Marshall - 1 nomination

Original Song, "Stand Up for Something," Music by Diane Warren; Lyric by Lonnie R. Lynn and Diane Warren

Could someone please explain to me why nobody has heard of this incredible movie?  I don't recall seeing a single piece of advertising, a preview at a movie (I see a lot of movies, as you can imagine), a single ad in a magazine.  Dear PR team for this film, you're fired!

This film follows a young Thurgood Marshall who travels the country for the NAACP and defends hopeless African Americans who have been charged with crimes they didn't commit just because they are black.  In this case, Joseph Spell (Sterling K Brown) is accused of rape and attempted murder by a wealthy white woman, desperate for her husband not to find out that they slept together.  Marshall partners with another attorney, as the court will not grant him privilege to serve in a state where he is not licensed, so Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) becomes the official "of counsel" to the defendant.  Together, they work hard to earn a not guilty verdict.

Chadwick Boseman is making a career out of biopics having played Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and now Thurgood Marshall (he is certainly on his way to an Oscars nomination in the future).  If it was up to me, I'd keep giving him these juicy real-life roles.  He was different in each film, managing to pay homage to the real person without it being a cheesy impression of the real person.

Now, I don't know how much of this film is based on fact, or is historical, but it is worth every minute of the two hours to watch it.  The song is glorious (thank you Diane Warren and her NINTH Oscars nomination for Original Song) and powerful, and means something even as the events of today unfold.  I am MAD that I didn't see this film or even know about it before the Oscars nominated this song.  Now that you know about it, see it.

Beauty and the Beast - 2 nominations

Costume Design, Jacqueline Durran
Production Design, Sarah Greenwood (Production Design); Katie Spencer (Set Decoration)

Belle is a young, bright, creative, bookish woman who dreams of more than her provincial life in France with a community who just doesn't get her.  Meanwhile, Belle's father is captured by a beastly prince, and she goes to the castle to trade her life for her father's.  While at the castle, she discovers that the prince and all of his attendants have been transformed, he into a beast that no one could love, and they into objects like wardrobes and candlesticks and teapots.  (Disney has never explained why the people who work for the Prince must also be punished by the evil witch, as if they had any agency over themselves and their loyalties to the Prince, but I digress.)

This film is a very good adaptation from animation to live action.  The costumes and the production design are both very worthy of nomination, and one has to give Jacqueline Durran a huge tip of the hat for having been nominated for Costume Design in both this film and The Darkest Hour - she has two of the five nominations in this category this year. I tried to find out how many times this has happened before - for the acting categories, there have been 11 actors/actresses who were nominated in two different categories but never in the same category for two different films (i.e., Best Actress in a Leading Role for one film, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for another film, to see the full list, click http://bit.ly/1RfnGcB).  On a hunch, I looked up John Williams and he has 5 years in which two of his Original Scores for different movies were nominated against each other.  In 1927, William Cameron Menzies was nominated for Production Design for two different films and in this category, it has happened a couple of times (mostly from what I can tell because there were like 10 guys doing all the production design for all the movies!). Suffice it to say, this isn't something that happens a lot and serious kudos to Durran.  (And would someone please get me out of this rabbit hole????  I could research this all day, and if I didn't have so many Oscars movies to see, I would!)

I'm always fascinated when film makers cast a fantastic actor with a decent voice (Emma Watson) for a musical, instead of a fantastic actor with a fantastic voice (Luke Evans, Josh Gad).  The thing that Emma Watson does accomplish is capturing the smart, strong, independent woman that is Belle, perhaps because we see time and time again that this captures who Emma Watson is in real life.

I think it's easy to enjoy this film when you don't overthink the plot too much.  We know that Gaston is the bad guy because he is only interested in Belle for her looks, but we also know that the happy ending doesn't exist for the Beast until he is good looking again.  There are a lot of these little justice problems that are easy to identify, but let's give Disney a "good on ya" for trying to make a film about a smart woman instead of just a pretty one.