I have seen a whole lot of news articles (and solicitations for political contributions) about the proposal to raise the minimum wage. Most refer to the idea of $10.10 as the new proposed figure (up from $7.25). This new "magic number" is kicked around by both sides, each claiming its side of the argument: one says this will lift people from poverty, the other that it will cause loss of jobs. The Congressional Budget Office recently weighed in, saying both statements are true: their estimate was that 500,000 jobs would be lost, though some 16 million would have their standard of living improved significantly. This assessment was criticized as being biased toward the right wing viewpoint, and Orange House Speaker Boehner was quoted reaffirming an old statement that he would prefer suicide to putting a clean minimum wage bill on the floor.
This debate has taken a ridiculous turn, and mostly because of the all-or-nothing nature of the rise from $7.25 to $10.10. "Take Small Steps" was the sage advice of the Jodie Foster character's dead father to her in the Carl Sagan-authored sci-fi epic "Contact", and this would be where I would start the debate. Where did this $10.10 come from, anyway?
I'm guessing it is a calculation of the minimum wage which would be necessary to bring a family of X (three, maybe?) just above the poverty line for the median US cost of living given a annual level of 2000 paid hours. Either that, or it is a stunted rendering of a number selected for its sonorous qualities, two-thirds of a Herman Cain-type "nine-nine-nine" (nein?) random number generation. Why not $10.00, which is at least a round number (in base 10, anyway)? President Obama tried to round down and get support in his State of the Union address with a proposal to raise it to $9.00, which is the (only) other figure which the CBO analyzed.
What is missing from the CBO analysis is a simple graph with two axes showing the number of jobs lost, and the increased consumption resulting from increments in the minimum wage--these are both continuous functions, which CBO must have had some method of calculating in order to come up with these estimates. Someone intelligent should take a close look at this hypothetical graph and determine the optimal level--which would likely occur at an inflection points in one of the curves (neither of which should be linear)--that maximizes increased consumption for a given amount of job losses. It wouldn't take that long to figure out; then there would be a really strong argument for a bipartisan change in the figure (I am certain that $7.25 is too low, though).
Of course, there would be arguments against: government interference blah, and states rights blah-blah (actually, a little more sound objection; there are differences in the economies among them, and there should be differences in the defined poverty level), employer discomfort blah-blah-blah. Then there is the fact that the job losses and changes will not happen overnight, and that the making a fixed minimum wage for an indefinite period is putting a stake in the ground in the midst of a dynamic terrain. The best program would be to make a smaller change now--perhaps about the amount President Obama suggested, though not the same amount (so that Republicans could not be accused of supporting one of his proposals--heavens, no!)--with a scheduled review and additional adjustment in 18 months or so (just before the general election campaign starts). It should not actually be a political poison pill for anyone, but clearly 500,000 lost jobs is a tough one to swallow at this sensitive point in time.
Tips for Healthcare?
I saw a reference to an interesting proposal the other day; I believe it was in Los Angeles. The idea would be that 3% would be added to the bills of restaurants there and the funds would be applied directly toward payment for healthcare for the staff of the restaurants.
I like this idea, in principle. There is a fundamental problem in the healthcare system today for those workers (full- and part-time) for whom employers do not contribute anything toward their insurance, and restaurant workers, in general, are certainly among those. 3% is not such a high tax to pay for the benefit of those who are serving those diners. The only problem would be if that money ends up being subtracted from the tips the staff receives: far too many of them are mostly or completely dependent on the tips, being exempted from minimum wage requirements. Americans are well-known to be the most generous in the world with the tips they habitually give; it would be a bit of a shame if those habits eroded, but less so if diners knew that their wait staff were guaranteed a decent wage and healthcare.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
The Winter Games
So, the Sochi games are over. After a bit of a rocky start, the Russian team came on very strong, and President Putin left with something resembling a smile on his face. Apart from the pairs figure skating, which has belonged to the Russians, and before that the Soviets, almost uninterruptedly for decades, the two big wins were the women's figure skating gold (more on that later) and the medal sweep in the classic 50-km cross country race today, the equivalent of the Summer Olympics' marathon. I would say those two victories more than made up for the shortcomings of the Russian hockey team, as the closing ceremony more than made up for the opening ceremony's faults. Like the closing ceremony in London for 2012 showed for Britain, the Russians have more than enough cultural content to fill a closing ceremony and remind us that they still have a lot to offer the world. I guess that's worth $9 billion, or whatever it cost .
Before I move on from Russia, though, I need to carp on some things: The first point is that, though Russia is at the top of the dreaded medals table, that was in part due to the fact that it has been a home for expatriates who wish to transfer their nationality for sporting reasons--and, in one very important case, for reasons of love. If Vic Wild, the double gold-medaled snowboarder, had performed for his home country, the US and Russia would have tied for gold medals (one would presume that he would have still won his thrilling semifinal comeback in the parallel race by .05 seconds or whatever if he was wearing the US uni). That's not a default, or a whine, but simply to point out that the nationalism aspect is a bit more fluid than those there, or here, or anywhere else may think. The second is that Russia has until 2018 to get its act together politically before it hosts a real event on a national basis--I saw it mentioned nowhere, but it will be hosting the 2018 World cup (of soccer, y'know). This is not the kind of event that you can bottle up in remote seaside and mountainside villages; it's something like 10 locales all over the country with millions of people traveling all over. The police-state mentality won't work, and they better get their racial/gender tolerance thing together before then. Then, there is the fact that during the Games, something close to a Soviet-style repression of demonstrators, followed by a popular coup d'etat, occurred not so far away in Ukraine; on the one hand it's positive for the participants that the violence didn't spill over; on the other, the repressive hand of the modern Kremlin was evident in both Sochi and indirectly through its sponsored leader in the Ukraine, the exiled ex-President Yanukovich.
Rant about Locales
The awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia, and the 2018 Winter Olympics to South Korea, and the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics to Brazil, and, for Pete's sake, the 2022 World Cup to Dubai, along with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, all indicate a problem that has really not been well thought through. These locales are ones that are not safe, are not ready for world sporting events, are poorly chosen. I can just see North Korea holding the world hostage with an invented crisis in 2018, riots in Brazil for one or both events, people dying of the heat in Dubai, etc. Not to mention the cost--Dubai can afford it, Russia can probably afford it, maybe Brazil can afford it (jury's still out), but it's an awful wasteful way to develop a country's infrastructure and brag to the rest of the world. I prefer the World's Fair approach (Milano in 2015, story for another post), and I think the search for new, exciting places to have these world sporting events needs to cool it. And in the case of Sochi, and I can imagine it will also be the case in Yeongchang, Korea, they need to cool it a lot (it was not nearly cold enough for the outdoor events at Sochi, and Korea's altitudes are too low for Alpine skiing).
Although I have a very firm view of where the Summer Olympics should be held (Athens), and I would argue the World Cup final should always be in Wembley Stadium in London (the soccer equivalent of Athens) after a global, neutral-site elimination tournament, I'm not such a know-it-all about the desired location of the Winter games.
Best idea that I can come up with is to follow the principle above and have the games return to their roots, but that means splitting them up. Basically the event has four main divisions: the Alpine skiing, the Nordic events (biathlon, cross-country, ski jumping), the "classic" specialty sports (luge, bobsled, hockey, curling, and figure and long-track speed skating), and the X-games stuff (snowboard, freestyle, moguls, halfpipe, slopestyle, whatever, along with the odious short-track skating). The interest level is not so broad for most nations; there is very little overlap of the nations which dominate in these four groups. For example, the Russians won nothing in Alpine skiing, the Americans nothing in the Nordic, the Germans and the Dutch had their specialties (luge and speed skating), and some country--I guess--won curling. I will give some credit to Norway, Austria, and Canada, which manage to show up for most of these categories, at least to some extent, and Italy's neighbor Slovenia, which garnered an outsized share of medals for its size and competed well in many categories. My proposal would be to hunker the Nordic events down in some neutral Nordic location (Finland?), the Alpine events in Innsbruck or St. Moritz, speed skating in Holland (of course), and the others can be spread around existing venues (whichever European nation has the best); the new-fangled stuff should be in the New World, somewhere out West. (I would keep those, because they expand the global interest: it gives Australia, New Zealand, etc. a reason to show up--not to mention it being a huge sop for the US audience--without them where would the US get its share of medals? Yes, I knew we did pretty well in Alpine skiing this year...)
Watching Them Abroad
This is the second time that I have watched an Olympic session outside the US, and, once again, I found the viewing attraction and entertainment increased. The first was watching the 2000 Summer games held in Sydney while I was in Britain, and there were a lot of similarities in the experience.
I note first that the emphasis on the sports presented is very different, and the diversity of them is greater. Imagine 30-km relay cross-country shown live on the principal TV channel: you might not think that a great idea (and maybe it isn't, from the perspective of the US ratings), but you should take it from me: it was great to watch. There is still emphasis on the performance of the TV channel's "home" competitors, but it isn't just possible-gold-or-don't-show (which is the NBC network criterion, whether they admit it or not). The Italian performance in 2014, as with the UK's in 2000, had lots of just-missed-medal type performances. As a matter of fact, the predominance of fourth-place finishes was heavily noted, with their ironic referrals to "medaglia di legno" ("wooden medal")--the Italians ended up with eight medals, of which two silver, and six bronze (no gold), and they made the best of it (though of course they wished for better).
One thing that seems to be the same in all the coverage--too much talking. After an hour and a half of the climactic 50-km men's cross-country (solo) race, the commentators noted that 25 or so racers were still within range and that, for all their talking, no trends had yet become apparent, and they wondered what they had been talking about for 90 minutes. At least there was an event to watch to accompany the incessant
talking, something superior to Bob Costas' face. That event, plus music generated independently, would make a nice accompaniment to reading a magazine, cooking a meal, or playing with the kids.
