Forget The Oscars. Here's My Own Awards for 2023 -- Best Action Scene, Wildest Premise, Most Iconic Moment
#262: Alternative Awards show, TV shows I'm watching
Edition 262:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: I invent my own awards to hand out for 2023’s movies. Then a quick rundown of all the TV shows I’m checking out. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Kevin Costner’s epic gamble that he’s still America’s preeminent cowboy.
An Alternative Awards Show
With the Oscars only a week away, this is the time when I usually go awards crazy in this newsletter. This year, I admit I’m a little less excited because it feels like most of the major awards are a foregone conclusion. I can summarize my predictions ballot in one word: Oppenheimer.
The only major category with any drama remaining is Best Actress, which is running at a dead heat between Emma Stone for Poor Things and Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon. If it were me, I’d give the edge to Gladstone, but that’s the one moment of tension for the night.
The truth is, the Academy’s set of categories is lacking any sort of fun or personality anyways. So I figured, to use some of this awards energy I feel every year around this time, why not come up with my own alternative awards show?
The categories are a mix of serious and absurd, and the picks are defiantly subjective. It goes without saying, but this is all my opinion.
So without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Funniest Movie:
Funniest Performer of the Year: Marshawn Lynch, Bottoms
The Bob Barker Memorial Award for Best Action Scene
Nominees: Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon; Sacré Coeur stairs fight, John Wick 4; “No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn” attack, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3; the Spider-Man multiverse fight, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
WINNER: The Spider-Man multiverse fight, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
This scene, in what was my favorite movie of the year, is one of the most incredible animation sequences in movie history. I don’t just mean that technically, though it looks amazing. The way it uses action to convey character, not just for our hero and our villain but thousands of other Spider-Men, was storytelling of the highest order. And despite the chaos, it’s incredibly coherent what’s going on the whole time. What an achievement.
The Velocipastor Award for Most Insane Movie Premise
Nominees: Cocaine Bear, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, M3GAN, Shotgun Wedding, Your Place Or Mine
WINNER: Cocaine Bear
I mean, the entire appeal is right there in the title. A bear…does cocaine, then starts massacring people. It was insane enough a great two-minute trailer, but didn’t have the legs to sustain a two-hour movie.
The Coach Award for Funniest Movie Performance
Nominees: Jamie Foxx, They Cloned Tyrone; Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings; Marshawn Lynch, Bottoms; Nick Offerman, Dumb Money; Ryan Gosling, Barbie
WINNER: Marshawn Lynch, Bottoms
No competition in this category, as every single second Marshawn is on screen is audible laughter for every audience member with a pulse. I’ve said this in other contexts, but basically every time you put a camera in front of him, he’s pure gold.
The Star Is Born Award for Best Trailer
Nominees: Barbie, Cocaine Bear, The Creator, Killers Of The Flower Moon, Napoleon
Winner: Killers Of The Flower Moon
For several months, I saw this trailer rolled out before every movie I went to and even 20+ times later, it still got me hyped. The music is amazing, the visuals, the quotes…when Robert De Niro says “Expecting a miracle to make this all go away? You know they don’t happen anymore” followed by the drum hit…**chef’s kiss** no notes.
The Michael Cera Award for Best Scene Stealing Performance
Nominees: Glenn Howerton, Blackberry; Jamie Foxx, They Cloned Tyrone; Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
WINNER: Glenn Howerton, Blackberry
Howerton’s bombastic, unhinged Jim Balsillie dials up the best parts of his “Always Sunny” character without ever breaking the dramatic tension of what was one of the most underrated movies of the year. If there were an award for best quote, it would undoubtedly go to, “I’m from Waterloo, where the vampires hang out!!”
The Fire Your Agent Award for Most Underutilized Talent
Nominees: Brian Tyree-Henry, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse; Emily Blunt, Pain Hustlers; Florence Pugh, Oppenheimer; Idris Elba, Extraction 2; Lily James, The Iron Claw
Winner: Florence Pugh, Oppenheimer
No agent is going to get fired for putting their client in one of the biggest hits of the year, but I just want more for Flo, who a few years ago upstaged Scar-Jo in her own superhero movie, gave a killer speech in Little Women and looked like a movie-leading star going forward. Instead, she’s flopping around naked on top of Oppenheimer in that one deposition scene from the movie that most people are going to skip past in a rewatch.
