Big Picture Big Sound

Oscar announced his nominees and while he always throws out some surprises and often makes questionable choices, this year he has outdone himself, especially in the Best Picture category.

The nominees are American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Her. It's not a bad group, but most fall far short of Oscar-worthy. A few have fallen wayyyyyyy short.

Let's do a quick examination of the nominees and break them into two distinct groups. The first group is solid:

"Dallas Buyers Club" probably comes closest to being the complete viewing experience. There are no visible holes. The acting, directing, and story are all first-rate.

"Nebraska" is an acting extravaganza, with two performances that could possibly bring home the statue, but its detractors view it as too slow, with not enough action. I disagree with them.

"Philomena", like "Dallas Buyers Club", is based on a true story. It also features great performances, especially by Judi Dench. My only minor complaint with it is that I found some of Dench's character's behavior to be a tad unbelievable, but apparently it follows the truth pretty closely.

Rounding out the first group is "The Wolf of Wall Street", yet another based-in-truth entry. Scorsese does his usual great job even though this feels a bit like a rip-off of his own "Goodfellas", at least stylistically. It is also unbearably long.

Now let's take a look at the second group of nominees, a far weaker bunch:

The nomination of "Her" is a bit of a mystery to me. Yes, it is artsy and nice-looking and the idea is clever, but who cares? It is a supposedly profound view of relationships, the future, or both. In reality, it might have been a nice twenty minute ditty, but as a feature it is not award-worthy.

"Captain Phillips" is the Tom Hanks entry and it was done far better last year when it was titled A Hijacking.

"Gravity" is gorgeous to look at. So what? Aside from that, it appears to be similar to "Her" in that it is supposedly laced with deep messages and meanings. How wonderful. "Gravity" is weightless.

"12 Years a Slave" could have been so much better, but by trying to impress upon us just how brutal slavery was by subjecting us to beating after beating, it instead turned our shudders into sighs of here we go again. Going in for close-ups of shredding flesh made it feel more like a snuff film.

Lastly, and it deserves to be mentioned last, is the incredibly overrated "American Hustle". Yeah, it features some awesome acting, but its utter lack of drama or comedy makes one wonder exactly what it is. I would have preferred to watch an acting class with talented actors. The most amusing part was Christian Bale's toupee, but a funny toupee does not a great film make.

Anyone who believes that any of this second group is better than Blue Jasmine is acting on an agenda, not on judging the relative merits of the films of 2013.