Before I move on from Russia, though, I need to carp on some things: The first point is that, though Russia is at the top of the dreaded medals table, that was in part due to the fact that it has been a home for expatriates who wish to transfer their nationality for sporting reasons--and, in one very important case, for reasons of love. If Vic Wild, the double gold-medaled snowboarder, had performed for his home country, the US and Russia would have tied for gold medals (one would presume that he would have still won his thrilling semifinal comeback in the parallel race by .05 seconds or whatever if he was wearing the US uni). That's not a default, or a whine, but simply to point out that the nationalism aspect is a bit more fluid than those there, or here, or anywhere else may think. The second is that Russia has until 2018 to get its act together politically before it hosts a real event on a national basis--I saw it mentioned nowhere, but it will be hosting the 2018 World cup (of soccer, y'know). This is not the kind of event that you can bottle up in remote seaside and mountainside villages; it's something like 10 locales all over the country with millions of people traveling all over. The police-state mentality won't work, and they better get their racial/gender tolerance thing together before then. Then, there is the fact that during the Games, something close to a Soviet-style repression of demonstrators, followed by a popular coup d'etat, occurred not so far away in Ukraine; on the one hand it's positive for the participants that the violence didn't spill over; on the other, the repressive hand of the modern Kremlin was evident in both Sochi and indirectly through its sponsored leader in the Ukraine, the exiled ex-President Yanukovich.
Rant about Locales
The awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia, and the 2018 Winter Olympics to South Korea, and the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics to Brazil, and, for Pete's sake, the 2022 World Cup to Dubai, along with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, all indicate a problem that has really not been well thought through. These locales are ones that are not safe, are not ready for world sporting events, are poorly chosen. I can just see North Korea holding the world hostage with an invented crisis in 2018, riots in Brazil for one or both events, people dying of the heat in Dubai, etc. Not to mention the cost--Dubai can afford it, Russia can probably afford it, maybe Brazil can afford it (jury's still out), but it's an awful wasteful way to develop a country's infrastructure and brag to the rest of the world. I prefer the World's Fair approach (Milano in 2015, story for another post), and I think the search for new, exciting places to have these world sporting events needs to cool it. And in the case of Sochi, and I can imagine it will also be the case in Yeongchang, Korea, they need to cool it a lot (it was not nearly cold enough for the outdoor events at Sochi, and Korea's altitudes are too low for Alpine skiing).
Although I have a very firm view of where the Summer Olympics should be held (Athens), and I would argue the World Cup final should always be in Wembley Stadium in London (the soccer equivalent of Athens) after a global, neutral-site elimination tournament, I'm not such a know-it-all about the desired location of the Winter games.
Best idea that I can come up with is to follow the principle above and have the games return to their roots, but that means splitting them up. Basically the event has four main divisions: the Alpine skiing, the Nordic events (biathlon, cross-country, ski jumping), the "classic" specialty sports (luge, bobsled, hockey, curling, and figure and long-track speed skating), and the X-games stuff (snowboard, freestyle, moguls, halfpipe, slopestyle, whatever, along with the odious short-track skating). The interest level is not so broad for most nations; there is very little overlap of the nations which dominate in these four groups. For example, the Russians won nothing in Alpine skiing, the Americans nothing in the Nordic, the Germans and the Dutch had their specialties (luge and speed skating), and some country--I guess--won curling. I will give some credit to Norway, Austria, and Canada, which manage to show up for most of these categories, at least to some extent, and Italy's neighbor Slovenia, which garnered an outsized share of medals for its size and competed well in many categories. My proposal would be to hunker the Nordic events down in some neutral Nordic location (Finland?), the Alpine events in Innsbruck or St. Moritz, speed skating in Holland (of course), and the others can be spread around existing venues (whichever European nation has the best); the new-fangled stuff should be in the New World, somewhere out West. (I would keep those, because they expand the global interest: it gives Australia, New Zealand, etc. a reason to show up--not to mention it being a huge sop for the US audience--without them where would the US get its share of medals? Yes, I knew we did pretty well in Alpine skiing this year...)
Watching Them Abroad
This is the second time that I have watched an Olympic session outside the US, and, once again, I found the viewing attraction and entertainment increased. The first was watching the 2000 Summer games held in Sydney while I was in Britain, and there were a lot of similarities in the experience.
I note first that the emphasis on the sports presented is very different, and the diversity of them is greater. Imagine 30-km relay cross-country shown live on the principal TV channel: you might not think that a great idea (and maybe it isn't, from the perspective of the US ratings), but you should take it from me: it was great to watch. There is still emphasis on the performance of the TV channel's "home" competitors, but it isn't just possible-gold-or-don't-show (which is the NBC network criterion, whether they admit it or not). The Italian performance in 2014, as with the UK's in 2000, had lots of just-missed-medal type performances. As a matter of fact, the predominance of fourth-place finishes was heavily noted, with their ironic referrals to "medaglia di legno" ("wooden medal")--the Italians ended up with eight medals, of which two silver, and six bronze (no gold), and they made the best of it (though of course they wished for better).
One thing that seems to be the same in all the coverage--too much talking. After an hour and a half of the climactic 50-km men's cross-country (solo) race, the commentators noted that 25 or so racers were still within range and that, for all their talking, no trends had yet become apparent, and they wondered what they had been talking about for 90 minutes. At least there was an event to watch to accompany the incessant
talking, something superior to Bob Costas' face. That event, plus music generated independently, would make a nice accompaniment to reading a magazine, cooking a meal, or playing with the kids.
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Official Oscar Preview
The news today about Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, and the posting of the j'accuse article on Nicholas Kristof's NYTimes blog by "Dylan Farrow" repeating her accusations of child molestation against Woody Allen (not posting the links, this time) force my hand a bit in writing this lead:
Smart people sometimes do stupid things.
Famous people sometimes do stupid things.
Artists sometimes do stupid things.
People who are not smart, famous, or artists sometimes do stupid things.
I have no statistics on the relative frequency of those occurrences.
Clearly, Woody Allen is a guy who has major psychological issues, and has had them all along. He is "narcissistic" (totally in love with himself and his own thoughts), he could clearly be accused of misogyny, of having lusted after young girls (as an "older" man), and guilt is a major theme in his work (one could ask: why?). He also seems to have some traits of weirdness which don't all fit together, like claustrophobia, agoraphobia, fear of crowds, fear of publicity, going to Knicks games, and playing the clarinet in public. He is also a brilliant, extremely hard-working artist, and, like many artists, he routinely sublimates his neurotic impulses into his art.* I don't know that much about Hoffman, who was also brilliant in his craft (and I don't use this word lightly at all) and seems to have been quite messed up, as well. In the end, though, he may just have made a major error and latched onto some poisonous smack. I'm sure it will all come out, in much more detail than I want to hear about. For that matter, relating to the Woody polemics, I think Roman Polanski and, yes, Mia Farrow are pretty screwed up, too, in very similar ways, but still very accomplished artists.
So, the first two things we have to get out of the way about the Oscars are: 1) Hoffman is not nominated for anything this year (thank goodness); and 2) Allen is nominated for best original screenplay for "Blue Jasmine" this year; he will not win--that is certain. I don't think he should have won, anyway. I saw "Blue Jasmine" on a plane; I could be self-righteous and say that in this way I did not contribute to his wealth (which is somewhat the way I feel about "The Wolf of Wall Street", though it's not Scorsese's or DiCaprio's wealth I'm concerned about but Jordan Belfort's). I'll just say that it was not one of my highest priority films to see in a theater, but I thought I'd catch it since I had the chance. We'll get to it later when we discuss the Actress nominations.
I mentioned "on a plane"--it was January 5, and I was on my way to Italy, where I am now. Italy has lots of great things about it, but one thing that's not great is access to first-run movies in their original language (unless that language is Italian). So, I'm basically stuck at the number of movies that I had seen before I left (with one major exception, which I'll get to). The key omissions are "Dallas Buyers Club", "Philomena", "Inside Llewyn Davis", "the Hobbit....", "Saving Mr. Banks", and "Nebraska"--the first two (out, but hard to find) and the hobbit one are really the only ones for which I need to apologize for not seeing, as the others basically ducked the holiday season in all but a very small number of theaters. I certainly would have liked to have been able to see the Coen Brothers film on a big screen, but I'm afraid they blew it for me this time. ("Nebraska" is the only one of those really out here in Italy, and I think it would lose something being dubbed into Italian!) I also didn't see "Wolf of Wall Street" (see above), "August: Osage County" (not interested--I could not believe it was listed as a comedy at the Golden Globes), or "Frozen" (not to worry: I'm sure it will win the Oscar for Best Animated without my endorsement). Or any of the shorts or documentaries, of course--I'm not one of the privileged members of the Academy--I'll skip voting on those, as I have no informed opinion.
Best Movie Discussion
This section could be entitled "discussion of the movie that will win the Oscar for Best Picture", and I don't mean to suggest this is "the best" movie discussion you can find, but what I really mean is that this is (at least in the first part) a discussion of what was the best movie of 2013, something I do not think is limited to the nominees. The Academy limits itself to 5-10 nominees and has nine this year; I really don't know how they decide that (probably the ones recommended by >X% of the Academy), but I do think they missed a couple, and they showed a typical American, late-year bias in their selections.
