Beauty and the Brain: Barbie Boxes with Oppenheimer in the Oscar Heavyweight Ring
Overture, Curtains, Lights! This is it! The Night of Nights ! They’ll hit the heights. And OHHHH what heights they’ll hit!!! On with the Oscar Show…. This is it!!!! The 96th annual Academy Awards is tonight, with an hour earlier start at 7pm, hosted by the droll comedic quipper Kimmy Kimmel.
The filmmaking quest for Best Everything this year comes down to the never-ending mano-a-womano of the haves and have nots, Mr. BMOC versus MSery, the quintessential battle of the sexes: Blond bombshell with long legs and brains tries to defeat the daddy of the Atomic Age. Oppenheimer vs. Barbie.
Oscar contention takes on the perennial patriarchy of Hollywood with Oppenheimer poised to sweep the major and minor categories while not- to-be-counted-out Barbara Millicent Roberts (Barbie) comes back fighting. It’s impossible to be beautiful AND smart AND personable.
Especially if you’re plastic – or merely judged to be so. Right?
Oppenheimer is a great achievement in film. No argument there. But hasn’t Oscar awarded enough gold to such historic warmongering biopics? This reviewer personally prefers Dunkirk, which truly ought to have won Best Picture in 2018 over the somewhat frivolously esoteric The Shape of Water.
So……. a film about a pescatarian love affair between a meek, mute woman and the swamp monster stunt double from The Creature from the Black Lagoon may end up more esteemed than the metaphorical manifesto of contemporary feminist outcry? Does Barbie stand a chance to upstage Oppenheimer come the Best Picture big reveal. Stranger things have happened.
Not likely. Oppenheimer will likely walk away with at least eight Oscars later tonight: Best Picture, Beat Director, Best Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Original Score, and some technical Oscars awarded before the really big show. Oppie has got a shot at Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Makeup and Hair. But my bet and vote goes to Cord Jefferson for American Fiction and Kazu Hiro for Maestro. That nose! That wonderful, glorious nose!!!
Why watch? Hollywood is all about making the impossible possible, including the impossible dream. In matters other than Barbiella, will Lily Gladstone tie Emma Stone for Best Actress? Katherine Hepburn split the Oscar with Barbara Streisand in 1969. This century Coda, the little film that could (reviewed by At Z MovieZ September, 2022), upstaged heavyweight contenders Dune, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story for Best Picture.
As much as I would love to see Lily Gladstone triumph as the first Native American to win a Best Actor Oscar (other than Wes Studi who received an honorary Oscar in 2019), my vote goes to the performance of five-time Oscar nominee Anette Bening as Diane Nyad. Anette has lost the Best Actress Oscar four times, twice to Hillary Swank. Two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Jody Foster’s Best Supporting Actress performance in Nyad also rises above the other nominees. But Jody has won – twice already- and most votes will go toward RAISING (representation and inclusion standards) Oscar.
Wouldn’t it be exciting to see the The Holdovers go home with an Oscar handed to Paul Giamatti? Wasn’t Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer mostly being Cillian Murphy? Robert Downey, Jr. is an amazingly gifted actor. But the part of Louis Strauss as the foil to Robert Oppenheimer wasn’t exactly the stuff that Best Supporting Actor Oscar’s are made of – think Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now or Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke, Mahershala Ali in Moonlight and Greenbook ( although that really should have been a Best Actor nom.), and Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Wouldn’t it tickle us pink if Ryan Gosling took home the Best Supporting Ken Oscar to Barbie’s dream house? Of course, to paraphrase Newt from James Cameron’s Aliens…. Ken and Barbie can’t have dreams because they’re just a piece of plastic.
Perchance to dream…..
See you at the Oscar’s!
