Now that it’s fairly clear that the Academy awards are purely a business deal, let’s talk about some real year-end recognitions now. Instead of churning out a generic should-would-wish-dark horse list for the Oscars, I would like to present my own token of appreciation to films of (strictly) 2009 that impressed me with some or all of their facets. Of course, I haven’t seen as many films from last year as I would have liked to, but I would like to think that I have missed only about a dozen should-have-seen films (Visage, Around A Small Mountain, In Comparison, Enter the Void, My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done, Ruhr, Wild Grass, Kinatay, White Material and About Elly being some of them). Furthermore, I’d like to propose a handful of changes to the usual (read: Academy’s) categories of awards:
- No Supporting Actor categories: A category that’s very dubious. It’s been long since popular films have eschewed the one male protagonist-one female protagonist template. And then, who’s to decide who is supporting whom?
- No separate category for Male Actors and Female Actors: What’s the argument here? That a woman brings a separate sensibility to the character and that they can’t be compared head to head? In that case, we should have such classification in every other category too. Since that’s absurd, we’ll just have one all-encompassing category: Best Actor.
- No separate category for Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay: Is adapting a screenplay from a book or a play easier than writing a original one? Or are we looking at how the film captures the spirit of the book? What are we honoring anyway? Ditch that. Only one: Best Screenplay.
- No separate categories for Make-Up, Costume Design and Art Direction: I fail to understand how these three can have independent existence. And it seems to me that the first two are a hangover from the star-studded studio era. Again, we’ll be having only one: Best Production Design.
- No categories for Special Effects and Original Song: Superfluous.
- No separate category for Animation films: The medium is a mere directorial choice. Why condescend?
- No separate category for Documentary films: Having watched a few Herzog films, I realize that there is no boundary between fiction and documentary and that, in cinema, every fiction is a documentary and every documentary is a work of fiction, in a way,
- No category for Foreign Language films: “Foreign” to whom?
- A separate category for Casting: A largely ignored facet of production and an integral part of the filmmaker’s vision, Actor casting is yet to get its due recognition.
- A special “For the Love of Cinema” category: A film buff’s desire and invention, these are for films that just love what they are doing and where they come from.
- Three tiers for each award – denoted by the shorthand Gold, Silver and Bronze – for the Winner, Runner-up ad Second Runner-up. There may be ties within each tier which means that I just wasn’t able to select one over the other.
Without further ado, I present The Seventh Art Awards (!) for 2009:
Best Film
Gold: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
Silver: The Maid (Sebastián Silva)
Bronze: Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
Best Director
Gold: Manoel de Oliveira (Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl)
Silver: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Bronze: Claudia Llosa (The Milk of Sorrow)
Best Actor
Gold: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Silver: Hye-ja Kim (Mother)
Bronze: Steve Evets (Looking for Eric)
Best Casting
Gold: Lars von Trier & co. (Antichrist)
Silver: Quentin Tarantino & co. (Inglourious Basterds)
Bronze: Jim Jarmusch & co. (The Limits of Control)
Best Screenplay
Gold: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Silver: Juan José Campanella, Eduardo Sacheri (The Secret in Their Eyes)
Bronze: Marco Bellocchio, Daniela Ceselli (Vincere) (tied with) Francis Ford Coppola (Tetro)
Best Cinematography
Gold: Mihai Malaimare Jr. (Tetro)
Silver: Christian Berger (The White Ribbon)
Bronze: Binod Pradhan (Delhi 6) (tied with) Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds)
Best Editing
Gold: Jay Rabinowitz (The Limits of Control)
Silver: Sally Menke (Inglourious Basterds)
Bronze: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (A Serious Man)
Best Production Design
Gold: Eugenio Caballero (The Limits of Control)
Silver: Christian Marti (Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl)
Bronze: David Gropman (Taking Woodstock)
Best Sound Design and Mixing
Gold: Liam Egan (Samson and Delilah)
Silver: Sin Cohen, Colin Guthrie, Walter Murch, Pete Horner (Tetro)
Bronze: Paul N.J. Ottosson, Ray Beckett, Jeffrey J. Haboush (The Hurt Locker)
Best Sound Editing
Gold: Federico Esquerro, Francisco Pedemonte, Leandro de Loredo, Juan Ferro (Tetro)
Silver: Stephane Rabeau, Francis Wargnier, Caroline Reynaud, Cyrille Richard (A Prophet)
Bronze: Guray Gursel, Mustafa Durma, Danton Tanimura, Sacha Walker, Burak Topalakci (The Breath)
Best Musical Score
Gold: Osvaldo Golijov (Tetro)
Silver: Various (Inglourious Basterds)
Bronze: Alexandre Desplat (Fantastic Mr. Fox)
“For the Love of Cinema” Award
Gold: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
Silver: Vengeance (Johnnie To)
Bronze: Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola)
So what are your picks of 2009?