The five movies released in 2013 that I saw and think were the best were: "American Hustle", "12 Years a Slave", "Gravity", "Her", and "The Great Beauty" (a/k/a "La Grande Bellezza"). Close behind were "Captain Phillips", then two films which had the double misfortune of being released too early in the year and featuring young adult-type stories ("The Spectacular Now" and "The Way Way Back"), while the best comedy/musical of the year was the long-forgotten "The Great Gatsby" (yes, you forgot that one, Golden Globes!), the soundtrack of which I bought, and which I would say is only slightly less impressive than that of "American Hustle" (since they don't give awards for best soundtrack--maybe the Grammys do?). To fill out my ten, I'm going to guess I will put "Inside Llewyn Davis" or "Frozen" when I get the chance to see them (and no, they were not nominated for Best Picture--for a good concise listing of the nominees, I suggest this one that came out the same day as the nominations on CNN).
Back to best movie: the one I enjoyed the most is "American Hustle"; it also clearly had the best ensemble acting performance. "Gravity" was the one which had the most impressive artistic creativity. "Her" and "La Grande Bellezza" made me think, and feel, in ways that I had not thought or felt before, while "12 Years", though absolutely brutal and cruel to its viewers, was a work of world-historical significance: I think that, like "Schindler's List" a few years ago, and maybe "the Pianist", these historical recreations can establish truths and settle things, once and for all (OK, "Shoah" may have already done that before Spielberg and "Schindler", but few will ever see that.) In the case of "12 Years", the argument that one sometimes hears in the South that slaves "didn't have it so bad", that "many of them were happy", etc. just should not be tolerated after that movie. (Not that they should have been tolerated before, though they were/have been.)
For me, that's the difference-maker, a great film, which also has a lasting, meaningful effect on society. The story of "Gravity" is full of holes, though the art and performances were breath-taking. "La Grande Bellezza" has been criticized here in Italy for political incorrectness, though I think that criticism is off the mark--it is apolitical, because its themes are beyond mere politics of the moment, the country, or even of this era. It is highly self-indulgent, though--that narcissism thing, again. "Her" is a movie before its time--actually, way before its time--that deals with one of the most interesting topics that is out there today. The subject is referred to as "the singularity"--I recommend looking into it, as I'm sure writer/director Spike Jonze did--when machine intelligence catches up, surpasses, then outdistances human intelligence. When it comes, it could come very quickly, but I hasten to say that machines are really stupid today, and it doesn't seem that this story is close to our lives today. Fifty years from now or so, it will be considered a classic of this age. OK, it's about some other things, too, like the search for love, how the feeling of loss can bring people together, but let's face it--I'm all in favor of love between humans, in all its varied forms, but "falling in love" with your operating system is just weird, either now or in the future.
"American Hustle" is the one that is trickiest to deal with, as the gossip suggests the Academy is apparently wrestling with this one right now. It is the early favorite for the Best Picture award, and the hype behind it has generated a backlash. Basically it is a pretty mundane period piece from the '70's that was jazzed up tremendously with an adroit Hollywood treatment--pretty much the same as "Argo", only a less interesting story. The key aspect of the film (SLIGHT SPOILER FOLLOWS) was the addition of the Mafia kingpin played by Robert De Niro; without that, it was just your typical entrapment job on sleazy politicians--plenty of that around. But the treatment, with the great actors, makeup, music, and that edge of danger which the Mafia threat brought in, those are what made the movie. So, great artifice--sort of like "Gravity". But "12 Years a Slave" is the real thing--a true story, made real, with performances that tear your guts out, for all the right reasons. So, I'll go with that.
Will the backlash win out? It did last year, when the resentment against Spielberg and his "Lincoln" gave the award to a far less deserving film, and I don't know what the Academy was thinking when it awarded "The Artist" over "The Descendants". It's still embarrassing to consider. So, who knows? I'll be content if either "Hustle" or "12 Years" wins, surprised if neither does, though "Gravity" may have a shot, too.
Best Picture--Will Win/Should Win: "12 Years a Slave"
Directors!
Really, they shouldn't even have this category--the nominees should be the same as for Best Picture, and the award should go to the director, not the producers. I'm trying to think of a great movie that didn't have great direction, and I can't. At least they should open up the category in the same way they did for Best Picture, up to 10 nominees, and it wouldn't be hard to fill. So, my pick would be Steve McQueen ("12 Years"), for the reasons described above. (By the way, Steve McQueen the actor never won an Oscar--he was nominated once, for "The Sand Pebbles", in which he was great! I didn't care for his acting much, in general, but I loved his performance in that movie; kiddies, rent it sometime, you can really learn something from it. I won't spoil it and tell you what you would learn about, but it's not a beach/surfer movie.)
In terms of Hollywood politics, David O. Russell ("Hustle") is considered a jerk; I'd say he's a better shot to win for Original Screenplay (which is fine with me). Alexander Payne won for "The Descendants", so he's been taken care of; Martin Scorsese has also won (finally!), and I don't think "Wolf" should get him another; so the other main contender is Alfonso Cuaron, who is eminently deserving. Have I ever mentioned what an amazing movie was his "Children of Men"? I'll be content with either Cuaron or McQueen.
Best Director - Should Win: Steve McQueen
Will Win: Alfonso Cuaron
Acting!
Best lead actor (male) was a difficult category to limit to five nominees this year. "I hear" that there were several deserving actors who were not nominated (Hanks, Redford, Oscar Isaac for "Llewyn Davis"...). Among those who were nominated, I've seen the performances of only two, Christian Bale in "Hustle" (who was great, but will not win--see David O. Russell above) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (it's really hard to type his name!) for "12 Years"--I really hope he wins. So far, from the other award shows it looks like Matthew McConnaughey (he lost a whole bunch of weight--I guess that's harder to do than gain a bunch of weight, which Bale did) is the favorite; and I should say I give Matthew props for his (forgotten) performance early in the year in "Mud". I'd say Bruce Dern is the dark horse candidate, as there are a lot of old-timers in the Academy who'd like to give it to him. Leo DiCaprio will have to wait another year.
Best lead actress looks to me to be a race between Cate Blanchett ("Blue Jasmine") and Amy Adams ("Hustle"). I think this Woody thing will end up hurting Cate's chances, which is unfair--she was spectacularly good (she's always very good, but this role was tougher and she nailed it). As for Amy, I would say this role wasn't quite as tough as the one she mastered last year (for "The Master"), but she (and her intentionally phony English accent) were good enough to win this year, I think. Meryl Streep's got plenty of award-winning roles (and this ain't one), Sandra Bullock got hers (otherwise, she would win), and fortunately for the leading candidates, Judi Dench has won an Oscar (supporting, for "Shakespeare in Love") out of her seven nominations. Note: Cate has also won, for imitating a multi-Oscar winner (Katherine Hepburn) in "The Aviator", but I don't think that in itself will be the obstacle.
When it comes to Supporting Actor/Supporting Actress, I think there's a chance for a breakthrough this year with two Africans winning (there's even a chance for three, with Ejiofor, but I think that's unlikely). When it comes to Supporting Actor, I think that Barkhad Abdi as the Somali pirate in "Captain Phillips" should win--Academy voters don't usually hold it against a supporting actor/actress that he/she is "the bad guy". I hear that Jared Leto was superb, though, as a transgender AIDS patient in "Dallas Buyers Club". As for Supporting Actress, I don't know: it's a tough field, with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lawrence bringing strong, popular entries, and Sally Hawkins has earned her praise for her latter-day "Stella!" (called "Ginger" in Woody's version), but I'm going to go with Lupita Nyong'o's searing performance as a brilliant, trapped slave in "12 Years".
Best Lead Actor: Should Win--Ejiofor; Will Win - McConnaughey
Best Lead Actress: Should Win--Blanchett; Will Win--Adams
Supporting Actor: Should Win--Abdi; Will Win--Leto
Supporting Actress: Should Win/Will Win--N'yong'o
Writers!
I'm tempted to use the old Bill Murray/SNL approach to the preview when it comes to the Original Screenplay category: "Nebraska", "Dallas Buyers Club"? Didn't see them--next! Seriously, I can imagine both getting some support as being truly original script ideas filled with human interest. I wasn't that thrilled with the quality of the wit in Woody's latest outing (and we have disqualified him above for other, less appropriate reasons), though I did think he did a good job with the flashbacks, using them to build the story and not making us all confused with their use. Failure to do that well was actually the problem with the script for "Hustle"--the flashbacks didn't always work so well, the initial scene (although hilarious) being a good example: it didn't tie back to the actual story very well. OK, the dialogue was often superb and chock-full of good lines (Jennifer Lawrence's character got most of them); despite its flaws I wouldn't mind if it won. No, the best original screenplay was "Her", by the almost-always genius, Spike Jonze. The back-and-forth between Joaquin Phoenix's character (how was he not nominated? I'd like to know...) and Scarlett's "character" was like a modern-day Platonic dialogue. Please, let him win!
Adapted Screenplay is one I always have trouble picking, and I have no confidence at all in my assessment of the nominees. I've heard "Wolf" went on far too long, so that suggests the screenplay was not tight. "Captain Phillips", on the other hand, had a very taut script, but I've heard a lot of the dialogue, like the amazing final scene when he's been (SPOILER) rescued, was improvised. I'd be really annoyed if "Before Midnight" wins--I did see it, and its script really annoyed me: very stilted, like Woody Allen but without the charm. The dialogue in the "12 Years" script could also be considered "stilted", but it was a very interesting approach: the words of all the characters, even the uneducated ones, had a flowing, well-reasoned quality, as if to say that folks 150 years ago could speak a lot better than we can today. Is it true? I don't know, but I think that principle is unlikely to be rewarded on Oscar night. So, I'll go with "Philomena"--Steve Coogan, one of the writers (and lead actor in it), is a really cool English guy and I think it will add some class if he wins.
Original Screenplay: Will win - "Dallas Buyers Club"; Should Win - "Her"
Adapted Screenplay: Will Win/Should Win - "Philomena"
Costumes! Makeup! Sound! Set!
