A few significant things happened yesterday in the Oscar race. Let's start with Natalie Portman.
Brady Corbet (who will factor a bit later with my Best Films Rewatch and his performance in "Mysterious Skin")'s 2nd directorial feature, "Vox Lux" premiered in a similar fashion to "Jackie" a few years ago. A mere week ago, Natalie Portman wasn't in the Best Actress (or supporting, if you believe that talk) race. Now, if the film lands a distributor, she appears to be in.
The biggest, and most telling thing to happen out of Toronto was the reaction to "A Star is Born." Get ready Oscarwatchers. This is the film to bash.
From "Million Dollar Baby" to "The King's Speech" films have been taken down by Oscar bloggers for the sake of placing other films on a pedestal. I have been quite guilty of this in the past, going all the way back to 1994 with "Forrest Gump" and most notably the years of "Avatar" and "The King's Speech."
But when "Mad Max" (my favorite film of 2015) didn't win Best Picture, I wasn't mad. I really liked "Spotlight." I even enjoyed "The Revenant" although I think I have probably cooled a bit on that one.
Last year, we all know how much I loved "Call Me By Your Name," and although I did make it clear that I believed Timothee Chalamet was superior to Gary Oldman, I believe I had an objectivity to my reporting.
What I predict happening to "A Star is Born" is something quite similar to what we saw two years ago with "La La Land" and last year with "Lady Bird." Both films came into the race beloved (as appears to be happening with "A Star is Born"), and both left beaten down.
With "La La Land," another brilliant film, "Moonlight" won Best Picture instead...but after the former being trashed with a ridiculous "race" narrative that in retrospect looks so unbelievably trite and unfounded. What happened with "Lady Bird" was even worse. I initially enjoyed the film, but over time I began to question that, buying into the narrative that it wasn't the right female led film to take Oscar by storm. I watched it the day of the Oscars and felt a bit deflated as I really enjoyed it. Luckily I kept my criticisms of the film to a minimum. But the damage by others was done. The film went home empty handed.
"A Star is Born" seems to be destined for the same fate. Bradley Cooper, a very talented actor is hated by a few very loud dissenters. Go back to "Silver Linings Playbook" and you will see that. If those people are to be believed, it's a terrible, reprehensible film. But if the Academy (it was nominated in all 4 acting categories and Jennifer Lawrence won!) and critics (a 92 tomatometer!) are to be believed, it's great. Guess what...it is great.
"A Star is Born" is a film the vultures are circling, ready to pounce. The question is, will it survive?
The third major thing to happen yesterday was the "Beautiful Boy" premiere.
When I first saw the teaser for this film, I was a bit worried, but the trailer won me over in the long run. I'm a person in long term recovery from addiction, I love Timothee Chalamet, and would love to see him win an Oscar. These things had me scrolling my Twitter feed for hot takes for hours last night.
The early takes were very positive, mostly from people I have never heard of. Positive notices retweeted by the "Beautiful Boy's" Twitter handle. It took a minute, but Oscar bloggers began to post...and you could tell they didn't want to bash it...but they weren't quite "going there" with praise either. Sure, it seems that Timothee is great, Carrell as well, but the film itself was a question mark.
It honestly reminded me of election night 2016. The writing was on the wall all night, but I didn't want to admit it.
Then I read the review at Hollywood Reporter, and it was bad. They even had issues with Chalamet.
SO...we will wait. My fear is that if the Hollywood Reporter is this hard on the film, the New York Times will be worse.
It's still very early. Very, very early, and I haven't seen any of these films. That being said, I have watched the Oscar race for quite some time and have been writing about for almost a decade. I said on Twitter yesterday that the most predictable performances in the Oscar race are that of the Oscar writers. We all play our parts...ones that we have been playing for far too long.
I'm just glad my character has changed a bit over the past few years. For the better.
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