The Seventh Art 
February 28, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Just one protest: I think that male and female categories should be separate, because we react very differently to male and female acting. For example, if I tried to put in a general ‘Best Acting’ category, it would be all females, or males would be there simply because I felt the need to be ‘fair’.
That’s because acting has two components: involving power and portrayal. It’s the first that we react very differently to.
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I meant that the two parts of acting were ‘involving power’ and ‘portrayal’, not that the two two parts of acting involved power and portrayal.
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Touche. But what is the actor but a mere ink for writing the director’s/writer’s statement? If you should see the difference between blue ink and red ink, you should inevitably see the difference between the grammars, the meanings and the styles..
I guess, even with male/female directors, you react differently. It just isn’t as apparent.
Cheers!
LikeLike
March 2, 2010 at 10:11 am
To be honest, I don’t really see how my reactions to a male v/s a female director would be particularly different. For example, Across he Universe. I loved it when I watched it, then found out it was directed by Julie Taymor, but my reaction was exactly the same as on previous viewings.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m rejecting your idea of different reactions to different gendered directors; just that I’m somewhat skeptical.
All that, however, is beside my basic point. The thing about acting is that the two reactions are completely different. There is only a modicum of similarity, where for every other role, there is a modicum of difference. Why? Because we’re not being asked to relate to the director, just the actors in front of me.
(As you can imagine, I also hate the discarding of the word ‘actress’; I’m fine with ‘actor’ being used like ‘he’ unisexually, but I think the women merit a word).
Lower in the thread, you bring up the much more relevant (in my eyes) point of our reactions to actors in different genres.
Here, you have a good point, but I would consider the actor/actress division slightly more important than this because of the difference between different reactions to actors and different reaction to characters.
LikeLike
March 2, 2010 at 10:26 am
Yes, I see your point. Fair. But when you say you “relate” to a character, aren’t you, in fact, relating to the character’s world view, sensibilities and emotional responses, which are, in turn, the director’s and the writer’s? Of course, the difference is not as manifest as the actor-actress split, but this difference, IMO, doesn’t justify separate evaluation criteria for actors and actresses.
LikeLike
March 2, 2010 at 10:37 am
Interesting way of putting it. You’re making sense, but I’ll have to mull it over in my head to be sure I agree with you.
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Amazing suggestions there regarding reorganizing &/or modifying award categories. Indeed, if actors are to be categorized based on gender, logically so should every other category.
But I do also agree to some extent to what Ronak mentioned above. I think we do react differently more towards male & female actors, and not as much to male & female directors for the simple reason that actors are there in front of the camera.
Further, I feel that separate categories need to exist for lead actor & supporting actor. I think it would be unfair for a guy who, say, has 20 or 30 minutes of screen presence with someone who has 90 or 100 minutes of screen presence. Don’t you think so?
Nonetheless, great ideas there for sure!!!
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Well, Screentime is another parameter I don’t believe in. In a film that runs for over 3 hours, even the supporting actor gets a huge screen time. It’s a mere luxury or a necessity of a script.
Yes, Anthony Hopkins won the Lead Actor award for his twenty odd minutes.
Also about the reaction to actors. I would like to think that, in that case, our reactions are pre-conditioned, to an extent, by every thing else – gender, genre, mise en scene etc.
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Original screenplay is original screenplay. It deserves a separate category.
It could be clubbed with adapted screenplay considering that the dialogues are invented. But how do you decide between a film with an adapted screenplay and an ‘original’ film. What about the factors of story and character invention. Plus the book may have references to music and art; an original film has to invent all this.
LikeLike
February 28, 2010 at 11:24 pm
You do agree that writing for the screen – original or adapted – is an art by itself? One has to decide and align every facet of the script towards the vision of the film. The final script is a final script. I don’t see a point in making the distinction between the various possible sources of the final script. It’s like saying:”This screenplay is just adapted. But this is so original. So it’s greater.”. Plus, why should using the references from the book be considered inferior?. Of course, the author of the source has to be credited no doubt. But I don’t see why there should be classism within two equally profound scripts.
Cheers!