OK, I'm not a pro in any of these areas, far from it, but I have had a pretty good track record picking these technical areas, using a few tricks. I can't really say, then, who I think should win, but I will say who I think will win.
Costumes - Edith Head (8 Oscars) is dead--she was an automatic pick, in her day. So, you go with the movie that had the fashion look that seems most interesting. "The Grandmaster" was Chinese silks, between the wars--definitely interesting. "Hustle"--'70's bimbos--out! "Great Gatsby" --'20's flappers and rich fops--been done too much! "12 Year" -1800's shabby, plus Southern slaveowners--too "GWTW"! "The Invisible Woman"--my first reaction was, "What the heck was this movie?" but when I looked it up, it's that hidden lover of Charles Dickens movie for which I saw a very interesting and attractive preview--I didn't even know it was out. Middle-class Victorian--boffo! I'll go with "Invisible", narrowly over "Grandmaster".
Sound Mixing/Editing--they always explain the difference, and I always forget (I think editing is the artificial creation of the special sounds, and mixing is the general sonorous feeling). These are ones that usually get swept up, when there's going to be a sweep (that's not this year, I think). Besides, the only nominee in these categories which is a potentially big-time Oscar winner this year is "Gravity", and everybody knows "there's no sound in space!" Still, I think it and the hobbit one are the main contenders. 'll go with "Gravity" on the editing side (lots of heavy breathing in costumes, muffled explosions), and the hobbit one for mixing. (Have I've confused myself again? Oh well...)
Makeup-- There are three nominees: one is a "Jackass" film, one is "The Lone Ranger"--a flop of historic proportion, and the ridiculous makeup for Tonto (Johnny Depp) was a main factor in its awkwardness--and the third is "Dallas Buyers Club". It's a pretty easy guess.
Production Design-- You want to pick the one which had the set that contributed most to the movie's success. "Her" had interesting sets--I think most of the futuristic look came from filming in Hong Kong; however, it's a choice between "Great Gatsby", where Gatsby's house was the star of many scenes, and the miraculous creation of deep space in "Gravity". I'd have to go with the latter.
Costume Design - "The Invisible Woman"
Sound Editing - "Gravity"
Sound Mixing - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Makeup - "Dallas Buyers' Club"
Production Design - "Gravity"
Music!
Original Score -- this is not best soundtrack! John Williams is always a good bet, but "The Book Thief" didn't score, so to speak. "Gravity" had music that was a little too intrusive, as I remember, though sometimes the Academy voters reward that. I really can't remember the music in "Her", to be honest--I was too focused on the dialogue. Obviously, I didn't see "Philomena", but I like Thomas Newman's music a lot, it would be a good opportunity to reward "Saving Mr. Banks", which otherwise got snubbed.
Original Song - A good opportunity to give an award to Bono, and posthumously to award Nelson Mandela. There was a scandal and one of the nominees was pulled for the crime (!) of sending emails out to remind voters to vote for his movie as a nominee.
Score - "Saving Mr. Banks"
Song - "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"
Camera!
Cinematography should be a slam dunk for Ernest Lubezki in "Gravity". Basically, they should retire the award after they give it to him, with future years' award being the "Ernest Lubezki award for Cinematography"--the camera work was that good, and that important to the film.
Film Editing - everyone was talking about the opening 15-minute single-take shot in "Gravity", and Cuaron is listed as co-nominee in this category for that film. But I ask you, how hard is it to edit a 15-minute take? No, I'm going to go with the hobbits on this one and hope the Academy agrees.
Visual Effects - This one often surprises, with the award going not to the big hit but one with a stunning visual. I would've thought "Elysium" could have won, but it wasn't nominated, so I'm going with the "Star Trek" one, as I remember a pretty dazzling scene where the Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco was totally destroyed.
Cinematography - "Gravity"
Film Editing - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Visual Effects - "Star Trek Into Darkness"
Animation!
One word: "Frozen"! The other guys don't even need to show up, unless they want to.
Animated Feature - "Frozen"
Foreigners!
I'm going to close with a bit of rant: of course I'm pulling for "The Great Beauty" ("La Grande Bellezza"), but that's the only one of these I've seen. I'm sure that's true of a lot of others, and it should win. (The French lesbian film could've been a threat, but it didn't end up being nominated.)
Instead, I want to lobby for a little bit more consideration from the Academy for foreign films' being considered in other categories. Yes, "The Artist" won several awards--all mistakenly, in my view, and "Life is Beautiful" won best actor for Roberto Benigni--a highly entertaining winner, also probably a mistake. The point is, these are exceptions, and the Academy is not seriously considering the exceptional work being done regularly outside of the US and Britain for the most part, especially in the technical areas. If it were doing so in 2013, "La Grande Bellezza" would have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, there would have been some kind of nomination for Film Editing (selection of locations--where does that get an award?) and Toni Servillo should have gotten consideration--if not a nomination--for Best Actor. So there--!
Final Tally of "Will Win": "Gravity" - 4; "Dallas Buyers Club" - 3; "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug" - 2; "12 Years a Slave" - 2; all others, 1 (or less). Amy Adams prevents an embarrassing shutout of pre-nomination favorite "American Hustle".
Enjoy Oscar night--I think Ellen DeGeneres will be a good choice: hip, but not too much.
*My five favorite Woody movies--and it is not a trivial question:
1) Sleeper; 2) Broadway Danny Rose; 3) Zelig; 4) Bananas; 5) Crimes and Misdemeanors. Me, I like the funny ones best--at his best (for me), the Woodster called in mind the inspired madness of the Marx Brothers. He hasn't been that light-hearted for a long, long time. .
Smart people sometimes do stupid things.
Famous people sometimes do stupid things.
Artists sometimes do stupid things.
People who are not smart, famous, or artists sometimes do stupid things.
I have no statistics on the relative frequency of those occurrences.
Clearly, Woody Allen is a guy who has major psychological issues, and has had them all along. He is "narcissistic" (totally in love with himself and his own thoughts), he could clearly be accused of misogyny, of having lusted after young girls (as an "older" man), and guilt is a major theme in his work (one could ask: why?). He also seems to have some traits of weirdness which don't all fit together, like claustrophobia, agoraphobia, fear of crowds, fear of publicity, going to Knicks games, and playing the clarinet in public. He is also a brilliant, extremely hard-working artist, and, like many artists, he routinely sublimates his neurotic impulses into his art.* I don't know that much about Hoffman, who was also brilliant in his craft (and I don't use this word lightly at all) and seems to have been quite messed up, as well. In the end, though, he may just have made a major error and latched onto some poisonous smack. I'm sure it will all come out, in much more detail than I want to hear about. For that matter, relating to the Woody polemics, I think Roman Polanski and, yes, Mia Farrow are pretty screwed up, too, in very similar ways, but still very accomplished artists.
So, the first two things we have to get out of the way about the Oscars are: 1) Hoffman is not nominated for anything this year (thank goodness); and 2) Allen is nominated for best original screenplay for "Blue Jasmine" this year; he will not win--that is certain. I don't think he should have won, anyway. I saw "Blue Jasmine" on a plane; I could be self-righteous and say that in this way I did not contribute to his wealth (which is somewhat the way I feel about "The Wolf of Wall Street", though it's not Scorsese's or DiCaprio's wealth I'm concerned about but Jordan Belfort's). I'll just say that it was not one of my highest priority films to see in a theater, but I thought I'd catch it since I had the chance. We'll get to it later when we discuss the Actress nominations.
I mentioned "on a plane"--it was January 5, and I was on my way to Italy, where I am now. Italy has lots of great things about it, but one thing that's not great is access to first-run movies in their original language (unless that language is Italian). So, I'm basically stuck at the number of movies that I had seen before I left (with one major exception, which I'll get to). The key omissions are "Dallas Buyers Club", "Philomena", "Inside Llewyn Davis", "the Hobbit....", "Saving Mr. Banks", and "Nebraska"--the first two (out, but hard to find) and the hobbit one are really the only ones for which I need to apologize for not seeing, as the others basically ducked the holiday season in all but a very small number of theaters. I certainly would have liked to have been able to see the Coen Brothers film on a big screen, but I'm afraid they blew it for me this time. ("Nebraska" is the only one of those really out here in Italy, and I think it would lose something being dubbed into Italian!) I also didn't see "Wolf of Wall Street" (see above), "August: Osage County" (not interested--I could not believe it was listed as a comedy at the Golden Globes), or "Frozen" (not to worry: I'm sure it will win the Oscar for Best Animated without my endorsement). Or any of the shorts or documentaries, of course--I'm not one of the privileged members of the Academy--I'll skip voting on those, as I have no informed opinion.
Best Movie Discussion
This section could be entitled "discussion of the movie that will win the Oscar for Best Picture", and I don't mean to suggest this is "the best" movie discussion you can find, but what I really mean is that this is (at least in the first part) a discussion of what was the best movie of 2013, something I do not think is limited to the nominees. The Academy limits itself to 5-10 nominees and has nine this year; I really don't know how they decide that (probably the ones recommended by >X% of the Academy), but I do think they missed a couple, and they showed a typical American, late-year bias in their selections.
The five movies released in 2013 that I saw and think were the best were: "American Hustle", "12 Years a Slave", "Gravity", "Her", and "The Great Beauty" (a/k/a "La Grande Bellezza"). Close behind were "Captain Phillips", then two films which had the double misfortune of being released too early in the year and featuring young adult-type stories ("The Spectacular Now" and "The Way Way Back"), while the best comedy/musical of the year was the long-forgotten "The Great Gatsby" (yes, you forgot that one, Golden Globes!), the soundtrack of which I bought, and which I would say is only slightly less impressive than that of "American Hustle" (since they don't give awards for best soundtrack--maybe the Grammys do?). To fill out my ten, I'm going to guess I will put "Inside Llewyn Davis" or "Frozen" when I get the chance to see them (and no, they were not nominated for Best Picture--for a good concise listing of the nominees, I suggest this one that came out the same day as the nominations on CNN).