The ‘What’s In The Box?’ Award for Most Iconic Movie Moment
Nominees: Trinity Test, Oppenheimer; the final goodbye, Past Lives; the virginity scene, Beau Is Afraid; conducting Mahler’s Second, Maestro; the bombing, How To Blow Up A Pipeline
WINNER: Trinity test, Oppenheimer
Powerhouse category. Personally, my favorite movie moment of the year was the ending of Past Lives, but if we’re talking about movie moments that will be widely talked about years from now, there’s no contest. The whole movie builds to the grandeur of this moment, and Christopher Nolan’s execution of it somehow lives up to the hype.
The Hepburn Award for Best Movie Star Performance
Nominees: Emma Stone, Poor Things; Glenn Powell, Anyone But You; Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings; Michael Fassbender, The Killer; Adam Driver, Ferrari
WINNER: Adam Driver, Ferrari
Being a great movie star is a different thing than being a great actor, but Driver’s portrayal of Enzo Ferrari is the rare case of being both. His magnetism and physical presence dominates every frame of the movie, and going forward make me think he could do anything.
The Glass Award for Worst Movie of the Year
Nominees: Boston Strangler, Candy Cane Lane, Gran Turismo, Totally Killer
WINNER: Gran Turismo
A corporate promotional video thinly disguised as a sports movie, this project represents everything that is wrong with movies today. The plot is a ripoff of Top Gun, and the CGI is so bad I almost think the actual videogame’s graphics would’ve been better.
TV Show Round-Up
It’s been all quiet on the theatrical front since the start of the new year (until Dune 2 this week, of course), and a whole wave of new television shows are vying for water cooler status. Here’s what I’ve been watching:
True Detective: Night Country (Max): I’m not sure how many times I can be Charlie Brown’d with the football by this show, which every season poses really interesting and provocative questions in its opening episodes and then fails to satisfyingly answer them in the home stretch. Never has a show been more aided by supplementary material, as most of the enjoyment of watching it week to week was going through the speculation and internet sleuthing that was done between episodes. Jodie Foster was great though.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Amazon Prime): Still probably my favorite show of the year so far, even if later episodes couldn’t quite reach the heights of that amazing pilot episode. The world of this show was so fully realized, and yet Donald Glover and his collaborators didn’t widen out their scope too much, instead focusing their full attention on Glover and Maya Erskine’s fantastic protagonists.
Tokyo Vice S2 (Max): I mentioned this one last week, but through two episodes I’m enjoying this second season easily as much as the first. A cops (and journalists) vs. robbers story set in modern(ish) day Japan with the Yakuza. It’s an on-screen world I always want to return to.
Shōgun (Hulu): It’s quite obvious what the ambition was for this show — it’s Japanese “Game of Thrones.” Following up one of the biggest shows of all time a lot to ask (it turns out, too much to ask of “House of the Dragon”), but surprisingly this show seems up to the task. The scale is epic, and each faction of characters gives you something to cling on to. If folks can climb over that “one inch barrier” of subtitles — most of the show is in Japanese — they may just find their next TV obsession.
Curb Your Enthsiasm S12 (Max): Before you ask, no, you don’t have to have seen any of the previous seasons to jump into the madness. After all, the show follows Larry David, who is famous for creating “the show about nothing” (Seinfeld). But this is the final few episodes, so I’m savoring the hijinx because the really are as funny as ever.
Sunderland ‘Till I Die S3 (Netflix): Simply the best of all Netflix’s sport docuseries, following an English football club’s struggles. Go back and watch all three seasons, you won’t be disappointed.
Trailer Watch: Horizon: An American Saga
Kevin Costner is never afraid of big swings. He’s apparently self-financing not one but TWO epic westerns that will come out this summer, with some whispers saying he’s put in as much as $20 million of his own money. From the trailer it’s obvious how grand and indulgent the movie hopes to be. If he pulls it off, it’s like Top Gun: Maverick all over again, an earnest no-nonsense smash hit. If it flops, it’s one of the biggest disasters in movie history. From this trailer, I can’t tell which side I’m leaning toward?