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 7:38 am
This is a terrific post JAFB, and I got a good laugh reading that first section with all those dismissals. But alas, you do make some good points, though the differentiation between lead and supporting performances is a vital concern. Sometimes the actual time overlap is frustrating.
In any case I am intrigued with your strong support for TETRO and THE LIMITS OF CONTROL, though I’ve long known your understandable affinity for INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.
I’ll give it a go with some of these:
Best Film:
Gold- Bright Star (Jane Campion)
Silver – Avatar (James cameron)
Bronze – 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
Best Director:
Gold- Jane Campion (Bright Star)
Silver – Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum)
Bronze – Tom Ford (A Single Man)
Best Actor:
Gold: Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Silver: Michael Stulbarg (A Serious Man)
Bronze: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Best Actress:
Gold: Abbie Cornish (Bright Star)
Silver: Yolande Moreau (Seraphine)
Bronze: Catalina Saavedra (The Maid)
Best Screenplay:
Gold: Bright Star
Silver: A Serious Man
Bronze: Police Adjective
Best Cinematography:
Gold: Christian Berger (White Ribbon)
Silver: Mauro Fiore (Avatar)
Bronze: Eric Gautier (Summer Hours)
Best Musical Score:
Gold: Abel Korzeniowski (A Single Man)
Silver: Michael Giacchino (Up)
Bronze: Sergei Yevtushenko(The Last Station)
Needless to say, your own work here in every sense is superlative, as expected.
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 10:31 am
Ah, Sam. What an eclectic list. Couldn’t have come from anyone else. I haven’t seen A Single man, which seems to have dominated your list. And Cornish was my 4th pick for best Actor. She was a natural.
And if I were to consider 35 Shots of Rum as a 2009 film, it’ll get my Gold for best film, best director and at least Silver for best score and best actor. Remarkable film.
And the production design of Bright Star was a strong contender too.
Thanks for this great list. Cheers!
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 9:52 am
[…] Just Another Film Buff takes a break from his scholarly essays and presents an equally tasteful presentation of his own best films and performers in a mock-up of the Oscars. it’s a great post!: https://theseventhart.info/2010/02/28/awards/ […]
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 6:18 pm
An excellent post, as usual, and you mention some more than excellent films – THE LIMITS OF CONTROL is one of the best of that year. And the ‘No category for Foreign Language films’ is a sly point well made. I still can’t give INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS any points though. Maybe I should watch it again, I just found it rather boring – and I was so looking forward to seeing it too!
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Oh Sean, You should definitely give it a second try. I think you’ll like it. And cheers for the point about TLOC.
Thanks mate!
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 7:47 pm
JAFB, funny, clever and well written.
I have so many issues with the Oscars (esp. regarding American Bias) that I generally ignore them.
In fact I am as dismayed by them as I am by your continued praise for Limits of Control and Inglourious Basterds. These are clearly objectively bad films that must be placed on a banned index forthwith! My Gold would go to Antichrist.
I have never heard of ‘Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl’, so I must try and track that down.
LikeLike
March 1, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Stephen! Basterds on banned list? Let’s not be so croool to the Germans, man!
Disagreements aside. I am with you on Antichrist. I’m not sure why Dod Mantle’s work missed a spot on my list.
Do check out Oliveira’s film. It’s a gem.
Cheers!
LikeLike
March 2, 2010 at 6:05 am
I am surprised that The Hurt Locker and Tetro did not score anything on your Best Picture or Director choices. I guess I gotta see the Oliviera film. Also, for the musical score, I liked Sherlock Holmes and Up. And my inner geek would love to give an award to District 9!
LikeLike
March 2, 2010 at 9:10 am
Rocketboy.
I loved Tetro. It’s probably 4th or 5th on my best director list and 7 on my favorite films list. I have some minor gripes with The Hurt Locker. Loved the score of UP too…
Cheers!
LikeLike
March 18, 2010 at 9:08 am
Been a while since I visited your blog.
Good article. I completely agree on the casting and supporting actor part.
LikeLike
March 18, 2010 at 9:12 am
Thank you, Sureshwar. Good to have you back!
LikeLike
March 19, 2010 at 8:34 am
I would love to see your non-cinema blog updated!
LikeLike
March 19, 2010 at 9:31 am
Abandoned!
LikeLike
March 21, 2010 at 11:09 am
totally unfair! the blogworld has lost a good humorist (is that even a word?)!
LikeLike
March 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
LOL. I cringe now at what I thought was funny…
LikeLike