Back to best movie: the one I enjoyed the most is "American Hustle"; it also clearly had the best ensemble acting performance. "Gravity" was the one which had the most impressive artistic creativity. "Her" and "La Grande Bellezza" made me think, and feel, in ways that I had not thought or felt before, while "12 Years", though absolutely brutal and cruel to its viewers, was a work of world-historical significance: I think that, like "Schindler's List" a few years ago, and maybe "the Pianist", these historical recreations can establish truths and settle things, once and for all (OK, "Shoah" may have already done that before Spielberg and "Schindler", but few will ever see that.) In the case of "12 Years", the argument that one sometimes hears in the South that slaves "didn't have it so bad", that "many of them were happy", etc. just should not be tolerated after that movie. (Not that they should have been tolerated before, though they were/have been.)
For me, that's the difference-maker, a great film, which also has a lasting, meaningful effect on society. The story of "Gravity" is full of holes, though the art and performances were breath-taking. "La Grande Bellezza" has been criticized here in Italy for political incorrectness, though I think that criticism is off the mark--it is apolitical, because its themes are beyond mere politics of the moment, the country, or even of this era. It is highly self-indulgent, though--that narcissism thing, again. "Her" is a movie before its time--actually, way before its time--that deals with one of the most interesting topics that is out there today. The subject is referred to as "the singularity"--I recommend looking into it, as I'm sure writer/director Spike Jonze did--when machine intelligence catches up, surpasses, then outdistances human intelligence. When it comes, it could come very quickly, but I hasten to say that machines are really stupid today, and it doesn't seem that this story is close to our lives today. Fifty years from now or so, it will be considered a classic of this age. OK, it's about some other things, too, like the search for love, how the feeling of loss can bring people together, but let's face it--I'm all in favor of love between humans, in all its varied forms, but "falling in love" with your operating system is just weird, either now or in the future.
"American Hustle" is the one that is trickiest to deal with, as the gossip suggests the Academy is apparently wrestling with this one right now. It is the early favorite for the Best Picture award, and the hype behind it has generated a backlash. Basically it is a pretty mundane period piece from the '70's that was jazzed up tremendously with an adroit Hollywood treatment--pretty much the same as "Argo", only a less interesting story. The key aspect of the film (SLIGHT SPOILER FOLLOWS) was the addition of the Mafia kingpin played by Robert De Niro; without that, it was just your typical entrapment job on sleazy politicians--plenty of that around. But the treatment, with the great actors, makeup, music, and that edge of danger which the Mafia threat brought in, those are what made the movie. So, great artifice--sort of like "Gravity". But "12 Years a Slave" is the real thing--a true story, made real, with performances that tear your guts out, for all the right reasons. So, I'll go with that.
Will the backlash win out? It did last year, when the resentment against Spielberg and his "Lincoln" gave the award to a far less deserving film, and I don't know what the Academy was thinking when it awarded "The Artist" over "The Descendants". It's still embarrassing to consider. So, who knows? I'll be content if either "Hustle" or "12 Years" wins, surprised if neither does, though "Gravity" may have a shot, too.
Best Picture--Will Win/Should Win: "12 Years a Slave"
Directors!
Really, they shouldn't even have this category--the nominees should be the same as for Best Picture, and the award should go to the director, not the producers. I'm trying to think of a great movie that didn't have great direction, and I can't. At least they should open up the category in the same way they did for Best Picture, up to 10 nominees, and it wouldn't be hard to fill. So, my pick would be Steve McQueen ("12 Years"), for the reasons described above. (By the way, Steve McQueen the actor never won an Oscar--he was nominated once, for "The Sand Pebbles", in which he was great! I didn't care for his acting much, in general, but I loved his performance in that movie; kiddies, rent it sometime, you can really learn something from it. I won't spoil it and tell you what you would learn about, but it's not a beach/surfer movie.)
In terms of Hollywood politics, David O. Russell ("Hustle") is considered a jerk; I'd say he's a better shot to win for Original Screenplay (which is fine with me). Alexander Payne won for "The Descendants", so he's been taken care of; Martin Scorsese has also won (finally!), and I don't think "Wolf" should get him another; so the other main contender is Alfonso Cuaron, who is eminently deserving. Have I ever mentioned what an amazing movie was his "Children of Men"? I'll be content with either Cuaron or McQueen.
Best Director - Should Win: Steve McQueen
Will Win: Alfonso Cuaron
Acting!
Best lead actor (male) was a difficult category to limit to five nominees this year. "I hear" that there were several deserving actors who were not nominated (Hanks, Redford, Oscar Isaac for "Llewyn Davis"...). Among those who were nominated, I've seen the performances of only two, Christian Bale in "Hustle" (who was great, but will not win--see David O. Russell above) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (it's really hard to type his name!) for "12 Years"--I really hope he wins. So far, from the other award shows it looks like Matthew McConnaughey (he lost a whole bunch of weight--I guess that's harder to do than gain a bunch of weight, which Bale did) is the favorite; and I should say I give Matthew props for his (forgotten) performance early in the year in "Mud". I'd say Bruce Dern is the dark horse candidate, as there are a lot of old-timers in the Academy who'd like to give it to him. Leo DiCaprio will have to wait another year.
Best lead actress looks to me to be a race between Cate Blanchett ("Blue Jasmine") and Amy Adams ("Hustle"). I think this Woody thing will end up hurting Cate's chances, which is unfair--she was spectacularly good (she's always very good, but this role was tougher and she nailed it). As for Amy, I would say this role wasn't quite as tough as the one she mastered last year (for "The Master"), but she (and her intentionally phony English accent) were good enough to win this year, I think. Meryl Streep's got plenty of award-winning roles (and this ain't one), Sandra Bullock got hers (otherwise, she would win), and fortunately for the leading candidates, Judi Dench has won an Oscar (supporting, for "Shakespeare in Love") out of her seven nominations. Note: Cate has also won, for imitating a multi-Oscar winner (Katherine Hepburn) in "The Aviator", but I don't think that in itself will be the obstacle.
When it comes to Supporting Actor/Supporting Actress, I think there's a chance for a breakthrough this year with two Africans winning (there's even a chance for three, with Ejiofor, but I think that's unlikely). When it comes to Supporting Actor, I think that Barkhad Abdi as the Somali pirate in "Captain Phillips" should win--Academy voters don't usually hold it against a supporting actor/actress that he/she is "the bad guy". I hear that Jared Leto was superb, though, as a transgender AIDS patient in "Dallas Buyers Club". As for Supporting Actress, I don't know: it's a tough field, with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lawrence bringing strong, popular entries, and Sally Hawkins has earned her praise for her latter-day "Stella!" (called "Ginger" in Woody's version), but I'm going to go with Lupita Nyong'o's searing performance as a brilliant, trapped slave in "12 Years".
Best Lead Actor: Should Win--Ejiofor; Will Win - McConnaughey
Best Lead Actress: Should Win--Blanchett; Will Win--Adams
Supporting Actor: Should Win--Abdi; Will Win--Leto
Supporting Actress: Should Win/Will Win--N'yong'o
Writers!
I'm tempted to use the old Bill Murray/SNL approach to the preview when it comes to the Original Screenplay category: "Nebraska", "Dallas Buyers Club"? Didn't see them--next! Seriously, I can imagine both getting some support as being truly original script ideas filled with human interest. I wasn't that thrilled with the quality of the wit in Woody's latest outing (and we have disqualified him above for other, less appropriate reasons), though I did think he did a good job with the flashbacks, using them to build the story and not making us all confused with their use. Failure to do that well was actually the problem with the script for "Hustle"--the flashbacks didn't always work so well, the initial scene (although hilarious) being a good example: it didn't tie back to the actual story very well. OK, the dialogue was often superb and chock-full of good lines (Jennifer Lawrence's character got most of them); despite its flaws I wouldn't mind if it won. No, the best original screenplay was "Her", by the almost-always genius, Spike Jonze. The back-and-forth between Joaquin Phoenix's character (how was he not nominated? I'd like to know...) and Scarlett's "character" was like a modern-day Platonic dialogue. Please, let him win!
Adapted Screenplay is one I always have trouble picking, and I have no confidence at all in my assessment of the nominees. I've heard "Wolf" went on far too long, so that suggests the screenplay was not tight. "Captain Phillips", on the other hand, had a very taut script, but I've heard a lot of the dialogue, like the amazing final scene when he's been (SPOILER) rescued, was improvised. I'd be really annoyed if "Before Midnight" wins--I did see it, and its script really annoyed me: very stilted, like Woody Allen but without the charm. The dialogue in the "12 Years" script could also be considered "stilted", but it was a very interesting approach: the words of all the characters, even the uneducated ones, had a flowing, well-reasoned quality, as if to say that folks 150 years ago could speak a lot better than we can today. Is it true? I don't know, but I think that principle is unlikely to be rewarded on Oscar night. So, I'll go with "Philomena"--Steve Coogan, one of the writers (and lead actor in it), is a really cool English guy and I think it will add some class if he wins.
Original Screenplay: Will win - "Dallas Buyers Club"; Should Win - "Her"
Adapted Screenplay: Will Win/Should Win - "Philomena"
Costumes! Makeup! Sound! Set!
OK, I'm not a pro in any of these areas, far from it, but I have had a pretty good track record picking these technical areas, using a few tricks. I can't really say, then, who I think should win, but I will say who I think will win.
