One Last Hurrah for the Unloved! (Our Post-Nomination Eulogies)
Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 1:20PM by staff
We asked Team Experience to share eulogies & tributes to their most beloved cinematic achievement that was left out on Oscar nom morning. Not everything can be nominated. Since we must now turn our attention to the actual nominations, please shed one last tear of appreciation for these great artists and films.
BEN MILLER: Leave No Trace - you were too beautiful and non-assuming to be truly embraced by an awards body like the Academy. Yes, Winter's Bone got a Best Picture nomination for Debra Granik's 2010 film, but you were rated PG and there was not a cliche, line of exposition, or bit of over-acting to be found. You are too perfect a creation to be lumped in with the Oscars. We will remember you when Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie and Granik eventually accept their future statues.
NATHANIEL R: Eighth Grade, you were too lovely and far far too young. Too humiliatingly real, too emotionally fragile and too comically pure for the heightened spectacle of Hollywood's back-patting event. You gave us hope for the future (Elsie Fisher and Bo Burnham have bright ones) while also transporting us back to our own childhood. You were a time machine even H.G. Wells would have marvelled at and cringed through... provided, of course, that he attended the British equivalent of junior high in the 19th century...
DANCIN' DAN: Today, I will be listening to the mournful yet hopeful theremin of Justin Hurwitz's brilliant score for First Man, to help process my emotions over that film's lack of nominations in Editing, Cinematography, and Score, all of which are among the two or three finest achievements of the year in their respective categories.
CHRIS FEIL: Greetings, friends and fellow mourners. I stand before you today, a widow of Widows. My body-length veil is a symbolic representation of my long suffering of the dismissive treatment of this film, and also a metaphoric representation of the depths of my anger. The candles we light in its honor represent the nominations we could have given it: the immaculate Viola Davis, the exacting Steve McQueen, Joe Walker's exhaustive editing, and lest we not forget: an original song by Sade. None of us deserved what Widows gave us, but especially not the ungrateful Academy. I know Olivia the Dog will agree with me when I say this, but Widows will never be dead to us - it will go on in repeated viewings, "what should have been" memorials, and of course, the ascension of Cynthia Erivo's film career.
SPENCER COILE: Suspiria, I should’ve known I was not living in a world as fantastical as your final 30 minutes if I thought for one second you’d actually be nominated for Makeup and Hairstyling. But never forget the body-contorting, leg snapping, maniacal good times we had together.
JASON ADAMS: I've seen a few horror movies in my day (that is, uh, an understatement) and Toni Collette's work as the grieving and conflicted Annie in Hereditary is the stuff we dream of every time we turn on another midnight howler. Every slashing and decapitation, every masked nightmare bumbling about a forest with co-eds on the brain, we wade through them all in hopes that somebody will bring their everything to the table - all their dedication and craft and humanity to tear open their insides and show us pain, real emotional devastation, real grief and confusion in a grieving and confusing and devastated world. Toni gave us myth, she gave us firelight on a cave's wall. It's a towering achievement, her terror-stricken face, just a single year in, is already iconic for an entire genre. Annie lives forever.
JORGE MOLINA: Whenever Toni Collette gets a Lifetime Achievement Award in the future, the "I am your mother!" scene in Hereditary will be the showcase focus. It will be remembered as a "Can you believe that wasn't nominated?" Oscar overlook. Let us also send thoughts and prayers to the Blunt-Krasinski household and all the bottles of wine they will go through this week. At least we will be happy Emily is slowy but surely starting to build an overdue narrative that will get her a statue eventually.
EUROCHEESE: RIP Toni Collette, whose twisted scream and ferocious tenacity was just another reminder that her surprise nomination almost two decades ago was such a blessing. For those of you who are sad for her loss, I can only imagine she'd ask that you stop wearing that fucking face on your face.
ERIC BLUME: Was it too much, too soon for Damien Chazelle? He followed his brilliant, Oscar-winning work on La La Land with the equally demanding First Man, which scored a few technical nods but not much else. Chazelle had one of the most difficult directing assignments of the year, which he nailed with beautiful subtlety and soaring panache, and his name should certainly have replaced Adam McKay's. And it's a true curiosity that Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Justin Hurwitz's score, and the film itself aren't among our nominees. No worries, though: time will be extraordinarily kind to First Man.
TIM BRAYTON: In a generally not-too-horrifying morning, the one sour note was Ethan Hawke failing to get in for his hushed, heavily interior performance as a turbulent priest in First Reformed. Given the film's Best Original Screenplay nod, we know that it was on the Academy's radar, but alas, this wonderfully subtle, haunting work was no match for fake teeth or a ludicrous Italian accent.
SEAN MCGOVERN: John. David. Washington. BlackKklansman scored some significant nominations and I'm absolutely thrilled about that. But while it's arguable that Adam Driver's role had more dramatic edge, the whole film hinges on JDW's ability to stay cool, be clever, deliver pithy dialogue and act a whole range of emotional beats. This is one thing about the Actor category that annoys me - with a few notable exceptions, young actors never receive their dues. Whereas over in Actress, it's so common to see a young, blonde (white) ingenue being coronated. We've seen a thankful shift in this recently, thank goodness. But year after year I find myself desperate to find the Best Actor category interesting.
WHO HAVE YOU BEEN MOURNING THESE PAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS?
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• 12 things we learned from the noms
• Adams vs Weisz, Round Two
• Best Picture Silliness
• Deep Cut Oscar Trivia
• Mourning the Snubs
• How to Stage the Original Song Performances
• Nomination Index (individual charts still being updated)
Reader Comments (56)
I could go on and on about actress, director, editing, etc. but for actor: First of all, Ethan Hawke and Ryan Gosling, as well as John David Washington, and those Sisters Brothers, John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. You Were Never Really Here for the Oscar. Don’t Worry, AMPAS, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Not with you. Not this year.
Surprised that Don't Wory, He Won't Get Far on Foot didn't have traction. Would seem an easy kind of sell.
@Me: "Nothing about the film reflects queerness in any overt or potentially (for those who are uncomfortable or resistant) assertive way." Did you not watch the last 10 minutes of We The Animals? The entire film has been a slow boil toward the revelation of a young boy's earliest awareness of his same-sex desire. I guess it WAS too subtle.
@San FranCinema; Does a character being gay make the movie very gay? That's my point.
And I'm pretty surprised that so many people who find the club scenes in Bohemian Rhapsody to be homophobic (too badly done to be anything) don't feel that way after the big scene in We the Animals.
Rest in Peace the (currently) mystery ninth and tenth Best Picture non-nominees. To A.M.P.A.S. - can we dump the Byzantine Best Picture nomination process that takes a mathematical Ph.D to interpret and simply go with a weighted scoring system (ten points for a first place placement, nine for a second place, et cetera), add them up, and give nominations to the top ten point scores?
Colette.
Phoenix.
McKenzie.
Sakura Ando in Shoplifters.
Zain al Rafeea in Capernaum (stunning, stunning work)
Widows.