By Ken Stokes<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note:<\/i><\/b> Ken Stokes is an Idaho-based writer I\u2019ve had the pleasure of getting to know over the past few years. After we viewed the live-action shorts nominated for this year\u2019s Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awards (aka the Oscars), Ken opined to me on a major player in the Fourth Estate\u2014the filmmaking industry. What follows is Ken\u2019s advice on how to win your Oscars pool.<\/i><\/p>\n
We all have a lot on our minds these days, what with COVID-19 variants, domestic terrorism, mass shootings, infrastructure debates, yada, yada, yada. But for the so-called legitimate and popular press and some denizens and part-time residents of our own Valley, another hot topic of debate is emerging: On Sunday, April 25th, who will win the Academy Award for the Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture for 2020? Pundits swear there\u2019s never been a tighter race in Oscars history, the principal reason being that never before have the prognosticating awards (Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, American Society of So Who Gives a ****, etc.) been so evenly split between the contenders. As I\u2019m assuming most of you missed their performances, and even fewer know who\u2019s nominated in this or any category, here\u2019s the list and how the women; I mean, how the women\u2019s performances, will no doubt be judged (wink, wink):<\/p>\n
All pretty dazzling performances. So how\u2019s an Academy member to choose? I can answer this as a person who, in the past, was asked by an Academy\u00a0 <\/span>member to fill out his ballot. \u201cYou know more about this crap than I do,\u201d my marginally-famous but presently nameless friend said. Yes, that happens\u2014more than the Academy likes to think or admit. If you want to win this year\u2019s Oscars pool, here\u2019s your convoluted decision-making process:<\/span><\/p>\n First off, and in the wake of years of \u201cOscars So White\u201d and the Academy\u2019s desperate and Johnny-come-lately attempt to bring diversity to Old White Rapist Land, we knock out the White American Actress\u2014McDormand\u2014whose subtle, radiant performance is the heart and soul of the so-called shoe-in for Best Picture, \u201cNomadland.\u201d Take out her screen time and all you\u2019re left with is a commercial for the National Geographic Channel. Don\u2019t cry for Franny just yet. She already has two Best Actress Oscars and was a producer on the film, so she\u2019s almost assured a statue for Best Picture, which will bring her household total of Little Gold Men (remember she\u2019s married to writer-director-producer Joel Coen; you know, \u201cFargo,\u201d \u201cNo Country for Old Men\u201d) to seven. No single household needs eight Golden Doorstops.<\/p>\n On the other side of the spectrum, so to speak (sorry, that sounds awful), are Day and Davis, both playing seminal blues artists (Thank God they weren\u2019t playing maids. Again.). That\u2019ll spilt the diversity vote down the middle. Moreover, Davis won an Oscar, albeit for Best Supporting Actress, for her performance in the film adaptation of August Wilson\u2019s \u201cFences\u201d just four years ago. Ma Rainey\u2019s is another Wilson adaptation. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again.<\/p>\n Which leaves us with two white Brits. Nothing melts the heart of an Academy member quite like a Brit nailing an American accent. Kirby, who broke out as the boozy Princess Margaret in Seasons One and Two of \u201cThe Crown,\u201d hasn\u2019t much traction in this race, and honestly, didn\u2019t we all really prefer Helena Bohnam-Carter\u2019s performance of the same character in The Crown\u2019s third season (There was a young lady from Dallas … oh, Google it).<\/p>\n And that brings us to a corset-free Mulligan (watch \u201cSNL\u201d 4\/10\/21 if you miss the breath-restricting device) in a Me-Too manifesto portraying an obsessed woman avenging the rape-suicide of her best friend. Her performance covers so much range and has such frequent tonal adjustments that she comes off as a chameleon doing cartwheels at Sherwin-Williams. Like McDormand, she is the movie. Cut out her screen time and you\u2019re left with the creepiest Judd Apatow movie imaginable. She led the pack early on but now it\u2019s neck-and-neck to the wire.<\/p>\n So who\u2019ll win? That would be any person who has endured years of endless prattle by sportswriters, sportscasters, pundits, fans, Monday-morning quarterbacks, weekend warriors and wannabes debating the finer points of each and every sports playoff ever broadcast. Sportsaholics, this is just a taste of what you sound like. So be considerate next time, OK? Not everyone is quite as enthused as you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ken Stokes Editor\u2019s Note: Ken Stokes is an Idaho-based writer I\u2019ve had the pleasure of getting to know over the past few years. After we viewed the live-action shorts nominated for this year\u2019s Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awards (aka the Oscars), Ken opined to me on a major player in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15882,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15879\/revisions\/15882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}