Sunday, March 27, 2022

The Windshield Wiper wins Best Animated Short - 2021


Well, the Academy has gone ahead with their plan to remove several of their categories from the main broadcast, which includes Best Animated Short. As a result I will not be watching the ceremony. The good news is that the excited categories would be announced early on. The bad news is we find out early on that the Academy has voted The Windshield Wiper as the Best Animated Short of 2021, and the 90th winner of the category since its inception in 1932.

Yeah...the film that I ranked 50th out of 50 films nominated between 2012 and 2021.

It's not that I think it's a bad film. I did rank it fourth in quality in my actual review over the seasonal front-runner Robin Robin. I just felt that it tried to be too cute in the way the vignettes were presented, and as a result left me feeling empty. But obviously it was enough to impress the Academy at large. So with that out of the way I can move on to something else and ignore the rest of whatever the Academy has to say.

Now I'm adding to this post after the ceremony ended. Apparently something happened between Will Smith and Chris Rock that could become a new meme on the internet. Anyways, the biggest winner of the night was CODA, who tied for the fewest nominations among Best Picture nominees (with three) but won them all including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Picture. Some analysts were holding out hope that front-runner The Power of the Dog could win, but it only ended up with a win for Jane Campion as Best Director. Dune had the most wins of the night, with six, but it kind of got skewered because most of them were in the excommunicated categories: Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound alongside Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects.

Besides Troy Kotsur winning Best Supporting Actor for CODA (where he joined co-star Marlee Matlin as deaf winners), most of the other acting awards went to the expected picks: Will Smith winning Best Actor for King Richard and Ariana DuBose winning Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story. The latter win helped Anita join an exclusive fraternity as characters that helped two actors for the same character. The only category that was somewhat suspenseful was Best Actress. The precursors were all over the place, with SAG winner Lady Gaga (House of Gucci) getting left out of the final lineup. The award eventually went to Jessica Chastain for her performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the film which also won Best Makeup and Hairstyling. That allowed it to join CODA as the other film with multiple nominations to win all of its nominations.

As for the other categories, Belfast took home Best Original Screenplay, and Billie Eilish won Best Original Song for the titular song in No Time to Die. It marked the third Bond theme song to win in this category in the past decade. That win kept Lin-Manuel Miranda from an EGOT for the second time, although Encanto did eventually win Best Animated Feature. Meanwhile the other animated nominee with multiple nominations in Flee went home empty-handed, as Summer of Soul (...or the Revolution Would Not Be Televised) won for Best Documentary Feature and Drive My Car from Japan won Best International Feature. Riz Ahmed took home an Oscar for The Long Goodbye a year after he missed out of Best Actor. Meanwhile The Queen of Basketball won for Best Documentary Short. The inspirational film about basketball star Lusia Harris alas came too late as Harris had died in January 18 of this year, a few weeks before the nominations were announced. Licorice Pizza and Don't Look Up went home empty-handed despite their nominations for Best Picture.

And of course The Windshield Wiper had won Best Animated Short. Anyways, here are the stats that were missing from my rankings.

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Highest ranked non-winner: World of Tomorrow (1)
Lowest ranked winner: The Windshield Wiper (50)
Winners in the top 10: Five (Paperman, If Anything Happens I Love You, Dear Basketball, Hair Love, Bao)
Average rank of the ten winners: 16.9
Number of favorites in a year outside the top 10: Three [Pear Cider and Cigarettes (12), Tsukumo (20), The Dam Keeper (21)]
Films that were not my favorites in a year in the top 10: Three [One Small Step (4), 妹妹 (9), Bao (10)]
Highest average ranking in a year: 2018 (18.4)
Lowest average ranking in a year: 2014 (33.2)

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