Oscar Best Picture Nominee’s but they’re Seinfeld episodes pic.twitter.com/eg1jHvBE6n

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That is so good

I can't get rid of the sand!

One thing I was thinking about last night was how unique Sean Bakers night was through the lens of his film making method. On one hand he richly deserves what he got, but you could also ask the question, Was he really "best" at any of the three? He's talked at length about how his craft is such a mixture of all three areas.

Screen Writing
Since he's an auteur, from a screen play standpoint I've heard interviews where writer/directors talk about how their screenplays often have shorthand. They are the ones shooting it so they don't maybe flesh out everything in the actual screenplay because they know what they mean. So was it really the best screenplay? If the movie wasn't made and just the screenplay existed, was it good? I haven't read it so I am actually curious. I think this is often a downfall of this category, in that it is too tightly coupled with the resulting movie. Sometimes the Oscars reward good screenplays that turned into great movies and seldom the other way around. Two TexAgs related examples I can think of are Elizabethtown and Passengers. TCTTS raved for weeks about how those were the best screenplay he'd ever read. Yet, they both resulted in ho-hum movies, so got no recognition for their screenplay.

Directing
One would think from an auteur standpoint this would be the best "umbrella" award, but what makes it funny is that he himself said "that director should never work again" in reference to his own work on the movie.

Editing
"I saved this movie in the edit". His own words, so arguably the award he deserved the most. I've always thought this award is the hardest award to get right based off the actual work because of the very nature of the craft. Editing is more about what isn't on screen than what is on screen, and there is no way to know what existed, all we can see is the finished product. Like screen writing, the editing often gets pulled up by the end result, when there are probably some mediocre movies where the editor was an actual genius and saved it from being crap. It was interesting to hear him mention how the editing was so important and took sometimes crappy footage and saved the movie, making me think this is the award he maybe was the best at.

Anyway, maybe I just couldn't sleep last night and we are in between release cycles at work so I have too much time on my hands Either way I am extremely happy for him, just thought it was such a unique accomplishment based on how he works.

More of the Academy's anti sci-fi bias

Conan returning as host.