Costumes - Edith Head (8 Oscars) is dead--she was an automatic pick, in her day. So, you go with the movie that had the fashion look that seems most interesting. "The Grandmaster" was Chinese silks, between the wars--definitely interesting. "Hustle"--'70's bimbos--out! "Great Gatsby" --'20's flappers and rich fops--been done too much! "12 Year" -1800's shabby, plus Southern slaveowners--too "GWTW"! "The Invisible Woman"--my first reaction was, "What the heck was this movie?" but when I looked it up, it's that hidden lover of Charles Dickens movie for which I saw a very interesting and attractive preview--I didn't even know it was out. Middle-class Victorian--boffo! I'll go with "Invisible", narrowly over "Grandmaster".
Sound Mixing/Editing--they always explain the difference, and I always forget (I think editing is the artificial creation of the special sounds, and mixing is the general sonorous feeling). These are ones that usually get swept up, when there's going to be a sweep (that's not this year, I think). Besides, the only nominee in these categories which is a potentially big-time Oscar winner this year is "Gravity", and everybody knows "there's no sound in space!" Still, I think it and the hobbit one are the main contenders. 'll go with "Gravity" on the editing side (lots of heavy breathing in costumes, muffled explosions), and the hobbit one for mixing. (Have I've confused myself again? Oh well...)
Makeup-- There are three nominees: one is a "Jackass" film, one is "The Lone Ranger"--a flop of historic proportion, and the ridiculous makeup for Tonto (Johnny Depp) was a main factor in its awkwardness--and the third is "Dallas Buyers Club". It's a pretty easy guess.
Production Design-- You want to pick the one which had the set that contributed most to the movie's success. "Her" had interesting sets--I think most of the futuristic look came from filming in Hong Kong; however, it's a choice between "Great Gatsby", where Gatsby's house was the star of many scenes, and the miraculous creation of deep space in "Gravity". I'd have to go with the latter.
Costume Design - "The Invisible Woman"
Sound Editing - "Gravity"
Sound Mixing - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Makeup - "Dallas Buyers' Club"
Production Design - "Gravity"
Music!
Original Score -- this is not best soundtrack! John Williams is always a good bet, but "The Book Thief" didn't score, so to speak. "Gravity" had music that was a little too intrusive, as I remember, though sometimes the Academy voters reward that. I really can't remember the music in "Her", to be honest--I was too focused on the dialogue. Obviously, I didn't see "Philomena", but I like Thomas Newman's music a lot, it would be a good opportunity to reward "Saving Mr. Banks", which otherwise got snubbed.
Original Song - A good opportunity to give an award to Bono, and posthumously to award Nelson Mandela. There was a scandal and one of the nominees was pulled for the crime (!) of sending emails out to remind voters to vote for his movie as a nominee.
Score - "Saving Mr. Banks"
Song - "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"
Camera!
Cinematography should be a slam dunk for Ernest Lubezki in "Gravity". Basically, they should retire the award after they give it to him, with future years' award being the "Ernest Lubezki award for Cinematography"--the camera work was that good, and that important to the film.
Film Editing - everyone was talking about the opening 15-minute single-take shot in "Gravity", and Cuaron is listed as co-nominee in this category for that film. But I ask you, how hard is it to edit a 15-minute take? No, I'm going to go with the hobbits on this one and hope the Academy agrees.
Visual Effects - This one often surprises, with the award going not to the big hit but one with a stunning visual. I would've thought "Elysium" could have won, but it wasn't nominated, so I'm going with the "Star Trek" one, as I remember a pretty dazzling scene where the Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco was totally destroyed.
Cinematography - "Gravity"
Film Editing - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
Visual Effects - "Star Trek Into Darkness"
Animation!
One word: "Frozen"! The other guys don't even need to show up, unless they want to.
Animated Feature - "Frozen"
Foreigners!
I'm going to close with a bit of rant: of course I'm pulling for "The Great Beauty" ("La Grande Bellezza"), but that's the only one of these I've seen. I'm sure that's true of a lot of others, and it should win. (The French lesbian film could've been a threat, but it didn't end up being nominated.)
Instead, I want to lobby for a little bit more consideration from the Academy for foreign films' being considered in other categories. Yes, "The Artist" won several awards--all mistakenly, in my view, and "Life is Beautiful" won best actor for Roberto Benigni--a highly entertaining winner, also probably a mistake. The point is, these are exceptions, and the Academy is not seriously considering the exceptional work being done regularly outside of the US and Britain for the most part, especially in the technical areas. If it were doing so in 2013, "La Grande Bellezza" would have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, there would have been some kind of nomination for Film Editing (selection of locations--where does that get an award?) and Toni Servillo should have gotten consideration--if not a nomination--for Best Actor. So there--!
Final Tally of "Will Win": "Gravity" - 4; "Dallas Buyers Club" - 3; "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug" - 2; "12 Years a Slave" - 2; all others, 1 (or less). Amy Adams prevents an embarrassing shutout of pre-nomination favorite "American Hustle".
Enjoy Oscar night--I think Ellen DeGeneres will be a good choice: hip, but not too much.
*My five favorite Woody movies--and it is not a trivial question:
1) Sleeper; 2) Broadway Danny Rose; 3) Zelig; 4) Bananas; 5) Crimes and Misdemeanors. Me, I like the funny ones best--at his best (for me), the Woodster called in mind the inspired madness of the Marx Brothers. He hasn't been that light-hearted for a long, long time. .
2014 Political Preview: Europa/Italia--Pt. 1
I aim to demystify two extremely complicated subjects in this post, and one which will follow soon after: the proposal for reform of the electoral system in Italy, and the upcoming (in May) elections for the European Parliament.
I suppose I should try to make the case to my audience--those who are not Italians, or Europeans of any kind--that these are important subjects. I know one group to whom these subjects are intrinsically of interest, and that would be the political scientists. Italy has long been a case study in the conflict between the desire for greater democracy, which in Italy has taken the form of elections with proportional representation and multiple parties, and for governmental stability (which has been elusive in Italy with that system); while the European Parliament is a political experiement in multicultural representative democracy far more adventurous than has ever been attempted previously. Far more complex than the US democracy, the only plausible comparison is to India's electoral system, but Europe's system does not have the unifying element of a single, historically-dominant party (the Congress Party), and those unified by their desire to oppose it. Beyond that, just consider that Europe's economy is far larger than China's, larger even than the US', so that if it were considered a single economy--and what is the European Union if not an attempt to make it so?--it would be the largest. And, considered as a unit, Europe is lagging in its recovery from the Great Crater, so this has a significant effect on the global economy. Further, within Europe Italy leads in lagging, that is, it is the country with the largest net loss in GDP yet to be recovered from the double-dip recession that has been experienced in Europe. So, whatever, interesting and/or important, I hope you're convinced. If so, read on, and I will be your Virgil to lead you through the dark paths ahead.
Primer on Italian Electoral Reform History:
70 Years in 10 Minutes (if you read slowly)
Before I can go into depth about this political lightning rod named Matteo Renzi and possibly explain what this reform thing is all about (and how it might be a little different from all the other electoral/political "reforms" that have occurred in Italy since World War II), I need to give a little background. I refer you also to the two other times that I have dared to post on Italian politics before, both within the last twelve months. One of these was in February, 2013, just after the last Parliamentary elections, on the challenge of forming a government, and the other was in June when, contrary to many people's expectations, a government was actually formed.
So, a primer: Italy's Parliamentary system has generally had elections driven around party lists with proportional representation within regions (the word is used loosely here, the electoral districts do not necessarily correspond to the Italian governmental regions); if your party could get over 5% of the vote, it will have representation in Parliament. There are two houses of the Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; today's Italian Senate differs only by having some lifetime members, an honor to those who have served the government prominently and honorably (that cuts it down, as will be discussed),slightly different computational formulas, and the electorate is limited to those over 25 years of age (so there, whippersnappers!).
The result of the party list/proportional representation scheme has been splitting of the electorate, with two or three larger parties in double digits but always less than 50%, and a few smaller parties with less than 10% nationally (and some much less, but scoring Parliamentary seats on a regional basis). The pattern, for most of the postwar period, has been shifting alliances and coalition governments based on pooling the strength of one or two large groups and a lot of similarly-minded smaller ones. The test of a coalition is its ability to maintain a majority in key test votes; failing a test vote, the government is dissolved, and either a new coalition is formed or early elections are called.
This system was highly democratic, in that most votes end up gaining representation in Parliament, and with some resemblance to their number, but more democracy does not necessarily translate into good governance. The larger parties in Italian history have eventually failed their supporters and collapsed. The three large parties of the postwar period--the Communists (the P.C.I.), the Socialists (the P.S.I.), and the Christian Democrats (D.C.--somehow the third initial of the inevitable TLA--three-letter acronym--was omitted, perhaps it was their flaw)--all collapsed in the early 1990's, due to a combination of scandals, of alleged bribery and of the exposure of the infamous P2 Masonic lodge (which seemed to run everything in secret), along with the end of the Cold War, which demoralized the Communists, but also removed the reason for uniting in the DC as the hated-but-necessary alternative to Eurocommunism. These were the latest in a series of party formations and collapses dating back to the beginning of the modern Italian state, including also the Liberals, the Republicans, the Social Democrats, the Popular Party (P.P.I.) and the Fascists. With the exception of the Fascists, whose ruin was entering into WWII with opportunistic intent and disastrous result, the usual theme was unreliability of the leadership's loyalties and internecine squabbling.
Without a doubt, these themes have continued, but since the early Nineties, there has been a sincere search for a two-party system, Italian style. The multiplicity of parties has continued, but there has been a unifying force: the dominant Italian politician of the last twenty years, Silvio Berlusconi; and the coalitions have been roughly aligned around the (Berlusconian) free-market appeal against socialism/Communism and for patriotism (or provincialism), and its natural (for Italy, anyway) opposition, good-government social democracy oriented toward greater participation in the European Union.
