by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
It’s awards season! The most wonderful movie time of the year! Here I am already loving films like Conclave and Anora, we’ve got the release of big awards blockbusters in Gladiator II and Wicked, and then there’s still more to come on the horizon… Hot damn, it’s fun to be a movie lover. But let’s not get too distracted by all the goodness being released in theaters all around us, because we’ve got to dive into what’s come before. As a reminder, with Oscars: What If…, we look at categories the Academy Awards should be honoring, but for one reason or another, they aren’t. So we’re going to imagine what could’ve been regarding past Oscar seasons. Hopefully someday the Academy will do right by these creative talents, but until then we must do the Academy’s job for them. Let’s look back at the year Pluto was unceremoniously demoted from being a planet, the Nintendo Wii hit shelves, the Apple MacBook was released, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, and Julian Assange launched WikiLeaks. It is time to examine the films of 2006, celebrated at the Oscars in 2007. Let’s see what could have been!
Best Stunts and Choreography
Given to the best achievement in dance, stunts, related performances, and overall choreography.
And the nominees are… Casino Royale, Children of Men, High School Musical, Mission: Impossible III, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
And the winner is… Casino Royale!
I really wanted to give this to Children of Men for the spectacular oners throughout this movie that required crazy levels of coordination and big stunts, but then I remembered Casino Royale opens with a nearly 10-minute parkour chase that even has a sequence of people jumping from different scaffolding cranes hundreds of feet in the air. Yeah, Casino Royale is insane. From falling down stairwell shafts multiple stories, to massive firefights in sinking buildings where people get trapped underwater, to giant car chases over airport runways with gasoline trucks, this movie rips. It’s accomplishing so much scene to scene that you almost can’t process all the incredible stunt work you’re seeing. In fact, the stunt gurus even set a world record with this flick by flipping an Aston Martin DBS at the end of a car chase and rolling it seven times. Seven times! This record was recently broken earlier this year, as The Fall Guy rolled a car eight and a half times, but we’ll talk about that movie down the road. For now, I’m more than thrilled to award Casino Royale with the Oscar for Best Stunts and Choreography. It absolutely deserves it.
Best Performance by Voiceover or Motion Capture
Given to the best off screen voice performance, or on screen motion captured performance.
And the nominees are… Megumi Hayashibara as Paprika/Atsuko Chiba in Paprika, Paul Newman as Doc Hudson in Cars, Bill Nighy as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel in Stranger than Fiction., Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen in Cars
And the winner is… Bill Nighy as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest!
This would probably be a lot closer if Doug Jones’s Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth was a motion capture performance, but due to Guillermo del Toro being a practical effects genius, Jones was in the world’s greatest makeup suite. So we are left with a far easier decision to make, because Bill Nighy wipes the floor of the competition here. As Davy Jones, his physical mannerisms, mixed with his unique vocal performance, makes for one of the most distinct blockbuster characters we’ve ever seen. He’s smarmy, sinister, charismatic, and surprisingly emotionally vulnerable. At key moments in the story, Nighy really gets to flex his muscles and put on a show, while also tapping into a relatable tale of heartbreak that all audiences know all too well. So finally getting to take a break from Andy Serkis, who we’ve been seeing win this category through most of the decade already, I’m happy to gild Nighy with this Oscar.
Best Performance by an Ensemble Cast
Given to the best overall ensemble cast performance.
And the nominees are… Babel, Children of Men, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine
And the winner is… The Departed!
It pains me to leave off great ensemble work from the likes of Inside Man and The Prestige. Alas, I can only nominate five films, and this was a stacked year. Hell, even picking a winner wasn’t easy. The siren call I was getting from Little Miss Sunshine was quite tempting. I mean, how relatable is Paul Dano not speaking to anyone for half a year, and then when he finally cracks the first thing he yells is “F***!!!” at the top of his lungs? I feel seen.
In the end, however, this has got to go to The Departed. Although this might have given Marty his long overdue Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, it was tragically underrepresented in the acting categories. Luckily, Marky Mark got his nomination for being the guy who does his job. Still, this group is fantastic. The chemistry they exude as they bounce off each other with frantic and passionate line readings hooks you and never lets go. The dichotomy of the different characters, given the nature of the script, has these great acting talents wearing so many masks, double-crossing one another at any given moment, that it really allows these actors to show off their range and put on one helluva show. So to Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Ray Winstone (Man, I could just keep going — this cast is stacked), you all absolutely deserve this ensemble Oscar.
Best Directorial Debut
Given to the best achievement in direction by a debut directing talent.
And the nominees are… Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine, Ryan Fleck for Half Nelson, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for The Lives of Others, Sarah Polley for Away from Her, Jason Reitman for Thank You for Smoking
And the winner is… Little Miss Sunshine!
