Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2015

The Contenders:

The Big Short (winner)
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2015

The Contenders:

Eddie Redmayne: The Danish Girl
Matt Damon: The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio: The Revenant (winner)
Michael Fassbender: Steve Jobs
Bryan Cranston: Trumbo

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2015

The Contenders:

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight (winner)

Matt Damon Won't Stay Rescued

Film: The Martian
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s kind of a running Hollywood joke that Matt Damon gets left places and has to be rescued. That’s the central plot device of The Martian: Matt Damon gets stranded on Mars and needs to be rescued. That might be the basic plot here, but the truth is that The Martian is less about rescuing Matt Damon and more about how balls-out cool space is. If you aren’t awed by space, amazed by it, or humbled by it, you haven’t really looked at it.

So at an unspecified time in the near future, The Martian proposes that we have sent a manned mission to Mars. A crew of six is on the surface of the planet doing Mars-y, space-y stuff when a massive windstorm crops up and threatens their small base. In fact, the storm is so significant that it forces an abort of the mission. The crew scurries to their craft to escape when a piece of blowing debris impales the crew’s botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon), puncturing his suit and is biomonitor, which makes everyone think he is dead. The ship blasts off with a crew of five, leaving Mark on the planet wounded, but still alive.