In 1993, Italy changed the electoral law (through a referendum) from the traditional, fully "democratic" one with proportional representation and preference selection, to one with a mix of single-representative electoral districts and proportional representation with list order fixed by the parties. In 2005, the political forces aligned (basically with Berlusconi's desire) to create a new law designed to ensure major-party coalitions. Under this law, the parties could choose to agree to run in coalitions (though they would have different lists of candidates), and the coalition with the largest share of the popular vote (in the Chamber of Deputies only) would get enough additional representatives to reach 55% of that house, thus ensuring the basis of a majority. This worked pretty well--there were "only" four different governments between 2005 and the 2013 elections, well below the postwar Italian average--but the system was wrecked by events which converged in 2013, a couple driven by decisions of the Judiciary (an additional, powerful and unpredictable force itself), and a couple driven by the inherent flaws of the system.
First, there were the results in 2013, in which the top three party/coalitions--called (in translation) "Common Good" (the center-left), "Center-right", and "5 Star" (the iconoclastic movement headed by Beppe Grillo, see previous post) each obtained greater than 25% and less than 30% in the vote for the Chamber of Deputies. Despite the center-left coalition having received a mere 0.4% more than the center-right, it gained the majority bonus and went to 55% of the Chamber, the other two groupings dropping below 20% (and the other parties outside these groupings dropping from 16% of the vote to 8%) of deputies. In the Senate, the popular vote results were similar (though a lower % for 5 Star, which tends to have more support among the young), but without the majority bonus the other two groups were virtually equal at about 40% of Senators.
So, in the Chamber of Deputies there was no problem, but a new government must be supported by majorities in both houses, and the Senate was the problem. The little parties could be managed, but with 5 Star firmly against any agreement or coalition, the only solution was an agreement between center-left and center-right. With the economic emergency, and the need above all else to agree on a budget which would convince the German bankers to continue to support Italy's, a non-partisan govenrment was formed. Instead of being led by Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the largest party of the "victorious" center-left (now called the "Democratic Party"), a lesser politician from that party, the able but somewhat colorless Enrico Letta, was chosen as prime minister, with the center-right gaining a major share of the government posts, and the party furthest to the left of the center-left coalition (let's call it, the S.E.L., "the Greens") cut out of the deal. Bersani did the honorable thing, given his inability to close the deal and the fairly weak plurality his coalition obtained, and resigned as leader of the Democratic Party (he has since had a serious stroke, so it is unclear if he will return to any active political role).
Next come the two judicial results which have combined to cause turmoil in that "historic compromise" government (I use the phrase ironically). It was formed to bring Italy's economy out of its slide; it hasn't done much to make that happen, though the slide seems to have slowed. It did, however, manage to survive its first crisis, which came at the conclusion of a series of court cases lasting years, in which Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax evasion was finally, definitvely, affirmed (subject to appeal, of course). It then fell to the Senate to decide whether to expel Berlusconi from its membership or defy the courts. This split the center-right party down the middle. A significant number of his side, perhaps surprisingly large, decided to cut Berlusconi loose (they formed a new party called "New Center-right"--N.C.D.), and he was expelled from the Senate--forever (unless they change their mind someday). The Senate coalition regrouped without the Berlusconi loyalists, who have taken on his party's former name, Forza Italia ("Go, Italy!"), and are seeking to bring down the government and bring new elections--in this regard, they agree with 5 Star, who got close but won no cigars out of the last election and are looking for a rematch.
Late last year, the Constitutional Court, Italy's highest, handed down a decision that the application of the 2005 law in the 2013 elections violated the Constitution, because the current law does not specify any minimum level of popular vote required to get the majority bonus; thus, the law departs too far from democratic principles. In theory, with a dozen parties, a party could get 10% of the vote and end up with 55% of the deputies; in the event, the center-left coalition went from 29.5 to 54.8%, and this was too much for them. They did not specify what needed to be done, nor did they deny Parliament the right to make the electoral law, but they did say something needed to change--and before the next Italian Parliamentary election occurs. Otherwise, the system would go back to the original proportional/preference scheme.
Matteo Renzi and the Italian Electoral Reform
Enter--finally!--Matteo Renzi. Renzi is not in the Parliament, nor in the current Letta government; his day job is Mayor of Florence. His real job, though, is head of the Democratic Party; he won a dramatic victory among the party loyalists last fall with two-thirds of the votes, and as the head of PD, he is also the de facto leader of the center-left, for the next election (which will come in the European Parliament this May; a subject for Part 2). Renzi has stepped dramatically into the fray (the Italian word they use is usually "palude", the swamp) and volunteered to help concoct an Italian electoral law which will satisfy the Constitutional Court and set the stage for the next Parliamentary elections.
I have to say I admire his courage (also his youthful vigor, he is thirty-something) in taking on this role. There are approximately as many possible solutions to this challenge as there are Deputies plus Senators (945!), and every one of them probably has a different solution in mind. Here are a few of the issues he is tackling, and the proposed solution in the draft law*:
The current answers proposed by Renzi are:
The proposed reform has caused a lot of agita+ to everyone except Renzi and Berlusconi, including Letta (the debate can definitely cause the fall of his government), other members of his own party (who are being put in the shade), of the other parties of the governing coalition (who are being squeezed), of the parties of the extreme left and right (in extreme danger of losing representation in Parliament), and, finally and most gravely, the 5 Star Movement of Beppe Grillo. Grillo & Co. are opposed to any form of electoral reform short of direct election of members (very much in line with their general proposition for direct participation, and elimination of parties and alignment along a left-right spectrum); what they want tactically is to find a way to break down the government and go to new elections in the old style. They felt they were close to getting the upper hand, and further government ineptitude can only lead to greater success for them.
The volume amped up this week as the bill was presented to Parliament; 5 Star tried obstructionist tactics which bordered on disrespect for the institutions--something I'm sure they feel but are not permitted to express (it could lead to criminal action). The first test--defeating a motion that the proposed reform was itself unconstitutional--was surmounted with strong support from the government parties, as well as Berlusconi's. The real debate will start in a week or two; Renzi will want to make some tactical concessions to bring in as much support as possible, as some of the deals he will have to make will turn off members of the smaller parties in the government--which after all is not his government--and the members are likely to be able to register their personal objections anonymously, in a secret ballot.
Regardless of the outcome of the debate--and the forces for passing something are very strong at the moment, despite the difficulties--Renzi has placed himself at the top of the list of candidates to be the next premier. Both he and Berlusconi have calculated that the reform would lead to a direct competition between his Democratic Party and a regrouped Berlusconi coalition, and Renzi would like his chances in that one: Berlusconi's support is ever more fragile in the public and the political elites. Still out there in (dis)loyal opposition, though, will be Grillo and his forces; in the meantime, Grillo has an ideal opportunity to upset the balance of political forces in Italy through the elections for the European Parliament in May.
* I have not yet found access to a text of the draft law--I refer you to the following articles (Google will translate to English) on formulas under consideration and the recent laws, and one in English that helped clarify things.
+agita =upset stomach; a useful word, though basically one of Italian-Americans and just a few from Italy's South.
I suppose I should try to make the case to my audience--those who are not Italians, or Europeans of any kind--that these are important subjects. I know one group to whom these subjects are intrinsically of interest, and that would be the political scientists. Italy has long been a case study in the conflict between the desire for greater democracy, which in Italy has taken the form of elections with proportional representation and multiple parties, and for governmental stability (which has been elusive in Italy with that system); while the European Parliament is a political experiement in multicultural representative democracy far more adventurous than has ever been attempted previously. Far more complex than the US democracy, the only plausible comparison is to India's electoral system, but Europe's system does not have the unifying element of a single, historically-dominant party (the Congress Party), and those unified by their desire to oppose it. Beyond that, just consider that Europe's economy is far larger than China's, larger even than the US', so that if it were considered a single economy--and what is the European Union if not an attempt to make it so?--it would be the largest. And, considered as a unit, Europe is lagging in its recovery from the Great Crater, so this has a significant effect on the global economy. Further, within Europe Italy leads in lagging, that is, it is the country with the largest net loss in GDP yet to be recovered from the double-dip recession that has been experienced in Europe. So, whatever, interesting and/or important, I hope you're convinced. If so, read on, and I will be your Virgil to lead you through the dark paths ahead.
Primer on Italian Electoral Reform History:
70 Years in 10 Minutes (if you read slowly)
Before I can go into depth about this political lightning rod named Matteo Renzi and possibly explain what this reform thing is all about (and how it might be a little different from all the other electoral/political "reforms" that have occurred in Italy since World War II), I need to give a little background. I refer you also to the two other times that I have dared to post on Italian politics before, both within the last twelve months. One of these was in February, 2013, just after the last Parliamentary elections, on the challenge of forming a government, and the other was in June when, contrary to many people's expectations, a government was actually formed.
So, a primer: Italy's Parliamentary system has generally had elections driven around party lists with proportional representation within regions (the word is used loosely here, the electoral districts do not necessarily correspond to the Italian governmental regions); if your party could get over 5% of the vote, it will have representation in Parliament. There are two houses of the Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; today's Italian Senate differs only by having some lifetime members, an honor to those who have served the government prominently and honorably (that cuts it down, as will be discussed),slightly different computational formulas, and the electorate is limited to those over 25 years of age (so there, whippersnappers!).
The result of the party list/proportional representation scheme has been splitting of the electorate, with two or three larger parties in double digits but always less than 50%, and a few smaller parties with less than 10% nationally (and some much less, but scoring Parliamentary seats on a regional basis). The pattern, for most of the postwar period, has been shifting alliances and coalition governments based on pooling the strength of one or two large groups and a lot of similarly-minded smaller ones. The test of a coalition is its ability to maintain a majority in key test votes; failing a test vote, the government is dissolved, and either a new coalition is formed or early elections are called.
