The Pirates! In An Adventure With No Oscars

The Oscar for best animated feature of 2013 is awarded to Brave. I am in two minds. On the one hand, Brave is groundbreaking in many ways. A lot has been said about the character of Merida - a female lead is still a rarity in animation, and Brave's release is also a breakthrough moment for redheaded toons. Brave also succeeds in completely overthrowing the tired old Hollywood plot about reconciliation with father, by giving us a reconciliation with mother instead.

On the other hand I do believe The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists! was the better film at almost every turn: script, animation, artistry, subversive humour. It's a personal opinion but only one of these films took me on such a journey that I left the cinema exhausted, and it wasn't Brave.

The Oscars often reward films that are thought to be "important" for some social or political reason, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Brave also fitted perfectly into the theme connecting all this year's winning films - gross historical inaccuracy, in this case playing fast and loose with Celtic culture. By comparison the psychopathic pirate-obsessed portrayal of Queen Victoria in The Pirates! is pretty much in line with most of the history books.

Cinema Just For Fun makes a good case for Brave in her review here, along with some great reviews of other Oscar winners and about a million other films.

Pandora's Box Of Oscars: Part II

Further thoughts on Avatar's multi-Oscar nominations: for all the criticism, Avatar hasn't been nominated for a single Golden Raspberry this year. It's fair to say that the public, who vote for the Razzie nominations, haven't carried a knife for this film - they've either been highly enthusiastic or indifferent rather than especially critical, and seem to have reserved their real hatred for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Twilight.

However this also reflects the categories of Raspberry which are still too broad and too traditional. There really aren't any grounds for Avatar being nominated for Worst Picture, or Worst Supporting Actress etc. However if there were a Raspberry for Worst Name Of A Mineral In A Sci-Fi Movie, for example, or perhaps Most Badly Disguised Political Message, then Avatar would win hands down.

Pandora's Box Of Oscars

Team Avatar in the news again - with nine Oscar nominations. I enjoyed this film, but on reviewing the nomination list I had some mixed feelings.

Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg, with Kim Sinclair for set decoration
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
No argument on these three: quality of physically constructed sets and props and of CGI elements is pretty high, as is the overall standard of photography. The depth of simulation of Pandoran geography and culture is a factor here as it really comes across well in the film.

Editing: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
Has Avatar been edited in an unusually brilliant way? Not so sure, although editing is one of the most important creative processes in film; also as I've previously said, editing a 3D film is different from 2D and there may have been numerous achievements and envelope-pushes along the way. Agreed (after extra time).

Original Score: James Horner
Not the most memorable film score ever but beautifully understated, and deserves some kind of award for not going down the March of the Stormtroopers route. OK, you can have that one on me.

Best Picture: James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
In a year that Moon didn't even get a mention I'm going to be overcritical of the Best Picture category. Avatar is a very enjoyable film (if you're not a full time critic) and that should count for something, but is it in the Best Picture overall category? Sorry, it's no turkey but it doesn't quite make the grade.

Sound Editing: Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Sound Mixing: Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
I should know more about this technically, but I actually don't think the sound was of such stand-out quality to deserve Oscar nominations in the same way as the visual elements.

Direction: James Cameron
For: Cameron is well known as a hands on director, and has pushed every aspect of this movie from start to finish. So you can't separate his input from any other aspect of the movie - if you're giving out any gongs at all you have to include him.
Against: once upon a time, a director's job included coaxing great performances out of actors. Remember? Avatar has nine nominations - none of which are for acting - and I don't believe the cast are to blame for this as they included seasoned professionals like Weaver and highly talented newcomers like Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana.
Conclusion: you can keep the nomination but only after a slap on the wrist. Understood?