Tag: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Oscar Predictions: The People’s Joker

Batman’s most notable nemesis certainly has an Oscar history. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 sequel The Dark Knight won him a posthumous Supporting Actor statue. Eleven years later, Joaquin Phoenix took the lead Actor prize as the title character in the Todd Phillips treatment of the demented clown. The other famous cinematic Jokers are also Academy recipients: Jack Nicholson (three times for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Terms of Endearment, As Good as It Gets) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club).

No, Vera Drew is not going to follow suit. However, The People’s Joker is drawing raves from many critics. A parody of superhero pics and an exploration of transgender issues, this Joker has had a fascinating and bumpy ride to the silver screen. Unveiled at the Toronto Film Festival in 2022, the film was shelved due to trademark and character rights complications.

A year and a half later, Drew’s crowd-funded concoction is out in limited fashion domestically. She stars, directs, and cowrites with a supporting cast of unknowns and familiar faces. They include Lynn Downey, Kane Distler, David Liebe Hart, Phil Braun, Maria Bamford, Christian Calloway, Tim Heidecker, Scott Aukerman, Bob Odenkirk, and Robert Wuhl (who was reporter Alexander Knox in Tim Burton’s first Batman).

Reviews are praising the filmmaker’s use of the 21st century’s preeminent genre to document her own transformation. The Rotten Tomatoes score is 96%. This doesn’t seem like something the Academy would honor, but the Indie Spirits could be another story and perhaps even DGA could put Drew in their First-Time Director race. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

2016 Golden Globes Reaction

To borrow a phrase that will surely be used many times over this evening and tomorrow, the Hollywood Foreign Press went ga ga for La La Land at the Golden Globes and made some history in the meantime. The Damien Chazelle musical won 7 trophies and was victorious in every category it was nominated for: Picture (Musical/Comedy), Director (Chazelle), Screenplay (Chazelle), Actor in Musical/Comedy (Ryan Gosling), Actress in Musical/Comedy (Emma Stone), Score, and Original Song (“City of Stars”). And ladies and gents – that’s a record number of wins in Globes history, topping the six received by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Midnight Express.

The biggest shocker of the night happened right away when Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s work in Nocturnal Animals took Supporting Actor. It was a big surprise when he was nominated and far more so that he won. There’s a pretty decent possibility he could be the extremely rare GG winner to not receive an Oscar nod (though he certainly just upped his chances).

Overall – this blogger went 9 for 14 in his picks. The La La Express was responsible for a couple of those misses. I predicted Hugh Grant in Florence Foster Jenkins over Gosling and Moonlight over La La for screenplay.

A slightly less surprising miss – Isabelle Huppert in Elle taking Best Actress (Drama). I predicted Natalie Portman in Jackie. Elle also took Foreign Language Film over my pick Toni Erdmann, yet that wasn’t totally unexpected.

So… what does this all mean for the big dog, the Academy Awards? Well, La La Land is unquestionably the favorite with the runner-up being Moonlight, which I correctly predicted for Best Drama.

In acting races, Best Actor (Drama) recipient Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea maintains an edge over Denzel Washington for Fences. Emma Stone is beginning to look more solid by the day for Actress. Supporting Actor is more of a question mark to be sure, though Mahershala Ali in Moonlight is what we’ll call a soft front runner. I correctly predicted Viola Davis for Supporting Actress in Fences and she remains the Academy fave.

Animated Feature went to Disney’s Zootopia and it holds as the mostly likely Oscar winner.

As for the show itself, it felt a little long and rushed at the same time. Steve Carell and Kristin Wiig provided the biggest laughs while host Jimmy Fallon was moderately successful in the short time he was given (he did seem to disappear pretty quickly).

That’s my recap, folks! Updated Oscar predictions coming Thursday…