This system was highly democratic, in that most votes end up gaining representation in Parliament, and with some resemblance to their number, but more democracy does not necessarily translate into good governance. The larger parties in Italian history have eventually failed their supporters and collapsed. The three large parties of the postwar period--the Communists (the P.C.I.), the Socialists (the P.S.I.), and the Christian Democrats (D.C.--somehow the third initial of the inevitable TLA--three-letter acronym--was omitted, perhaps it was their flaw)--all collapsed in the early 1990's, due to a combination of scandals, of alleged bribery and of the exposure of the infamous P2 Masonic lodge (which seemed to run everything in secret), along with the end of the Cold War, which demoralized the Communists, but also removed the reason for uniting in the DC as the hated-but-necessary alternative to Eurocommunism. These were the latest in a series of party formations and collapses dating back to the beginning of the modern Italian state, including also the Liberals, the Republicans, the Social Democrats, the Popular Party (P.P.I.) and the Fascists. With the exception of the Fascists, whose ruin was entering into WWII with opportunistic intent and disastrous result, the usual theme was unreliability of the leadership's loyalties and internecine squabbling.
Without a doubt, these themes have continued, but since the early Nineties, there has been a sincere search for a two-party system, Italian style. The multiplicity of parties has continued, but there has been a unifying force: the dominant Italian politician of the last twenty years, Silvio Berlusconi; and the coalitions have been roughly aligned around the (Berlusconian) free-market appeal against socialism/Communism and for patriotism (or provincialism), and its natural (for Italy, anyway) opposition, good-government social democracy oriented toward greater participation in the European Union.
In 1993, Italy changed the electoral law (through a referendum) from the traditional, fully "democratic" one with proportional representation and preference selection, to one with a mix of single-representative electoral districts and proportional representation with list order fixed by the parties. In 2005, the political forces aligned (basically with Berlusconi's desire) to create a new law designed to ensure major-party coalitions. Under this law, the parties could choose to agree to run in coalitions (though they would have different lists of candidates), and the coalition with the largest share of the popular vote (in the Chamber of Deputies only) would get enough additional representatives to reach 55% of that house, thus ensuring the basis of a majority. This worked pretty well--there were "only" four different governments between 2005 and the 2013 elections, well below the postwar Italian average--but the system was wrecked by events which converged in 2013, a couple driven by decisions of the Judiciary (an additional, powerful and unpredictable force itself), and a couple driven by the inherent flaws of the system.
First, there were the results in 2013, in which the top three party/coalitions--called (in translation) "Common Good" (the center-left), "Center-right", and "5 Star" (the iconoclastic movement headed by Beppe Grillo, see previous post) each obtained greater than 25% and less than 30% in the vote for the Chamber of Deputies. Despite the center-left coalition having received a mere 0.4% more than the center-right, it gained the majority bonus and went to 55% of the Chamber, the other two groupings dropping below 20% (and the other parties outside these groupings dropping from 16% of the vote to 8%) of deputies. In the Senate, the popular vote results were similar (though a lower % for 5 Star, which tends to have more support among the young), but without the majority bonus the other two groups were virtually equal at about 40% of Senators.
So, in the Chamber of Deputies there was no problem, but a new government must be supported by majorities in both houses, and the Senate was the problem. The little parties could be managed, but with 5 Star firmly against any agreement or coalition, the only solution was an agreement between center-left and center-right. With the economic emergency, and the need above all else to agree on a budget which would convince the German bankers to continue to support Italy's, a non-partisan govenrment was formed. Instead of being led by Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the largest party of the "victorious" center-left (now called the "Democratic Party"), a lesser politician from that party, the able but somewhat colorless Enrico Letta, was chosen as prime minister, with the center-right gaining a major share of the government posts, and the party furthest to the left of the center-left coalition (let's call it, the S.E.L., "the Greens") cut out of the deal. Bersani did the honorable thing, given his inability to close the deal and the fairly weak plurality his coalition obtained, and resigned as leader of the Democratic Party (he has since had a serious stroke, so it is unclear if he will return to any active political role).
Next come the two judicial results which have combined to cause turmoil in that "historic compromise" government (I use the phrase ironically). It was formed to bring Italy's economy out of its slide; it hasn't done much to make that happen, though the slide seems to have slowed. It did, however, manage to survive its first crisis, which came at the conclusion of a series of court cases lasting years, in which Silvio Berlusconi's conviction for tax evasion was finally, definitvely, affirmed (subject to appeal, of course). It then fell to the Senate to decide whether to expel Berlusconi from its membership or defy the courts. This split the center-right party down the middle. A significant number of his side, perhaps surprisingly large, decided to cut Berlusconi loose (they formed a new party called "New Center-right"--N.C.D.), and he was expelled from the Senate--forever (unless they change their mind someday). The Senate coalition regrouped without the Berlusconi loyalists, who have taken on his party's former name, Forza Italia ("Go, Italy!"), and are seeking to bring down the government and bring new elections--in this regard, they agree with 5 Star, who got close but won no cigars out of the last election and are looking for a rematch.
Late last year, the Constitutional Court, Italy's highest, handed down a decision that the application of the 2005 law in the 2013 elections violated the Constitution, because the current law does not specify any minimum level of popular vote required to get the majority bonus; thus, the law departs too far from democratic principles. In theory, with a dozen parties, a party could get 10% of the vote and end up with 55% of the deputies; in the event, the center-left coalition went from 29.5 to 54.8%, and this was too much for them. They did not specify what needed to be done, nor did they deny Parliament the right to make the electoral law, but they did say something needed to change--and before the next Italian Parliamentary election occurs. Otherwise, the system would go back to the original proportional/preference scheme.
Matteo Renzi and the Italian Electoral Reform
I have to say I admire his courage (also his youthful vigor, he is thirty-something) in taking on this role. There are approximately as many possible solutions to this challenge as there are Deputies plus Senators (945!), and every one of them probably has a different solution in mind. Here are a few of the issues he is tackling, and the proposed solution in the draft law*:
- Whether there will be lists at all, or whether it will all be one seat per district, most votes wins;
- Whether the parties will have the same list of candidates or different lists, by region, and the right to determine the list order or whether it will be determined in a primary;
- Whether there will be a majority bonus, and at what level of popular vote it will kick in, and what will happen if no coalition gets to that level;
- What the minimum level of votes for representation in Parliament will be, and whether there will be any regional concessions (i.e., whether that minimum will apply on a national basis only);
- What, if anything, will be done to bring more women into the Parliament; and, last but not least,
- What's to be done about the Senate?
The current answers proposed by Renzi are:
- There will be lists (basically non-negotiable to Renzi);
- The parties will name the lists (though he is agreeable to having primaries, they would not be mandated in the law);
- Majority bonus is currently negotiated to kick in at 37% (boosting the leading coalition's level to 55%, though that is negotiable--the idea is to have it safely above 50% so the government would be stable), but so far, there is no plan to deal with the situation in which no coalition reaches the minimum level--it would lead to a difficult Parliamentary environment and probably necessitate new, early elections;
- The minimum number is being negotiated downward, to try and get some minor-party support, with 4.5% and 4.0% being discussed--allowances for provincial qualification is still under discussion;
- Women will be equally represented on the lists, though there is the possibility for trickery (some women have discovered that and are challenging the provision); and
- Tthe current thinking is either to abolish the Senate, or make it a dilatory, honorary body like the House of Lords in the U.K., which advises on laws but whose support is not required for a bill to become law. This would be a separate bill, approved after the Election Law (which the Senate must approve!), but which would take effect either before or after the Electoral Reform law.
The proposed reform has caused a lot of agita+ to everyone except Renzi and Berlusconi, including Letta (the debate can definitely cause the fall of his government), other members of his own party (who are being put in the shade), of the other parties of the governing coalition (who are being squeezed), of the parties of the extreme left and right (in extreme danger of losing representation in Parliament), and, finally and most gravely, the 5 Star Movement of Beppe Grillo. Grillo & Co. are opposed to any form of electoral reform short of direct election of members (very much in line with their general proposition for direct participation, and elimination of parties and alignment along a left-right spectrum); what they want tactically is to find a way to break down the government and go to new elections in the old style. They felt they were close to getting the upper hand, and further government ineptitude can only lead to greater success for them.
The volume amped up this week as the bill was presented to Parliament; 5 Star tried obstructionist tactics which bordered on disrespect for the institutions--something I'm sure they feel but are not permitted to express (it could lead to criminal action). The first test--defeating a motion that the proposed reform was itself unconstitutional--was surmounted with strong support from the government parties, as well as Berlusconi's. The real debate will start in a week or two; Renzi will want to make some tactical concessions to bring in as much support as possible, as some of the deals he will have to make will turn off members of the smaller parties in the government--which after all is not his government--and the members are likely to be able to register their personal objections anonymously, in a secret ballot.
Regardless of the outcome of the debate--and the forces for passing something are very strong at the moment, despite the difficulties--Renzi has placed himself at the top of the list of candidates to be the next premier. Both he and Berlusconi have calculated that the reform would lead to a direct competition between his Democratic Party and a regrouped Berlusconi coalition, and Renzi would like his chances in that one: Berlusconi's support is ever more fragile in the public and the political elites. Still out there in (dis)loyal opposition, though, will be Grillo and his forces; in the meantime, Grillo has an ideal opportunity to upset the balance of political forces in Italy through the elections for the European Parliament in May.
* I have not yet found access to a text of the draft law--I refer you to the following articles (Google will translate to English) on formulas under consideration and the recent laws, and one in English that helped clarify things.
+agita =upset stomach; a useful word, though basically one of Italian-Americans and just a few from Italy's South.
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