Beauty Break / Best Shot: "Making a Scene" with Oscar Contenders
Thursday, November 28, 2013 at 9:12PM One of my favorite Oscar traditions is the New York Times short films celebrating Oscar contenders, locked contenders and longshots alike. And by short films I mean very very short. Like one minute. You might remember that previous year's editions have given Casting Directors a ton of brilliant ideas which, for the most part, they've been slow to pick up on like Viola Davis as a frightening villain. Remember that?
This year's shorts, eleven in total, are all directed by two-time Oscar winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski who is most famous for shooting Steven Spielberg's filmography (and less famous for once being married to Holly Hunter but that's cool, too.) The shorts are sublime in concept -- they mismatch contender actors with one or two lines from screenwriting contenders (update: not from the writer's actual contending films, which I initially thought since the Bradley Cooper bit sounds like a near lift from the All is Lost's opening monologue) -- though not always in execution since this multiplied tradition can't help but be a bit uneven each year.
Cate Blanchett with a line from the writer of "Computer Chess"
For fun, and as a shout back to the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series that's currently on hiatus, I've selected my favorite single image from each of the shorts [10 more after the jump]. But by all means go and watch the shorts. It'll only take you 15 minutes and there will be many delicious thanksgiving feasts for your eyeballs beyond the ones posted here.
Bradley Cooper with a line from the writer of "All is Lost"
Bradley Cooper dancing. Love it.
Robert Redford with a line from the writers of "This is the End"
Oprah Winfrey with a line from the writer of "Stories We Tell"
Greta Gerwig with a line from the writers of "Before Midnight"
Gerwig's might be my favorite of the shorts
Forest Whitaker with a line from Greta Gerwig who co-wrote "Frances Ha"
Julia Louis-Dreyfus with a line from the writer of "Enough Said"
Michael B Jordan with a line from the writer of "Her"
I'm not sure that one works. Jordan doing horseback western is, for whatever reason, almost as uncomfortable as Jesse Eisenberg doing suave espionage.
Oscar Isaac with a line from the writer of "In a World"
Chiwetel Ejiofor with a line from the writer of "Mud"
Adele Exarchopoulus with a line from the writer of "The Butler"
Adèle's line is perfectly chosen for her (and delivered in French)
They call me sexy, smart, sociopathic. But not necessarily in that order."
Reader Comments (18)
On that Oprah one: HELLO Amanda Waller audition.
These are really fun. My top 3 are 1. Greta 2. Julia 3. Cate but I really enjoyed all of them, except Whitaker's.
@Volvagia - oh my God, that would be amazing. They didn't give Angela Bassett nearly enough meat for that role, and considering how that role was a huge zero, there wasn't much that she could do with it anyway. It would be fascinating to see Amanda Waller's ruthlessness filtered through the Oprah persona. Now if only there was a good script and a good director for whatever DC movie they could use Amanda Waller in.
My favorite was easily Cate Blanchett's -- queasy and odd and pretty and grotesque in rapid beats. Only Tilda Swinton can achieve the same effect I think.
I can't seem to find a favorite, they were all pretty good, but if I have to choose it would probably be from Cate, Oprah or Julia. Or maybe Issac.
Nat, are you sure the lines are from those movies? They don't sound familiar.
I really think they are... just they feel very different in context. Like, for example, the bradley cooper bit is definitely from the opening monologue of All is Lost and if you divorce the words from the tone and intensity of the Gerwig piece, they are definitely words that could have been part of that epic fight in Before Midnight.
of course some of the lines are so generic that they could be from any movie (like the Chiwetel or Oscar Isaac lines)
I don't think these lines are from the movies either. Love the films, though!
They did a great Q&A with some of the writers as well.
In the credits of the video they name the writer of those scripts. It's those movies.
Cate Blanchett and Oscar Isaac were my two fabs
Yeah, I don't think those lines are from the movies either. For example, Oprah's line was:
"So you died while I was out. How convenient. I thought it would be easier if you were dead. But actually, it’s just irritating,”
I watched "Stories We Tell" last night and that line didn't appear anywhere in the film. Maybe Sarah Polley wrote the line specifically for the project?
I look forward to these every year. Julia and Oprah are my favs,
I think I like the Oprah one because it isn't Oprah being Oprah or even that Oprahish. That was not a woman who gives people things, desperately needs to be loved or is trying to sustain an image. That was a woman who takes what she wants and is comfortable with that.
Both the Cate and Julia ones just have so much style and conflict between the images and the text and the Oscar one is so easy to relate too in a wtf sort of way.
"They call me sexy, smart, sociopathic. But not necessarily in that order."
Who says that in The Butler??
That dress that Cate Blanchett was wearing looked so much like sliced smoked salmon!
squasher88 -- so maybe i was wrong (unless yaya says that at some point?) but some of them definitely are.
Maybe they are lines from the script that didn't necessarily make it into each film?
"For the first time, we commissioned lines from an eclectic and talented group of screenwriters, including Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Andrew Bujalski, Nicole Holofcener and J. C. Chandor — writers responsible for some of the best scripts of 2013. We asked them each to write a single line for us — not a scene, a script or a scenario, but simply an intriguing, amusing or captivating line of dialogue." (New York Times, 11-25-13)
EVERYONE -- sorry. that Bradley Cooper bit threw me. I thought it was a direct lift from All is Lost. (sure sounds like it) so i've updated the post accordingly to read "with a line from the writer of..." under each entry