Annual OSCAR Rant - 2016 version

There are certainly people with more deserving OSCAR RANTS than your humble foreignfilmguy (#OscarSoWhite:TheSequel), but I have to admit I didn't see "Straight Outta Compton" or "Creed", so I cannot comment on those snubs. What I CAN and WILL comment on are the following outrageous SNUBS:

No Best Picture or Best Director nominations for perhaps (I don't want to give away my Top Ten List too early) the Best Movie of the Year: "CAROL"! WTF#1? It is clearly the class of the Oscar season (the backing of those no-good Weinsteins notwithstanding) Instead, we have to suffer the far inferior BRIDGE OF SPIES and THE MARTIAN as Best Picture (not to give away my Not Top Ten List).

"SICARIO" - snubbed for everything but Best Cinematography, Score, and Sound editing (it should win for all three).

Screenplays: Aaron Sorkin not getting nominated for "Steve Jobs" is a snub, especially since the lame script for "The Martian" did get one. I have yet to see "The Hateful Eight," but I am sure there is more wit and artistry in the first five minutes of it than in the entire patchwork, obviously written by several hands mess that is "Bridge of Spies."

Best Costume Design: NO recognition for the outstanding costumes in "BROOKLYN"?? WTF#2!

I am sure all five best documentary features are deserving, but to leave out MY two fave docs of the year -- "Best of Enemies" and "Listen to Me, Marlon" -- seems wrong.

Best Song: I'm sorry, Sam Smith fans, but as soon as I heard the opening song for the new James Bond film "Spectre" I was ready to declare it the WORST Bond Film song EVER! (And that is saying something!)

At this point in my annual RANT, you expect to hear me go off on my favorite Oscar whipping boy: JOHN WILLIAMS. Well, this year, I am not gonna do it! It's STAR WARS, after all. That is the man's bread-and-butter! Props to JW! In his stead, I am awarding the honorary John Wiliams Rant to another composer who is clearly a hack unworthy of Oscar recognition, and that person is . . .

THOMAS NEWMAN, "Bridge of Spies"! You, sir, suck as a composer! What an ingratiating, hackneyed, obvious and unrelenting score that was! No matter what the rest of the movie was like, I knew the score would ruin the entire movie for me. Have I mentioned that it's not that great a movie, anyway?

MACBETH

Starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard

Lady M goes to town with her eye shadow!

I hesitated before buying my ticket to the latest cinematic treatment of one of the Bard's classics -- in spite of its stellar lead actors -- wary of sitting through yet another stage-bound retelling of a work I know so well. Boy, was I in for a surprise! This film doesn't simply 'open-up' the play, it de-constructs and re-constructs it into the time and place where it was originally set: the wild Scottish Highlands where witches and omens co-exist with the harsh realities of life in the Middle Ages.

The landscape -- fog and fire and breathtaking natural wonders (filmed on the Isle of Skye, I learned later) -- grounds the action to a time and place where the gruesome events don't seem so out of place. Call it the "Game of Thrones" effect, but the grimness of the setting makes the blood-drenched action more believable. And there is a lot of blood: from the battle Macbeth wins to first early glory, to the chaotic murder of Duncan and his guards, to the final battle against MacDuff, you are immersed in it.
All of this comes at a price, however: the price of Shakespeare's beautiful verse. I was continually struggling to decipher the thick Scottish brogue in many of the line readings. Some of his most-cherished soliloquies sneak-up on you -- in a way that is both organic, yet somehow offhand. This worked effectively in Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" speech; less so in Macbeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow" (delivered by an otherwise excellent Michael Fassbender as he drags around his lifeless wife). A final word about said lifeless wife: Marion Cotillard was so good I almost wished they changed the script so Lady M wouldn't have to die! She nailed the English verse like a true professional. And she's French! The ultimate compliment (for this visual medium of film) is perhaps this fact: I spent the 'dead week' at work looking into B&Bs on Skye to wander the heath where this movie was filmed.