action, a reminder that by engaging in these narratives so intimately, you are participating in their conclusions. —DS
Documentary Short Subject
Nominated:
Body Team 12: David Darg and Bryn Mooser
Chau, beyond the Lines: Courtney Marsh and Jerry Franck
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah: Adam Benzine
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Last Day of Freedom: Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman
Who Will Win: Body Team 12
This is a rough lot as far as watching a bunch of deeply depressing, existentially heavy short films, so chances are the Academy will go with a short but very contemporarily relevant pick, for once not automatically picking the film that’s at least ostensibly about the Holocaust.
Who Should Win: Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
Maybe the most traditionally structured of the nominees, this very well could win, because from some perspectives it’s just as much about the art of filmmaking as it is about the Holocaust. Regardless, Adam Benzine is a director’s director, attempting to stay largely outside the studio system to make the film exactly as he wanted to. Perhaps most notably, though: Because Shoah was aired on PBS, it was never given the Academy recognition it deserved as one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and so in some vicarious ways this is both an award for Benzine’s dedication and for Lanzmann’s courageous masterwork. —DS
Film Editing
Nominated:
The Big Short: Hank Corwin
Mad Max: Fury Road: Margaret Sixel
The Revenant: Stephen Mirrione
Spotlight: Tom McArdle
Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey
Who Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Who Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
All aspiring action filmmakers should bow to the altar of Fury Road; let Sixel’s editing be their beatitudes. Every cut here is flawless, honoring George Miller’s impeccable sense of space while developing a wordless language of action, reaction and emotional consequence. Also, if Mad Max happens to not win this category, then expect many more upsets to come. —DS
Foreign Language Film
Nominated:
Embrace of the Serpent: Colombia; Directed by Ciro Guerra
Mustang: France; Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Son of Saul: Hungary; Directed by László Nemes
Theeb: Jordan; Directed by Naji Abu Nowar
A War: Denmark; Directed by Tobias Lindholm
Who Will Win: Son of Saul
Who Should Win: Son of Saul
Making the Case for: Mustang
Deniz Gamze Ergüven is a natural. There’s no better way to describe her as a filmmaker. Ergüven made her feature debut in 2015 with Mustang, a movie that is so accomplished and so refined in its craft you might expect to find a decades-long filmography behind her. While the biggest competition here comes from another first-timer, László Nemes, whose Son of Saul is the projected frontrunner of the category among those who treat the Oscars like horse racing (if you’ll pardon the use of that expression here), Mustang is startlingly real in ways that many of the pictures highlighted in other categories simply aren’t. It’s a gem wrought from a personal, deeply intimate human experience many of us in the U.S. simply aren’t privy to.
And so as not to let the point slide, it is Ergüven’s premiere as a director. Coming from a more veteran director, Mustang would be great. Coming from Ergüven, it feels like a goddamn revelation—as well as a cousin to the wildly different works of Sofia Coppola and Pier Paolo Pasolini in that it is very much its own thing: on a cultural basis, on a human basis, and on the basis of style, too. Mustang is a singular experience from a singular voice, a testimonial to female perspectives on the fringes to accompany the likes of Brooklyn and Carol. If Ergüven is as of now mostly unknown, she deserves to be known, and Mustang deserves to win. —Andy Crump
Makeup and Hairstyling
Nominated:
Mad Max: Fury Road: Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared: Love Larson and Eva von Bahr
The Revenant: Siân Grigg, Duncan Jarman and Robert Pandini
Who Will Win: Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin for Mad Max: Fury Road
This is in the (blood)bag. —DS
Who Should Win: Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin for Mad Max: Fury Road
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