It’s a photo finish between Henckel von Donnersmarck and the pair of Dayton and Faris, but the duo wins out.
Not gonna lie, I just really wanted to say Henckel von Donnersmarck. Such a badass name (and great director too!).
There are families that have issues, and then there’s the family from Little Miss Sunshine. Not the most dysfunctional family in the world, but certainly one of the most dysfunctional families ever put to film. And while it could easily become overwhelming to juggle this quirky ensemble cast, the myriad of storylines, and tight filming conditions (with the majority of the film taking place in an old ‘78 Volkswagen Bus), Dayton and Faris don’t seem to miss a beat. They have a terrific sense of timing and pacing that allows the comedic moments of this film to be snappy and quick-paced, while simultaneously allowing for enough breathing room for the emotional moments to hit you hard in the gut. Combined with their ability to pull tremendous performances from this cast, earning Oscars noms for acting and even taking home one win, they clearly cultivated an amazing sense of chemistry while on set. It’s quite clear that Dayton and Faris made all the right decisions to bring together an astounding debut project, making them more than worthy of this award.
Best Popular Film
Given to the best audience supported motion picture that earned a spot as one of the top 25 box office films of the year.
And the nominees are… Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Cars, Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
And the winner is… Casino Royale!
Not gonna lie, this was a rough year for big blockbuster films. Sure, there were a lot of movies that made trucks of money, but a small fraction of them were actually, well, good. Hate to say it, but the truth can hurt sometimes. I mean, who’s sitting at home and singing the praises of flicks like Ice Age: The Meltdown, X-Men: The Last Stand, Superman Returns, Night at the Museum, and Happy Feet? Sure, they may have some fans, but the majority of critics and audiences weren’t on board with what Hollywood was spewing out back in ‘06. Dare I say that I’m not even entirely comfortable nominating flicks like Cars and The Da Vinci Code. These were certainly adored upon their release, but time has not been too kind to them. Honestly, it would’ve been really nice to nominate genuinely great films like The Departed and The Devil Wears Prada, but unfortunately these films were just not even in the same league in terms of box office popularity as the films I did move forward with nominating.
Again, rough year.
But as much as it may have been challenging to pick out five films for nomination, it was remarkably easy to pick out a winner for Best Popular Film, and that’s Casino Royale.
A reboot of one of the longest-running film franchises of all time, Casino Royale revamped James Bond for the new millennium, and audiences couldn’t get enough of it. Grossing $167 million at the domestic box office, and $606 million worldwide, this was the highest-grossing 007 film ever produced upon its release. The grounded and gritty storytelling, mixed with star-making performances from Daniel Craig and Eva Green, and some of the greatest action spectacle and mesmerizing stunt work we’d ever seen, left moviegoers floored. This has since gone on to earn a reputation as being one of the best, if not the very best, Bond film ever made. No wonder audiences flocked to their megaplexes in droves. And to think, people wanted to boycott this movie because Craig had blonde hair…
Normally I like to follow up box office love/film popularity with awards analysis. Sadly, Casino Royale didn’t earn any Oscar consideration. Which is a shame, because even without a category for student workers, you could’ve easily seen a world where this was nominated for Visual Effects, as well as Original Song for Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name.” But I’m not inclined to hold the lack of Oscar noms against this flick given how poorly blockbusters and big money-making films did at the ceremony this year. Pirates received four, sure. That’s great. But Cars only received two noms, Borat got just one nom, and Da Vinci got the big ol’ goos -egg like Casino. But Casino Royale did earn a whopping nine BAFTA nominations, taking home one win, and that’s not nothin’.
Really, the only contention you could have with Casino Royale winning is Pirates of the Caribbean losing. This is because Pirates did get those four Oscar noms, even winning one for Best Visual Effects, and it made nearly $400 million more at the box office globally. By our usual metrics, this should be the winner. But this is where the Best in Best Popular film really holds a lot of subjective weight. Simply put: Dead Man’s Chest, with all of Johnny Depp’s buffoonery, is not a better movie than Casino Royale. Why? ‘Cause it’s not — plain and simple. One was a cultural phenomenon at the time, the other has stood the test of time to be considered one of the greatest action films ever made. And for that reason, even for as much as Dead Man’s Chest was popular and beloved, we have to award Casino Royale as the Best Popular Film.
Thanks for joining me on another trip down memory lane to see what could’ve been! We got to talk about the reboot of one of the greatest action franchises of all time, one of the most charmingly dysfunctional families we’ve ever seen, and Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture-winning (finally!) crime epic. Be sure to come back next month when we take the time to look at films like Hot Fuzz, Ratatouille, and There Will Be Blood. We’ll be discussing the Oscars of 2008, celebrating the films of 2007!
You can read more from Heath Lynch, and follow him on Letterboxd